08.18.04

Three hundred dollars later the plumbing problem is kaput. Mater learned that anti-bacterial soap ain't the best thing to have around. Seems she's fallen into the fallacy that all bacteria and germs are bad, bad, bad. Not hard to conceive, she's a nurse.

Her obsession with cleanliness and the need to control her environment is worrying. I cast it to her profession, and that she was attacked in her own home years ago.

There's deeper stuff going on. I don't know what to do. I can be wrong. Hell, I just an amateur making uneducated guesses at her mental state. The more time I spend around her, the more I feel that there's something not right.

She's gone to therapists, but her need to please those she feels have some authority over her is difficult to breach. In the past, she'd come back from therapy and tell me how much the therapist agreed with her. She grasps at anything to prop up her view of the world and her role in it. I think she needs to have someone prod at her ego--making her re-examine her world view. I can't. I'm not smart enough and too closely involved.

I'm beginning to suspect that she'll even make herself physically ill in order to preserve her ego. That really worries me. More likely it's a combination of physical and mental.

Yesterday, after Mr. Rooter left and HellKitty roamed wild and free, she lay down for a while. Her teeth have been bothering her (another remnant of the attack on her--the assailant punched her in the mouth, breaking many of her teeth) and she told me that she had a dental appointment tomorrow (i.e. this) morning. The pain must be a horrible reminder of that night. Her temperature shot up to 102. She called her doctor and got a prescription for antibiotics. I went and picked them up. Later, she decided to go to the hospital, where she works, to get some cultures done.

She called after a couple of hours--they'd found nothing--and she was going to be back at the house soon-ish. I stayed up, just in case. At midnight, I heard the garage door opener groaning. After a few minutes, the back door slammed shut. I went out to the kitchen. She told me that many people had recognized her in the ER, and were concerned with her well-being. That, to me, was the telling part.

See, it said, I'm important and see how many others think I'm important, too?

I feel awful. I don't want to play into her need for primacy in all things. I know that her pain is real enough. But I think that she's doing herself more harm by not dealing with the underlying causes.

I don't know what to do. I don't know that I can do anything.

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