Tonight, driving to the grocery store, as we came up to a stop sign in a neighboring development, John pulled the car all the way over to the left. I was, naturally, astonished. Especially since a car was pulling up to the stop sign on our left, signaling to turn right - directly into our car.
When I asked why he had done such an amazing maneuver, he explained that he thought I'd suggested it to avoid the sharp dip on the right. To this very moment, hours afterward, part of his brain still believes I suggested it, completely forgets that the way I handle the car-jarring dip is to come to a full stop & proceed v e r y slowly.
Just now, feeding Gryf the wet cat food that Rennie so dearly craves, I was seated on the toilet, where I had held Gryf when we administered his nightly meds, and John was - I thought - standing outside the door, protecting it from a marauding cat. Imagine my surprise when not one but two cats burst through the door, Rennie & Lakota, dashing into the room & leaping up on the counter as Gryf leapt down & whisked out the door.
Naturally, I called out for John. When he entered the room, I asked, in (admittedly) brittle disbelief, "Did you go into your studio?"
John's answer - "No, I wasn't." Which stumped me. He clearly hadn't been by the door. He could not - could not - answer that he was in the studio. The words would not form. He explained that he answered no because he thought I'd asked if he was in the front room.
My next question - "Did it make any sense for me to ask if you were in the front room?" John could not give me a yes or no response. Instead, he went into an explanation of how he heard me say front room.
The front room (formerly Mom's bedroom) is my yoga room & one of the places where the cats hang out. Me & the cats, not John. It made no sense that he'd go there. It made complete sense that he might have popped into the art studio, which is right next door. Which is where he was, at least until I cried out when Rennie & Lakota disrupted Gryf's meal. But he could not bring himself to say it made no sense to say the front room. It's not that he wouldn't, he couldn't. He could no more bring himself to say that than he could bring himself to say, "I don't know," when he moved into the left lane from the right right before a stop sign.
This is an interesting dynamic that's bedeviled us for over 25 years. Don't know the roots, don't care. I do care that his brain works the way it does because it puts me us others at risk.
If something could possibly put an action of his in a questionable - not even in a wrong, just a questionable - light, his brain swings immediately into back peddle & I am the one responsible for whatever it was, whether telling him the best way to handle a bone-jarring dip is to head into the other lane or asking if he was in a particular room. Whatever the reality might be just doesn't register. Like the other day, when he came to a complete stop in the middle of a road & when I asked why answered that he was moving forward - as we sat, dead still.
I'm not trying to be right, just alarmed that his brain can so completely separate from what is happening. To say that you are moving when actually at a complete stop is astonishing. To defend saying it, given the circumstances, is even more incredible. But what's actually happening just doesn't register. I can fuss & fume & throw a zillion hissy fits - he still isn't going to get it. It just doesn't register. And nothing that HE does is going to change it. It's not about reason.
Here's my great hope. That someday he gets to the point where he stops immediately pointing the finger of responsibility at me. But in light of the fact that's it would be spectacularly hard for him to do that, since (in my opinion) it springs from subconscious roots, I'd settle for him getting to the point where the situation plays out & is repeated back to him & he can just say, "That doesn't make any sense."
Because it doesn't. It didn't when we were at a full stop & he said we were moving forward. It didn't when I asked why he'd pull all the way over to the left lane from the right - at a stop sign with a car signaling it was going to turn directly into us. It didn't when he heard me say the front room instead of "your studio." I don't dispute that he experienced the car moving when we were at a full stop or that he truly thought I'd told him to swing over the wrong lane or that he heard front room. But not one of the three makes any sense.
Maybe if John gets to the point where he stops rationalizing how he came to do or hear what he truly believes he did & can just step back & say, "That doesn't make sense," maybe then some higher power can step in & change whatever in his subconscious triggers it in the first place. Maybe it never will. But I sure do hope that John gets to the place where he can, because it will mean the world to me to at least know that he can detach enough - even if just an itsy bitsy bit - to see how the situation, whatever it might be, just doesn't make sense. Because, frankly, it's flat-out dangerous.
No comments:
Post a Comment