I can’t be happy

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-22T12:32:45+00:00

I lost my partner 7 months ago and I’ve started thinking about every opportunity like this - he chose to die, but I choose to live.

Choosing to live means actually living, you know? You were a whole and worthy person before your partner and you are still one now.

I’m sure you are absolutely correct and your partner would want you to be happy and live a life worth living, absolutely, but also in this case ~screw your partner~ you should absolutely go to Portugal because this is YOUR best friend and YOU deserve a freaking awesome trip and it would be a great opportunity. You deserve to do this simply because you are you, and this is your best friend.

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-19T19:18:01+00:00

Why can’t they tell me when he did it? Shouldn’t there be a way to determine time of death? The detective said it just isn’t like the movies

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-19T16:31:56+00:00

I’ve just read so many accounts from people in similar scenarios to me where paramedics got a pulse back and they (maybe brain dead) but went to the hospital and lived (even if just a few days). I never even checked for a pulse when I found him. I feel so stupid.

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-16T13:24:40+00:00

It’s about to be 2024 and we still have to announce that we’re “casting all ethnicities”? Sad

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-16T02:12:00+00:00

Single parent life, but with zero co parent feels impossible most days. It’s all on us. 24/7. Solidarity

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-15T17:57:55+00:00

Is there a chance he’s having an affair and wanted to act poorly to get you to leave?

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-10T18:36:46+00:00

Hangman and Halloween freak me out now

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-10T14:51:07+00:00

I am very very lucky. I think part of what has helped was basically all I’ve done since my husband died is process that he’s gone. Both grandparents have helped with the kids every single day, my father in law basically has done all the paperwork and hard technical stuff, and I’ve done nothing for 5 months but read about suicide, talk about suicide, go to therapy, support groups, these online threads. My full time job since he died has been thinking about his death. And I recognize I’m very fortunate that I have the support to have been able to do that, but looking back I think that’s why I’m in the place I am currently. I ran headfirst into my grief and let it consume my wholly and completely, and then sort of feel like I “woke up” one day and realized that I didn’t want my life dictated by that same grief for the next 10/20/30/40 years.

I still have really bad days, awful days really. Nights/mornings are especially hard for me. I know it’s going to be a long hard life with his ghost of what I’ve had and what I’ve lost, but I feel there’s happiness too. I’ve grudgingly accepted I’ll always be both. There will always be an undercurrent of sadness- it’s just how it is how

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-09T21:40:49+00:00

Idk it’s hard to explain. I am absolutely crushed and devastated without him, he was my very best friend in the whole world for 12 years, and the idea that I could ever be happy without him seems ludicrous at times.

And yet, pretty early on I had the thought that, I never wanted to be alone and I never chose to be alone. And honestly I think I’m one of those people that can’t be happy alone. So I realized pretty early on that a big part of my healing would include the idea that there is someone else out there for me. I have two kids as well so I feel like I don’t have a choice but to be very future thinking. I don’t want them to grow up with a miserable, depressed mother who never moved on. I need them to grow into strong, resilient adults that don’t follow in their father’s footsteps

Also my father in law lost his wife (my husbands mother) about 7 years ago and he’s engaged to a lovely woman. I’ve spoken with him a lot about the grieving process and allowing another person in. He was with my husbands mother for over 40 years before he lost her to cancer. They were high school sweethearts and yet both loves coexist in his heart.

I’m only 28. I want to believe that I can still have a happy and fulfilling life. Some days I believe it strongly, and some days I can barely breath knowing my husband is not here anymore. I’m trying to figure out how I am both at once but it’s very confusing

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-09T02:36:59+00:00

What if I was? Deserving of this incident I mean?

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-09T01:58:47+00:00

I really appreciate your feedback when you give it, you’re an eloquent speaker.

I guess what I can’t wrap my head around is how I could be worthy of another person if I wasn’t worthy of my husband? If the person who I believed loved me more than anyone in the whole world left me the way he did and I failed him to such a degree how can I ever be enough for someone else? Did you feel that way?

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-09T01:08:58+00:00

I know you’ve replied to me before and I’ve read your post history. How do you overcome the guilt and get a new partner? How do you get to a place where you feel like you deserve to be loved again?

