My husband died today

[NarcSis]

Heard of the 22 push ups for 22 days challenge? A Suicide Awareness / PTSD awareness campaign that started to bring attention to the fact that 22 veterans a day commit suicide in the US. Well, I'm in Canada and our stats aren't that high, but considering the fact that "veteran" includes anyone who's ever served whether in combat or not and is not restricted to years, if you were in the militia for a month, you technically count as a veteran, so if you commit suicide, you count in those stats. If you're elderly and served in the military at some point in your life, you count in those stats. I on the other hand no longer count in the First Responder stats because I'm a former first responder...anyway that's another issue. Anyway, this challenge has also started to include awareness of emergency services deaths to suicide and PTSD, great and wonderful but all the money raised goes to veterans charities.

I'm pissed off today. My brother is participating in this 22 push up challenge, he's been posting his videos to facebook every day. Who did he dedicate his video too today? Our brother - yep, the one who FAILED his psychological screening for PTSD!!! Who's never seen combat! Who's just spent the last 8 years of his damned life essentially being the Mayor of a Town for christ's sake!! Boo f*cking whooo he has PTSD my f*cking ASS!! The ONLY reason he's dedicated his stupid push up challenge to his brother is because they are "veterans" who both claim to have PTSD because they weren't allowed to come home from out of country when our brother died - what!? Biggest misunderstanding of what PTSD is on the face of the earth!!!

Meanwhile, my husband and I just lived through 8 years of f*cking hell called PTSD and HE KILLED HIMSELF !!!! Yep, committed suicide and my f*cking brother dedicates his Push Up challenge to a guy who functions normally, holds down jobs, performs extremely well under high stress and NEVER once saw combat!! f*cking perfect. I hate my family more and more every year, they're all a bunch of idiots.

My husband is dead because of the stress he endured during the course of his job as a Paramedic. I developed PTSD and live in hell because of my former job as a paramedic. I cannot handle even the smallest amounts of stress anymore and it's all I can do to just cope with day to day - now f'ing completely alone, ALL thanks to that job called PARAMEDIC!! GRRRRRRRR.

I will never have PTSD in their eyes, I will just be that weak little kid they always saw me as. I will never have any form or substance in their lives. They never ask me how I'm doing. They never call, they don't even stop in to visit anymore. My brother "with PTSD" promised on fb to come visit me last month, great when everyone can see how much of a loving and caring sibling you are on social media, well, the day before he was supposed to come he said he was "too sick to go anywhere" and then later posted pictures of himself on his boat out enjoying the sunny weather with his family. Nice, caring and supportive family I have.

I don't know how I'll be when they start to die. I wonder if I'll even shed a tear, I don't even really know them anymore. They'll just cease to exist and I'll probably forget they even died because I never hear from them anyway. I haven't heard from them in a long, long, time. Like my husband and I, they don't exist in my reality and we never existed in theirs, that's why it was so easy for them to get over it...get over him and just leave me alone again.

I'm not real to them.

I was only ever real to my husband. He was the only one who held me when I cried, when I was afraid and even when I was happy. He was the only one who made me happy. He was the only one who was ever here in my reality. Now I have no one and it's really hard to find reasons to keep going.

The dog...everyone said get a dog, you need the company, he'll be a great source of comfort. dogs are great company. They're actually not. He sleeps all day. He can't speak to me. I miss having Conversations with my husband. I miss asking a question and having it answered. I didn't have to take my husband out every morning at 7am, we could sleep in, cuddle, share a big breakfast and just keep each other company. I miss laughing with him. I miss being silly with him. My dog is afraid of me when I'm crying. My dog has no clue how to play, he gets afraid of toys, he's afraid of tennis balls, he can't fetch and has no interest in chasing things. Don't get me wrong, when he's awake he can be cute by wanting almost constant love and attention but he's not always awake. I inherited another "old guy" who just wants to lay around all the time and go hiking once in a while.

I miss my husband. I miss him so much. Why did he have to kill himself?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I cannot answer your painful and anguished why. You have every right to your own way of grieving in my opinion. I think that you are a good person. You do not deserve what has happened to your husband and to you.:hug::hug::hug:

 

[NarcSis]

I found my old diary that I'd been missing since he died and I SWEAR I checked under the bed in the room my sister sleeps in SEVERAL times!! I went in there today and it was just lying there, under the bed next to my old textbook. I took everything out from under that bed the month he died because I was trying to gather all of his things together and it WAS NOT there. God, that woman, I swear!

