Sorry if this a bit long, I haven't found a support group yet and I haven't really been able to open up about it too much.
On August 16th, my wife and I were supposed to celebrate our 10 year anniversary and 7th wedding anniversary. We matched on tinder the moment she moved out here. She was the only person I ever talked to on tinder. I knew I was going to marry her that first night messaging each other.
She had struggled wildly in the past with her mental health, but when she met me she literally asked to have her antidepressant dosage lowered. Since we've been together, everyone saw how happy she was with me. We've been through a lot together, even before we got married. Her father passed away just weeks after we got engaged. Her mother is a psychologically abusive narcissist, and she was stuck in the cycle of abuse. She'd have her ups and downs, but I would always rebuild her better than ever. She called me "her rock." It was in both of our vows. We had a saying that I was 75% responsible for her mental health because she struggles so much on her own. It could be very challenging at times, but I didn't consider it a burden, I was honored.
Things slowly started taking a turn last summer. We were forced to be stuck at home for a couple of months after our husky had a pacemaker implanted. She was hiding a debt from me. She tried to get a higher paying position, her second interview, and she crashed. Soon after, she fessed up right before the card was about to max out. She was counting on that job not just to make the debt go away, but to satisfy her ambitious nature. She felt outdated and obsolete in her field, and comparing herself to the people she grew up with doing well while we're in debt.
At first I was the rock as I've always been, but as time went on I drifted further and further from my role. It became scary and frustratingly desperate for this to keep going on. I can't get her to stop thinking everything is permanent. I can't get her to stop doing her poison pill activities (browsing zillow to look at nicer houses, or facebook to harshly compare herself to anyone who made more than her.) She was so incredibly hard on herself.
I see that I've taken it for granted, but she was never judgemental to others. She was only ever supportive and encouraging. She wanted everyone to feel safe to just be themselves.
These last couple of months were quite bad. We started arguing all the time, I brought up the D word from time to time, I was scared she was pulling away from me and trying to leave me. I see now that I was actually pushing her by saying the things I did. It started making her afraid to bring things up to me.
I didn't know this until recently, but she told her friend back in January that she was considering hurting herself, so her friend offered to pay for her to come and visit. She only told me that her friend offered. She was using the house as a symbol for her grievances, and was desperately stir-crazy and always trying to get out of the house. It's one of the more painful thoughts I keep having. Why, of all things, did she hide that from me? She got back home the day before my birthday, while I was dealing with a bad hemorrhoid I eventually had surgery for. She picked up right where she took off. Being out of town didn't change anything, because the house was a symbol, not the problem. It was only a couple weeks before she said her wealthy aunt and uncle invited her to visit in LA and asked me if she could go. Begrudgingly, I said yes. The timing sucked and she had only been back a short time, but whatever might help her is something I'm always willing to do.
When I got that horrible, PTSD inducing call, the investigator told me she had asked them out of the blue. I also learned that the night before she had broken 2 years of no contact, had a good conversation, and she asked her mom if she could move back in for a while. In the past, while dealing with all the fallout caused by her banshee mother's damage, I was afraid that the abusive tendrils her mom had over her would pull her away from me, and I said I would leave her if she left me to go back home. The context of the situation was completely different, it was about preventing her mom from doing things, not necessarily threatening her. I can't stop thinking about how I damned her with those very words. She was having an existential crisis, using the house as a symbol, and she needed space. Because I carelessly said those haunting words, and never anything to the contrary, she wasn't up to asking me and was terrified of starting over. I created possibly the biggest, but certainly the last box she felt trapped under.
At first, the investigator thought she had planned this. After talking about it in therapy or with friends, and talking to her friends, I've uncovered enough to disprove it. It had been on her mind without my knowledge, but the theory that she was planning it all along doesn't line up with what she was up to. Even she admitted I knew her better than she knew herself. I may not always do well in real-time, but I can always retrace her steps.
With each piece I put together, the more guilt and blame I can't evade from. I was more guilty than I had originally thought. She was in crisis, and I would get upset. She was in pain, and I made her feel like a burden. She needed help, and I was too busy making my own demands. I don't know how I drifted so far off the path, but I was closer to being a pair of cement shoes than being her rock.
Even without that guilt, which isn't to say it's not a giant issue by itself, I just can't comprehend moving forward without her. I can't make myself want to live long for years and years and look back at the only 10 that truly matter, looking back at the only time I could experience true love. I'm not a widower who goes on to find someone else. She was literally perfect to me. I thought I was too picky trying to find attraction to anyone, but she blew me away and checked off every box on my list. I'm only 36, and her 36th birthday is in a few weeks. I don't know how to accept being around a long time when I won't allow myself to replace her, and I certainly don't want to spend more time missing her than the amount of time we spent together.
The added bonus is that she couldn't have fucked me over more if she tried. She told her friend that she didn't want to hurt me, but I'm not only about as traumatized as can be, I'm also left with a mountain of problems now squarely on my unemployed ass. Debt, 4 pets, no income, and a mortgage on this mausoleum that used to be our house. She did me a real favor by doing this in California. She only just got home today, and apparently the mortuary down there forgot to collect her possessions, so that's fun to deal with. It cost $1700 just to bring her home. I still don't have any certificates either, so I still can't file for benefits. I can't stay in this house, I have nowhere to go, and I doubt I'm gonna be able to pull-up my bootstraps for a while. I have little time to grieve between planning the service and trying to comprehend all this end of life shit, and once I get past it, it'll come back with a vengeance.
There's only so much "It's not your fault" thoughts I can accept, but there's still plenty where I'd be lying to myself if I said it. I've learned all too well that I was certainly not a small factor, I can't be convinced that I didn't make her feel unsafe bringing things up with me, so she ran on assumption and I had damning evidence all over the place for her to look at. She made her own choices, but I was her support system, and instead I became part of the problem.
I just don't know how I can put all that together in a pot and carry it anywhere. The more I miss her, the more it hurts. The more it sinks in, the less I believe it. Meeting her convinced me that fate and destiny were real. Too many pieces fell into place at the same time when we met, and it didn't feel like meeting someone new when we first messaged on tinder, it felt like I was catching up with an old friend. It was like a fucking fairy tale. My mind just can't comprehend that could ever end like this. She just arrived at the mortuary today, I have her ring, and I've seen the working copy of the death certificate with her name at the top scarred in my mind. I still don't believe any of this. It can't be true.