Roller Coaster Ride From Hell

Roller Coaster ride from hell.
Today was going to be a good day. I was determined. I pushed and I pushed and boom, it all blew up and fell into a million pieces around me. I woke up alone. I woke up in pain. Not your regular kind of I am getting old and aches kind of pain, but the kind of pain that reminded me that my back is still broken in 4 places, and I had become such a wretchedly horrible person that the one time in almost a year my boyfriend took more than a day off and he chose to leave me behind and go off with his friends to get the hell away from me.
But, I thought of my 5 things:
1. Pain pills
2. Coffee
3. A 2 hour head start with school being delayed.
4. My Family
5. He was coming home today
So I got up, made my coffee, took my pills, and started my day. I fed the dogs, I watched an episode of stupid pointless TV to get my mind elsewhere and I waited for my kid to wake up. She got up, we hung out, she watched TV, enjoying her 2 hour delay. I got her breakfast ready, I did my makeup, did my hair, and I got ready for my day. I got her off to school, washed a load of laundry, and headed out to my doctor’s appointment. Got a text on the way there from the man, he is an hour away.
I got there, checked in, and saw I had an email. From the man. In it, he told me he loved me, but he was torn between me and his life at home in KY and he misses his daughter and he wants to move back home. He doesn’t want to leave me but he is miserable and he wants to go home in June when the semester is over and school is out for Madi and the lease is up. BOOM! Did my world just crumble down around me? Did everything I have worked so hard to keep together just fall shattering to the earth like the shards of glass that used to be my heart? Yes, yes it did. I got through my doctors appointment. I sat in the parking lot on the phone with my mom for a good half an hour. I pulled myself together. I refused to fall apart. I refused to let the hurt and the anger in. I just refused to feel anything for a moment.
It was like my daughter’s dad all over again. I was emotionally dying, but I would not let it show. I would not lose my composure, not for him. I would not let him see the tears. I came home, a volatile cocktail of emotions. I stopped and checked the mail. SSDI… oh thank God, the answer to my prayers. The letter I have been waiting on for over a year and a half. A decision about my disability claim/appeal. My 7 specialists including my psychologist all say I cannot go back to work. All say I am disabled. In fact, SSDI tells the state of Virginia I am disabled enough to receive Medicaid for the medical costs. I open it…. YUP, Bastards denied me again! No specific reasons other than they agree with their last decision and feel it is lawful. Are you fucking kidding me?? 37 holes in my brain and spine, 4 chronic broken bones in my back, organ failure, bipolar disorder, graves disease, hyperthyroid… a monthly infusion, 15 doctors appointments a month, over a quarter of a million dollars billed to Medicaid last year… and I am denied?? You ever feel like waking up and screaming WHAT THE FUCK at the top of your lungs?
I just sat in my car for a minute, trying desperately to search for the last crumb of my sanity. Is this really happening? Please wake up from this nightmare.
I came inside, and I could not face him. I could not look him in the eye. I couldn’t look at him. I walked passed him and pretended he didn’t exist. I locked myself in the bathroom and tried to clear my head. He came in here and waited, then he left. He went back into the living room. I grabbed a cigarette, walked back passed him and out to the garage. On my way out he asked if we could talk, I ignored him. I came back in and he was in the bedroom, I made a cup of coffee and decided it was time to face this elephant before my daughter got home from school.
So I went into the bedroom. I sat on the bed, and I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what to feel. So I told him that. I asked what he wanted from me. Did he want me to scream? Did he want me to cry? Did he want me to throw things? What the hell did he want from me? He said “I don’t know”. So I decided to tell him about my day. How my day started off sucky, got better, the bomb of him wanting to leave me exploded and how I had tried so hard to reinvent myself. I told him about the call from my shrink this morning; calling to check on me because my Primary Care Doc was afraid I was about to kill myself. I told her that I already had. I had killed the miserable person I became and replaced her with a woman who could no longer carry the baggage. Then I asked him again what he wanted from me. And again, I got no answer.
His whole email was about the promises he made to his family, to come home after the Army, to be there for his daughter. And I reminded him of the promises he made to me. Promises he made to my daughter, to his daughter to us as a family. For better or worse, that was the promise. Forever and always, it used to mean more than four years. And what about our children? How would this affect them? I am the only mother his daughter has ever known. He is the full time dad figure in my daughter’s life while her father is the fun guy who buys her stuff.
He finally broke down. Told me he was caught in the middle, torn between the two and he asked me what to do. He begged me to tell him what to do. I cannot make him stay. I cannot tell him what to do. I can only offer my honesty. So I did. Honestly, I think his daughter being so far away is his choice. He has promised her and I for years that she is coming here. Our whole life since we moved in together always included an extra room for when she came to live with us.
Life with me is not perfect. This is not the life we planned. No one ever plans on having MS. No one ever plans on their body shutting down and making them incapable of working. No one ever plans on facing their own mortality at the age of 30. No one ever plans to have to be the breadwinner, or to have to depend solely on the other person. If we planned for this, we would spend out entire adult lives depressed and afraid and this is why these thoughts don’t come to the average 30 yr old.
He wanted my opinion of what to do. If it were up to me, I would bring his daughter here, she would live here, we would get married, and he would finish school and we would have a life. We would have a family. We would have each other. Then again, if it were up to me, neither of us would have this disease, we would both be working, we would both be paying the bills and we would be equals. But I cannot make that happen any more than I cane make him stay so it is not up to me. It is up to him. I hate not being in control of things, I hate that I cannot control my own life, my own destiny. I hate it but I have to deal with it. I don’t have the option to walk away. I cannot pack up and leave and not look back. I am the one that is fighting to live.
He finally opened up. The walls of responsibility are closing around him and he is suffocating. He cannot pay the bills as it is so he doesn’t want to bring his daughter here. He cannot keep on top of things no matter how much he works. He works so much to pay the bills because I cannot. He doesn’t blame me, he cannot blame me. He loves me, but he feels so overwhelmed by pressure that he is drowning. He works 12 hour days, goes to school on his days off and he cannot keep the bills paid. It’s killing him. He doesn’t think I am happy or that I ever will be happy because he cannot give me attention when he is home. He doesn’t have anything left to give at the end of the day.
I feel horrible for that. I feel horrible for this whole rotten situation and I don’t blame him for wanting to leave. He works so hard and he never gets a break, never gets a day off where he can just be. Stuff piles up at work or stuff piles up at home and he is constantly running this rat race with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. At the same time, it’s just money. We will always have bills, it is a fact of life. I don’t know what to do anymore. We decided to try to work things out. All we can do is try. But now I live with the fact that I don’t know if he is going to be here tomorrow. I don’t know how to accept that. He has always been here for me through it all, and the idea of him not being here is killing me, but the idea of him continuing this race alone and trying to get the bills paid is killing him, so no one is happy.
I am so lost right now. I am trying to find this happiness in my life that doesn’t seem to exist and each time I think I am getting close I hit a landmine and it all blows up in my face. I don’t know which way to turn. But I know that going straight on the path I have been on will end in disaster.