I know I just checked there two months ago too because I have been endlessly worried about where that diary was ever since he died. I was afraid he'd found it and read it and that was what caused him to kill himself, now I'm suspicious that she's had it this whole time. I had the diary before I met him, so most of it is endless blathering about my friend and my confused feelings for him over the years; also it details the only "relationship" I ever had before I met my husband - a three week tryst with a guy my age just after university, nothing sexual just blah.blah, blah, I'm dating someone; immature stuff. The reason why this diary was so important to me is that it also details everything I went through in college, my experiences with my husband before we started dating, the innocent wondering if he "liked me" or not, our first date, losing my virginity to him, our early life together, our bad times and how soon our sexual issues together started. It also has updates I'd written over the years, things like us getting married, my continued confusion about my friend and ending with my PTSD. My last update was in 2011.

I read the entire thing aloud today - maybe coincidence but my dog had a nightmare during my reading of it. I cried helplessly at the final entry because you can see that I was starting to come to terms with the PTSD and struggling to forge onward despite admitting to depression and suicidal ideation. I was a few months from being terminated by workers comp then. My life challenges were only going to get worse after that last entry. What that last entry did illustrate though is my endless love for my husband, our strong bond in the face of that particular challenge. It brought us together, determined to fight forward together and my acceptance of the "small things" in our life. Those small things meant nothing anymore in the face of the PTSD, they were insignificant and meaningless complaints born of a longer standing depression I'd been struggling with.

I see the serious bouts of depression I'd always struggled with in my writing over the years. I also see the serious bouts of depression that he went through during our early time together. In one entry I detail how he's mistreating me because he's struggling to come to terms with a career failure and I'm helpless to make things better for him because I don't know how, each time I try he just dug himself in deeper and pushed me away. I was hurting a lot then. I considered leaving him but was afraid to do that during his rough spell and didn't know if I could make it on my own. I decided to stand by him. And we stood beside one another for another 18 years after that. He loved me. I loved him. There were always doubts when we'd hit our depressive periods, when life didn't go as we'd hoped it would, when work came up and kicked us in the butt - for him in particular, the separation from his first long term partner, their fighting, his crying, his anger and then the dead baby call. That one was bad. Lost sleep. Post Traumatic Stress symptoms. Depression. Self doubt. Anger directed at me, at life, at everything. weeks of this until things settled and he was finally able to just move on again. It always haunted him though. He always referred to that call and how it actually led to the end of a career for the young partner he had that night.

I remember now, going to one of my family reunions with him, I was already dealing with PTSD, he'd just done a really bad baby call a few days before and I hoped going to the country would help him relax and let go of it - my niece brought her newest little one, 5 months old, same age as the one that had died on him that week. He jumped up from his seat and (rudely, in the opinion of my family) left the gathering. I followed him and we stayed in my room while he cried helplessly for at least an hour and he told me he couldn't go back out there. I understood, I could barely stay out there too and I was so glad I had an excuse not to be there. We spent the rest of the day / night just hiding together in my room. I heard all about how rude and weird we were the next day.

They had no clue what it was like to deal with any of that shit. No clue whatsoever and I defended him (and myself) tooth and nail. I remember saying, "When you have to watch a baby die right in your own hands, and feel that helplessness, THEN you can tell me how we should or shouldn't behave in certain situations, but until then, you have no idea! He just went through hell and it's bothering him and that kid being there was bothering me too."

I was going to write another Update entry in my journal, I got about a page in before I noticed I wasn't breathing and my entire body felt heavy. I had to take a break. I was trying not to cry as I told an unknown future audience that my loving, sweet husband killed himself. How do you say you understand but you'll never get it? How do you tell them that despite how depressed and angry some of your entries seemed, you loved this man with everything you had? How do you convey the depth of that kind of love?

I needed a break. I needed to be here and not back on that day. I have to stay here for a little while.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

:hug:

 

[NarcSis]

Everything is a reminder. This morning I'm exhausted, slept only two hours, dog woke me up at 5 urgently wanting to go out, then woke me up again at 7, uggh.

