Tumble dried

[jamesG.1]

Last few days have been an absolute roller coaster.

News of my ex dying came last sunday and I've had virtually every emotion imaginable over the week.

Most of all though, it's the battle with guilt that's been worst.

To put in context. My ex was always complex, but it was the arrival of my problematic mother after a stroke and the resulting contact with my narcissistic brother that really threw things into decline. However, she had many long-term issues that were building, and almost certainly she'd been drinking secretively on top of an above-average social drinking habit for decades.

But I was torn badly in my responses to these shifting needs and given that my mother was hardly looking like she'd be there long, I prioritised her needs. However, my brother ran campaigns against my partner through my mother that cut deep. He'd set his sights on forcing mum to liquidize her assets by selling her house, having her move in with us and then running away with his 'share'. He'd parasitized mum for years, something mum was singularly unable to stand up to. In fact she was so deep in Stockholm syndrome with him that she'd attack me and my partner as we tried to assist her in order to support the needs of her little cuckoo.

The timing was dreadful. My partner had lost her mother only 2 years earlier, a highly abusive woman who had taken out her anger at her third unwanted daughter 'wrecking' her career. My GF had never properly addressed this abuse and had very complex issues laying wide open and of course the alcohol was her favoured response. My brother, being a malignant narcicst identified the fractures in her and went for it, placing pressures on our relationship that couldnt be sustained. I didn't think it was alcohol, I thought it was either a thyroid issue or some other such endocrine effect, but as I pushed her harder to adress the alarming rise in symptoms, she kicked back aggresivly.

My options were highly limited. I was trying to run a business during a recession with a workaholic business partner with zero empathy, fighting off attempts by my brother to invade my life and raid my mother's small nest egg and my partner was falling to peices in front of me.

Stage one of my guilt is that I brought my family into the mix. Stage 2 is that I cracked and had an online affair.

By this time I was desperate, my partner and I barely spoke and I was insane with stress. Through an online project I met and collaborated with a woman in the states and when I told her what I was dealing with, she rushed to give support, something I was not receiving from any other person. When I finally found out that my partner had been concealing her drinking from me after being certain I was trying to save her life by getting her to go to the doctors, something just snapped. It was something I just never thought I coukld do, but I was gaining love and support for the first time in my life and I simply could not resist it. My life was a trainwreck, I was running out of hope, and this woman gave it to me.

The mum died and there was one final hideous round of incidents. I was walking around like a robot, fixing the final issues and wondering what I'd become.

Then I went to the states to see my freind, the both of us still in relationships, to finish this project and to just be near someone I liked and who liked me and I dunno, escape from my life.

I didn't want to come back. I sat in the bar at the airport and just sobbed, Life had ceased to mean anything but confrontation, worry, and hoplessness.

When I got back the whole thing kind of blew up. I'd done nothing controversial, but it was enough, and I felt that now, at last I could try one last time to persuade my GF to seek help. It went nowhere. She threatened me one last time over the relationship and I called her bluff.

So it was over.

During that last month I finally got her to see a consultant and it was confirmed that all my worries about her health had been a nonsense. She'd been letting me think she was seriously ill in order to cover her drinking for nearly 5 years. I felt numb really. I'd been hammered from every direction for no good reason by 4 impossible people for what? Pride?

I left.

Then the C-PTSD hit. The last four years since then have been hideous. You all know this, the dreams, the panic attacks, the confused rolling thoughts that just churn and churn.

And then, 4 years down the line, I finally start to get up and running. I meet someone new, get a new career, get my thoughts calmed down and wham... my ex falls downstairs and dies.

So guilt. It goes like this. I left her, had an affair, so she declines, and so I killed her.

It's a very easy shorthand for anyone who wants to make that the narrative, all her friends who failed to back her up when I fired a million distress flares. The neighbours who never saw what went on inside the house. The family on her side whom she loathed, and who drove her insane with bullying, including the father who let her mother and sisters abuse her with zero intervention.

So far, I've only had one such conversation, and I may probably never have another, but the scenario of an ex, living as a recluse, her liver destroyed by drink falling and dying alone and not found for days is hovering over me.

