Throughout the last several posts I have touched on the various subjects that I have faced being the wife of a solider with PTSD, but to be honest I still have a very hard time adjusting to this new man in our home. For people that knew him before they would think I was lying about the new behaviors he has exhibited. They could never imagine him acting this way.
When I met my husband he was 17 and a senior in high school. I had just graduated and was looking for an adventure and a guy to sweep me off my feet. I had just moved to Des Moines, Iowa to be with my biological mother. Shortly after arriving there I attended a wedding with them at a local hotel where I caught my first glimpse of him. He was working as a handy man for the hotel doing various tasks throughout the night. He flirted with me and I with him. I had a very low self esteem so I figured there was no way he would ever go out with me but I gave him my number anyway. A couple days later I decided to join my mom and my new dad on a semi run to California. I drove them crazy because I couldn't stop talking about this awesome new guy and how much I was hoping he would call. A week or so later we returned from the run and sure enough he had left me a message asking me out. You may ask yourself why I am telling you all this....the answer is to give you an idea of who my husband was before the PTSD. Anyway moving on. That night I called him back and asked if he wanted to get together. Of course he accepted and next thing you knew we were dating. From that moment on we were inseparable. A few short months after we started dating we decided to move in together while he finished high school. Right before his graduation he proposed to me and I said yes (obviously). We decided to get married on our one year dating anniversary that way we would only have to remember one anniversary the rest of our lives. During our enagagement he spent a lot of time with a pastor who worked nights at the hotel and the pastor would use that time to witness to him telling him about God. So one night he came home and asked me to help him give his life to Christ. Now my adoptive parents were very cultic with their beliefs and made my life miserable telling me no matter what I did it wasn't good enough for God, so you can imagine that I wasn't thrilled about his new choice in life.
Shortly after his conversion I found out I was pregnant. Of course this led his family to believe that was the only reason he was marrying me. However three days after our wedding I miscarried our little girl. After that I became obsessed with getting pregnant again and he just continued to be his amazing self. We decided to move to Duluth, MN in order to build our marriage but shortly after getting there he met up with some people I knew from my childhood and he started attending their church. Things got difficult for us as he got further into Christainity and I did everything I could to try and pull him away. As most people tend to do he went off the deep end becomig very strict and legalistic. After the birth of our daughter he "felt" called to become a pastor so we moved back to Des Moines for a short time to better our living situation for our new child. It was my mom that gave us the idea to try becoming truck drivers so we could make good money for our child. When our daughter reached a year old we sent her to stay with my mom while my husband and I went off to truck driving school. We spent the next four months learning how to drive and getting started. On our graduation from the trucking academy I ended up getting pregnant with our son. So my husband became a solo driver and spent many weeks away from home. It hurt our marriage and almost ended us when I found out he had extra cirricular activities with a woman while he was away. But he told me he didn't believe in divorce and that it was against God. We then attended marriage counseling to heal our marriage and next thing you know he told me God told him to go back to school to become a pastor, it was finally time. Without hesitation we packed the family up and moved to Missouri where he started Central Bible College. He got further into the church and I got more and more resentful. I was close to finishing nursing school myself when I was hit by a careless driver ruining the rest of my life. While I was freaking out and getting angry at God; my husband kept begging me to go to church with him and ask God to fix things. He kept telling me that God had a plan for me and he would take care of us. I was so angry and frustrated with him.
It wasn't long after the accident that we moved back to Des Moines. My husband immediately joined the church there and started doing interviews to work as an assistant pastor. He was still driving truck during the week and on weekends he would work at the local church. During that time he told me how much he wanted to join the army how it was a dream of his and he couldn't shake the desire to join. Finding a permanent job at the churches was hard and it was depressing him so together we went to the recruiters office. They did their speech and before you know it he was signing the papers.
The point in all that was to show how he was before the army. He was a family man, a Godly man, he loved to joke and laugh, he loved going on dates with me and he was a devoted husband who would do anything to make his marriage last. He always told me that our lives were designed to be God, marriage, family, then church. He lived his life that way making the kids and I the most important part of his life.
I came from a screwed up home so when I used to get angry I would threaten divorce and he would tell me to stop using that word it wasn't allowed in our home because once married you were married for life. He considered the word divorce to be a curse word and it would anger him deeply when I would say it.
His return from Afghanistan brought home a whole new person. When he came home for his R&R he was slightly different but still my husband and it didn't take long for him to adjust to being home. But like I said before it was right before he came home for good that everything changed. Now the man I share my life with is almost a stranger. I would ask him to go on dates with me to which he would say no or it would seem like a burden. It seemed like a chore for him to spend time with me. He grew distant and next thing I knew HE was talking about divorce saying maybe God didn't bring us together after all. I can still remember that day and how my heart broke. When we first got married I had low self esteem and I told him I was terrified that he would some day leave me for someone better. He always told me I needed to get over that because he was there for life. Now here he was telling me that my deepest fears may happen. I couldn't believe it. For the next several months I was afraid to be happy because I never knew if he was going to bail on me.
Aside from the divorce talk and the anger issues he lost his faith in God. I started reading my Bible a few months ago and tried to get our family back into church. He went but I could tell he was trying to appease me. His heart wasn't in it. I would ask him when he last prayed and he would tell me he didn't see a point in it. He couldn't remember the last time he prayed! In fact a couple of weeks ago we were talking about God and he flat out told me he didn't care he just went for the kids. I knew things were bad but I never in a million years thought he would lose who he was.
What scares me the most is all of his fundamental beliefs have changed or gotten lost in his head and I am worried that the few he did have left are dying as well. Let me try to explain that better. He was always emotionally tough and could compartmentalize his issues in order to do his job and take care of the family. Things like suicide or divorce or giving up on God were foreign to him. He hated when people would use those things as a way out but now here he is doing the same. He made a joke the other day about dying and it scared me to think he may actually not be joking. Now before you worry I do know the warning signs and what to look for and pay attention to and he hasn't shown any of the signs but he lost his drive for the future he doesn't see himself living to old age. That scares me.
So my thought for tonight is to watch carefully. Always be on alert because everything and every behavior is really a symptom and if they get worse it is up to you to get them help. They may fight and may get angry with you but much like any other illness if the symptoms get worse you need to be the one to get them help. I have heard far too many sad stories about soldiers whose families didn't see the warning signs and the soldier either killed himself or someone else. I have done all I can to educate myself and I pay attention daily to his behaviors to make sure I am there to help him. And I can bet I still don't know anywhere near enough. There is so much to learn. As a spouse there is nothing more important than that. I hope my story tonight has helped someone and I hope that we can find a way to help these men so we don't have to lose anymore soldiers to PTSD. If you get nothing else out of my posts please take away this one thing.....you can never be too well educated on this disease. Study all you can learn as much as possible so you can help your spouse.
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