Some of you may have seen my threads in OT. But this one definitely skirts ON topic so here we are.
This time 16 years ago I was preparing to go to rehab. Things were really bad between JM and me. He’d been chatting with his previous gf and we’d had a couple of big fights about it. I remember telling him that my biggest fear was him hooking up with this xgf while I was gone. He promised me, swore a sacred oath, all that stuff, that he would not do anything like that. Well, 30 days later plus a few days, I find a sweet little romantic e-card he’d sent to her. Phone records proved he’d spent hours on the phone with her, while I was allowed 30 minutes twice a week to talk to him and our kids. This was actually not the A that broke us. He refused MC and I knew I couldn’t stay sober and walk away from my M at the same time.
So of course, nothing changed with us. And a couple of years later the A that broke us happened. Blah blah blah, S then false R and then S again and then true R. Things were really good. Are still good.
But tomorrow morning he is driving several states away. For something like rehab. His PTSD is off the rails. The ketamine treatments and EMDR were very helpful. Until they weren’t. He snapped 2 weeks ago. OD’ed on clonazepam. He was unresponsive for about 36 hours and did not wake up well. He was hallucinating and fighting. Our younger son was planning to stay the night with him so he was in the room. I went to the bedside and just said "Baby, you’re safe. You’re in the hospital and I am here." Y’all, his eyes opened but he did not see me. And he reached up suddenly and grabbed the neck of my shirt. He yanked me down across the bed rail. Our son acted fast and was able to get JM’s hands loose. He was also able to talk him down and JM went back to sleep/unconsciousness whatever you want to call it.
It took me 2 weeks to process this and recognize it as very real trauma. Isn’t that crazy??? He. Choked. Me. It wasn’t me he was trying to choke. He was certainly not in his right mind. He doesn’t even remember it. In fact he doesn’t remember anything from Wednesday through about Sunday of that week. But it was his hands and my throat. I remember it all. Our son remembers it all.
And it’s just so… bizarre. The timing of it. I’m grateful for 16 years of sobriety. I’m grateful for 13 years of a truly reconciled and rebuilt M. But I am shaken and sad and I don’t even know what. In 28 years I have never been afraid of him. But in the mornings I don’t want to wake him up. It sucks. I have been in IC again since about February when all hell broke loose in our family… our niece and her boyfriend were running a meth operation on the property we all live on. I’m stepping up my visits with her.
And so tomorrow, JM is off to a PTSD residential treatment center. 4-6 weeks is the time frame we were given. It is far enough away that it’s unlikely I will be able to visit. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Oh, FFS. I’m just word vomiting here. Please keep us in your thoughts/prayers. For his safety driving, and for a breakthrough in his treatment. For me to find a way through this mess of trauma and yucky feelings. My default is to take care of him. That’s obviously not really healthy. So I have to find a way to sit with this discomfort knowing it won’t kill me, even if it feels like that.
