Catch up

I keep thinking, Oh, I’ll remember that! I’ll post in a couple of days.

Of course, I don’t remember.

I was in the hospital in august. Got out the 10th. I was triggered by the filthy house. Couldn’t breathe. They kept sending me home, and I’d be back in a couple of hours. The hospital system is so overwhelmed they do everything to keep from admitting people. When I was admitted, and then released days later, I was feeling pretty good.

The partner had to clean the house. Like, really clean it. Within a couple of days, he was sick. I was expecting this. He is the only person allowed to be sick in this household. If I’m sick, he’s sick in a couple of days, and it’s worse.

He went to bed. Whined continuously. Took little baby steps to get to the bathroom. Really milked it. I helped him, made sure he had food and water (something he doesn’t do for me) made sure he took his meds, etc. But honestly, I thought he was faking. Then he developed a fever. He wasn’t faking.

I kept trying to get him to call for an ambulance. He kept refusing. Until he couldn’t move, at all. Couldn’t get out of bed for the toilet and you can guess where that went. He didn’t tell me, but I found out when taking his temperature, he’d spiked up to 104f/40c. If I’d known, I would have called for an ambulance if he liked it or not. Finally, he admitted defeat and called for an ambulance. His fever was no longer too high, it was only 102f/38.8c. The ambulance service told him it wasn’t life-threatening and refused to pick him up.

So we called a secondary service – for non-life-threatening medical issues. They took him to the hospital for …what was the term? Public service or some such. Word got out quick and his family started showing up to take care of him. Which was good, he literally couldn’t raise his hand to drink and the nursing staff was so short staffed, they couldn’t care for him.

In short order, the oldest brother showed up. After a couple of days, he comes home from the hospital and says: he’s had a stroke and multiple organ failure. He has hours to days to live.

This was a lie.

It was gaslighting.

A couple of days later when I enquired about his organ failure, he says, quote. Orgain failure? He’s never had organ failure. I asked about his stroke, and my BIL waves his hand, It might have been a stroke, but MRI is indeterminate.

He gas lit me. For funzies. See, I can’t leave the house. I equate leaving the house with death. So I weigh each thing – is it worth dying for? Well, when I thought my partner was on his death bed, I said yes, it’s worth going out for. BIL says, but I thought you couldn’t leave the house? (but his tone was AHHA! I knew you could, you’re just faking it. Wanting attention.)

Ever since then, he has literally ignored me. He does not respond when I make a comment. He looks either through me or not at me at all. I’m not invisible. I do not exist.

There are many things I can bring up about my BIL, and I will. I don’t know all the ends and outs of what abusive behavior is, but I figure one or two things he’s doing would qualify.

I will be going into that in the next post. Hopefully soon. I have no one to talk to, so this is it. No one to talk to here, either, but better than just sobbing all day. I’m tired of crying.

Afraid. Or Gaslighting?

This post might become a little jumbled. The last 24 hrs has been a bit of a ride. As my emotions and thoughts are all over the place this post might reflect that.

I was watching a youtube vid by a guy evaluating the Tiger King show. I’ve not watched Tiger King but I’m interested in body language, and he does body language. One of the things he says is; watch him. He says something, then turns to her as if asking ‘was that right? did I say it right?’. She is in control, he needs reassurance that he’s still in her good books. He’s afraid of her. (might be paraphrasing, but that’s the gist.) My jaw dropped. My partner does that all the time. Acting like he’s afraid of me. Sometimes when we’re alone but also in front of other people. “I have to walk around you like I’m on eggshells”, my partner says. “You just go off over nothing”. Am I doing that? I’ve been angry a few times, who doesn’t get angry? But as far as I know, I’ve never been angry over nothing. An example of my getting angry: He says something outrageous, let’s call it ‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant’… not necessarily that, but that caliber of ‘outrageous’. I respond as you might expect. He says; ‘We’ll talk about it when you’re not hormonal’. (Which I read as: when you agree with me, you’re not hormonal). But now, I’m wondering, AM I abusive? DO I threaten him? I will, absolutely, defend myself. It’s a verbal thing, on both… hum. I was going to say, its a verbal thing on both our sides, but that’s not true anymore. He has started to get physical in his murder attempts. Am I becoming abusive?

Or is it a magnificent case of gaslighting? Convince me, and anyone else, I am the abusive one, he’s just a poor, innocent man dealing with a woman who goes off on nothing. And I guess, you have to define ‘nothing’. To him, saying something outrageous is nothing. He doesn’t mean it, he’s frequently just changed sides during an argument/debate. It’s not the subject, it’s about getting reactions.

Gaslighting is making you doubt your own reality. Am I abusive?

He says he’s afraid of me, and now I am absolutely afraid of him. Another thing that happened in this last 24 hours, but I’ll make a different post on it, as I think it might get long.

