Our Journey with PTSD

Posted on January 21, 2020 by dragonspitapothecary

I’ve actually had this post written for months but it never felt right to publish it. I would occasionally see it in my drafts and pass by it not wanting to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it at home anymore either much less write about it and yet I did. I know the message in this post is important and I know there are more out there just like me but I hesitate. It brings tears to my eyes every time I read it and sometimes the hard to stuff to share is exactly the stuff to publish but it feels so vulnerable. There has been so much vulnerability and pain in this process that putting words to paper about it just sometimes feels like fresh pain and I would welcome a reprieve from the pain this illness has already caused in my family without the necessity of this post. Yet I have already endured more than I ever thought I would in my marriage these past 3 years and some times it just feels like the pain will never stop and so I share this post.

Meet My New Husband

My husband has suffered from PTSD and chronic anxiety for over the past three years. During this time he hasn’t worked and walked away from a job he loved and held for 28 years. This was hard for him emotionally because he loved the place he worked and seriously not many of us can say we’ve stayed at the same company our entire careers. The first year he barely got out of bed and was strung out on prescription medications that kept him exhausted and angry. Yes then there was the anger, the pure rage that would spew from him over little and big things and you just didn’t know what would set him off. There were several medications and lots of Xanax as his doctors tried to figure out what was going on and how to help him. Once the diagnosis of PTSD and chronic anxiety became labels applied to him we thought we could then deal with it and there would be help. There wasn’t help though only more prescriptions and a whole new set of challenges.

This being difficult enough to deal with there were several other things also occurring that added to the challenges of helping him, living with him and keeping our family together. First there was the loss of his income and health insurance. For many families it is just not possible to live the same on half your income and it was certainly the situation our family now faced. It was and still sometimes is very scary financially. We have always been careful with money mostly but having this secure job all of a sudden be gone and not knowing when or even if he would be able to ever do it again was stressful and a hit for our family’s financial safety net.

There was also the loss of friends, people we had known for years that just stopped coming around or inviting us to things. Granted there were now a lot of restrictions on what we could do for outings as a family. We couldn’t do simple things like go out to eat because he would be too overwhelmed. We could no longer take trips to the grocery store or park because it was too much and we didn’t know what would set him off. It felt like being trapped inside our home with an angry monster and no one was coming to help. No one was offering any type of relief or support and no one even checked on us.