Jennaishealed.org

Brought Cooper with me again, and of course we spent most of our time at the “Castle Park.”  We also brought Jenna her new glasses so she can actually see now (I tried them on and man she must be BLIND without them, although she is not one to complain, about that anyway).  I got ridiculously sick, had a fever for two days running, cold sweats, etc.

We are going back the weekend of the 24th.  I was planning on going back the weekend of the 17th but the inlaws want to take Cooper to Birmingham that weekend for a party, so we bumped the Jenna visit to the next one.

Jenna herself is doing really great.  It was so awesome to have Cooper with us, as we got to be our little family unit all weekend.  As I have mentioned before, that is what I lament the most, that Jenna doesn’t get to be with Cooper and vice versa.  Anyway, more later…

For so long, right from the beginning, I worked with all my heart and mind towards one goal: to make Jenna whole again. I have as much as admitted it in the past here, but it looks like that just is not going to happen. So much of my self esteem has been wrapped up in Jenna’s ultimate fate, and my role in her current one, that I have become totally non-functional. trying to span the distance between full recovery and partial.

For a long time I tried to do the best I could with the whole faith thing, and believing against hope in some kind of Christian miracle. I mean, I *really* tried to believe it. The name of this website itself is testimony to that much. The funny part of all of this is that if you had asked any of my college friends about an eventual Christian conversion for Mr. Robert here, they probably would have put that at a -100000% probability. At least I would have. But maybe its like they say, the more you resist something, the more you will eventually succumb. Just ask all the moralizing preachers who are eventually caught — often literally — with their pants down on the question.

I don’t know if “succumb” is the right word. I distinctly remember being in a hallway with Jenna’s dad and some church and “believer” friends of theirs, and I so very desperately wanted Jenna to be OK, to be whole again, that I really wanted to be able to believe.  I just didnt think it was possible, given where I had come from on the subject.  I walked that hallway a FEW times before I could convince myself that such a thing was even possible. I eventually decided I would have to make myself believe it was possible, and for a long time I believed and prayed that Jenna would be able to return to her former life.

I do have to note that if it wasn’t for the possibility-of-whole-recovery thing to begin with, I may not have been able to make it at all. And where Jenna is right now is not all that bad, recovery wise. She is happy, so I should be too.

Nevertheless, in my darker moments, I blame myself for so much of this. I blame myself for ever entering Jenna’s life to begin with, etc. I wont make a list because I am trying to move beyond it all. If I persist with it, and with trying to be so entwined with Jenna’s recovery on a daily basis, I am going to end up in a rubber room, or a morgue.  At least until I can get my own emotional soup cleared up, I just have to step back from the Jenna war room mentality I’ve kept up for the past four years.

I used to try to be as honest with Jenna as possible, including telling her the truth about my own mental status. Big mistake. I need to get some distance from all of this. For my own survival. I have been wallowing in the gap between where I want Jenna to be and in the reality of where Jenna is going to be, and it is just not working. Now its been a frickin YEAR in the hellabama house. When I dropped Jenna off with her parents in Indiana last summer, I was a weeping wreck. A year later, I am still a weeping wreck. I have had conversations about “keeping” Jenna, aka whether to completely cut her off, with her dad, wondering whether I have the ability any more to deal with it all. God knows I tried, but clearly I do not.  I have no intention of cutting her off entirely, I just need to step back a little bit.

I will still stay in Jenna’s life, take her many calls, but I am going to try to detach spiritually and emotionally from the impossible goal stated in this website’s URL. Jenna is happy, content, and functioning as best she can in her current situation, and I need to be happy with that, just that, and not be a Sisyphusian mess.

The library is closing right now (actually now im in the parking lot doing a revision) so I will try to articulate more of what I’m talking about at another time.

He just got back in from vacation, so he wasn’t all the way up to speed, but he looked over some reports he had and said that she is doing better on the Ritalin, being more active and going to the grocery store instead of relying on staff to go for her, etc.  I am trying to get them to get her to work out more on the treadmill because of what I have heard about physical activity stimulating the brain and such.  She is also gaining weight, probably due to the Zyprexa, and I want her to avoid that because she walks like a drunken zombie enough as it is, not to mention the elevated diabetes risk with Zyprexa itself.  I wonder if it elevates the diabetes risk due to the medication or because it causes weight gain?  Probably both… 

I am at the library again, different one this time.  This one is on the way to Home Depot in a ghetto-y part of town.  Not making a judgement, just an observation.

