Can't they just fix him and give him back?

No seriously, can't I just be done with having to deal with this? Yea I know the answer to the question. I just don't like the answer. I've been looking for sources, books and such to help me understand my side of the abyss. Let's face it, putting a name to it doesn't help much past the initial relief that a professional finally said what I've been saying all along. Well that and the overwhelming urge to run around yelling, "see everyone, he's not just a jackass, there's a valid reason for his behavior, and it can be fixed" Great, so I was right, now what? Well, according to "my sources" there's a whole lot of working through things and talking about things and this seems to be a long drawn out process. And here I was hoping they could just fix him and send him home. At this particular moment in time I just don't want to deal with this anymore. Not that I have a choice because well, there's this abyss you see and I don't want to deal with that more than I don't want to go through the "healing process" I hate process. I'm more of an instant gratification kinda gal. Then there's the whole what if we go through all this and it doesn't help? Man wouldn't that be awful. See, the guy I married, the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, doesn't exist anymore. He's gone and he's not coming back. So what happens if I get to know this guy and the prospect of forever isn't so appealing anymore? I've been saying for years all I can do is pray my way through this. And boy have I been praying. That's about the only thing keeping me sane at this point. I think the good Lord might be getting sick of hearing from me. But now it seems, there's more that not only can I do but must do in order to come out the other side with him. But right now, I just want to have a normal life again. I want to be done with all this. I don't WANT to deal with it. But, the only way to get what I want right now, is to not be here. And well, that's not an option. Like my mama always said, this too shall pass. And it will. You see, one of the side affects of living with someone with PTSD is that your emotions are also on a constant roller coaster. While, at this moment I just want to throw up my hands and tap out, that will change by days end I'm sure. Because that would be quitting and that wouldn't sit well with me. By days end, I'll remember what we're fighting for here. And want to fight for it. Just gotta keep your eye on the prize. Do ya ever wonder what it's like on the other side of the abyss? I do. I often wonder what goes through his mind. Okay, most of the time it's more of a "what the hell were you thinking" kinda thing but sometimes it's a genuine interest in how his brain works. What happens in there? Why does he do things, or not do things? For instance, we can sit down and talk things out and create a strategy and have a plan. And he'll tell us that he's going to do something or be better at doing something. Then he never follows through. Now a rational person would understand that this process is only going to destroy any trust your family may have. And yea, at this point if he said the sky is blue I'd look up to check because I don't trust a word he says. If I ask him a question, and he gives me an answer, I don't trust he's telling me the truth. If he says he's going to do something, I don't believe he will. So what goes on in there that leads him to think this is a good idea? Ya gotta wonder if it's he doesn't think things through, if he is not capable of understanding consequences or if he just doesn't care. We've even had a discussion about it. Which leads us back to his inability to remember things. And my overwhelming frustration that he doesn't remember. It's like living in a constant loop. I've told him that he's damaging his relationship with his family, I've told him some of the things he does is really disrespectful to me and our marriage. He knows it's hurtful and pushing me farther away, and yet he continues to do it. Seriously, what's it like over there on the other side? It would be interesting to take a peek inside. If you're out there reading this and thinking yea I know exactly what you mean. Know you are not alone. Hang in there.

So who do I get to get mad at?

