Shoot hit the wrong button.
He was under a lot of stress so I would just shut up and avoid him and try to keep his home life as stress less as possible. He was pulling away from me. He was refusing to live on his days off just retreating into his laptop or a device. I let him because he always told me playing his games was "stress relief" for him.
In the months leading up to his death I was pushing him more and more to get out, to go hiking, to go driving to just get us out of the house so that we could just be a part of life again. I felt like I was dying inside and I needed to move, to have purpose, to be alive inside. I felt like I was forcing him to do things he didn't want to do.
Then he got hurt at work and I felt even worse for "forcing" him to go out because he complained about his pain more. I said one day that I wanted to do something that he liked doing, so he said, let's go to the park and I said, no it's not something you like doing because you get too sore, I feel like I'm hurting you more when we go out there. He pouted and said, it hurts but that's just pain, it's good for me to be out there.
We were out there the week before he died. We were supposed to go back out there the day he died.
Did I push him too hard? Did I make him feel worthless because of his discomfort and pain? Did he feel like he was dragging me down?
Because he wasn't. I was trying to make us both live. We were both dying inside. I didn't know how else to make him feel better. I didn't know how to make me feel better. Just when I thought everything in our life was going to get better, the lawsuit was going to settle, we could let go of that stress and start getting me real honest help again, we could start rebuilding our lives...
I was even starting to feel more in control of my symptoms, I was being so much braver, taking chances, feeling comfortable on my own, starting to feel confident and slightly more independent again.
He killed himself.
He lost all hope and killed himself. He was daydreaming heavily about the settlement and it was scaring me. He was imagining buying new computers and devices and cars and going on vacation and paying off the mortgage...I wasn't in any of those ideas. My future treatment wasn't in any of his dreams, it's like I was going to get this settlement and just hand all of that money over to him. There were no plans for my future, my education, my treatment or any of the responsibilities around the house like the roof, the crumbling driveway, the uninsulated garage door.
I've always been the buzz kill. I've always been the one who reminds people to stay on the earth and not go dreaming off into space. He was a dreamer. Why didn't I just let him dream? Why did I have to point out all of the things we needed that money for first before we could play?
Maybe I was never any good for him. Maybe I sucked whatever little bit of life he was trying to hold onto right out of him.
I'm tired of being strong. There's no one left here for me to be strong for.
I don't want to do today.