Tell The Truth

Then there are the challenges I hadn’t thought about. One of the features of the disease, which I hadn’t particularly thought about at the beginning, was that there would be a growing confusion between thoughts and memories and reality.

It began about a year ago.

We all know that time – the early hours of the morning – when problems seem intractable and we feel weak and powerless. Then we wake up properly and the world clarifies and we become more confident and by mid morning the night terrors are gone.

With R that wasn’t happening. She would have dreams or worries in those early hours and when she woke up they would be real. Whatever she had dreamed was happening would be reality. It would take a lot of love and support to get her to see the distinction and I would often spend up to half an hour making sure that she knew what was real and what was a dream before I went off to work.

We discussed what R called ‘the wobbles’ with Professor K and after some discussion he prescribed Sertraline and the improvement was noticeable: she was noticeably happier and relaxed.

But I have realised that each new symptom is only an indication of what was going to become a major feature in time. The whole definition of truth and reality became an issue. If she was convinced something had happened that I knew hadn’t – what should I do? All options are fraught with consequences.

If I ignore it and start talking about something else it can provoke a hostile and resentful reaction.

If I challenge it and try to convince her I am right and she is wrong it is a lose-lose situation. Either I don’t convince her and she becomes angry and aggressive, or I do and she feels embarrassed and stupid.

If I behave as if it is true I give legitimacy to a view that can have unexpected and undesirable consequences down the line.

An example. When we moved into our flat many years ago there was an odious bitch who lived in the flat below who used to phone up and complain about our two year old child running across the floor (which she could hear on her ceiling). This used to upset R a lot to the extent that she used to tell our daughter off for running across the floor. The woman was famous for taking neighbours to court and being dismissed by the judge and told to learn to live in peace with her neighbours. This memory had faded in significance over the years and we laugh about it (in the end we fucked the bitch good) but recently it has surfaced as a recent thing. Now, every manila envelope that arrives is part of an ongoing court case and I arrive home to a distressed R saying “You know that woman who is always taking us to court – she has written to us again.” The letter in question is a tax code change advice from the tax office or a telephone bill.

So someone tell me. How do you communicate truth? Or shouldn’t you bother?