Thank you everyone for your kind words.
But for every up there is a crash. I'm upset and I don't know now whether or not to be angry with him. In all honesty, I feel like a fool.
I've been missing him so much. And like I'm told his brother said at the funeral, "I'm a person of science..." but I still have no answer for what I heard in my room yesterday morning. The house makes no sounds similar to what I heard. The dog hasn't made any vocalizations that are remotely similar or as clearly vocal as that. I heard it as clear as if there were someone standing in the corner of my room not wanting to be detected, "Shh. Sit. Stay." The dog was reacting to something, just like he'd been reacting to something all day that prior day. There were several times he was lying on the floor when he alerted and looked toward the stairwell or the front door. At one point he even got up and walked toward the front hall, curious with his ears back and then he looked back at me unsure and started wagging his tail. When we were in the basement because I wanted to "be" down there "with" my husband (his stuff), the dog was sniffing around and then suddenly turned and looked toward the stairs. He then went to the bottom of the stairs and sat there looking up at something. His ears kept raising up like he was listening to something.
Maybe I was just wanting to have "an encounter" with my hubby and my mind produced what I wanted. Maybe when we die, we just move on with no memory of what we've left behind. Maybe he's actually gone and he'll never look back toward me. My therapist told me that she got goosebumps when his brother said in his eulogy that he was a man of science and does not believe in the metaphysical but the night before the funeral his brother came to him. She said it sounded very confusing but she thinks he truly believed that my husband visited him in a way he could not fathom using earthly rules. Is it possible?
It was very cold yesterday and I decided to rot in front of the TV watching Netflix. I put on a program called The OA which I was warned that I was not to watch because the opening sequence involves a suicide attempt (nothing severely dramatic or emotional). So i begin watching this show (and binge watch the entire first season!) only to find it is about the afterlife and a possible explanation for what happens. I sit there going over and over what I experienced and start trying to explain it in terms of this tv show I'm watching! it actually made sense to me in a way then - alternate realities that our consciousness just transfers to after life in one reality ends in some way. Some consciousnesses can figure out ways to "Jump" back or visit. Hubby was a very intelligent being, if not a little handicapped by his possible dyslexia issues, he had an amazing mind. If there was anyone who could figure out how to "jump back" to this place, it would be him.
It's all very illogical and fantastical but somehow it soothes the soul in it's need for answers.
Of course, then came the crash. I decided to write to him last night again about his visit. I re-read the entries since his death, almost every single one screams, "I miss you, please come back to me, please, please, please, I need you, I love you, I'm sorry," etc. etc. I'm essentially crying over and over repeatedly through the pages of this journal. I'm begging him over and over not to leave me the way he did. I'm devastated and shocked and afraid and alone for the first time in a very long time. I'm terrified of facing this life alone. I scream repeatedly how much I loved him and how could he give up what we had. I go on repeatedly about our love, our perfect life together and how we were just made for one another. And then I skimmed through years worth of entries before that.
Every single one was an expression of how disappointed I was with him. It seemed I only wrote when I was angry with him. There are no good memories contained in those pages. I read it and I see a past filled with anger, disappointment, swallowing my pride and carrying on "accepting" the life I've chosen with him. In several entries I'm rationalizing suicide because I cannot see a way out of the decision I made to be with him....but I keep coming back to the decision that I'd invested too much of me in that relationship to just walk away from it and give up.
He did. And that answered a question for me - how could he just walk away from what we had? He was never nearly as invested in it as I was. I was the one who was carrying that relationship. keeping it moving forward and making a majority of the effort to make things work. Why was I so exhausted and fatigued and susceptible to PTSD? Because I was swallowing back trauma at work and swallowing some pretty unfair treatment at home. I was being willfully blind to the reality of our relationship together. I was his caregiver over the course of our entire relationship according to these entries and I was his emotional dumping ground, just taking and taking and forgiving and forgiving and not wanting to rock the boat. In the pages I see my perceptions of things that were happening and just how much I was not communicating to him for fear of losing him.
I was always afraid to lose him. He was part of my illusion of "success" in life. And yet, in the same breath, I was wanting to walk away from him and just leave it all behind for death. I was convincing myself that he would be okay without me. I was rationalizing and finding ways for him to be okay after I was gone - selling my vehicle, not having to feed or clothe me anymore and most importantly, he could spend all of his time on his games without having to interrupt his "life" by entertaining me.
That was a recurrent theme throughout the years - even BEFORE I developed PTSD. His stupid video games. In one entry I go over how he had to move his nintendo machine off the couch the first time I went to his apartment just so I could sit down. In many others, I describe how lonely I am because he is spending 12 - 18 hours or more on his video games, often not coming to bed and only stopping to eat and catch a few hours of sleep. This wasn't just a post-PTSD or recent years issue, this was something that was so a part of our life that I'd completely white-washed.
Yes, we had adventures together. Yes, we traveled places and had vacations. Yes, we shared an interest in movies and tv. Yes, we snuggled and hugged and said I love you every day. Yes, we loved one another, but if I deluded myself into thinking his video game issue was just something recent, I was wrong. He had this period where he gave up on the marathon sessions because I expressed how upset it made me. We went out hiking, we started working out together, we took up jogging, we started spending hours at the mall but in between, his "reward" for doing the things I wanted to do was to spend a few hours on his games. I "allowed" that....like a mother raising a child.
