Hard Days

While things are going pretty well here the TBI and all that comes with it is still a major issue in our family.  Most days we can pretend it doesn’t really exist, I’d like to think it’s because he’s so much better but the real reason is that we’re so much better.  For the most part we can recognize issues coming and do our best to work around them and when we can’t work around them we’ve done a better job dealing with them – for the most part. 

Some days we are both blindsided, or I am blindsided and he’s in such a state of denial/delusion that the thinks he’s fine.   Yesterday was a very hard day.  He woke up feeling “dead inside” unable to really handle human emotions.  When this happens he’s just really hard to be around, he snaps and yells and is beyond irrational.  I have to watch every little thing I say.  Yesterday I didn’t watch my words close enough.  He was telling me that a text that was sent at 10:00 didn’t reach him until 12:30, the text was Mrs. Pastor requesting his presence at church at 11:00.  He had already decided he wasn’t going to church and all I said was “well if you were going you would have to be out the door by 10 anyway.”  I was just blurting out the first thing that came to mind and pointing out that he should really feel bad because the text came too late for him to even act on it if he had wanted to go.  This turned into him screaming at me that they weren’t asking me to go and I need to get over myself.  The time wasn’t the point he was pissed that he didn’t get the text.  Not everything is about my and I need to chill.  I blocked out the nastier stuff, and then he stormed off. 

I know that it’s not him.  I know it’s not him.  I also know it’s not me.  But it is him and me.  He may be dead inside on a particular day but I’m not.  I still feel, I still care, I still hurt.  I feel and care and hurt a lot.  Too much. 

He later came over to me and told me that he wanted to apologize but in his current he doesn’t think he is wrong.  He said that tomorrow he would know he’s wrong, like he has in the past, but given how his brain was working that day he didn’t think he was wrong.  Then he got upset that I was crying, upset with himself for doing that to me.  I hate to let him see me cry because it sends him further down the rabbit hole, telling me not to let him get to me and that I can leave and take everything because I shouldn’t be married to someone who make me cry. 

I cry about our life every few months.  I’ve done a good job finding other ways to vent my anxiety and frustration.  But I do cry.  It’s hurts to hear the person you love say hateful things to you.  To accuse you of hateful things.  To have to tell your kids that you were thinking of something sad and that is why you are crying.   

Loving someone with brain damage is a tricky thing.  Even when you know that his brain doesn’t work like it used to the realities can still catch you off guard and crush you to the core.  Today I am still trying to recover, my heart is pretty broken and I can’t shake the feeling that I am not good enough.  I’ll be fine, I’ll take it out on the treadmill.