...3 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
18.December.2020

TL;DR

Trigger warning...mental health, spousal abuse, suicidal ideation, child neglect

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Emergency services are currently dispatched on another welfare check to my ex-husband. We expect a phone call confirming that he's being taken in for observation. If you are a prayer... go one further and pray he's determined unfit to be let back out. Pray that he be held. Pray that he be treated...long-term, in-patient.

He...spirals... quickly and dangerously and frequently. Earlier this month, he was communicative and self-aware...

read also:in the upward tick of manic mode.

During that time, he moved into another county, leaving behind the services others had worked so hard to set up for him, in a burst of 'outrunning his problems' energy.

Ill-advised doesn't even begin to cover it. Outraged that his previous landlord was asking for help with basic household chores (in return for exceptionally discounted room and board), he burned that situation to the ground and moved his dilapidated rv onto the property of a former friend he'd reconnected with. As of last week, the household was Covid positive. By all accounts, he's been holed up in the RV ever since. He's off his meds, has missed every appointment for care management, and is effectively reliant on his alcoholic friend for everything: food, transportation, electricity, water, advice, etc...

This is a man who, by want of both his ego and his illness, has damaged everything and everyone he touches. A man who both actively and passively abuses every person in his life, whether through violence or neglect. A man who buries his guilt underneath personal attacks on those who try to help him get help. Who knows he's done horrific things but believes his 'superior intellect' releases him from any responsibility for those actions.

And who, every time without fail, scorches the earth as he comes out of his manic phase... which makes it nigh on impossible to get him into care. Lashes out every time and then threatens suicide as the depression takes hold.

Fast forward: between last night and this morning he sent out his 'customary' novella of text messages full of vitriol, baseless accusations, and finally, farewells.

I'm...tired. This roller-coaster is exhausting. My eldest son and step-children deserve so much more... so much better. I hate this for them. I hate this for me. This man was my monster in the dark for years... and his brokenness does not erase the terror or the damage.

Words fail.

Untreated mental illness contaminates everyone in the circle...causes immeasurable stress and distress to every caregiver, no matter the distance. And burns out the very sympathy and empathy so needed by the one who is ill.

I fear for the day when he sinks a hook into my eldest.

I fear for the day that he goes beyond threatening.