It was freezing when we came downstairs so I decided to turn on the fireplace. As I sat staring at the flame I thought, "The last time this was burning was that night before you died." We were lying on the floor because his back was sore. I got him an air mattress and my sleeping bag to try to make him more comfortable. He was chilly so I turned on the fireplace. I remember taking a picture of it just before he rolled over to face me and said, "I'm so sad."

I was thinking last night at bedtime that the thought feels so real to me when I picture myself hugging him again in the future. It's like it IS going to happen.

Those thoughts make me kind of angry because I saw his body, I felt his ice cold finger covered in make up. I smelled the "dead make-up" smell on his body. He no longer exists as a physical object. Hugs are physical things so this can never happen ever again, yet my heart and my mind convince me that future hugs from him WILL happen....we'll be together again in the near future.

I'm clinging to a delusion. I don't know why. I feel it like a premonition. It is not logical. He died and hugs can't happen, tomorrow, the day after, weeks or short years from now. I pray they could, that this was all just staged and one day soon it will all be revealed to me but that's a delusion. It's my mind trying to protect me from the pain of reality.

I don't like my reality now. I need to go back to that night in front of the fireplace and change things, make him stay. Hold him tighter, love him more, help him see. He wasn't going to die anyway. We weren't going to lose everything. He was just catastrophising. He just had to hold onto me.

How could he have let go of everything...of me?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I still miss the hugs and kisses intensely. I miss the talks we used to have.:hug:

 

[Iamsensative]

I am so sorry for your loss.

 

[NarcSis]

Had a panic attack earlier, thought I smelled rotten egg smell. I opened the windows to vent the house but was breathing shallow, experiencing a headache and feeling lethargic - all out of sheer panic because Nothing Was Wrong in the house. Yes, I'd used the fireplace, yes, I'd opened the firebox to clean before using it, yes it was shut securely and most importantly, the pilot light was still lit!! I was really struggling to convince myself of the logic - there would be no egg smell if the gas was still burning at the pilot light! Duh!

Nope. I still sat there lost in panic and terrified and having psychosomatic symptoms and thinking irrational thoughts.

I kept thinking, "This is it, this is why I feel I'm going to see him again, me and the dog are going to succumb to gas poisoning." , "I'm going to die today.", "Maybe I'll just fall asleep then, I won't know it's happening." Oh and those thoughts are great food for panic!

There was nothing wrong with the fireplace, the smell was actually coming from somewhere outside. Regardless, I lay there, preparing to meet my end, terrified and wondering why my husband would leave me with such a dangerous appliance to care for. (He's never actually touched it, I've always been the one to clean it!)

I felt so inadequate. I had no clue who to call for help or if I should even bother. I wanted to text my hubby or call him to ask what I was supposed to do. I needed a man.

It's suicide prevention month this month and my fb newsfeed is just inundated with the "Yes, You Can prevent another needless suicide" stuff. I'm kind of bitter seeing it every day, being reminded of the signs I was supposed to have seen, the things I was supposed to have said or done - I think it's all garbage because from my perspective there were no signs, no threats, no ideation, no drawn out clearly defined struggle and no threats or even time to write even a simple f'ing goodbye note!

I hate all these so-called experts running around telling me what I should have seen when it's too f'ing late! He's dead! I'd love to do it all over again and sit them all in my living room to watch him that day before and see if any of them saw it coming. See if he could've been neatly categorized in their little check boxes.

I was reading about another medic who lost her job to PTSD, she is severely affected and was heavily relying on her husband for everything from emotional/psychological to financial support like me. Three years of that. Her husband hung himself two months ago. No note. No goodbye. No I love you, just got progressively moodier over the course of the year, got into an argument at work, came home and hung himself in their garage.

I'm telling you it's the job. That job adds up after a while and there are no options for moving around to broaden your horizons within the field, operations, administration, fleet, mechanical, these are not considered viable secondment positions for us, we're trained for one purpose and no one understands that sometimes to keep swimming you have to keep your head above water by being allowed to rest.

I'm not sure if my husband had PTSD, or depression, or any mental illness but he was experiencing Cumulative Stress. It can build and it can kill you. Whether you're a hard driving businessman or a paramedic, if you keep adding stress upon stress without allowing some to dissipate it will eat you alive and kill you.

