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.