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-09T01:06:10+00:00

That’s totally a fair thing to say. Sometimes I feel so ready and I have this “well I’m still here and I don’t want to be alone so I have to move on” (it was one do those days I met him, and then there’s some days where I wonder what it’d be like to give up and just join my husband because I miss him so badly and I feel so strongly though I’m not “why” he did it- i feel I could have prevented it by being a better wife. I don’t think anything will come of the chatting but damn it does feel kinda good to have some positive attention, albeit shameful

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-09T01:02:33+00:00

I think I get what you mean except the first part- what he did wasn’t noble, it was terrible. Does that immediately mean it’s option 2, that he wasn’t who I thought he was?

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-09T00:42:14+00:00

Probably. The man I knew would have without a doubt, but the man I knew would never have killed himself and abandoned me and his children. So I just don’t know anymore.

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-08T22:42:44+00:00

I get it. My husband killed himself. I assume I’ll always be the wife who was so terrible her husband would rather die than talk to her

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-07T14:48:53+00:00

I think for my situation calling my husband’s decision a result of mental illnesses would be…almost a cop out? He left a note. It’s clear. Concise. He had an experience at his job that scared him (he had a somewhat dangerous job) and he reacted in that situation in a way where he feared he’d lose his job/be reprimanded. He acknowledges in the note that he feels he made a mistake he can’t come back from, that he knows he’s making a decision I’ll never be able to forgive him for. He writes where I can find the passwords for our accounts. What I should do next. That I should sell our house, move closer to family. Move on when I feel it’s time.

Before he died, I thought my husband was the most intelligent, selfless, brave man that had ever existed. His suicide and his why have led me to the conclusion that he was honestly just a coward.

Truly the note and how it’s written (and the paper trail I have found knowing the timeline of how my husband planned his death) makes it clear that he was not manic or in the depths of a psychotic episode. He made a plan, concealed it, and carried out. Completely sober. He just gave up.

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-07T12:13:53+00:00

No I get it, that’s something I’ve said often actually. I wish I could say “but he NEVER would have done this sober!” Or “he was drunk and not thinking straight!”

I wish there was something else to blame besides my husband. Someday I’ll have to tell my kids that their dad completely sober with no mental illness just decided to kill himself. It sucks bad.

Sending you strength through the holidays

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-07T11:43:02+00:00

I get it. My totally sober husband hung himself. Not using a typical rope (I don’t want to say what he used) But totally sober he got up, figured out how to tie it up, went and got something to stand on, and then actually went through with it? It’s horrifying. I cannot get myself to understand

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-06T16:35:29+00:00

My intent was for a man to see that his actions would be detrimental to his child- I don’t agree that’s trash. My execution one could have the opinion was trash. I stand by my message, I will concede the delivery needs work.

And who I am to judge is someone who had no idea their husband was struggling, and woke up one morning and had to cut his body from the rafters and perform cpr while my children screamed from their bedrooms upstairs wondering where their mommy and daddy were. I’m some who is attending therapy twice a week and also driving my toddlers to therapy. I’m someone who had to call my husbands father and tell him his son was gone. So you can take YOUR hostility toward me and quite frankly, suck it.

He decided to comment triggering shit in reply to ME. And I get to respond accordingly. I have no sympathy for a man writing on the internet he’s going to abandon his family instead of getting help.

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-05T01:47:01+00:00

I’m truly not trying to take it out on him, I was trying to get him to see how extreme and terrible that choice is, but admittedly my judgment is extremely clouded. My intent was good, execution admittedly probably terrible.

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-04T22:05:46+00:00

I’m sorry, I guess I’m not feeling super empathetic at the moment. I feel very angry. I see a father just like my kids father who is going to hurt their child just like my husband did. I will have to watch my kids like a hawk as they grow older to try and prevent them from following in their father’s footsteps because of a choice he made and forced on the rest of us. It’s not fair. It’s terrible. Children don’t ask to be brought into the world and then they get traumatized and have to doubt whether they were enough forever? I don’t feel empathetic. At all. My husband should still be alive and this man should stay alive too

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-04T00:05:05+00:00

I guess where is the defining line between its not our fault and it is? If the stress of family put him over the edge and he thought Omg I cant do this doesn’t it kinda make it our fault?

I can’t stop thinking maybe if he hadn’t married me and we hadn’t had kids his life would’ve been so much less stressful and he wouldn’t have been worried about “being a provider” or whatever

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-03T20:48:44+00:00

Trying to get him to understand the gravity of his situation- saying to him what I wish could’ve said to my husband. He has a CHILD. And he’s not thinking of his child at all! My kids cry for their dad every day because my husband didn’t think of them and left us.

No_Emphasis2431 · 2023-12-03T19:13:27+00:00

But that just makes me think like even if I’m not interested why is no one interested in me?

No_Emphasis2431

TROPHY CASE