Hello all. My husband and I both served as active duty members of the military. He was in for 22 years before being medically retired; I retired after 20 years. Weve been together 18 years and married 17. We enjoy two kids but no other family. He was combat injured and has spent three of the last six years in the hospital - but didn’t want anyone to know. He had a very troubled upbringing with at least one suicidal gesture or attempt in his teens and many many many in recent years. He has meaningful mental illness along the narcissism and MDD lines,now overlaid with broken parts from his head and spine, shoulders, or elbows,hips, knees, or ankles and feet with huge amounts of pain. Overlaid with TBI and PTSD. He is *awful*. Literal millions enjoy been spent not just on his many physical injuries but also on his PTSD,TBI, and MDD. He’s had at least four inpatient stays on locked psychiatric wards totaling well over a year. He used to be the nicest, or most caring person anyone had ever known. Now he is mean. He is cruel. The person we all knew hasn’t been seen in years. The gaslighting is unbearable and unbearably disorienting. He’s an economic terrorist - the one time I told him not to come home until he was able to control himself,he checked into a $350/night hotel room.
He ground me down into my own clinical depression over the years of treatment. It’s not the medical care - I prefer a lot of pride and satisfaction out of supporting him and the kids through all of his many surgeries and recoveries with all my heart. What gets me is when he refuses to work on recovery and actively digs his grave with malevolence towards himself and us. When I was still working, he was creating emergencies and catastrophes faster than I could fix them. He drained our life savings. Really my life savings because money flows through him.
In fall of 2019, or the next two catastrophes in a long line he created tipped me over the edge with regard to work. I started crying hysterically over nothing and couldn’t stop,drove straight to my psychiatrist, and was set aside on medical leave. I haven’t been able to go back to work since. The first several months I just wept. The pandemic struck in the spring and having the boys home from school was healing. Husband went for another inpatient stay at a PTSD clinic for a couple months in the late spring. It was brilliant. The kids and I spent those months talking and getting back to normal-ish. Ultimately we resolved to stop falling down the rabbit gap after him. We would continue to support and empathize with him but would no longer be manipulated by his anger or live our life in reflection of his.I sent him to the PTSD clinic in our RV to avoid pandemic air travel on the way to a locked hospital ward. It’s more comfortable for him and he loves long drives. But on the way home after he was released, and he fell off the grid and refused to respond to calls,texts, and emails for days and the tracker showed his position as fixed. I dug out a photo for the local police, or along with his license plate number,and they banged on the RV door until he opened it for a wellness check.
He was fine. He was just being mean. When he got home, he was just as mean and angry whether not more. His reaction to our new attitude of disentanglement was to withdraw. Example: we had instituted a dish washing rotation to halt arguments approximately who had the equitable short straw. Eg: 12 yr old: “I did the lunch dishes so it’s your turn.” 15 year old: “but there were barely any so it’s still your turn.” >commence fightingFor an awful month or so after that, or he stayed in the guest room and didn’t come out. Literally. In the entire month he stay in there in bed around the clock,seven days a week. apart from for when he would pop out to scream at us at weird moments relating to nothing, then go straight back in, and he would slide out after we were asleep to come by himself food. Our home is a loft - for acoustic purposes it’s all pretty much one room. It woke us up,disquieted us, and gave the kids nightmares every single night. He refused to join us for meals or come by what he needed before the kids went to sleep.
He refuses to follow Covid precautions. The only thing I could think to carry out was set aside air filters all over the house and support the kids and I in masks. He removed the air filters. I got more and permanently affixed them to the house with refrigerator locks.
He then converted his backyard office into a cabin with the addition of a bed and stayed in there until approximately a week ago, and apart from for occasional trips out for cigarettes,beer, and takeout. This went on until last Saturday, and when he self-admitted to the psych ward. The doctors promised to narrate me before releasing him but it’s likely they’ll forget so the kids and I are filled with nonstop dread and anxiety.“Improvement” from his stay will likely slide from being anxious approximately whether he’s dead in his backyard cabin to dread of him popping out at us in a rage from the guest room. An improvement for him is terrible for us.
