Venting When everything goes great...except...

[Ritter]

I've posted around in a few threads before so some may have read my story in the past but basically I'm here because my long-term boyfriend CTB suddenly (and unexpectedly) close to 6 months ago. I've been wracked with grief and guilt over losing him and that is what led me here. Most days since I've been consumed by his death, wishing, and praying and bargaining, deluding myself with denial and fantasies that he's still alive somewhere. Lately I've given up on the fantasies (because I rationally know he's gone and never coming back and the small moments where I'd pretend came less and less frequently).

I have an amazing family and the most wonderful friends who have been incredibly supportive, I have a wonderful dog, a nice house, a great job, I've been promoted at work, given an incredible amount of authority and responsibility, and even been accepted into a masters degree program that work is not only going to pay for, but pay me to go to.

So on the outside, it seems like everything is going up...... but he's still gone and never coming back and every day that I come home to an empty house, wake up without him next to me, go to bed thinking about him and hoping I'll dream about him.... It has been hell. There really are no words to describe how much it hurts. I take no pleasure in my hobbies, in my work, in relaxing, in anything. When I think about the future all I think about is how it won't have him in it. I think about my failures, about the things I may have done or failed to do for him, about his hopes and dreams and everything I wish he could be doing and experiencing. I think about how smart, funny, and absolutely adorable he was. I think that I should have been given a chance to help him and that more than anything he had given himself a chance since he kept it all inside, away from me, from his friends and his family. I think about how we talked about being together forever and how forever will never come.

I've seen therapists, psychiatrists, taken medication, continued routines and exercise and tried to cut down alcohol consumption. I'm doing what they say you should do. But really what does anything ever matter if the person you loved more than anything, whose happiness was your happiness and who made you feel like you were something is gone?

I know grief lasts a long time and to some of you my situation can seem like a very temporary problem, but it's a never-ending problem because I don't see this getting any better. While I am very uncertain about an afterlife I keep wondering what if there is one, what if he's waiting for me, what if all I have to do to see him again is CTB? No matter what happens in my life he is gone and even more tragically the life he should have had will never be. So how do I keep living with that?

 

[nitrogen]

Your story is so sad but beautiful at the same time. I can't CTB because that would mean murdering my hubby. We're the love of each other's life. He explicitly told me if I CTBed, he'd follow right away.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

First, I send you warmth and support.

If I may share, in high school I had a boyfriend cbt and had no support. My semi-narcisstic mother wouldn't even take me to the cemetery when we were driving by. The psychiatrist did therapy and was useless, so I faked being okay to stop the worthless sessions. I almost didn't survive it, and I didn't have all the hope then for a good life that you do. You've been wounded and need support from others who get it. That's why I'm thinking peer survivor support would be helpful. Maybe not even cbt survivor support, but loss of a partner support. Our Western culture is clueless about experiencing and supporting grieving, and it sounds like you need support. But please know that what you are experiencing is natural, it sucks exponentially, and it *will* process over time. It may even help to try some EMDR therapy, just throwing it out there.

My other thought, and please forgive me if this is not what you are seeking here, is that it sounds like you have people in your life who love you. Your grief, thoughts, fantasies and cbt consideration are natural responses (I went thought them), and those who love you may experience the same if you cbt, so... can you tell any of them, even one, that if only he had let you in, you would have helped, and that you are now giving them the opportunity to do that for you?