btjk
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Hello. My name is Darius. I am a married man. I hope it will stay that way despite my best efforts to be an unusually cruel husband.
I made this post to a few places, I've edited it for triggers as best I can while still telling my story, and decided to share it here. Its a bit of a mess because I am a horrible mess.*
To all mothers and fathers surviving their children, you have my sympathy and my condolences. I'm so sorry for your loss.*
I will say that this post is long, and it is a horrible thing. It's rough and it spans a year. It is most definitely missing details. My wife could probably add a million more if she were posting this, but I will keep adding more as I remember.*
It is about the loss of my son, and what happened to me and to my wife afterwards. My intent is to be candid, it might feel emotionally gratuitous at times. Please consider that before reading. I don't want anyone to hurt because of this. I just want to share, because I finally believe it is important.
--------------------
Apologies if this is poorly written. Swear words below.
-----
In December 2014,
My wife and I lost our son to miscarriage, as much as we both hate that term. It was not her fault. He was 18 weeks old. There was nothing wrong with him- he was perfect. Placenta previa and a tear in the water sac (PPROM) took him from us.
After this, my wife and I were extremely close for about a month. The hospital experience was traumatizing beyond what I can express, and we bonded deeply over it. In fact, we got married a few days after we lost him.*
After that, everything fell apart. She fell apart. I stopped falling apart- I was empty. I became a shell. Had to go to work. As a husband with no heart, I left her without leaving her. A year later, we're estranged and terrifyingly close to a divorce.
Three nights ago my heart just about exploded as I woke up to the reality of everything that had happened and everything that was happening. I felt the consistent excruciating pain of the loss of my son for the first time in a year. I felt the pain of the impending loss of my wife and how I have treated her. I haven't stopped feeling it, and I don't want it to stop. I'm getting help because I know I'm a wreck of a man. I don't want to lose my wife.
This is what happened in a rough nutshell. This is my confession, and my story of our story.
-----
She had lost her job before he was born, a job she had for years. Her new holier than thou boss lady didn't take too kindly to my wife being pregnant, and at the time, unmarried. Hardcore Baptist (nothing against regular Baptists). Cold bitch. Right in the middle of the fucking holidays.
I was the only source of income all of the sudden, and I was making a twig over half of what I make now (not much). She had her sons living with us and stopped getting child support. We had a dog. We had a baby on the way. Thats a lot of expenses and pressure on me to get a lot of things right.
I got it very wrong in the end, but I believed I was right- the worst kind of wrong. I focused on work, and even with food stamps we needed charity support on multiple occasions to keep our apartment- which is nothin' fancy. But its home. I was highly egoically ashamed.
When we lost our son, my wife and I bonded like only a child could make happen- but I had to keep working literally two days after we lost him. She didn't want me to go but she understood. She was supportive of me. She was walking to me after work sometimes so we could be close and walk home together. We did everything together, like we did before, but it was even deeper now.
(Not to say we never had trouble. We had a hell of a lot of it. But things changed. I changed. We had him, and we lost him.. then I started to change back to the worst version of me I have ever been.)
Still, tension mounted as I was so very insecure of my financial abilities, and everything else. My focus shifted more and more towards work and obsessing over numbers, towards logic. I came home but I stopped coming home. She noticed. She knew what was happening to me.
Her cycle started exactly one month after he died. To the day. The same damn day. Her hormones went haywire. She suffered greatly unlike anything I'd seen her endure before, and for a long time. Severe postpartum depression, with no baby. Her milk came in, relentlessly. Self harm, suicidal, screaming in pain, smashing things, tearing things apart, not eating, not drinking.. I was convinced I was going to lose her too.*
And. Every. Single. Day. I had to leave her here, to go to work, to make sure we had a home. For bills. For food. For the dog. For my family. For my wife, I had to abandon my wife, in a puddle of tears on the bathroom floor, every day, for seven hours, alone in the dark.
And I did.
I did and I convinced myself she was worse when I was near her. That she blamed me for what I did to her. That she hated me. I left her more and more, even when I was home. I took work on saturdays and it broke her heart that I would leave her alone even more.*
It got easier for me to leave.
