Today I’m grateful for feeling…

A level of dread, terror, I don’t know, that I haven’t reached before. Cubu has always had this weird sleep disturbance that happens every now and then. He’ll act out his dreams, like his body doesn’t stay locked during REM and it’s pretty scary. Another of these episodes happened last night and, being frustrated at it, I looked it up in a spiteful kind of way.  It appears that this set of symptoms is a distinct precursor to neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s disease, Lewy body dementia, or multiple system atrophy. His symptoms are specific enough that google leads you to just one answer, which was scary all on its own, because there’s no “Oh it might be this other benign cause so let’s not worry…” We spent a great deal of the morning holding each other, frozen in disbelief, and crying. He scheduled a doctor’s appt for Thursday, which will likely lead to an appt with a sleep specialist. We’re trying not to think about it until it is or is not confirmed, to varying degrees of success.

Overwhelmed at the possibility of this future, and the energy it is taking to not spiral into a black hole of anxiety and useless worry/predictions. Feeling that when it rains it pours. And feeling scared of the hope I have. He’s so young, the early onset cases are different, maybe he has a weird combo of these two other super rare kinds, maybe we’ve been misunderstanding something, maybe we dreamed this morning and if I look it up again, it will be different. So I’m going to do my best to not feel or think about it until a professional looks at him. 

Sad and disappointed at myself as my glass guy came and picked up the glass for the unmade two windows. I didn’t bring up everything I meant to, and we’ll talk again next month, but I just feel like such a bad worker. Although I’m grateful for this timing, I think I’d fucking explode if I had to do a window with Cubu’s potential nameless guillotine hanging over him/us right now. 

Helpless. How can I support this? What can I do? Cubu has never had a big thing happen since we’ve been dating. He needs comfort in ways I don’t know what to give. From what I can tell he just likes physical reassurance, which I give copiously, but then I worry it’s too much? I’m sure I’ll grow into it, and this is important to learn about him. I strongly feel the need to do it right, to do it the best I can, since this is all I can do.

Conflicted because of the billiards games we played today. My dad taught me pool and it’s one of the few perks I got from that relationship, some of the few fond memories. I had forgotten there were good memories, so hard have I been focusing on finding the worst of the bad ones. Should I be embracing those more to have a wider picture? It felt weird to be rejoicing in a skill he taught me, he who I have been ravaged by and spend most of my waking days actively recovering from. To feel close to him. In a way it made me very aware of what I could have had, what a father could have been. 

Lost as to how to proceed. I’m so caught in dealing with the past and C and I are preoccupied looking at a potential new future. Where does the present fit into this? In the present everything is great, the sun is shining, the birds are out, we have a wonderful home. But we’re both drowning in feelings from another time. Buddhism says I’m supposed to stay in the present, that I’ll find peace and joy there. It feels like an impossible ask right now. I find peace only for a moment.

Leaning into the good…

• Cubu and I had a CORP Billiards tournament today. It was a lot of fun hanging out and playing pool. We even went to a pool hall after to keep playing with other coworkers on our team. We left early out of exhaustion from the morning, but it felt like a nice piece of normalcy.
• I played really well in both the tournament and the pool we played after, or at least relative to my skill level. At one point in the tournament, they broke and when it was my turn, I sunk in every single solid in one go until the 8 ball, which was off by maybe half an inch.
• it was a very low-key day. I think it would have been awful to have done that google search on a busy day, I’m so grateful today has nothing else and neither does tomorrow.