First I need to get something out of the way. I was thinking about my post yesterday and the friendships we've lost. It occurs to me that several of the men we no longer talk to most likely also had PTSD. It's like trying to get two North ends of magnets to get along. I really hope that sometime during therapy hubby figures this out too and can begin to look at the situation from a different perspective. Unfortunately he does have a tendency toward a "martyr" complex, for lack of a better term. If you say you're tired, no one is as tired as he is. If you say you're stressed, no one is as stressed as he is. You get the picture. That just frustrates the beehoozits out of me. First, it belittles anything anyone else may be feeling. Second, he never sees anything from anyone elses perspective. As they say, you don't know their story. He tends to get so wrapped up in his feelings and anger he never stops to think maybe the other person may be going through something too. Now, on to my next thoughts on life. Where the heck is the complaint department? Who do I get to yell at? Who do I get to get mad at? This isn't fair! I did everything right, I'm a good wife and mother. My life revolves around my family. I'm June freaking Cleaver and I like it that way. I did everything right and still I look around at the pieces of what used to be our lives and I want to scream at someone. I guess here's a good time to explain our lives. As I said, we've been married for 22 years. My husband works heavy construction in NYC. We have 5 kids. I'm a stay home mom. I'm a stay home mom for a couple of reasons. First, I want to be. I have nothing against women who work outside the house, that's not my business. But for me, I didn't have kids to pay someone else to raise them. Second, my husband wanted to build a career in his industry. He wanted to get to the top of his field. That was only possible if he was free to work the hours he did to get where he was. We worked hard to build his career. We were on top. He was the best of the best. All we had to do was coast the rest of the way to retirement. So, 9/11 happened. I won't go into detail but I will say he was working a job a block from the towers. There was a period of several hours that I didn't know if he was alive or not. A day later he went back and worked the the pile for several months. Until he was too sick from the dust to continue. Then he moved onto another job and went about the business of pretending it didn't affect him and he was fine. We learned to live around it. We learned to ride the roller coaster and maintain a normal life. At least from the outside. It's fascinating how you can live with the constant presence of PTSD in your life and no one looking at you from the outside has a clue. When he was having a "bad spell" and doing things or going places took too much out of him, we'd make some excuse, that always sounded believable, because "I'm sorry, but we can't go because hubby's brain has taken a holiday" probably wouldn't have gone over well. I became a master of subterfuge. You know how it is. Little white lies here and there to protect him. I was sick, or one of the kids was sick or he was working. I'll say right now, after 12 years I was running out of illnesses to have. One of the kids was going to have to come down with rickets next. But we managed, we kept it "under control". Yea, there's a lovely little lie we tell ourselves huh. We can control it. I'd suggest he go see someone now and then but to no avail. I knew he was not well but like anything else, the first step is admitting there is a problem and he just wouldn't. He thought the way he thinks and behaves is the way everyone else does. People with PTSD honestly don't understand that the way their mind works is not normal. Then, the beginning of the end. He was offered the job of head foreman for his local on the Freedom Tower. As much as I never wanted him to go back there, he seemed to need to go. I hoped that it would help him heal. To rebuild would be therapeutic for him. WOW was I wrong about that one. The hours and stress level were insane. The job slowly consumed him. It became his reason for existing. It was his obsession. His white whale. The longer he was there and the higher the stress level, the more determined he was to see it through to the end. As a side note, he was the only one, from any trade who was there from beginning to end. As much as I'd like to say I'm proud of that fact, the reality is that everyone else was smart enough to leave before the job drove them insane. He did quit the job once. I was so happy! It was over. We were out. A week later he went back. When he told me, I went into shock. I started shaking and nearly passed out. As he talked I kept thinking, you see what this is doing to me why are you doing it. But, Ahab wanted his whale. He asked me if I'd ever forgive him. I wanted to say no. That this was too far. That this was my line in the sand. But what I said was, there's nothing to forgive, you are who you are. And he is. I always have to remind myself that it's the illness. Because no healthy, sane person would treat someone you love like this. Ironic isn't it, that the place I thought had taken him from me so many years ago, ended up taking him away in the end. It was days and weeks and years of scrambling to keep him sane. Talking him off the ledge over and over again. Begging him to quit. He slowly slipped away. He abdicated any involvement in our family life and I became a single parent. He went to work and I did everything else. Half the time I wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. The decisions he was making and the things he was doing were ludacris. And therein lies the cruxt of the problem. People with PTSD don't make reasonable, rational decisions. It made perfect sense in his mind. He just wouldn't face the fact that his mind was ill. It actually became a thing with the kids and I when one of us would say, what's wrong with him or why did he do that, the response was always, daddy is just not right in the head. And still, we kept it together. Then, in an odd twist to the story, my father passed away. And that was the final straw. He just couldn't handle one more stressor and his PTSD blew out of control. He couldn't go to work most of the time. He was nasty and angry and I didn't like him very much. He was doing things that he NEVER would have before. I didn't recognize him. This was NOT my husband. It was like waking up in the movie the body snatchers. Even his signature has changed. And so here we are. He finally had to admit he's sick and seek help. He is no longer a foreman but is managing to maintain a job doing much less. Starting at the bottom of the hill again. But so far, he's gone to work every day which is huge. I want to scream and yell at him for doing this to us. I'm so mad he did this to us. That it was his actions and decisions that brought us to this hell. But, I can't. Because it's not him, it's the illness. I couldn't get mad if he had diabetes or cancer or any other physical illness and I can't get mad at him because he has a mental illness. All we can do is pick up the pieces and see what we can build with them. See, if the two people who now find themselves in this life together are compatible. See if we fall in love again. See if we will ever be happy again. Sometimes I wonder if we will be able to. Sometimes I wonder if I even want to. So, who do I get mad at? Who do I yell at? Who do I blame? If you're out there reading this, you're not alone. And we all feel the things you do.