I started to feel everything less and less. I dissociated hard. I was desensitized very quickly. Would you believe that as a human being, as a man who was going to be a father, as a new husband, it got easier to be away from my dying wife.. without active guilt? Without obsessive fear? To know I might come home to a dead wife, and learn to just accept that with a deep breath at the door? I actually learned to put it out of my mind, and it fucking. got. easier.*
Emotionally, I have no balls.*
I couldn't face losing my son and my wife. I couldn't face being left alone. I couldn't face it and be invested. So instead of pump every ounce of blood into my heart and work my ass off trying to save her, I deinvested. I left her alone.
Because I was heartless and empty.
I, for the most part (90%+ of the time) felt nothing anymore. Not the death of my son, not the people all around us suddenly popping out babies like no one's business, not having to leave my wife alone, not choosing to leave my wife alone.
There was no family or friend support either, to say the least, for either of us. People were brutal, borderline evil. They said absurdly stupid and cruel things. It was them against us, and to her I was siding with them more and more every day. I love my wife, but I lost almost all ability to show it. Especially when it mattered.
She was absolutely right. I was siding with the "them" that wouldn't stop for a moment to pay respects to my son, or hold space for his mother.
She made it through though. She found the strength alone. She healed on her own. For a year, a fucking year, she called crisis lines for help, she saw therapists, she got a steady counselor, she went to groups, she joined forums, she got back into the things she loved, she fell, she picked herself up, she saw other loss moms fall, she picked them up, she looked for work, etc. It was a soul shredding process for her, and she did it alone, because I was not there. I was too busy in my ever growing safety-bubble making sure I could function minimally as a robot.
She worked on healing our relationship too, far more than I did or responded. The gifts I bought her, even the more expensive ones, she knew I couldn't feel. I took everything so personally. Any time there was a blip of disapproval, and sometimes even approval, it popped my fragile bubble and sooner rather than later, I always bolted away from her even more.*
Thats what we had. Blips. Blips of connection. Blips of my heart starting to beat again. But I always found a reason to shut it down real quick. Sometimes, within two seconds of the engine starting, I'd go look in the mirror, and I'd get angry, for no present reason. Just angry. Then, I would let go of the anger. And I would be empty again.
To her pain at this, I would essentially respond:
"How could you dislike me? Why don't you love me as I am? This is your betrayal of me! I am a man. I'm the provider. I need to do this, I need to be this, so we have a home. I can't be emotionally available because I'll break down instantaneously! Who knows if I'll be able to shove it all back down next time so I can make it to work without crumbling?"
"I can't be a husband to you in the ninety-nine ways I am neglecting you, the ninety-nine ways that you need me, so I can be the money-guy husband. Mr. Logisticus Acquistiones Practical."
"I can't lose my job, thats the most important thing."
Etc.
No heart required.
She knew what was happening to me. She knew all along. She still had compassion for me. Still she supported me so much. Still she DID so much for me. She tried so hard for so long to reach into my chest and jump start my heart.
But there was a limit. Now I sit alone in a three bedroom apartment, thats slowly draining away it's contents, as my wife and her kids and the dog move out. As my family leaves me, and I can't blame them.
Because I'm a human monster.
-----
This came to a head last December. I was fully automated at this point. I'd had my new phone for a few months now, and I was plugged in 24/7. Importantly, away from her. I said beyond heartless, cruel things. I had had enough of all this fear and pain business, this emotional business. I was doing my job and "if you cant love me or accept me as a man doing what he's supposed to do well too bad". I told her I didn't know about us anymore- by text or email of course. I told her I was going to see a counselor in January, to get advice on how to "deal with the relationship".*
NOT BECAUSE I WAS EXCEPTIONALLY ADEPT AT DEHUMANIZING, NOT BECAUSE I WAS MORTALLY MENTALLY WOUNDED BY MY SONS DEATH, NOT BECAUSE I WAS AN EMOTIONAL TIME BOMB, but because "the relationship is a problem". "You are a problem, to me."
