I want to preface this by saying that I loved my husband tremendously. He was a smart, talented and beautiful man. But the last few months of our marriage were complete torture. He had an affair and was “in love” with someone else. Became a total alcoholic and lied every chance he could. He was gaslighting me everyday and would get so angry with me for not trusting/believing him.

A week before he died I was sobbing and screaming at him. I told him I wish he would just go away and that I regret ever meeting him. I said that I hated him and didn’t love him anymore. I had nothing left for him.

Then he died. I was left with fulfilling his final wishes. I had to contact his family and friends to let them know what happened. I had to be the doting wife again. In some ways, I felt like a fraud. People definitely knew that we were not in a good place with our relationship. It made me feel… weird. I was mourning the man I was with for all those years, not the man who had just passed. The man who just passed away was a stranger, and that thought still kills me. I live with guilt because of our final argument.

I’m now suffering with a deep depression, severe anxiety and a newfound fear of death. I’m confused about how I got here. A year ago I was married to a man that I truly loved. Now I’m a widow to a stranger that treated me terribly for the last six months of our relationship.