Contact Me

I have had a number of people request that I contact them.  The trouble is that almost all of them do so through commenting on this blog.

Though I do have it set up that I can email people via comments, most people who comment on my blog have their settings set to "No-reply Comment"  Which means that I cannot reply to your comments.

If you do not know how to change this, please note that I have an email address listed in my profile.  You are welcome to contact me via that route.

I honestly want to email people back regarding their questions, concerns or other. 

Learning the Hard Way

 

I will never understand why everything seems to feel like learning to walk again.  I hear that it’s pretty common for spouses to be forbidden to talk about PTSD.  My husband has gone so far as to forbid me from joining support groups too.  That means that everything I know is learned that absolute hardest way possible.  Everything I share here, every lesson I apply to our life, it’s all from walking into disaster and then making it worse. 

I’m sharing this because I need you all to know that it’s not easy.  They are angry, they don’t like themselves, which means they can’t like you  either and they probably have no idea what triggers any of their outbursts.  This means that the spouse is the one left to care for everything and also to figure out what to do to diffuse the situation.  This means that it’s been up to me to figure out what triggers his different behaviors, what works to stop an escalation and what doesn’t and it means that I’ve learned it all by doing it wrong a few times.

Whoever you are out there who might be reading this, I’m in this with you.  I understand what it’s like to feel like you are blindfolded in a field of landmines.  I know what it feels like to have no idea what you did this time to start a fight, nor what you are doing to make it worse. 

I have grown incredibly frustrated with websites.  They are full of invaluable resources, but so often, it feels to me like they make it look so easy.  “All you have to do is work full time, take care of your kids and/or pets, pay all the bills, keep your whole life running, and create a plan that helps your spouse. “  I want to shout,”Oh, Is that ALL?”  If I could, I would love to throw something.

It’s not easy.  It’s not easy to feel like you have to hold it together, keep your chin up, be strong, and also take care of every detail of your collective life while also doing everything in your power to help your spouse.  In fact, it’s the opposite of easy.  I would equate it to walking over hot coals while trying to balance a tea pot full of hot tea on your head without using your hands and not being allowed to spill a drop.  See, doesn’t that sound soooo easy?

Here’s what I can tell you about it all of these suggestions you will read on the various PTSD websites:  They are worth your consideration.  No, it’s not going to be easy adding one more task to your life, but when you do find those triggers, when you do find what works, that will be an even bigger stress that is now managed.  It’s worth a try at least. 

My husband didn’t respond to the various lists I created to remind him of things and he never checks the emails I send him, so I still don’t have anything to help him remember to clean the shower.  But I did find what works to help keep him from escalating when he is angry.  And I discovered that it often takes at least 12 hours before he will be ready to talk about the situation.  That’s progress.

So don’t give up yet.  I know that every day is a crap shoot.  I know that some days I’m optimistic about things and some days I feel utterly hopeless.  But I wake up each day and I keep trying.  It’s not a short process, but it’s a process none the less and one without any quick fixes available. 

After The War

 Background Flag used courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 
After the war, life was never the same.

For some strange reason, everyone thinks that the war ending and the troops being pulled out means that life just magically returns to normal.  Like there was never a war to begin with.  But there was a war.  It lasted 10+ years (depending on who you ask).  We may not, as a nation, have ever officially declared war, but troops deployed, bullets were fired, people died and lives were forever changed.

After the war, if you want to say it's over now, nothing changed for us.

Why must people insist on saying things like, "Well, you can rest easy now, hun?"  No, I can't.  It's true that not many people in our life know what we are dealing with.  Who wants to have to tell everyone they know that they break out in cold sweats because of something on the TV?  I understand why my husband wants us to keep this a secret.  But none the less, secret or not, the war ending doesn't fix things.

Lives were altered.  Not just ours, but for thousands.  Thousands of people, families, friends, spouses lives were forever changed when this war began.  This never ending war that feels like it's just quietly being fought these days.  There are still people deploying.  Even if you don't want to hear about it.  There are still those who are never coming home again, even if you weren't paying attention.

And then there's us.

After the war, life was never the same.  The man I married is gone forever.  The girl I was, or at least thought I was, is gone.  The girl who took her place is a hardened, often sad, woman (because I am officially a woman now), who doesn't recognize her own husband, let alone her self.   The man in my house is an angry shadow of who he once was.

But wars must be fought, freedoms defended and sacrifices made.  But some sacrifices feel like heavier burdens than other.  Giving up my husband for a year was nothing, but he gave up so much more...  And the war ending cannot give it back to him.  The war ending cannot undo what he has been through and the battle we are still fighting at home. 

