March 16, 2026

Always in Motion the Future Is

This is the first time I’ve ever put a title at the very start. Usually I will write out whatever it is that sits at the back of my mind and go from there. However this is a quote that is, one, very nerdy; but two, very true.

Before Charlie passed away he asked me if I was going to marry Josh when he was gone. At the time I was so hesitant to tell him yes. Instead I opted for some vague and uncertain, but always pointing to yes. I didn’t want him to think that our marriage wasn’t the one that meant everything to me or that he was replaceable. “Well, this husband is gone. Time to plug in a new one.”

My response was, Probably, why do you ask?

He responded first with that the cat was curled up next to him, which he loved. And genuine proof of his ADHD.

Then he said, just curious. I want you to be happy. If he can do that, I support it.

I should have responded with, “he does.” but instead we went off on a tangent about the cat. He made a comment about taking her with him. Which he didn’t do, but he did take both of the pups with him, shortly after his passing. They couldn’t live without him either, I guess.

In 10 days we are going to get married. We already bought our rings, which we couldn’t afford, but you want them to be monumental. I bought a ring that will sit on top of Charlie’s. Josh is always supportive of my love/life with him and what we had… I don’t know how I got so lucky twice. Genuinely.

At times I feel so utterly, unbelievably lucky, and others I feel so cursed. It’s the nature of life I suppose and what you choose to focus on. I’d rather look at how the horrible things in my life have literally led to the best parts.

My plan for our eventual nuptials was to have a proposal on his half birthday, May 2, and then get married some time in the fall or whenever after. I joked and thought that getting married on November 3rd, between our two birthdays, would have been kind of fun. But that also would have been entirely too close to Charlie’s and my anniversary, November 1st. (He wanted to get married on a day he would be able to remember.)

However, even with the plan, life has a different way of working out as the last five years would absolutely attest. So we are pushing it up.

On March 26th there will officially be two Joshua Hensleys in the world.

February 27, 2026

Listen and Read Along

I’m in one of those moods where I want to write something sweeping and profound. Yet I lack even the simplest of ideas. If I could muster one up I’m sure it wouldn’t be what I want it to be. What I know it could be. Instead I lay here in bed listening to my “mellow out” playlist (posted above) replaying old memories in my head, hoping a spark ignites.

Instead all I’ve done is dwell on what was. What could have been.

It’s funny how we lose ourselves as we get older. We let outside forces mold and shape us into some mutated version we could never have imagined in our wildest fantasies. It’s never obvious of course. We don’t see it happening. On the outside we appear somewhat the same, but deep in our hearts and minds is the weak, near death version that once had so many hopes for the future.

At one time I wanted to a be a writer. I wanted it to be my everyday; the thing that would put my name on the lips and in the thoughts of strangers. Why I thought that any of that mattered at the time has since been lost to the years. So what if Jill from Ohio knows my name? It would mean nothing. I’d still be here laying in bed thinking of the past and regretting all I did or didn’t do.

Maybe I should lower my standards? Sometimes it’s the smallest things that bring about bigger things because it was part of a chorus of other tiny events. Together it makes something beautiful.

Instead of my singular fame and notoriety, I’d much prefer to inspire those around me. Something that they too could add to the collective.

Whether they know me or not. I think I have succeeded if I evoke something from someone that they can look at, or ponder over, that gives them purpose. That gives them pride.

But I’ll never achieve that. I’m just a tiny pixel on a giant screen.

It makes me think how my husband was so content in the end. The impression I got was that he was not bothered with the fact that he never made any huge impact in the world at large. In my own life he did. He brought out the best parts of me.

The other day I went off on an ADHD tangent regarding the Chinese zodiac. This is the first year I have ever heard of an element tied to the sign. With that it inspired to know my own element. After a quick search I discovered that I am a wood ox. The least stubborn of the 5 elemental oxen. Mine is all about growth and rebirth.

I also learned that my husband was a fire snake and my bf is an earth snake.

