overcome with grief from suicide

[needhelpnow]

My husband of 8 years took his own life and I'm filled with grief.  He have been a drug addict for the whole time in our marriage.  The drug abuse had progressively gotten so bad that I started leaving the house in fear of him coming home in a different state of mind.  With todays technology I would communicate with him thru texts and say awlful things to him out of disappointment and resentment.  This is what is haunting me.  The things I said would make anyone feel empty, hopeless and shameful.  I've been put thru so much that many times when I'd ask him to get help he would only agree to if during the time he went out and said he would, but the next day would avoid the conversation.  This went on for years and years.  I also feel like the enabler because he would demand money from me and out of fear from him and how he approached me I gave it.  However in the last few months my logic was to leave after giving money and stay away to avoid his asking for more.  I have the guilt that my leaving him caused even more depression.  However my life was spiraling out of control.  His behavior was going on 3 nights of the weeks leaving us with no money and an unhealthy marriage.  I feel so guilty that I expressed in bad ways to him in details about what is habit cost us.  I felt like he didn't care about us and only about going out.  This made me more angry and more hurtful to him.  Well he eventually took his own life and now all my hopes of him recognizing his actions have turned on me and I've having a hard time dealing with my own consequenses, please help me...

[llovern]

In my opinion, you did the very best you could under the circumstances.  After we lose someone, we tend to feel guilty about so many things.  We blame ourselves for all of our actions that we feel hurt the person we cared about.  We are only human, we do the best we can at any given moment in time.  Try to not be so hard on yourself.

[MissingDaniel]

Oh honey, I understand so much of what you are saying.  I lived in a very similar state most of my marriage.  It was such a strange juxtaposition, because living with an addict can be absolute misery in so many ways, but despite my husband's issues, I loved him so very much that I couldn't imagine living without him either.

 

The best thing I can tell you is that you have to give yourself a break.  You have to realize that you were living in such a stressful state, and you were doing whatever you could to help alleviate the stress and make yourself feel better.  And that sometimes meant taking verbal shots at him because you were angry.  You were coping the best way you could.  You absolutely cannot blame yourself.  I understand enabling well, but it is possible that without you there to help him and moderate his behavior, something could have happened to him before now.  You did not make him who he was - you were doing the best you could to love him despite his addiction.

 

My husband had been clean for 3 years when he died.  But he did still drink alcohol more than I would have liked, and the day before he left town, he drank heavily because he was upset about the death of his grandfather.  We were fighting the morning he left, and I did not even tell him goodbye before he got on the plane.  We talked while he was gone, and smoothed things over some, but if I had known he would never come home, I would have said so much more.  And the night he died, I knew he was drinking with one of his old friends, and I sent several angry texts, lashing out at him for what I considered irresponsible behavior.  He was not answering his phone, so those were the last communications I ever had with him.  I checked his phone when I got it back from the coroner, and discovered that he had in fact read the messages.  I will admit that it haunted me for a while, but I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not wrong to be angry.  I didn't know what was going to happen.  I was being human.  And I know he knew I loved him.

 

I hope you will be able to work this out for yourself.  I know your situation is not identical, but you have to know that you did the best you could.  And the bottom line is that you did not have control over his actions - only he did.  Forgive yourself.  Be kind to yourself.  Allow yourself to mourn.  I am here if you need to talk.  Hugs!

 

Andrea

[HeyJude]

This hits home for me too in a way.  My husband and myself were meth addicts for many years.  I got clean, he didn't until several years later.  I know exactly what your saying about the way you talked to him.  I talked to my husband like he was less than dirt.  I really believe what we were doing was trying to shock them into reality.  It doesn't work.

 

This is a really good example of why those who are married or living in the same house as an addict really need to go to ALANON or something similar if there even is something similar.  We get all goofed up in the head because we are living in such an unhealthy relationship.

 

But here is the thing...the addiction was his, he owned it.  Unfortunately I know all too well that the best of people can become addicts.  Being an addict doesn't make you a monster unless of course you feel that way yourself about it.  My husband did.  He felt horrible.  He wasn't using for fun anymore, he was using #1 - because he had to and #2 - because he felt so down on himself for what he was doing to us.

 

My husband finally did get clean.  We had to move from the West Coast to the East Coast to get away from the people he hung out with.  He did not come out of it unscathed though.  At some point during his addiction he suffered a "silent heart attack" which damaged his heart to the point that he had to have a heart transplant.  Hefty price to pay.

 

When he did die, 13 years later, I had all the same feelings of guilt that you are having.  It is perfectly normal.  Like Andrea says, we begin to question every little negative thing we may have said and done during our relationship. 

 

Addiction is a horrible disease.  I really believe that the medical profession needs to really start treating it as such rather than a character flaw which it is not.  I am so sorry that you had to lose your husband this way.  My prayers are with you.

 

Judy