If I Cry, He Wins

Background; I’m sick with what I suspect as covid 19, classic presentation for the first week. But it seems to drag on and on. I mention to partner, all the times he’s talked to his doctor friends, he never tells them I’m sick. I tell him he’s been disregarding everything I’ve said from day one. He denies this even though he’s told me a few times, flat out, I don’t have it. I gave my partner a written list of all the symptoms I’d had over a week ago.

He gets a little snotty about it and I respond in kind. We decide we don’t know what ‘a fever’ is, the definition the medical community is going by.

He calls one of his doctor friends, who say; ‘In this country, ‘a fever’ is anything over 37c’ (meaning, anything over normal). This puts me in ‘sick’ country. He calls a different friend doctor.

So his friend returns the call and my partner walks in and says something to the effect of; you want to talk to him? He’s standing two feet away from me and shouts. I don’t remember the exact words but the effect I came away with was ‘you can talk to him but I already have and you’d be a dick if you do’.

I say, ‘did you tell him my symptoms?’

‘yes’

So I say, no need to talk to him, then.

He speaks with him another 20 mins or so, coming back with two questions. How long have I been smoking and how long have I had COPD. After the call, he comes back and asks if I want to know what he said.

Restraining all sarcastic remarks, I say yes.

His doctor friend says I don’t have it. If I did, I would have recovered by now or I’d be dead. He says it’s just a COPD attack. A little more long winded but that was the bottom line. I didn’t interrupt, roll my eyes, or do anything other than nod. I gave the impression I bought it all. But inside, I’m thinking this just doesn’t match up with other things I’ve seen or watched.

It bothers me enough to wonder what my partner had told him. So the next day, I ask what symptoms he’d told his friend I had. Now this is word for word;

“I told him you had a fever, breathlessness, headaches, runny nose, aches, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And yes, I said ‘etcetera etcetera etcetera’, just like that.”

I said, ‘etcetera etcetera etcetera’? Honestly stunned. He said; Hey, I gave you the opportunity to talk to him yourself!

And I remember, only just then, how my partner lies. He lies with the exact truth. Then uses body language to indicate something else. But he’s on the phone, he can’t use body language to indicate they are all fake or lies. He had to do something verbally. Hence, the ‘etcetera’ business. In effect, he told his doctor friend I was faking. Just putting out symptoms and on and so on and etcetera, yadda yadda.

Of all the times he’s tried to kill me I’ve been amused. This time, I don’t feel amused. I wanted an independent, 3rd party honest opinion. He poisoned it. And implanted the idea with his friend that I’m…god knows what. A hypochondriac? Faking it? Looking for attention?

This time I feel hurt. I’ve had to stop myself from crying several times. I don’t think I’m sick enough to go to hospital. But I’m sick enough to want reasurance that I’m not imagining it, that it’ll be ok, and at what point to call for help. My partner doesn’t want me to go to the hospital either, he says because if you go, you’re likely to get it while in there. Now, that is a ligitament worry.

But the hospital is also where you go to get help. And if you need help and don’t go get help, you die. Which is okay with him, really. He knows if you’re meant to die, you will, and if you’re not meant to, you won’t. I’m fine with him believing that. I’m not fine with him pushing that onto me.

OR I am a hypochondriac.

I’m a woman of means!

I was once advised there were two subjects that would have the most negative impact on your marriage. Sex and money. And boy, ain’t that the truth.

Up until now, I felt fairly confident I couldn’t lay the charge of financial abuse at his feet. Sure, there were a couple of times where he was on shaky grounds. Like when he sold the family car to a friend of his. He didn’t volunteer how much he sold it for – and I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask because I knew very well he basically gave it away. I never saw a dime of it – he didn’t even just give me a couple of bucks. It went into a drawer and was handed out over the weeks, you guessed it, to his friends.

Or the time he was given an envelope of cash, which he kept in my desk drawer. I didn’t count how much was in it, I really didn’t care. But a few months down the line, I happen to see the envelope and wonder how much it was. I opened it to find 120 USD in there. When we got it, it was a good 1 inch thick. He refused to say what he’d done with it, except when I said, What did you do with it? he said: I can’t do anything with dollars! Which is, you notice, not an answer. He gave it to ‘friends’, I’m sure. For me not to notice him taking it, he had to have come sneaking in while I slept, and take out a few bills, here and there. He really can’t be trusted with large sums of money. He gives it away to ‘friends’. And I’m sure his ‘friends’ would dry up if he suddenly didn’t have cash to give away.

So, now we are caught up.

His brother recently gave him some money. Ah, let us tell it like it happened. He comes in, and says, while I was visiting brother, he told me he’s giving away some money to all his brothers and their wives. He gave me Eleventy-Thousand dollars!* in this breathless, over the top voice, that tells me he’s lying. This voice is one I recognize when he’s trying to either get a rise out of me or when he doesn’t want me to look too closely at it, but at whatever he says next. He says: He gave me Eleventy-Thousand dollars and I’m giving you half! You’re going to get Sixity-Hundred dollars! You are a woman of means! You’re rich! You can do anything you want with it, it’s yours! The money arrived last week, you’re rich!

