I’m still so hurt by everything that happened.
He had called me before 8am. It was the first time I had heard from him in nearly 5 days.
“What are you running from?” When I got no response I asked again. “What are you running from?” Still silence.
“S, there is a lot I’m learning that you haven’t told me. There is clearly a lot buried that is coming out right now. You are not telling me a lot. It’s time to start talking.
“S… what are you running from.”
I asked him what he was afraid of. “I’m afraid of how I’m going to feel.”
“Getting to the flight? On the flight? When you’re here—“
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to love you…”
I sighed greatly at this. He had told me he loved me countless times, but this was different.
“I’m afraid the same thing is going to happen again,” he said.
He had really only spoken of one other that he still hasn’t uttered the name of. “Do you think I’m going to abuse you?”
I pieced more together, things I had already figured. “Were you in a romantic relationship with them?” He fell silent.
“S, you had always told me they were just a friend. Were they a romantic relationship?”
A long pause before, “Yes.”
“You know I already figured that this was why you’re in this state right?” He said yes. I figured the flight could have been bringing up feelings and memories of them again, like my PTSD of the sorts with highways. That was the last partner he took a flight with. Shortly before I got to speak to him in his drunkenness, I learned that this would also be his first flight alone.
“You know that that would have been important for me to know before you booked that flight, right? And now it makes things a bit more complicated.”
“Yes,” he continued in single words in shame.
I told him that he is destroying himself, and destroying me in this state. I made it clear that he did not need to come if he was going to be like this.
“What do you want to do,” I asked firmly.
A short pause, but a strong, “I want to go.”
I told him that this flight would bring up many more emotions. That they will not stop.
“If you make that choice, you will have to face these things. Life will be calling you to face them. You can’t run from them. Are you ready for that?”
“Are you ready?” More silence. But concerning silence.
He had dropped the phone. I heard him stemming across the room, into an animalistic state, sounding like s*lf harm. I called out to him, in a stern voice, in an adoring voice, any way I could. My heart started beating heavy and my chest got a hot flash saying, trust your instinct. I immediately messaged his family in emergency.
I asked him if he was SH, and he said yes. I told him to place it across the room, for me. I don’t know if he had, but by the time his sibling walked in, he had gone outside for a smoke. He had just spent months quitting the habit out of free will, for me.
Sibling picked up the phone, and I felt like I was on the receiving end of a crisis hotline, trying to talk sibling down so that they could take away the alcohol (I later learned) and pills so that he was safe.
“See,” the younger sibling said. “This is why I thought the flight may not be a good idea—“
“I understand you. Yes, we will definitely have to talk about the flight. But right now we need to make sure he’s safe. You’ve doing a great job and I’m proud of you for doing this.”
His mom and I spoke on the phone for two hours after she had arrived there and left. She shared stories with me that he hasn’t told me. She grieved not being able to do more as a mother and seeing how hard it is to see her son suffer. She got emotional, and I just felt like an old soul speaking to another mother, as if I had already been one in a past life.
She told me that he urged her not to call me. I affirmed her that he brought it upon himself, that there would be no need to call me if he didn’t put himself in this situation.
She told me that he was getting on him about contacting me, to “not put that poor girl through that.” I also affirmed her that she was right and that I was being destroyed inside by all of this.
The stories she told me were heavy. He has never told me so many of those things. And it reminded me of all the times in the beginning when I basically played a one sided 21 questions with him because I felt he wouldn’t talk about himself enough, and it was like I didn’t know him at all but he had just fallen head over heels for me somehow.
But after all this, and everything I’ve learned, it is proof that I know even less than I thought about him.
I try to grant some grace with the autism. But this whole situation reminded me of R, and when I had to save him.
I also had his family try to send S to the hospital, per recommendation of my mental health care coordinator. They called emergency services to check him out and he refused to go.
Fortunately they were able to find more liquor in his room that sibling hadn’t found, all poured out. Supposedly he four bottles of rum over the past 4-5 days. Mom confiscated his phone and wallet so he couldn’t have any more delivered.
All this I learned from mom.
Today he said his voice was out, but kept using his dying electronics as an excuse, as of you can’t charge and talk at the same time, and it has never been a problem before. I told him that they were all excuses, that he was still running. He said it wasn’t intentional, and he’s trying to “start talking”.
He said that he already feels bad for feeling like he loses everything good in his life. This broke my heart, which now as I write I guess is his perception of his abuser when he was young. Maybe he wanted to stay with them. I don’t even know how they got reported. I have so many questions.
I will ask them all and see where he decides to come clean, and where I have to force him not to omit any information from me.
Under normal circumstances, I would leave. And I realized that in my last relationships I knew 6 months in Joe things would end up. And now I really don’t think this would last long term. But I don’t want to leave yet. This is the second instance of this, even though the first time we weren’t serious. But I’ve started to wonder if the first time was because of me too.
I just don’t know if this is actually redeemable. It sent me to such a dark place. I reverted back three years when I was in great trauma, having panic attacks and jittering just trying to get to sleep. Everything around me feeling so dark and dull and worthless.
I refuse to let him set me back with all the hard work I’ve done over the years. I will sorrowfully let him go if I must. I would hate it, but I would have to.
Can he go to therapy for this, and am I willing to wait years for him to work on this, plus accept the risk that at any moment in our marriage when shit hits the fam, he was drink himself to his grave while I’ll be left alone and live just as my mother did with my father, again?
He’s afraid that “it’ll end up like last time.” I’ve always told him about joes he manifest things upon himself.
If he hadn’t done this, things would have been different.