It’s funny. My husband burned me down to let myself regrow with Josh. Weird. Also bizarre that I just so happened to partner with my perfect match. A snake. Both times.

February 24, 2026

Crazy Chronicles – Episode 2

The actions that I took yesterday gave me a sense of pride. I knew what I had to do, which was to reach out to my therapist, and instead of my usual, “I know, I should,” I did. Evidently how I worded my email to him concerned him in such a way that within five minutes he called me.

“What’s going on, Josh?” He asked.

I began to explain the entire weekend and how I had felt. For someone who I feel, at times, just keeps me as a patient because I’m relatively low maintenance he was on-it when it came to my crisis. We talked on the phone for about five minutes. He listened to me and then responded by reminding me of all that I have gone through in the past few years. As a result, I am still in the process of grieving my husbands death. He explained that grief can manifest as anxiety or panic attacks because it’s our bodies response to the lack of the person’s presence.

“This person should be here.”

“It’s like they were completely erased from your life.”

The reminder really struck a chord in me and once I understood, and accepted this answer, it all made sense. I look back on the past few times I’ve had these episodes and each one was either directly or in a roundabout way, connected to his memory.

The first time was when we were driving to visit our Papa Bill in Palm Springs and I lamented, to myself, on the drive that I really missed Charlie. He was the chatty Cathy who could strike up and maintain a conversation about headlamps. He could make it so engaging that it would spark another topic and then another, like a firecracker. Without him there that day, the car ride was near silent. We had music playing but there was no discourse. To add to the vacuum of sound, it was also the first road trip with the three of us where charlie wasn’t included. The weight of his absence so very, very obvious. It made my heart hurt.

In that event I think the grief was too much for me to comprehend and it manifested as a “heart attack,” because a large part of my heart was no longer there.

The last two were not so much his absence but the meaning in it. He wouldn’t have approved of my BFs and my trip to SLO (it was a “sexy” trip) and then this past weekend the three of us were hanging out in the living room, without him, talking about how the brother-husband had a date with a new man.

Conceptually I understand that life goes on but… The heart doesn’t know or even really care. It wants what it wants. Mine wants my Charlie back. I am utterly lost without him. He successfully held this crazy together and now I am left to do it by myself.

To top everything else off, the past couple months I have been plotting and planning my proposal to the BF.

Charlie always joked, before he was ever diagnosed with ALS by the way, that when he died I would: 1) bring my boyfriend to his funeral, which I did do, but he brought his; and 2) that I would be remarried soon after he was gone.

I hated those jests. It felt like he was discounting my feelings for him or not believing that I absolutely I loved him. “Accusing me” of “moving on” felt like I was trying to erase him or, at the very worst, that I never cared for him. If there ever was a doubt in my heart that I “didn’t really love him,” caring for as he lost the ability to do literally anything and my subsequent immense longing has wiped awat any doubt. That man was my everything. Some may scoff, “how can that be, you had an open relationship? You had a boyfriend!”

To that I say, love is not precise. There is no single picture of what it should, could or does look. I believe that two heterosexual men can love another more than a spouse and not have it sexual in any sense of the word. Sex does not equal love, and vice versa. Combining them as one thing is minimizing the immense potential of the two. If they both work out, then you’ve got lightning in a bottle. Cherish it. However sometimes our hearts and minds are compatible, like the person was made specifically for you, but in the bedroom you both want entirely different things. Trying to meet in the middle is one way to build a strong bond, but sometimes there are things that are just impossible to bridge because of expectations. There are moments where even when your partner tries, there is a mental block reminding you “they’re not into this” and that kills potential in the attempt. I have found from my own experience at least, and even with my husband.

We want our partners to be happy and if that’s not doing that well… what do you do? In my opinion, suffering in silence is not an option. It’s what led me to cheating over and over again.

Instead of us breaking up, because at the core of our relationship was love and trust (I don’t know how it survived with my infidelity), we decided to open our marriage. After which, I believe, with every fiber of my being, it brought us closer together. It was all based on honesty and communication. We had a set of rules that guided our relationship and dictated what was and wasn’t okay. It wasn’t some lawless wild west where we could just do whatever the fuck we wanted.

