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.