2016.01.16

Hey now, I'm still here.

Two weeks into the new year and I'm still hanging around.

Turns out all I needed to do was start drinking the hard stuff again. Wine? Wasn't cutting it. I now use wine as a stop-gap until I can get real drink. That seems to be helping. Pour enough of the red on my heart and it keeps Ginger Baker away until I can wrap my lips around the real stuff.

Also, I've decided on vodka. Exclusively. Used to be I'd ping pong around gin, V. and whiskey, but I wised up and settled on just the one. The flying V. Gin caused too much sickness, whiskey only seemed to exacerbate my health problems, but good king V.? That's the stuff there. Sure, it causes wicked nightmares, but at least they're interesting. Plus, when I wake up in a sweat from some seriously FUCKED UP dream, and my heart is playing 1812 overture against my chest, I can pretend it is only anxiety. Nothing more.

Yeah, I'm good.

What about MW? How's that going?

Ehhhhhhhh. Okay, I guess. She's about to either quit or get fired from her job because she's been making a lot of mistakes lately. That'll be... bad.

Also, the house has become an absolute wreck. She refuses to clean; nor will she let me clean. Well, why don't I just "sneak clean"? Do some scrubbing while she's asleep or otherwise unaware? What the fuck? Am I so goddamned lazy I'm using my wife's Huntington's Disease as an excuse to live like a pig?

Ah-ha. See there? You don't know what it's like. You have no clue.

I tried. Of course I tried. But when MW noticed a clean floor when she'd left a dirty floor, an explanation was demanded. Um.... Wind? A freak wind blew through the house? Cleaned... the floor?

I'm pretty good at floating bullshit past my MW, but that's a non-starter. No. She caught me in the act and there was hell to pay. So I can't clean; she won't clean, and the house is falling apart.

A better example? The toilette bowls. I just had to take a day off work and spend $600 to replace two functional but dirty toilette bowls. MW wouldn’t clean them; wouldn’t let me clean them, but couldn’t live with them anymore. So she hired a plumber. But she was too embarrassed to be in the house when they came to replace the dirty utilities, so I had to stay home from work. Of course, she didn’t trust either me or the plumber to make sure the work was done correctly, so she was home too; hiding in the sitting room behind a curtain of tacked up blankets. She poked her head around the curtain a few times to give instructions; mostly about where the plumber should be allowed to walk – confusing the hell out of the poor guy – but the job eventually got done. The only positive about this situation is, because the toilets are new, I can probably get away with cleaning them on the down low every week or so without MW noticing.

Anyway, the upshot of all this? MW is looking to buy a new house. Makes sense. This house is dirty; we need to buy a new one.

Fuck yes. Why not? I'm all on board. Talking to real estate agents; driving around looking for good neighborhoods.... Sure, it'll deplete all our savings and put us back in an economic hole, but so what? We’re not going to live forever – why not act stupid now? It might be the last time we have to make such a serious mistake. After this, all our mistakes will be made for us.

The only good break in this situation is that, because I haven’t had a credit card in ten years, I’ve no credit and can’t get a load. Ha! I had to apply for a credit card and, am told by the bank, must make three month’s payments before I can try again to get a loan. So. That gives me three more months of drinking and grinning before I have to sign papers that’ll wipe out any hope I’ve ever had of financial security.

More than that – one of MW’s new home demands is that it be a one-story house. Somehow, someway, she understands that navigating a flight of stairs is now or will soon become… troublesome.

Who knows? Dwight Yoakum told me this drinkin’ will kill me…. Maybe I’ll get lucky before April.

Does this require more of an explanation? Those unfamiliar with the disease may think so. If all you know about Huntington ’s disease is from TV, then probably. On TV it is like a silver bullet of sickness. Terrible stuff, but –in one way or the other - resolved in 45 minutes (thank God). Maybe a season or two (I’m looking at you, House), but otherwise…. Bullshit. No, HD is a lifetime of suffering. And, depending upon circumstances, more than one lives are dragged down into the marsh of dementia. I drink a lot to prevent these thoughts, but oh thank God we never had children. It is just me, I alone, dealing with this. I’ve even isolated MW from her terrible, terrible family so they don’t have to acknowledge the fact that the next time they’ll see their beloved daughter/sister/cousin will be at her goddamned funeral. I’ve jumped on that grenade. And I’m going to lay here, fifteen, twenty more years before it blows. I and I alone.

So when I bitch about the house being in disorder or how MW is losing her job and those uninitiated wonder why I can’t be more proactive or helpful, my only response is death. Death is the ultimate answer for my ineptitude and folly. If I were to sit MW down, tell her that she’s sick, that she has a terminal disease that, yes, can be “managed” through medication and therapy, but not cured, then where have I put her? I’ve put her right in the fucking grave. I’ve shoveled six feet of dirt on MW’s lovely face and garnished it with a rose of prescription medication.

Remember – we both watched her mother suffer for 15 goddamned, terrible, insufferable, dehumanizing, fantastic, Godless, abhorrent years of the disease. “Hey honey, you have Huntington’s disease! But good news – I’ve just bought a lifetime supply of Depends and Ensure, so… Yummy!”

Making the decision to not tell her? Well, that’s an invitation for chaos to reign over our house. But what the fuck? The house is only myself and the stupid dog. We’ll live or we won’t, who cares?