I used to like roller coasters, until I began to live on one

Living with someone who has PTSD is very much like living on a roller coaster. You have times when things are shaky and there's a few turns but for the most part you're enjoying the ride. And then you're suddenly spiraling downhill at an unbelievable speed and you can do nothing more than hold on and pray you survive. And THEN there are the times when the ride is slowing down and you see the platform and you think the ride is over and you can get off and leave it behind. Only to have the ride shoot through the station and begin all over again. There have been times when things have been going well for so long, I thought it was finally over. I thought we'd made it through the storm. Yea, I don't fall for that anymore. I've learned to accept the calm, good times and enjoy it for as long as it lasts because I know it won't last forever. Eventually we will be on the downhill again. You know, those times when you're living with Jekyll and Hyde. I can't count the number of times we've been talking and having a perfectly normal, lovely conversation and someone flips a switch in his head and suddenly he's a screaming maniac. It happens in seconds, and it's frightening. The things he says don't even make sense. Or he's raging about something that happened years ago. At first I fought back. I mean come on, I'm Irish, it's what we do. I wasn't going to just sit there and take it. I tried to point out that he wasn't making sense. And he certainely wasn't understanding what I was trying to say. Eventually I learned to just not engage. First, it wasn't worth the effort, there was no reasoning with him. And second, I'd learned to be afraid of him. That's a tough one to admit. But yes, in some ways I'm afraid of him. Or rather, I'm afraid of his illness. One of the unfortunate side effects of PTSD is emotional abuse of the partner. There were times when he had me convinced that if I was a better wife, or a better mother, or kept the house cleaner, or or or. Somehow it would be better and so it followed this was all my fault. Yea, I got over that. Took me a few years, but it eventually dawned on me that it was him not me and there was nothing I could ever do or not do that would make him better. And, since the whole point of this is to be open and honest, I'll say that somewhere in the back of my mind, I was never sure the outbursts wouldn't get physical. They never have. In researching PTSD I've learned that things made sense to him. That this illness affects how his brain works and how he thinks. That the way he thinks and perceives things is waayyyy different than the rest of us do. It's even way different than he used to think. It's almost like a traumatic brain injury. Which is really hard for everyone around them. They're not the same person they were and it's hard to wrap our mind around it. It causes friendships to end and relationships to change. Because, well, we just don't get it. We can't possibly understand it. All we can do if we're lucky is to accept it. And accepting it does make it easier to live with. Once I understood that his brain actually works differently than it used to and he has no control over that, it did make accepting the new him easier. It makes me sad too. I've watched many friendships end because of it. I've wanted to grab both parties and shake them. Him because he's perceiving things wrong and them for not understanding that he really hasn't turned into a raging asshole. Well, at least not by choice. Both parties were at fault and of course neither side sees it. And there was nothing I could say or do to stop it. It is my sincere hope that one day, we'll be able to mend those friendships. They were my friends too and I miss them. It also drastically affects memory. It's like the part of your brain that creates new memories stops working. That was good to know actually. It gets so frustrating when he doesn't remember things. He completely forgets we've had a conversation much less what it was about. It's good to know that there is a reason for it and it's not just he can't be bothered paying attention. It still pisses me off, but at least I know he's not doing it on purpose. As much as I'm beginning to understand the illness, it occurs to me that I have no clue how it's affecting him. I can read all about the symptoms, and cause but I have no clue what's going on. Does he have flashbacks? Does he still have nightmares? Does the sound of a plane still bother him? Does he miss me as much as I miss him? I have no clue. I do know he has anxiety attacks, we've rushed to the ER thinking he was having a heart attack once or twice. But as with most people, he doesn't talk about it. That parts really hard to deal with. We used to talk all the time. We'd talk for hours. We were best friends as well and lovers. We were inseparable and always touching. If we were in the same room we were holding hands, or our arms touched or our knees. We always had some sort of physical contact. We had no secrets, we talked about everything. We had fun. We had an amazing marriage that everyone we knew both envied and emulated. Now, I have a roommate. And it sucks. I miss my husband so much. I miss who we were and what we had. In a way, I resent his therapist. I resent that he talks to him about things he won't share with me. I resent that he's the one that helps my husband, not me. I resent that I wasn't enough. I resent that he's the one on the other side of the abyss with my husband. I know, it's necessary and a good thing and I'm glad he's getting the help he needs. I guess it's not so much that he's there as it is that the fact he's here means that we will never get back to where we were. Our marriage as it was is over and we have to find a way to build something new. After almost 22 years of marriage, I have to start dating the man I live with and get to know the person he is now. We have to start over from scratch and that, in the end is the part I resent. Most of the time I'm okay. It is what it is and there's no sense in looking back. But sometimes, it hits and takes me to my knees. I used to be able to go to him when I was upset or hurting. Now, when it gets too overwhelming, I wait until everyone is in bed and asleep and have myself a good cry. He'll never know how many times I've sat alone and lonely and cried until there's nothing left. And thankfully neither will the children. I can at least protect them from that. Whoever is out there and reading this, hang in there. You're not alone. I won't say it gets better, because better is a relative term. But I will say you can learn to live with it.