On the anniversary of my sons death, I barely spoke to her. I said, with words actually physically coming out of my mouth, "We can talk about him, but I don't need to hear about the details. I remember them enough."*
And it upset her. And I left her alone some more.*
I did not see a fucking counselor in January. No way, I totally lost hope for us. I lost hope for everything. If I was automated in December, I went full-calculator in January.
It was my last shot, and I blew it.
I told her, directly, in no uncertain terms,*
"My plan is to do nothing. My love forbyou is core deep, but dying, distant, dormant. I don't expect our relationship to improve. I don't expect our relationship to get worse because it literally cannot get worse. I don't want to attempt communication because it hurts. I don't want to divorce because it hurts. And hurts is bad for works. I reserve the right to be indifferent indefinitely until at a later undisclosed date I decide make a decision."
To which she replied, "Really?".
And I said yes.
And I was wrong again. The relationship got worse. Of course it did, dumbass.
-----
She started sleeping out of the bedroom:
No reaction.
She said she's still taking that beach trip we were supposed to take together so we could reconnect.. but with her kids:
No reaction.
She really took that beach trip:
No reaction. Cough.
She says she's gonna move into the other room:
No reaction.
She really moved into the other room:
No reaction.. Eye twitch.
She had an art show:
No reaction.
She's looking for a job and another place to live:
No reaction.
She's staying with a friend now:
No reaction.
She's getting her things:
No reaction.. Slight palpitations.
She wont come home when I'm here:
No reaction.. Nausea.
She wants a divorce:
No SHIT. No reaction.. Sweating.
And as I am coldly, heartlessly separating her things from mine, and piling them into the living room for her to take away the next day while I'm at work, I open my bedside chest, and in it is a wooden block I'd all but forgotten about.*
Right after we lost our son, she gave me a wooden block with a picture of me holding my son printed on it, with the words. "I love you, my Papa." written on it.
And on the back, with a background of gold, there are more words, that read,
"Papa,
Thank you for always being there for my Mommy. Thank you for loving her so much. I would have wanted to be just like you when I grew up. I love you. When you miss me, walk with my Mommy at night and look up. I'll be watching over you.
Love,
[His name]"
She knew I loved the stars. She knew I loved our walks at night. She knew I loved her and our son.
I looked at the necklace on my chest that hold my sons ashes, and I looked at my ring, both of which I had all but totally ignored for a year and yet worn every. single. day.*
And I came alive again.
And I immediately wanted to die.*
Because I am a human monster.
It took me a YEAR of being one heartless son of a bitch to finally convince her I stopped loving her..
If I possess either, I love her with all my heart and soul.
I just could not find the strength to show it.
-----
I am so deeply ashamed. I am so guilty. I am so sorry; to my wife, who I have completely failed as a husband and as a friend. To my son, who I have failed as a father, and as an example.
I vowed to my wife I would be there for her and protect her always. I vowed to be kind to her and understand her and know her. I failed her, I failed my vows to her, right out of the fucking box..*
I promised my son I would live every day like he was here. I'm mortified to know that from somewhere up there he has seen what I have become, and how utterly I have failed even at the most basic human levels. How I failed his mother.
I left my wife alone in the worst pain of her life, and now I suffer the worst pain of mine alone.
I will be better. I owe you both better. You deserve better.
I love you both so much. I miss you both so much. Please forgive me.
I beg you both to forgive me.
-----
To all those who have lost children, I am deeply sorry for your loss. You have my compassion and my sympathy.
To fathers, I pray you do not tread a path such as mine. Its hard, sometimes borderline impossible to find resources for men in this situation. Its hard to even look because of how we're conditioned. Its even harder when we're in denial about our pain.*
Do it anyways. Get a counselor. Your girlfriend, your wife, is there because you need her just as much as she needs you. Be there with her. If you bury your heart, let her dig it out, and don't hate her for it.
I'm getting my counselor YEARS too late. I'm making the desperate calls alone in the dark, because I clearly have a problem. But I need my wife now, and I am all alone, and I deserve to be..*
-----*
If anyone does have grief or bereavement resources, especially for fathers or men specifically, please share. I'm three days in and I have no idea what I'm doing. Thank you in advance.
