I keep having better days followed by worser days. He notices. He'll say, "Are you feeling alright?", in the most heartfelt tone of voice. I wish I could describe better how gently and sweetly he says it. If you didn't know him, you'ld swear he was full of compassion and solicitude. He has a nice voice. I'm through falling for that. Now I just say nothing. If he repeats, "How do you feel?" . . . I say, "Fine." I say it coldly and a little sarcastically. Anyone listening in would think that I'm a real byeetch. I guess I am. Well, I'm done with trying to explain that I'm feeling kind of blue, just to have that met with the profoundest lack of interest you can imagine.

I used to admire him for being such an optimist that he couldn't in the least bit relate to what being depressed was about. "You just do that to yourself." he would dismissively say. I thought he was probably kind of right. Well, it sure must be nice to have someone around who finds a solution to your every problem. And he's always had problems galore. I've told myself to consider how bravely he bears up under his partial paralysis and declining ability to function. Somewhere or another I read something about the "tyranny of the weak." It is real.

I haven't brushed my teeth in over 24 hours. The lunch dishes from Friday are still in the sink. He said he wasn't hungry this evening, so I didn't even bother putting supper together. We are now into the wee hours of Saturday, so he is complaining of a headache and a sore eye. He never gets headaches and there's not a da## thing wrong with his eye. But he has noticed that I'm depressed and neglecting giving him the attention I usually give. So he ratchets up his level of neediness . . . because nothing mobilizes me so well as having a need of someone weak to fulfill.

Once, I cut my arms at the inner elbows because I thought it would be a way of making the torment I was then feeling visible to others. I was not a cutter. So opposed I was to bodily mutilation that I wouldn't even get my ears pierced. I'll never cut myself again. I was quite drunk when I did it (11 years ago.) But, maybe, now, I'll just let the dishes pile up and the trash and the laundry . . . to where his apartment will become alarmingly a mess to someone who pops by. He, himself, will become dismayed, if things stop being taken care of. When it starts to really get to him, I can then say, "Yeah, Honey, that's what happens in the living quarters of the seriously depressed. ------- Oh, you want me to do something about it? ------- Yeah, I'll get right on it, as soon as I feel motivated to give a flying fock." It's human nature for people to only give a da## about a problem when it becomes a problem to them. So, if I more-or-less go "on strike," then he'll have a reason to feel some genuine concern that I'm having a problem. At long last, he might even feel moved to say, "Is there anything I can do to for you, Sweetheart?"

I know this is dark and that I'm nuts.