--- What A Long, Starnge, Trip It's Been ---

To the world, you are one person...but to one person, you are the world!

�The 4th Floor
2005-02-22 at 11:50 p.m.

I am unlocking, for now. There is no one here to snoop for a while, so I can feel comfortable. For now.
Monday was a bad, bad day.
Actually, the entire weekend sucked. Where to start? The beginning, I suppose...
Poor Laura still knows none of any of this. I can't bear to call her and tell her yet, she will only want to talk to her father and that isn't possible now.
Snooping around on the computer, I learned that Brian has been e-mailing chicks he went to high school with. Asking them to go out drinking with him. NICE. Not only trying to hook up, but DRINKING again??? God, I thought we were SO past that hurdle after all these years! I was beyond pissed. He also had a nice little search going on Yahoo Personals, lots of interesting crap, trust me. All of the things he accused ME of and then some, and I wan't even DOING anything. Gotta love that reverse guilt thing! I'm not buying it and never will. He even told Laura that *I* had been "reading her diary" when HE is the one who started all that. He worried about her, and wanted to be sure that nothing really bad was happening to her that she wasn't telling him. Once she hooked up with Andrew & got herself into a better situation, the online journal wasn't even an issue anymore. But he felt the need to point this out to her to alienate ME.
So, on with the weekend. I took the kids to mom's and STAYED there. He stayed home and pouted. He couldn't call his family and pout since *HE* was the one who fucked up, and there wouldn't be much sympathy if he were honest about any of it. There's a lot of detail here I am leaving out, trust me, he did HORRID things online- from icky chats with teen girls who showed their tits and more to disgusting IMs. He explained it was because "he needed attention." Ok, needs attention? This from a man with the sex drive of a RABBIT? Good Lord, the man is NOT deprived of much of anything. At least he wasn't...
SO, off to mom's. It was fun for Kelly but Carolyn has NEVER slept anywhere but her own bed so the night was really rough for me. When I came home Sunday afternoon, he grilled me over & over again to give him some indication that our marriage had a chance. I couldn't give him that. Not then, maybe not ever. I had such hatred and anger inside of me I honestly wanted him to just DISAPPEAR.
So, that's what he decided to do Monday.
He locked himself in the garage with a shotgun and nailed all the doors shut.
He left a note. It didn't say much.
He was sorry, he felt bad that he had fucked up my life so badly. He was ashamed. He wanted me to know he left everything to me & Laura. (Everything? Suicide is not respected by life insurance, so I guess he intended for me to get the Bobcat and Laura the plow truck?)
He put a note on the front garage door that said CALL 911, DO NOT COME IN. PLEASE RESPECT THAT!
The kids were painting at the kitchen table when I got out of the shower. I actually heard him nailing up the garage doors but didn't realize what the sound was. After I blow dried my hair, I peeked out the window and saw the little sign on the front of the garage and tried to read it from the window, but all I could make out was "Do Not Come In." Of course, curiosity got the best of me and I went out there. I told Kelly to wait inside with Carrie while I went to tell Daddy to come in. She did, though I know now that she went to the window to WATCH what went on.
I read the whole sign and called him. He was still in there, and he told me to leave. I refused. I threw myself at the door repeatedly and it wouldn't budge. I screamed at him and told him not to be so fucking stupid and selfish, how could he do this to his family? Laura was just a kid when Brian's mother killed herself and I really don't think she ever forgave her for that. I know Brian never did. He told me we'd be better off without him and we would even have more money. I mentioned that killing himself would GURANTEE financial devastation for all of us, but he said he knew I would get social security! DUH! He is 36 years old, does he honestly think he has input enough to raise a family on???
He kept telling me to leave or I would regret it. I told him to shut the fuck up and open the damn door before I busted his garage down. He wouldn't. I went to the back of the garage and looked in the window, told him open the fucking door and don't make me do this. Nothing. I just got madder and madder. I picked up the kid's toy lawn mower from the snow pile and smashed the hell out of every window in the back of the garage, and continues smashing until even the window dividers and frames were gone. TOld him AGAIN to open the fucking door, and that if I cut myself on broken glass crawling in there, I was going to kill him MYSELF. He wouldn't. In I crawled, then got in his face and screamed at him. I couldn't stop. His selfishness and stupidity finally got the best of me and I just LOST it on him. Maybe not the best way to handle someone who is suicidal, but it worked. He was SHOCKED and completely confused by it all. He certainly couldn't shoot himself with me standing there screaming in his face. I told him UNBOLT the fucking door because I was NOT going to leave, nor was I crawling out that fucking broken window.
He opened it. Crying his eyes out. He ran in the house yelling, "Everyone leaves me. My family, my mother, and now the ONLY person who has ALWAYS been there for me, stuck by me throug EVERYTHING, is going to leave too. I don't want to BE in this life anymore, not like that!" He ran upstairs and threw himself on our bed, crying in a low howl like a sick animal, his nose bleeding everywhere. I called 911.
He won't be home for a while. He's been admitted to the psyche ward.
He is in the best place possible.
My anger is beginning to fade, just a little. I have talked to him several times today and I can really see just how fucked up his head really is. He NEEDS help and he WANTS help. Apparently, he was put on some meds in December and he decided to stop taking them a couple weeks ago because "he felt better." (Duh.)
His niece is bipolar. His brother is bipolar. THe shrink he was seeing in December suspected he was bipolar, but Brian did not LIKE that shrink because he/she made Brian confront things that he did not want to. Brian does not like to admit that ANYTHING is truly his fault, he likes to think that the world is out to get him and everyone is trying to take him down. It's obsessive, paranoid, and violent at times. It's impossible to live with. He lives in his own personal HELL and brings me right down there with him. There have been days I have wanted him gone, even wondered how much easier life would be with him dead- but I could never bring myself to allow that to happen. Somewhere, deep down, I know I love him. Maybe not as he is right now, but the person I married. I am trying to accept the fact that the person I married may actually not exist anymore. The person I have been with for 18 years is really already dead.
Bipolar is very much treatable and controllable with medication and therapy.
But you have to do it and stick with it.
Will he? I have no idea.
For now, he's on the 4th floor waiting for someone to help him help himself.
I am here, alone, taking care of our children and finding babysitters so I can keep working at night. Making dinner, wiping little butts, cleaning the house. Writing in my lame journal that no one really reads.
Just as I always do.
My life is pretty predictable...except when the unpredicatable happens. KWIM? Of course you don't. Neither do I.