I made this post to a few places, I've edited it for triggers as best I can while still telling my story, and decided to share it here. Its a bit of a mess because I am a horrible mess.*
To all mothers and fathers surviving their children, you have my sympathy and my condolences. I'm so sorry for your loss.*
I will say that this post is long, and it is a horrible thing. It's rough and it spans a year. It is most definitely missing details. My wife could probably add a million more if she were posting this, but I will keep adding more as I remember.*
It is about the loss of my son, and what happened to me and to my wife afterwards. My intent is to be candid, it might feel emotionally gratuitous at times. Please consider that before reading. I don't want anyone to hurt because of this. I just want to share, because I finally believe it is important.
--------------------
Apologies if this is poorly written. Swear words below.
-----
In December 2014,
My wife and I lost our son to miscarriage, as much as we both hate that term. It was not her fault. He was 18 weeks old. There was nothing wrong with him- he was perfect. Placenta previa and a tear in the water sac (PPROM) took him from us.
After this, my wife and I were extremely close for about a month. The hospital experience was traumatizing beyond what I can express, and we bonded deeply over it. In fact, we got married a few days after we lost him.*
After that, everything fell apart. She fell apart. I stopped falling apart- I was empty. I became a shell. Had to go to work. As a husband with no heart, I left her without leaving her. A year later, we're estranged and terrifyingly close to a divorce.
Three nights ago my heart just about exploded as I woke up to the reality of everything that had happened and everything that was happening. I felt the consistent excruciating pain of the loss of my son for the first time in a year. I felt the pain of the impending loss of my wife and how I have treated her. I haven't stopped feeling it, and I don't want it to stop. I'm getting help because I know I'm a wreck of a man. I don't want to lose my wife.
This is what happened in a rough nutshell. This is my confession, and my story of our story.
-----
She had lost her job before he was born, a job she had for years. Her new holier than thou boss lady didn't take too kindly to my wife being pregnant, and at the time, unmarried. Hardcore Baptist (nothing against regular Baptists). Cold bitch. Right in the middle of the fucking holidays.
I was the only source of income all of the sudden, and I was making a twig over half of what I make now (not much). She had her sons living with us and stopped getting child support. We had a dog. We had a baby on the way. Thats a lot of expenses and pressure on me to get a lot of things right.
I got it very wrong in the end, but I believed I was right- the worst kind of wrong. I focused on work, and even with food stamps we needed charity support on multiple occasions to keep our apartment- which is nothin' fancy. But its home. I was highly egoically ashamed.
When we lost our son, my wife and I bonded like only a child could make happen- but I had to keep working literally two days after we lost him. She didn't want me to go but she understood. She was supportive of me. She was walking to me after work sometimes so we could be close and walk home together. We did everything together, like we did before, but it was even deeper now.
(Not to say we never had trouble. We had a hell of a lot of it. But things changed. I changed. We had him, and we lost him.. then I started to change back to the worst version of me I have ever been.)
Still, tension mounted as I was so very insecure of my financial abilities, and everything else. My focus shifted more and more towards work and obsessing over numbers, towards logic. I came home but I stopped coming home. She noticed. She knew what was happening to me.
Her cycle started exactly one month after he died. To the day. The same damn day. Her hormones went haywire. She suffered greatly unlike anything I'd seen her endure before, and for a long time. Severe postpartum depression, with no baby. Her milk came in, relentlessly. Self harm, suicidal, screaming in pain, smashing things, tearing things apart, not eating, not drinking.. I was convinced I was going to lose her too.*
And. Every. Single. Day. I had to leave her here, to go to work, to make sure we had a home. For bills. For food. For the dog. For my family. For my wife, I had to abandon my wife, in a puddle of tears on the bathroom floor, every day, for seven hours, alone in the dark.
And I did.
I did and I convinced myself she was worse when I was near her. That she blamed me for what I did to her. That she hated me. I left her more and more, even when I was home. I took work on saturdays and it broke her heart that I would leave her alone even more.*
It got easier for me to leave.