So, here's the deal.

I've decided to create this blog for a couple of reasons. First, I find it much easier to write what I'm thinking than say it. I can organize my thoughts better and think about what it is I'm really trying to say. And second, in doing some internet research the past couple of days I've found a serious lack of support available to the families of the construction workers who worked rescue and recovery on 9/11. Everything seems to be focused on the first responders, the victims and their families. And while I completely understand, there is a whole lot of people who are living with this that have nowhere to go for support and encouragement. My hope is that maybe someone out there who is in similar circumstances may see this and know they are not alone. Let me state, very clearly, I'm no expert in anything. I'm just a woman married to a man who was present when the towers came down, worked rescue and recovery and has just completed work on the Freedom Tower. He has also just been diagnosed with PTSD. While, I've known for some time, and have pleaded with him to get help, he only recently did. So, now it's official. There is a name for the abyss that has grown in our lives and our marriage over the last years. I am not a doctor, I do not want anyone to think that I am advocating anything or anyone. My way of dealing with all this won't work for everyone. I'm just going to call 'em like I see 'em and write about the only thing I am an expert on, me. I will write about living with someone with PTSD, my frustrations, fears, anger, sadness whatever comes to mind. And someday, I hope to write about the joys and happiness again. Logically you know they can't help it. They're not behaving this way on purpose. You know they didn't intend to blow up their lives and families. But when you're standing on this side of the abyss and they're not making rational, normal decisions and the way they perceive things is so cockeyed it boggles the mind, the logic doesn't make it any easier to live with. It doesn't make it any easier to explain to family and friends. For these many years now I've not talked about it really. Partly, because I wanted to protect him. Let's face it, there's a certain stigma that still goes with an illness you can't see. And I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I was holding onto the hope that I was wrong, that it would just go away on it's own and we'd have our lives back, that I'd have my husband back, and then no one would need to know about it and think differently of him. Partly, because I guess I just figured no one would "get it". No one would get that I really had no answer for all the times someone asked me "what the hell is wrong with him". Or said "I'd never let my husband behave like that". Or "you deserve better than this, you should leave". How do you explain that this isn't him. He doesn't mean it, and he can't help it. That you're holding out hope that your husband will come back. That you know he's in there somewhere, and maybe if you can hold out long enough, that he'll come back to you. It now occurs to me that I'm probably not the only one who thinks that no one would get it. Because I sure can't find anyone out there so maybe no one else can either. So, here's the deal. I'll ramble on in the hopes that somewhere out there, someone feels less alone and lonely. And, if you find me and I'm talking about your life, say hello when you're ready and know that you are not alone.