After the war, life just isn't the same. 

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, I hope you will remember those who are not able to be with their families.  Whether it be military service or other forces that keep them apart, think of them while you are gathering with your loved ones and send them good thoughts.

Missed holidays are very common place in this military life, but that doesn't make them any easier. 

I feel blessed that I will get to see my husband for a short time today, but my thoughts will be with all of those still serving overseas, who will not be so fortunate.

Real Love

Real love is the thing of myths surrounded by clouds of romanticized ideas.  We spend so much time reading quotes about the perfect person for us.  We hear cautionary tales of about who not to trust your heart to.  We spend years and lifetimes yearning for the man who holds a boom box in the air outside of our bedroom window to tell us they love us.

But real love, not the kind where true loves first kiss awakens the princess, but real, honest, raw and sometimes painful love is none of these things.  It is running into the arms of someone who isn’t always perfect, never says the right thing and wondering if what you have will glow brightly for all to see, or burn in flames.

So much of love is what we are told we should want, we should expect and what we think we are supposed to feel.  But I’m not a romantic at heart, I’ve just spent my whole life being told that my lover should do romantic things.  But what I've got instead is a man who secretly fixes the closet door that has been sticking for years.  He takes the garbage out every week, so that I can sleep in.  There are no large romantic gestures, perfectly placed words or intensely tender moments.  But I have real love.  I have a love that looks into the face of the man I married knowing that the face I’m staring at is the face of a stranger.  I love him, even when he can’t love me back.  I love him through his anger at the world, his frustration and his pain.

I love him through isolation.  My carefully chosen words when talking about work, life, my frustrations and irritations are all so that I do not trigger pain in my husbands mind.  It often means that I can’t tell him about what I really do for a living and much of our discussions and connections are on a very superficial level. 

But, you see, my love is not based on always apologizing with roses, or even holding hands at sunset.  We don’t take long walks in the park, or have candle lit dinners.  There are no surprise gifts for me, no kisses in the rain .  But there is love.  Real love.  There is the kind of love that aches because I can’t take his pain away.  The kind of love that leaves me wishing I could take his place so that he can stop hurting.  We may go days without talking, he may be angry for months, but I still look at the empty space in my life and know that he will fill it back up again someday.  I look at him and know that someday, I will know this man as well as I knew the man I married.  Because the kind of love I have, is the patient kind.

I will continue to love and continue to wait.  I will continue to hurt and continue to feel lonely. I will be here, no matter what, because the kind of love we have is real love.  It’s not the stuff of myths and legends.  It’s not shrouded in romantic ideals or flowing, well places words.  It simply is.

A Letter to Myself

Dear You, yes, you going through that deployment,

I can’t promise you that it works out the way you lay in bed dreaming about.  In fact, this deployment will change a lot more than you ever imagined.  I know you have spent night after night crawling in bed at 5:30pm just to avoid the time of day that you miss him most.  When he comes home, sometimes you will look at the empty spot he sleeps in and wonder why you still feel like you are waiting.

But please know this, please know that when he smiles at you, even though it’s not quite the same, you will see that little bit of who he was before he left.   Please know, that through it all, he will survive, and so you will you.  Please know, that the perfect life you had planned will never happen, but what you will end up with is a life that you appreciate more than you will ever truly realize.

I know you have spent time fighting while he has been gone.  I don’t know why some couples do that, but they do.  And I know that some days you would rather fight with him and be angry than not hear from him at all, because every second he is on the phone with you is a moment that you know for sure, at least for now, that he is alive.  And I know that the days, sometimes weeks, in between those seconds feel like an eternity, during which you might go mad. 

You tell yourself, “If I can survive this, I can survive anything,” and I wish that were true.  I wish I could reach back in time and tell you that surviving the deployment is only half the battle.  I wish I could shout that into the universe so that every military spouse can hear my words and understand that waking up each day struggling to get out of bed until he is home again will not compare to the battle to be fought at home.  Not everyone will have to fight that battle, but the simple truth is that you will.

This deployment, for all its terrible pain and heartache, will give you some of the strength that you will need in the days to come.  But you are so much stronger than you think and it’s time that you start to rely on that strength, because the coming days will be tough.  But in the end, though the life you planned on having will be no where to be seen, the one you have will be worth fighting for. The life you have will be a life together, and no matter how bad things get, you will still wake up everyday thankful that at the very least, you’ve got that.

What is "normal"

I can't tell you much about why my husband is going through.  I can only tell you what I see and how I feel.  I am finding more and more that everything out there is about your spouse.  How he feels, what he thinks and what you should be doing in response.  But what about how we spouses feel?  What about what we go through as a result?