I complain that he stopped trying to make an effort in our relationship in recent years but if I'm to believe everything I'd written down over the years, it was me making all the effort. All vacations and outings were planned by me. All birthday celebrations, holiday meals, anniversary trips, our wedding - it was all me. It's not that I didn't want him to do any of that, I would have loved him to help me to do something in our relationship but I always got, "Whatever you want." I even had to choose my own birthday, anniversary and Christmas gifts. He invested very little in me other than companionship. We lived beside one another. I was always lonely. I wonder if that's why this being without him isn't actually such a huge adjustment and why I keep waiting for him to just show up at some point - he was usually missing from the room anyway.
Our anniversary was fine if we were working. He went out of his way to be moody on a lot of our anniversaries. Our fifth, I didn't actually remember but I read about his frustration with me for not asking the waitress for the bill and how he let that stew and became angry and sullen and quiet. Passive aggressive. I wrote about how I spent that anniversary crying silently on another bed at the hotel we were staying at. Alone.
I glossed over all of those bad times because I didn't want to be "that wife" who nags her husband over every little thing, who bugs him to just adore and pay attention to her. I wanted him to be free to be him but being him did not include or make room for me. Being him gave no thought to my needs. He didn't really know me enough to plan a date or buy a gift because he had no clue what I liked - he never payed attention.
Like I said, there were good times but it seems I've either magnified the bad times or I've magnified the good times. I'm not really sure anymore.
I wrote about my therapist suggesting I take time off of work to deal with the PTSD because it was strongly suggested to her by her supervising psychologist after going over my file. I wrote about how I wanted to discuss this with him and we'd make the decision together but he refused to talk about it, he acted angry, snapped at me for little things and then when I tried to rationalize it, he said, "Well, I guess that's your job then." in a voice that sounded highly disappointed in me. THAT'S why I put myself through hell trying to hold onto that job!! I didn't want HIM to be disappointed in me. I didn't want to be his DISAPPOINTMENT of a wife. THAT'S why I wanted to die so badly. I was alone in facing the PTSD too. He didn't want a dependent. He didn't want me to be defective. He wanted to hold onto that illusion of the "power couple" at work that everyone else wanted to be.
I can say that it was tough on both of us at the beginning because I was elevated all the time. I wanted to die all the time. I was upset and triggering and running to him for safety and comfort. If you read those entries, you see just how many times after PTSD that I wanted to just die and throw it all away because I was an annoyance to him with my symptoms. I tried to shield him as best I could. I started to swallow a lot down again, hide it from him to try to protect him and make him believe life was still okay. Little things made me want to die. He got frustrated with me - I want to die. He had a bad day at work and projected his anger onto me - I wanted to die. I couldn't sleep and he gets upset - I wanted to die. I have a nightmare and he has to work in the morning, so he just rolls over - I wanted to die.
I never gave up.
I never gave up and let go because I knew he needed me - to cook, to clean, to look after him and his needs. He rarely made the effort to meet my needs but I just accepted that this is what I could live with anyway. All I needed was to know he loved me and accepted me.
It kind of makes me feel a fool for having just spent a year whining and crying over him when I spent a good majority of the past 20 years essentially alone anyway. I was addicted to him. That is why it is so hard to let go. I got used to him being here, treating me a certain way, loving me just enough to keep me here looking after him. That's why I felt my life had no meaning without him here.
I loved him. I gave him all of my love, all of my devotion, all of me. He gave me a sense of safety, stability and loved me for what I did for him. After PTSD I could no longer do those things. It took 8 years for him to implode when the roles were reversed and he had to try to look after me. He was essentially my dependent for 12 years and we were financial equals then the tables turned and I became his dependent - eventually financially as well. I can imagine how hard that was for him.
I stopped making an effort. I stopped giving up my days planning FOR him and started trying to look after me. We ate out a lot and put on weight. I felt like an idiot having to resort to lists to remember things like "Do Yoga" and "Go quiet". He'd come home sometimes and I'd have nothing to share with him about my day because I'd done absolutely nothing but make myself meals and maybe get some laundry done before dropping to the couch exhausted. I stopped planning trips and vacations. I stopped making reservations for our anniversary dinners, my birthday etc. I stopped being able to do the things we used to do like mall walking or hiking. I wanted him to make the effort, to notice that we used to do things. He never noticed he just allowed everything to slide by the wayside. Our entire life went to the wayside. We spent hours beside each other, him absorbed in his computer, me staring at the tv - not talking about anything or being able to relate to one another at all.
We stopped being together because I stopped making the effort to carry us anymore. If a young me had just stopped being so full of energy and stopped pulling this relationship along, I wonder if we would have broken up long ago.
He didn't know how to safely say he was upset with the way things were going. He didn't know how to handle my possibly being disappointed in him for a potential future loss of his job. He didn't know how to be anything but a paramedic. He didn't know how to be him anymore. He walked away. He just let go and walked away.
He made the same conclusions I did. "If I die, he will be fine. The house will get paid off with the insurance, he can sell my car or the house and he will have money to live on. He will find a way to live without me, he's essentially lived without me all this time anyway." We lived alongside one another.
Is that why he was coming back to me? To ask why I was so upset and lonely when I'd practically been upset and lonely for 20 years anyway? Did he come to remind me that he's always just lived silently beside me and his death makes no difference, he's still there watching me, silently following along?
I don't know what to feel today. I posted on fb about the "visit" and hearing his voice. I get people saying things like, "True love goes beyond death." and now I'm wondering, did I just imagine what I wanted to hear? Was he ever as truly attached to me as I was to him? He walked away, that has to say something about how he felt about the value of our relationship.
I loved him.