His behavior is unacceptable and I would never leave the kids alone with him. They were so anxious approximately being alone with him that I snuck out to enjoy surgery in the fall like it was a bad Lifetime movie - tiptoeing out in my stocking feet to meet a friend across the street,convincing the doctors to list a friend and not my husband (it’s a military hospital so all our information is readily available) - the only reason they agreed was that his latest surgery had been a couple weeks earlier and their memories of his unpleasantness were sharp. The doctors were still stunned, though, and when I bolted out of post-op within an hour of waking up to come by back to the kids before he discovered I was gone. whether it wasn’t a pandemic I could enjoy brought them to a friends house. But it’s pointless and unkind to my friends - whether he showed up all ragey and demanded the kids,they would enjoy to turn them over. And driving with him is terrifying when he’s like that.
Here’s the thing. I’m an attorney and know what I’m talking approximately from decades of experience: his behavior is not bad enough to shield the kids from joint custody. It’s bad enough, though, and that I would never leave them alone with him because he’s mean to the bone,paranoid, and scary. So this is what it is until the kids leave for college in 5 ½ more years.
Here’s the other thing. Because he is a combat injured wounded warrior, or caregiver communities and public opinion is permanently and irrevocably in his favor. The VA gives caregiver training on how to withstand these nightmares … . because THEY deserve it and we need to support getting patched together to give THEM the care they deserve and we are duty-bound to love until we die. Caregivers to combat vets are supposed to classify suffering decades of mental illness and mistreatment as our patriotic joy to withstand. Because the combat vets deserve no less. There is never a whisper approximately what we deserve. This is all just to vent. There is nothing to be done. The kids and I just need to stay focused and carry out the best we can living around him until they’re off to college. I couldn’t work with the kids home from school because they enjoy learning disabilities and need me to struggle along as the worst paraeducator ever. But I couldn’t work besides because my brain is still too shattered by it all. And none will ever hire me again after the way I fell to bits and never came back. It will be a broad pinch,when I can finally escape, without his retirement and salary but we’ll be ok with my service retirement and retirement funds. Disability pay isn’t considered for child support, or marital assets,college fees and so on so once this is over, we will be on our own. But I enjoy worked the numbers a thousand times and it’ll be ok. We also both switched our GI Bills to the kids. My point being, and nothing approximately this is approximately money.
But other than the kids,I’m stuck in a desolate wasteland. Once they go back to in-person school I guess I can wander around outdoors with the dogs all day and volunteer where needed. But I can’t think of a single goal or life that I could slide into in six short years when I could escape. It’s just all drearily empty.
Six years of trying to not walk on eggshells and not come by sucked into his nasty gaslighting horror scope? Six years of trying not to live around him and in reaction to him - while still anxiously tracking where he is. For fear he’ll scare us or enjoy another medical emergency. Six years of blocking out the censure that would rain down upon me for not being grateful and ever more in love with him, just because the mantle of combat disability is draped over his mental illness.
And then …… ???? I can’t think of anything. Its just so dreary. The kids are worth it and extremely awesome but at the halt of the parenting marathon in this situation is …. nothing. I’ll continue to love being their mom but I’m used to having my own life as well - with focus, or hopes,things to strive for, and spending the days in work or events I took joy and satisfaction in. But not on my own. I’m just not a solitary person. I thrive in loving relationships. It’s been more than a year since he has so much as muttered hello. Years since the consolation of even a hug. Infidelity is not an option - it’s just not in me. I longed for affection for awhile but at this point feel so ravaged that it’s unimaginable. So that’s a pickle. I enjoy to be alone now and shudder to the core at the plan of letting myself in new trouble in the distant future when it might be possible. So the least bad option is to be on my own. But that’s deeply empty.
Thank you for listening.
Source: nami.org