My husband didn't believe cumulative stress could cause PTSD, he said it had to be a thing on its own because those PTSD cases always seemed to recover.
A different category of stress disorder, all on its own.

He had some pretty big challenges hit him in a relatively short period. He'd already been struggling to cope with our stressful fight with the employer, juggling partners, bad calls, injuries because of bad partners/bad calls, then along came this straw that knocked him clear out of his logical, rational self. He took his own life.

I don't think he really wanted to be dead, he just didn't want anymore bad to happen to us..to him. It was too much. I know what it feels like to say that life is too much to take anymore. I've said it, thought it so many times. I'm still here.

I'm still here because I am aware that life is too much In Those Moments but life has many more moments and I just have to wait until those ones pass. They always will. They always have.

He just had to wait. He just had to ground himself and wait it out.

:(

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I felt so inadequate. I had no clue who to call for help or if I should even bother. I wanted to text my hubby or call him to ask what I was supposed to do. I needed a man.

I really am in the same boat as you as far as having to figure everything out by myself. I think that there are real challenges to being alone on my own. I now live in a apartment where the landlord and the manager have gone above and beyond to help me but before when I was first grieving, everything seemed insurmountable and so hard. So I can relate to that but you did figure it out on your own and I give congratulations for that. I too get anxiety attacks sometimes when I bump into a problem that I am absolutely clueless how to fix.

I think that some heavy duty self care is in order for you. I think turning on the fireplace was a brilliant idea and choice that you made.

I think insensitive people around you would just shut the f*ck up, some people!!!!

I am so sorry that you are forced into the position of having to listen to their ignorant crap. I had my fill of it when my husband died and I did not get over it on their time table.

Cheering you on and fully supporting you. I have not walked in your shoes so I sure hope that nothing I said to you was brutal.:hug::hug::hug:

 

[NarcSis]

Thanks for being my cheering squad @gizmo, it means a lot.

I sort of had an unwitnessed crying episode in the Walmart today. I was coming down a main aisle and heading toward the electronics/movie area and I thought, "I wonder if he was looking for any new movies..." My next thought was to look for him in that area because if we ever separated in Walmart he'd usually be in that section looking at movies to buy. I almost started sobbing, I could feel my chest shaking and my eyes filled with tears. I ducked down an aisle and started doing some deep breathing and swiping at my tears.

He was just there with me. We bought 4 jugs of washer fluid, a large bag of pepperettes, other groceries and we grabbed lunch, drove to the park and sat in the car to eat watching the snow whip around us.

He Was Just There With Me!!! We were just there shopping!!

That was yesterday wasn't it? I so wanted to look around and see him. Go looking for him and find him there and tell myself all of the past few months were just a nightmare, not real.

Instead I forgot why I was there & just paid for what I had then left - forgot to get the other half of my groceries.

The dog and I were in the basement tidying up today. I put all of his things that I'd tucked in boxes piled all over the place into one area of the basement. Of course, at one point the dog laid down on one of my husbands old shirts, began sniffing it and then got up, went over to his boots, then to a box of his ball caps then to a bag that I didn't realize had some socks in it and then went to lay down by one of his sleeping bags...sniffed it, laid down and then looked at me with the saddest eyes and kind of whined.

I sat down hard on the weight bench and burst into tears. The dog got up and came over to lean against my leg! Usually he hates it when I cry. And he just sat there against me the whole time I was blubbering and saying, "I don't know why your Daddy had to leave me. I don't understand how he could have done it."

It was hard seeing the basement messy with boxes everywhere but now it's harder because I feel like I've tucked him away into a corner, hidden him.

I also see now that there are things that I can just throw out that I wasn't ready to part with earlier when we cleaned up. I can probably pull another two or three bags of garbage out of there.

I want to make room to exercise both me and the dog on those over 40C days and the below 20C days. I need the basement back. I need to clean it.

I did a good thing today. It wasn't a bad thing to put his stuff away. He's not going to use it again. He won't get angry if he can't find something. I didn't disrupt his organizational system. I can finish cataloging and taking inventory of his stuff if it's all in one area. I can reclaim the basement as mine.

I'm sorry, Tin. It's true. You won't be back for your things.

I wish you could just come back.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

:hug::hug::hug:

 

[Iamsensative]

Hope you can find some peace in time. Thinking of you. Sending prayers