I understand my job is to be strong and stand by him.  I get that I have to help him.  But what is normal to be feeling?  No one seems to be able to tell me.  There probably isn't a "normal" way to feel, so much as a common way that many people feel.  But I'm tired of wondering if this is "normal" or common.

I say all of this because it seems to me that I am having a hard time coping with my responses to my husband almost as much as I am having a hard time helping him.  He is not interested in fixing things.  When I try to talk to him, he gets this blank, arrogant stare.  He patronizes me.  He crosses his arms and gets a smirk on his face like I don't know anything.  He constantly treats me like I should just take whatever he dishes out.  I don't know what to say, but I often feel like he is owning his diagnosis in a way that says, "I'm the one with PTSD, you don't know shit about it.  Nothing you can say matters because my diagnosis gives me the ability to behave however I want."

Any time I try to talk to him, he gets that arrogant smirk and shuts me out.

After we have those days, I shut down.  I have given up a lot to help this man that I love and when he behaves that way, all I can do is sit on my couch and do nothing.  As in, I lack the motivation to do anything.  The aftermath of our altercations, our fights, our "discussions," our lack of communication is horrible.  I just sit and can't cope.

What do I do? I don't know.  I don't know if this weird, arrogant behavior is common.  I don't know if it's "normal" for them to behave this way. I don't know if it's common for me to sit on my couch the next day unable to find the proper motivation to do anything.  I just don't know.

The Roller Coaster

This crazy life we lead is a roller coaster.  A dated metaphor, I'll admit, but I lack a better term.  Maybe it's like trying to ride the wave of a tsunami.  Sometimes it feels like I'm just surfing towards the shore and other times it's like trying to stay afloat while a wild wave is crashing every which way I turn, threatening to drown me.

What this all means is that I often have times that I can't control my emotions any better than my husband can control his.  It means that we had a period of fighting and anger at the world that lasted over two months and here I am feeling so defeated that I don't know what to do... But the last two days have been fine.  I consider it a form of emotional whiplash.  I swing one way to find safety and stability and can't control the whipping motion that my emotions are forced into when I start to swing the other way.

Two months is such a long period of time to be struggling, fighting, hurting, anger, sadness, hopelessness, hopefulness, and the whole spectrum of emotions in between.  So when, without warning, the barrage of emotions that I have been deflecting suddenly stops, it's like I don't know how to feel anymore.  Or, on the flip side, all the things that I was feeling but had to be in tight control of to prevent the situation from becoming worse all seem to be washing up next to me as the remnants of the tsunami are washing up around me.

I have no idea what to do about this.   I busy myself.  I try to find ways to heal.  I try to do a lot, but mostly, I sit, unsure of what to do in my own skin.

This is one of those situations that I have no advice for.  I have no idea how to fix it, make it better, or lessen the effects of it. I can only hope that time will give me some insight, but for now, I'm sitting on my couch feeling crumby.

The Best Advice I've Ever Gotten

There are more websites about PTSD than I have time to sort through.  There are more tips for what to look for if you think your spouse might be suffering from PTSD than I ever thought could exist.  There are more "Do This, Not That" type lists, and resource lists and lists about all of these lists that a compulsive list maker like me ever feels overwhelmed. So, how do you sort through it all?  Slowly.

But in Googling things and reading and finding new information, I finally stumbled upon a piece of advice that not only hit me in the nose like a square punch in the face should, but made me realize that of all the things I will ever read, know, learn, question and apply to our life, this is the ONE AND ONLY thing that will make all the difference.

BANISH THE WORD DIVORCE from your life.

It's that simply folks.  Either you are in this and fighting for your service member, or you're not.  There is no halfway in this territory.  You can't have one foot out the door and still think that you are truly trying to make this work.

We ALL think about leaving.  We ALL hit our fill and wonder why we are here.  We ALL wonder if life would be easier if we just walked away.  And you know what? It probably would be. But if you are really going to be the support your spouse needs, you are here, 100%, every day, no matter what.

I'm not telling you to stay if you are in danger.  I'm not going to judge you if you don't stay.  I'm not here to say that everyone should always stay married no matter what.  You will never get anything but support from me, no matter how you feel about your life, your spouse or need/desire to leave.