I was desperate, I wasn't perfect, it was messy, but I am not going to let this narrative turn on me. I left for survival, I took it as far as I  could but I was broken, damaged, crazed with despair and frustration over things I had no power to change. No one will ever know what went on in that house but me, but mine is not the story that will stick.

To move on I need to harden to her final sufferings, sufferings that she chose. Help was nearby. I would have done anything to save her and the life we'd made, but nothing was wanted.

That's the truth.

[jamesG.1]

It's evident reading that back that I havn't really done justice to the realities of life in those last four years. Many of you will know the realities of living with an alcoholic, but I endured a surreal range of gaslighting, verbal abuse, threats, watching blood in the sinks after she'd been sick, financial threats and control, increasing isolation and on and on. All while fighting against my mother, brother and buisness.

I'm not perfect, I regret the online connection enourmously. She never knew the extent of it but of course, blamed it for everything and denied any of the main issues had ever taken place. It was an act of desperation for me, an attaempt to feel loved and supported in a sea of unhappiness and conflict.

But once I left, my ex transformed from aggresive drunken controller to pathetic victim and I'd given her and her belated supporters a perfect hook to hang me on. It's just not an accurate portrayal of events, she drove me away, threatened me a thousand times with the end of this very relationship and finally, at the end of my rope, I sagged and reached out.

Yesterday, the feelings of remorse seemed to just vanish in the face of my appraisals. I spoke for a long time with a family freind who had both witnessed my GF's decline and who had also had an abusive alcoholic partner who had died in similar circumstances. A huge weight lifted as she reassured me that I'd had no choice but to leave and that I'd done all I could. But today... the guilt and shame is back with a vengeance.

It makes no sense. She didn't want me, she pushed me away, she wanted to die. But when I left after taking this for so long, it changed and the world crowded in to judge me. Or at least I THINK they have.

The cruelty of this is bewildering.

[Rainagain]

This is such a sad story James.

If I were you I would focus on the addiction as the culprit rather than blame yourself.

Thousands of people die from addiction every year.

I'm sure there are factors which were causative and/or made it worse, but it doesn't sound like that is on you at all.

Grief rather than blame is fitting to what happened. I'm not sure blame helps much, and certainly doesnt change anything.

It's so very sad.

[Blueberry]

Hello James,

I want to let you know that I read both your posts. I don't judge you though that might be scant comfort if you feel that everybody irl is judging you. You didn't kill your ex. She fell down the stairs.

In this kind of situation, I try to focus on the opinion of a healthy person, e.g. the family friend. btw that is somebody else who is not judging you. On the contrary, providing real support and knows you irl too!

Guilt and shame - biggies when triggered. With what's hit you recently, I'm not surprised they've come back at you. Maybe check https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=56.0 when you feel up to it.

Sending support from the forum 

[Snowdrop]

I think if you need to blame anything, blame the alcohol. You are in no way responsible for her death. Please listen to your family friend, as she has a lot more perspective on the situation than most.

Sending you support.

[Kizzie]

Sending support also James, tough time for you right now 

[RiverRabbit]

https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=11643.0

Flashbacks from back when I was five... and my uncle died.  Some parts deeply relate-able...

[jamesG.1]

totally resonates RiverRabbit.

several doctors told me that alcohol was the worst thing they ever dealt with. Its destructiveness is unreal. And yet it's completely embeded in our lives.

sigh

[Three Roses]

Grief is so complicated. You're definitely in the thick of it.

Like you, I reached out for comfort when I left my husband. Confusion, despair, a shattered self-image, nonexistent self-esteem; a destructive, manipulative, hostile, gaslighting partner that I had to escape. Like a wolf caught in a trap, I would've chewed off my own leg to escape at that point. My very survival demanded it.

If he had subsequently died after my leaving, I know I would've experienced "survivor guilt". I had tried to keep his head above water for so long...had tried to point him to healing and happiness...i knew he was sick.

If someone is drowning but dragging her rescuer under the water, and the rescuer had to leave to save his own life, everyone would understand. Still, it leaves a grief that's unexplainable to anyone who hasn't been through it.