I worked on the falling-down garage this morning again.  The pain in the leg was far more intense this morning, so I quit after about an hour or an hour and a half or so.  Sobbing was involved.  Every time I hear love mentioned in a song, I cry.  I think of Jenna and it all bowls me over.  This time it was an Elton John song of all things.  And the only reason why I was listening to a music station at all was because I woke up super early and the NPR station was doing its repeat of the morning show I had heard earlier that am…

Man I am in so much frickin pain, mostly physical, but also psychological.  Many people have told me to go to the hospital, and other than the financial issues with that, I just seem to resist out of sheer… laziness?  Inertia, maybe.  I hate hospitals, and I already got a $8,000 bill for the last time I went for an out-of-control manic episode last fall.  There is a county hospital here in Birmingham that I could go to but still I resist. 

 This morning I managed to work on the falling-down garage for about two hours before I had to stop due to the pain in my leg.  I was half the time sobbing while I was working because I kept seeing Cooper’s old tricycle sitting there, and that reminded me of so much that has gone “wrong” with this whole situation.  I put “wrong” in quotes because there was really nothing else that could be done, I know that I made the right decisions in keeping Cooper away from his mom during her own uncontrolled manic anger stage.  In the process I have missed out on so much of his life myself.  The tricycle has barely been used, which just reminds me how much Cooper has been gone. 

I suppose I am a “wuss” for crying so much.   The good news continues to be that Jenna is doing well on the Ritalin.  I tend to upset her on the phone which I know I should not do, but in my own personal hell here in ‘bama I have few others to talk to.  My policy on Jenna has been never to shield her from things, which I know at some level is the wrong policy.  But in my heart of hearts I want to treat her as “normal” as much as possible, which means being honest with her and not sheilding her from things that could upset her.  I know when I am doing it that I SHOULDN’T be doing it, but I just can’t stop myself sometimes. 

 The other thing that is positive is that Cooper is doing well, also.  I try to talk to him as much as possible over the phone.  He loves to have me read him stories over the phone.

I was in Wallyworld the other week and was looking at the childrens’ books to see what is on the market (I am writing stories for Cooper, and wanted to see what if anything I might eventually market), and I found this really cute book called “Amelia Asks for a Pet”.  Anyway, I read it to Cooper over the phone the other night and it soon became a regular thing to read him that book, two others he left here last time he was here, and one story I wrote him myself.  I am working on another one right now about a family of bees, which is why I am at this library computer ( I have again lost internet access at the house again), to do a little research.

 Well, my back is killing me and I need to go get horizontal.  More later when I can get back over here….

for his very generous contribution to the Jenna fund! I should have made note of all the other contributions from other people here but I was keeping track of those on the www.bmw2002faq.com off-topic board…

I have Jenna on the phone right now, and she is doing well. She is talking to a rehabilitation counsellor in an informal chat outside as she has her cigarette. I am having her check her own rehab “session” appointments and take responsibility for her own scheldule, to try to get that 50% attendance record up, WAY up. She has also given me a shopping list of some stuff she wants me to get her, just some bath items, and with Casey’s gift, I can! Thanks again, man!

Jenna just told me that she is very proud of me (awwww!!) and is glad I am sticking around.  Me, too, Jenna (the sticking around part).   She also says things like she is glad that the accident happened, that she prayed for something like this to happen, to “knock her the f*** out.”  There is a kind of innocence there (of what she has truly lost) but also a rememberance of the way her bipolar condition used to plague her moods and cause her so much angst and pain before the accident.  The difference is that before the accident the bipolar stuff was largely hidden, controlled.  Now it explodes onto the surface at the drop of a hat, although that too is also much improved now that she is on all the medications she is on now (zyprexa, elavil, lithium, ritalin, and Im probably leaving some out).  The brain injury combined with the bipolar is truly a double-damned situation and I am so grateful we finally found the meds to control it.  Now we just need to get her better and truly get her her life back, as much as is possible anyway…