But what I do know is that I hit my fill.  I wonder if it would be easier to just walk away. I think about leaving.  And I packed my bags, I loaded my car and I headed out the door.  My husband didn't understand.  He didn't understand that this was it.  I was gone.  And it made me stop and realize that he doesn't always get it.  We have our good days and bad days.  Sometimes they are a lot of bad days in a row and it feels like we will never get out of this alive.  My husband wasn't in this with me.  He's been trying to fight alone for a long time and he wouldn't stop to hear that this is causing me pain too.  It affects my life and my heart too.  He sees that now.

It doesn't mean that he doesn't still ignore me sometimes.  It doesn't mean we don't fight, it doesn't mean that I learned to stop being angry and he learned to love himself enough to love me too.  It means that he knows that I'm here now.  I'm not here unless I get too angry.  I'm not here, but kind of plotting my escape.  I'm here.  And I will be here tomorrow and the next day, even if he ignores me, even if he is angry, sad, yelling or silent for days on end. I'm here.

Sometimes what we need to hear doesn't register on our ears until we are in the worst place emotionally.  I heard this advice and thought, "Crap. That's me they're talking about." It doesn't mean that life gets easier all of the sudden, but it means that you aren't giving up.  And our spouses need to know that.  My husband needs to know that when he's too tired to fight, it's ok, because I'm next to him and I'll keep fighting for him.  He needs to know that when he doesn't know who he is, it's ok, because I know who he was, and I know that he will find himself again.  He needs to know that when it's too dark for him to see, my voice will be there to help guide him through back to the light, because I'm not giving up on him.

Divorce is not a threat you give when you are mad.  It's not something you yell when you need to be heard.  It should be a word that you roll around in your mouth and swallow back down unless you truly mean it.  So be cautious with it.  And if you are finding yourself wanting to leave, that's ok.  It's normal to feel that way, but take a pause and ask yourself, "Do I want to leave because it's tough right now, or am I truly ready to call it quits."  If you aren't, then it might be a good time to reach out to someone for a chat and some support so that you can recollect yourself and be read to fight again in the morning.

We all need a break sometimes.  We all need to get away.  Just be sure that you call it what it is.  And don't be afraid to reach out to others to help you sort through your feelings if you aren't really sure.  This is a tough situation for all involved.

How Do You Balance Life With PTSD?

Finding a balance in life is hard, regardless of what you do for a living, your stresses or any other factor that might cause things to spin of kilter.  But when someone in your life suffers from PTSD, finding a solid balance can be an even larger struggle.  How do you deal with the stress of being a caregiver, the stress of life, your job, kids if you have them, and everything else when you home is no longer your sanctuary?

I work a job that is, by it's very nature, stressful.  There is nothing I can do to alleviate that stress short of quitting.  Trust me, the thought has crossed my mind.  But leaving a job I love and my co-workers and friends hardly seems like the best option.  The fact is, not everyone is able to have a single income, and if your spouse is unable to work due to PTSD, leaving your job is even less so an option.

My job is my escape, stress or not, it's a place I can go and be good at what I do.  I don't have to deal with my angry husband or any of the other stresses at home.  My home is not a sanctuary, it's not a place I can go to get away, there are no bubble baths in my day and no time to read a book alone in my room.  So I have a job. But that job is interfering in my ability to support my husband and something is going to give.

I had applied to change shifts, but didn't get it.  We had been relying on that shift change to be something to help our present circumstances.  We had hoped that it would give us the time we need to continue to work on things.  But now, I am staying where I am at and we are having to face this off balance life with no plan.

There is no one solution that will work for everyone.  But what I know is that when your spouse has PTSD, it often feels like your whole world is clouded by it.  The place that was once your quite, safe place in the universe becomes a battle ground, and suddenly work, friends, and generally being away from that home turns into the only way to distance yourself.  But if you aren't careful, that will imbalance your life even more.

I love my job.  I have strived to not leave it.  I don't want to give up all the hard work I've done.  But at some point, I have to find a way to balance this place that has turned into my escape with the need to be home supporting my husband.

The most important advice I can offer is to communicate.  When I told my husband I didn't get the position, he shut down.  He was disappointed.  He didn't want to talk to me.  But we HAVE to talk about it.  Life is full of disappointments and things you have no control over.  The most important thing to come back together and create a new plan.  Discuss the needs you both have.  It's ok to need to be out of the house, it's ok to need an outlet and it's ok that he needs you there.  Whatever the needs you both have, talk about them, prioritize them, make sure that you are both aware of what is most important to each of you.  Then create a new plan.  A lot of this life is trial and error.  You think this might work and it doesn't, so you move on to a new plan.  The same goes for balance.

Communicating what you both need and discussing the options and ideas to ensure everyone is getting their needs met is the only way to continue to strive for the so called balanced life.