I started to feel everything less and less. I dissociated hard. I was desensitized very quickly. Would you believe that as a human being, as a man who was going to be a father, as a new husband, it got easier to be away from my dying wife.. without active guilt? Without obsessive fear? To know I might come home to a dead wife, and learn to just accept that with a deep breath at the door? I actually learned to put it out of my mind, and it fucking. got. easier.*
Emotionally, I have no balls.*
I couldn't face losing my son and my wife. I couldn't face being left alone. I couldn't face it and be invested. So instead of pump every ounce of blood into my heart and work my ass off trying to save her, I deinvested. I left her alone.
Because I was heartless and empty.
I, for the most part (90%+ of the time) felt nothing anymore. Not the death of my son, not the people all around us suddenly popping out babies like no one's business, not having to leave my wife alone, not choosing to leave my wife alone.
There was no family or friend support either, to say the least, for either of us. People were brutal, borderline evil. They said absurdly stupid and cruel things. It was them against us, and to her I was siding with them more and more every day. I love my wife, but I lost almost all ability to show it. Especially when it mattered.
She was absolutely right. I was siding with the "them" that wouldn't stop for a moment to pay respects to my son, or hold space for his mother.
She made it through though. She found the strength alone. She healed on her own. For a year, a fucking year, she called crisis lines for help, she saw therapists, she got a steady counselor, she went to groups, she joined forums, she got back into the things she loved, she fell, she picked herself up, she saw other loss moms fall, she picked them up, she looked for work, etc. It was a soul shredding process for her, and she did it alone, because I was not there. I was too busy in my ever growing safety-bubble making sure I could function minimally as a robot.
She worked on healing our relationship too, far more than I did or responded. The gifts I bought her, even the more expensive ones, she knew I couldn't feel. I took everything so personally. Any time there was a blip of disapproval, and sometimes even approval, it popped my fragile bubble and sooner rather than later, I always bolted away from her even more.*
Thats what we had. Blips. Blips of connection. Blips of my heart starting to beat again. But I always found a reason to shut it down real quick. Sometimes, within two seconds of the engine starting, I'd go look in the mirror, and I'd get angry, for no present reason. Just angry. Then, I would let go of the anger. And I would be empty again.
To her pain at this, I would essentially respond:
"How could you dislike me? Why don't you love me as I am? This is your betrayal of me! I am a man. I'm the provider. I need to do this, I need to be this, so we have a home. I can't be emotionally available because I'll break down instantaneously! Who knows if I'll be able to shove it all back down next time so I can make it to work without crumbling?"
"I can't be a husband to you in the ninety-nine ways I am neglecting you, the ninety-nine ways that you need me, so I can be the money-guy husband. Mr. Logisticus Acquistiones Practical."
"I can't lose my job, thats the most important thing."
Etc.
No heart required.
She knew what was happening to me. She knew all along. She still had compassion for me. Still she supported me so much. Still she DID so much for me. She tried so hard for so long to reach into my chest and jump start my heart.
But there was a limit. Now I sit alone in a three bedroom apartment, thats slowly draining away it's contents, as my wife and her kids and the dog move out. As my family leaves me, and I can't blame them.
Because I'm a human monster.
-----
This came to a head last December. I was fully automated at this point. I'd had my new phone for a few months now, and I was plugged in 24/7. Importantly, away from her. I said beyond heartless, cruel things. I had had enough of all this fear and pain business, this emotional business. I was doing my job and "if you cant love me or accept me as a man doing what he's supposed to do well too bad". I told her I didn't know about us anymore- by text or email of course. I told her I was going to see a counselor in January, to get advice on how to "deal with the relationship".*
NOT BECAUSE I WAS EXCEPTIONALLY ADEPT AT DEHUMANIZING, NOT BECAUSE I WAS MORTALLY MENTALLY WOUNDED BY MY SONS DEATH, NOT BECAUSE I WAS AN EMOTIONAL TIME BOMB, but because "the relationship is a problem". "You are a problem, to me."