I could wax poetic about non-monogamy for hours, but that isn’t the point of this post.

Today I am doing so much better. I reached out to a professional and I listened to his expert advice. My word choice is deliberate. Most people hear what they’re told, but do they listen? Do they comprehend how it applies to them, in that moment? I got lucky because I am someone who spends hours ruminating in my mind. The bitch WILL NOT shut up.

Even with all of that progress, however, I still think I’m dying, but aren’t we all?

February 23, 2026

Crazy Chronicles – Episode 1

I want to document all of this weird psychosis I’m going through because 1) if I turn out to be correct it’ll be a crazy story and 2) because I feel like not enough people talk about what mental health is like as you’re experiencing it.

To put it plainly, I do not feel well. Mentally. Even physically. Two of the weekends in February I have had events where I feel like I am having a heart attack. That is normal when you eat like garbage and don’t exercise. Plus I just hit 40 and my family doesn’t really have a great track record when it comes to hearts. I believe my grandfather had his first one in his 30’s but I might be wrong and it was in his 40’s. Regardless it was the second one that took him.

What makes this feeling exceptionally worse is that I feel like I have had “premonitions” of my death. I am lying in my own bed, the ambulance crew comes in and starts working on me, but I end up passing away before they even get me onto the gurney. My boyfriend is telling the EMTs about our prior experience of having called for an emergency crew and how I am “fine.” Then there is darkness and all I hear is my BF’s voice calling my name and saying “Stop faking. Josh, wake up.”

This last detail, the haunting words, is an echo of when I went to the emergency room a couple weekends ago thinking the same exact thing. The only issue was, I wasn’t having a heart attack. My heart rate was off the charts but I am mostly certain that was caused by my paranoia and panic of my own demise. The demise I “foresaw” when we were driving down to Palm Springs a month ago.

It should be noted that with each of the above events I was thoroughly, utterly, off my tits stoned. I had had far too many edibles. And in this stupor I believe I “had flashes of the future.” Ones which I started to feel again in these noted moments above. Aka De ja vu. It’s been happening quite frequently lately. This is where I started to feel insane, because it is like the de ja vu becomes more frequent as I get closer to the moment it actually happens.

For instance I feel like I have done this before. I am having de ja vu even now, as I write this.

Maybe it is this weekend when I have my real heart attack and die.

It’s thoughts like that that have kept me on edge since Friday and I cannot shake it. I keep feeling as if I am marching toward my inevitable demise. It is stressing me out and making all of this way worse.

So, to be proactive I have reached out to my therapist to get a sooner appointment than March 9th. I need some advice because this overwhelming, all consuming, feeling/thought that I am about to die is really, really not fun.

I also made an appointment with my primary to get my heart checked out. The last few days my blood pressure has been elevated. So I am documenting it, while also trying to think soothing/calming thoughts.

The one thing about all of this that upsets me more than my own death, is how I am stressing my boyfriend out. I’m getting flashbacks from when I was 4 and my dad was having his mental breakdown. I vividly remember him standing in the living room, my mom sitting next to me on the couch, trying to talk him in to going to a hospital. He had just spent the last few hours swinging a broom around in the backyard killing “demons.” At one point, he had to put on yellow kitchen gloves because he was getting blisters.

I love my father, with all of his flaws, but I refuse to let this be a memory, of me, for the ones I love.

As I was writing this, my therapist called and we had a quick chat before rescheduling. He told me that people don’t have mental breakdowns now like they did in the 80’s. That was because people were over-stimulated and didn’t know that was the issue so they would check themselves into a hospital to find respite. Fun little fact. He also said that sometimes grief will manifest as panic/anxiety attacks. That one really hit home. A lot of the time when these events occur is in moments where my husband either should be there or he would be upset if he knew what was happening. My therapist explained that it is the lack of this person that makes you start to panic or feel anxious because they’ve always been there.