Tonight I screamed at my husband. Screamed at him.
I was furious. I was beyond furious. I howled my rage from the depths of my very cells, with an erupting fury that surely reached to the nearest stars. My voice was deafening. I was so very loud.
The anger that had been brewing below a host of other, more acceptable feelings blew out of my soul as I hurled a nearly overwhelming sense of betrayal and pain at him for his treachery.
“Damn you. Damn you! How dare you not trust me? How dare you lie to me about how bad it was? How dare you leave me like this?”
But he didn’t hear me. He couldn’t.
My husband killed himself two and a half weeks ago.
Nowadays it is difficult to know what I will be feeling from minute to minute. The crushing and inconsistent feelings of loss, of sadness, of guilt, of confusion, of numbness, of wanting him to show up and reassure me that it was all a terrible mistake — that he isn’t really dead… These feelings come in no logical order… with no sense to them, nor any rhyme nor reason.
My mind is a mess. My emotions are raw and triggered by the slightest memory, thought, feeling, smell… And oh good God, please do not give me a sympathetic hug because I will dissolve into an instant puddle of salty, snotty sobs right before your very eyes.
It had to happen at some point, of course. One can’t live with such crushing, primal feelings without letting them out somehow. As it happened, the timing for this explosion was far better than other moments when it could have spewed forth, although certainly more than a little dangerous… I was driving home, in the very pitch dark, down a narrow, winding road on the side of a mountain in western Maine.
Crying so hard I could barely see, and screaming so loudly my Jeep echoed, I couldn’t seem to stop the volcano that spewed out. I was glad it was dark so the drivers coming at me in the other direction couldn’t view the hideous contortions my face made, and nor could they hear the soul-wrenching screams.
Over the next half hour, the intensity of my raw, naked pain slowly subsided. In between halting sobs — punctuated at times with more screams that welled up then died off — I began trying to explain to this man I loved so deeply, what he had done to me in killing himself. My guilt at not seeing how crushing his physical and emotional pain was has been nearly unbearable. My fury at that pain — and the sources of it, all the way back to my husband’s childhood — is in part fueled by my wretched inability to “fix” it, no matter how much I loved this man.
I very much doubt this one experience of raging at a universe that allowed my husband to hurt so much will be the only time when I howl with a warrior’s madness.
The loss of this brilliant, wonderful, tortured man is too huge to be quieted so easily.
If you or someone you know needs help, visit our suicide prevention resources page.
If you need support right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or text “START” to 741-741.
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Thinkstock photo via redtea
In the past, I would have written volumes about my education, work experience, volunteering, and the husband I love(d) more than I can describe. Now, the only thing I really have to say about myself is that I’m the widow of a great but tormented man, and I have a lot of work left to do on this earth before I join him forever.
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