While I feel that divorcing Ex was absolutely the best choice, there are still times when my emotions get the better of me. Today is one of those times. After weeks of little to no communication from Ex he suddenly started emailing me. His written communication has always been difficult to read, understand, and follow. These were particularly bad. I'm starting to realize just how mentally ill he really is. He hasn't called nor contacted anyone in his family. His mom is understandably worried.
His sister and my sister work at a bank together. I've been passing information to his family via that network...yes...I am a weasel, why do you ask? My sister asked if they should file a missing persons report on him. I told them when I'd last gotten an email from him. I then emailed him and told him to call his mom or she was going to contact the police to file a missing persons report. As far as I knew my email had no effect.
Yesterday he sent me six emails. Part of it had to do with finding a renter for our old house. Part of it had to do with his rants about his family trying to put him in prison. "Why" I asked "do you think your family is trying to put you in prison?" After much back and forth I realized it was because of what I'd told him about the missing persons report.
Part of me still wants to fix it...as I did for our entire 28 year marriage. I wanted to go to him, reassure him and call his mom and make him talk to her. I feel badly for the state he is in. I want him to be "normal" again.
Another part of me wants to run away as fast as I can. I remember that he looks like a homeless person, that he isn't bathing, and that just having him near grosses me out. I often wondered why someone who was so paranoid would drive around a car that looked like he was living in it. Why he'd engage in behaviors that caught police attention. He was patted down multiple times and his car searched for drugs. I've never had that happen and it never happened to him when I was around. I lent an air of normalcy to him when we were together that he couldn't maintain when he was alone.
He never cared about anyone's appearance, He never cared about the state of anyone's home. He judged no one. I liked that about him. However he thought that everyone was like him and that his own appearance and the appearance of his home would matter to no one.
One of the worst things for me was that multiple times we got letters from the city or county about the state of our home. It drove me nuts since it was always the piles of junk he had everywhere on our property that caused the complaints. The worst thing was that the letters would increase his paranoia that "they" were out to get us. Not once did any of our neighbors ever ask "Hey, do you plan on cleaning this up?" If just one of them had come to him just once and let him know that the piles were not okay it would have made him aware of the social contract he was crossing. Because not one of them was willing to ask him to clean it up face to face he didn't believe me when I told him how much they hated it. He called me a liar.
I want to fix things but I know that this is beyond my capability. I don't have the knowledge or training to deal with mental illness. I've contacted a lawyer and have started the divorce ball rolling. The separation needs to be complete because I cannot fix this.
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Mental Illness
I was emailing my mother the other day and said something about being excluded from couples invitations from other couples in the church I went to. At the time I wasn't sure if there was something about ex that was offputting, or if it was simply because he didn't attend the church with the kids and I so no one there really knew him. I think it was a little of both. My mom then said:
"He really is bizarre and some of his strangeness is offputting. When he talks he avoids eye contact, he giggles and moves around; he manifests behaviors of the mentally ill and nobody is going to include that in their lives voluntarily. Not your fault, of course but you are judged for your mate's behaviors. We saw people look at [Ex] and move away from him almost like they were afraid of him. It's easy to understand why they would feel that way."
I read that through twice and started thinking, really? Was I that blind? So I, like any normal woman, turned to my best friend who has known me since before I even started dating Ex. I sent her my mom's quote and asked her if she agreed. She said:
"Yeah, I did notice. He always seems very jumpy and nervous, unless he is asleep! LOL. I think people steered clear more because he latches on to them and won't stop talking. When you put it all together it really does spell mental illness. I doubt he will ever get help though because no one will push him."
I knew that Ex was a hoarder which is considered a mental illness. I also knew that he had zero social skills and no social awareness. Once when I told him after we'd moved that our neighbor was mad at us for years for the mess that he kept in the yard, he accused me of lying. "She accepted help from me, she wasn't mad at us." Of course when her husband was in the hospital and she came home with her two young kids and the front door was wide open she was perfectly willing to let you go in and see if anyone was in there! Didn't stop her from being mad at you for bringing down the home values on our block.
Like my friend mentioned, he'd latch on to someone and talk their leg off. Complete strangers in a store would be walking sideways trying to get away from him and he'd confuse their polite unwillingness to be rude or mean to him as interest in what he was saying.
He got stranger as the years wore on. He stopped wearing clean clothes. After his father died he'd only wear his father's old clothes, even though they didn't fit him. He stopped showering and shaving or even getting his hair cut.
He drank...lots. He never acted drunk, but he'd wake me up in the middle of the night too drunk to walk, falling on the floor and crying. I gave up on ever having alcohol in the house for an occassional drink because it'd disappear. He always said it was to help him sleep.
He slept, all the time. His protestations of insomnia to the contrary, he'd fall asleep in the movies, while watching TV, even when we were talking. He'd be snoring LOUDLY, then suddenly stop get out of bed and be rattling around in the bathroom. I'd ask him what he was looking for and he'd say "A sleeping pill, I can't sleep."
I think I was blind, the behaviors came up so slowly and just one at a time so I'd get used to them before another would appear. I didn't notice how "off" he was because I wasn't used to looking at the sum of his parts.
"He really is bizarre and some of his strangeness is offputting. When he talks he avoids eye contact, he giggles and moves around; he manifests behaviors of the mentally ill and nobody is going to include that in their lives voluntarily. Not your fault, of course but you are judged for your mate's behaviors. We saw people look at [Ex] and move away from him almost like they were afraid of him. It's easy to understand why they would feel that way."
I read that through twice and started thinking, really? Was I that blind? So I, like any normal woman, turned to my best friend who has known me since before I even started dating Ex. I sent her my mom's quote and asked her if she agreed. She said:
"Yeah, I did notice. He always seems very jumpy and nervous, unless he is asleep! LOL. I think people steered clear more because he latches on to them and won't stop talking. When you put it all together it really does spell mental illness. I doubt he will ever get help though because no one will push him."
I knew that Ex was a hoarder which is considered a mental illness. I also knew that he had zero social skills and no social awareness. Once when I told him after we'd moved that our neighbor was mad at us for years for the mess that he kept in the yard, he accused me of lying. "She accepted help from me, she wasn't mad at us." Of course when her husband was in the hospital and she came home with her two young kids and the front door was wide open she was perfectly willing to let you go in and see if anyone was in there! Didn't stop her from being mad at you for bringing down the home values on our block.
Like my friend mentioned, he'd latch on to someone and talk their leg off. Complete strangers in a store would be walking sideways trying to get away from him and he'd confuse their polite unwillingness to be rude or mean to him as interest in what he was saying.
He got stranger as the years wore on. He stopped wearing clean clothes. After his father died he'd only wear his father's old clothes, even though they didn't fit him. He stopped showering and shaving or even getting his hair cut.
He drank...lots. He never acted drunk, but he'd wake me up in the middle of the night too drunk to walk, falling on the floor and crying. I gave up on ever having alcohol in the house for an occassional drink because it'd disappear. He always said it was to help him sleep.
He slept, all the time. His protestations of insomnia to the contrary, he'd fall asleep in the movies, while watching TV, even when we were talking. He'd be snoring LOUDLY, then suddenly stop get out of bed and be rattling around in the bathroom. I'd ask him what he was looking for and he'd say "A sleeping pill, I can't sleep."
I think I was blind, the behaviors came up so slowly and just one at a time so I'd get used to them before another would appear. I didn't notice how "off" he was because I wasn't used to looking at the sum of his parts.
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