November 28, 2012

  • The Unraveling

    It is sad to me that the birth of my relationship with Bill is here on Xanga (sometimes I go back and read the crazy in love and sex-fueled posts and cry) and it is also the only place I feel safe writing about the death of it.

    Sunday a friend and I went for a long, hard bike ride outside in the cold.  We finished up our twenty miles with a stop at a diner near our houses and had grilled cheese and martinis.

    My son was in the hospital and Bill did nothing - didn't come to see him or me.  Didn't even offer emotional support.  His kids were at the house over the holiday weekend and it's like he doesn't see them.  I fed them, cleaned up after them and entertained them.  He took them to visit his parents and left shortly after dinner and went to a hotel by himself, leaving the kids with his parents and brother.  (I took the kids out for tacos on Saturday, for example, and asked him to come.  "No.  I don't like that taco place," he said.  "Ok, well then where would you like to go eat?" I asked.  He was quiet for a minute and then said, "I don't want to go anywhere."  There are many, many, many examples of things just like this.)  He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.  He is not eating dinner anymore.  He is physically unable to do any more than he is doing.

    "I know I should leave," I said as I finished my martini.

    "Why do you stay?" my friend asked.

    "I love him," I said.  "And I think he will kill himself if I leave."

    He thinks about it every day.  Every single day he wishes he was dead.  ("It hurts my feelings to be with someone who wishes he was dead very day," I say.  "It's not about you," he says.)

    And this is where well meaning people ask about medication and counseling.  All I know to say is that we have done that, he does that, and that he is not doing well.  ("Talk to his doctor."  Ok.  I do that and they ask questions and they up his uppers or give him Viagra or ask if he has a plan and he says "no."  We go to marriage counseling and he sees a psychologist (the best he's seen ever) and he gets angry or can't answer the questions that are asked)  I am really feeling like this can't be fixed.

    This is the "for worse" part, right?  I have begun to think of this as a terminal illness.  If he had cancer that progressed to the point that he could not get out of bed or something I would not expect him to go out for tacos with me, right?

Comments (2)

  • Wow, I don't know. Good analogy with the physical illness. In that case, you would not blame yourself and you would also not be expected to come up with a cure, so go easy on yourself.

    I remember those in-love sex-fueled posts.

  • i do not understand most of this but it sounds horrible and i can't imagine going through it.

    you're definitely in the FOR WORSE section of the marriage handbook. i hope you weather through it as undamaged as is possible.

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