On the anniversary of my sons death, I barely spoke to her. I said, with words actually physically coming out of my mouth, "We can talk about him, but I don't need to hear about the details. I remember them enough."*
And it upset her. And I left her alone some more.*
I did not see a fucking counselor in January. No way, I totally lost hope for us. I lost hope for everything. If I was automated in December, I went full-calculator in January.
It was my last shot, and I blew it.
I told her, directly, in no uncertain terms,*
"My plan is to do nothing. My love forbyou is core deep, but dying, distant, dormant. I don't expect our relationship to improve. I don't expect our relationship to get worse because it literally cannot get worse. I don't want to attempt communication because it hurts. I don't want to divorce because it hurts. And hurts is bad for works. I reserve the right to be indifferent indefinitely until at a later undisclosed date I decide make a decision."
To which she replied, "Really?".
And I said yes.
And I was wrong again. The relationship got worse. Of course it did, dumbass.
-----
She started sleeping out of the bedroom:
No reaction.
She said she's still taking that beach trip we were supposed to take together so we could reconnect.. but with her kids:
No reaction.
She really took that beach trip:
No reaction. Cough.
She says she's gonna move into the other room:
No reaction.
She really moved into the other room:
No reaction.. Eye twitch.
She had an art show:
No reaction.
She's looking for a job and another place to live:
No reaction.
She's staying with a friend now:
No reaction.
She's getting her things:
No reaction.. Slight palpitations.
She wont come home when I'm here:
No reaction.. Nausea.
She wants a divorce:
No SHIT. No reaction.. Sweating.
And as I am coldly, heartlessly separating her things from mine, and piling them into the living room for her to take away the next day while I'm at work, I open my bedside chest, and in it is a wooden block I'd all but forgotten about.*
Right after we lost our son, she gave me a wooden block with a picture of me holding my son printed on it, with the words. "I love you, my Papa." written on it.
And on the back, with a background of gold, there are more words, that read,
"Papa,
Thank you for always being there for my Mommy. Thank you for loving her so much. I would have wanted to be just like you when I grew up. I love you. When you miss me, walk with my Mommy at night and look up. I'll be watching over you.
Love,
[His name]"
She knew I loved the stars. She knew I loved our walks at night. She knew I loved her and our son.
I looked at the necklace on my chest that hold my sons ashes, and I looked at my ring, both of which I had all but totally ignored for a year and yet worn every. single. day.*
And I came alive again.
And I immediately wanted to die.*
Because I am a human monster.
It took me a YEAR of being one heartless son of a bitch to finally convince her I stopped loving her..
If I possess either, I love her with all my heart and soul.
I just could not find the strength to show it.
-----
I am so deeply ashamed. I am so guilty. I am so sorry; to my wife, who I have completely failed as a husband and as a friend. To my son, who I have failed as a father, and as an example.
I vowed to my wife I would be there for her and protect her always. I vowed to be kind to her and understand her and know her. I failed her, I failed my vows to her, right out of the fucking box..*
I promised my son I would live every day like he was here. I'm mortified to know that from somewhere up there he has seen what I have become, and how utterly I have failed even at the most basic human levels. How I failed his mother.
I left my wife alone in the worst pain of her life, and now I suffer the worst pain of mine alone.
I will be better. I owe you both better. You deserve better.
I love you both so much. I miss you both so much. Please forgive me.
I beg you both to forgive me.
-----
To all those who have lost children, I am deeply sorry for your loss. You have my compassion and my sympathy.
To fathers, I pray you do not tread a path such as mine. Its hard, sometimes borderline impossible to find resources for men in this situation. Its hard to even look because of how we're conditioned. Its even harder when we're in denial about our pain.*
Do it anyways. Get a counselor. Your girlfriend, your wife, is there because you need her just as much as she needs you. Be there with her. If you bury your heart, let her dig it out, and don't hate her for it.
I'm getting my counselor YEARS too late. I'm making the desperate calls alone in the dark, because I clearly have a problem. But I need my wife now, and I am all alone, and I deserve to be..*
-----*
If anyone does have grief or bereavement resources, especially for fathers or men specifically, please share. I'm three days in and I have no idea what I'm doing. Thank you in advance.