At this point, it’d been almost 6 weeks since he got back from his family trip. I said: so it took you a month before you got around to telling me, and another week since you’ve actually had the cash?

He looks at me blankly. I don’t think this was part of his pre-planned conversation. He continues: now that you’re rich, you can help pay for any appliances that need to be replaced. ahh. There it is. The take back. Every single thing he has given me, he has taken something back. There is no free gift. New paint on the bedroom walls? Get rid of the hundreds of book. New carpet? Give away the dvds. Trip to Egypt? Stop smoking. New monitor? Oo-aw, so pretty, I think I’ll keep it.

Then the next day; you’re a woman of means, now! You can pay for your own charity. Me: you’ve always paid for both of us. Are you saying you refuse to pay mine now? Him: you’re a woman of means now! …nickel, dime, nickel, dime. And he’s clawed back a good portion of the money.

Due to some circumstances beyond our control, he has the money in an account of his other brother. Technically, it’s not ours. But we have access to it. Or rather, he has access to it, I do not. But all I need to do is ask him for any of it that I want, and he’ll get it to me. In my world, that’s called a gatekeeper.

Now I was already suspicious over the way he presented this wonderful opportunity to be a woman of means. And the take-backs. I’m suspecting something is off. So I asked him to show me the money in the account. He pulls it up, but does not open the full monthly account. The total shows not Eleventy-Thousand bucks – it shows Twentity-Two Thousand… and change. It showed, in other words, double the amount he told me.

My heart died just a little bit.

And I’m not sure why, but I didn’t press him to open it fully. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Why the hell I did that, I don’t know. I’m a coward? I couldn’t face that he would do that to me.

Now I sit here and wonder what I should do. I can;

Take the money, literally, have him pull the amount given to me, in cash, and stuff my pillow with it. It can be bolt money – used if I need to run.
Leave the money in the account and use as wished, because hello, even the fraction he’s willing to give me is more than I’ll ever see in my life.
Refuse the money, because my sense of moral outrage wants to one-upmanship him.

I could also ask him to again open the account. After all, he’s told me I can have access to the money any time. So that account holds ‘my’ money. Then, open the account fully and make sure there was only Twentity-Two Thousand in there, and that there hadn’t been One-Hundredity-Thousand at first, before it being moved along.

He’s starting to sound like a drug lord. But no, he’s not smart enough to be a drug lord. I will take his reason his brother was giving away his money before he died, so it doesn’t get tied up in taxes and lawyers. His brother would have to give away money to everyone, so no one contested they didn’t get what they should have.

The thing is, this whole thing has really stressed me out. What do I do? I’m such a damn coward. My heart is having a rough time of it. And by that I mean, it’s beating arhythmicity. I’m hyperventilating, breathing on the top of my lungs. I’m dizzy. My hands shake. I’m actually afraid I won’t make it through the night. I could die in my sleep.

And he gets all the money to himself, gets rid of me, and he’s innocent as hell. Fuck that. If I go, I want to take him with me.

No, I’m not going to kill him. I’d have to clean up the blood. No. I … seriously. The only thing I’ve ever, ever wanted, is for his family to know what a fucking dick he is. They all think he’s this kind, generous, caring, sweet guy. don’t you just love him to bits? But he’s not.

And his ganking me out of a lot of money (and making sure I have to go through him to get at it) means I can add financial abuse to his list.

*Eleventy-Thousand dollars exaggerated for comedic effect.

EDIT: all kidding aside. I realize I need to make something clear. The amount of money gifted to my partner is peanuts. I am poor – I’ve been poor all my life. Any amount of money that pays at least my monthly rent is a lot of money. Most people would consider it their coffee money for the month.

Egypt & The Impossible Task

This must have been about 10 years ago, now. I had a bucket list which included going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids and Valley of the Kings, you know, the usual. Partner was aware of this. One day, he says, “I’ll take you to Egypt. But only if you learn hieroglyphics, because what’s the point of going somewhere if you can’t read the language?”

This was actually kind of a silly thing to say, ’cause people do it all the time. On the other hand, I’d always been interested in hieroglyphics, and hey, trip to Egypt. So I agreed, I’d learn hieroglyphics and he’d take me to Egypt.

I got a good book and started teaching myself hieroglyphics. I actually found it kind of easy. After a couple of weeks of daily study, I was starting to be able to ‘free read’. Without needing to flip constantly to the cheat sheet. I showed him how well I was doing.

What! He says. You can’t do that! You can’t read hieroglyphics! I can’t read them and if I can’t read them, you can’t.

I’m dyslexic, I said. They’re just pictographs. It’s easier to read than English, once I know what it stands for.

No. He thinks about it for a micro-second, then continued, I’ll take you to Egypt if you stop smoking.

In that moment I knew he’d given me an ‘impossible task’. Not his fault we didn’t go, right, as I was just too stupid to learn hieroglyphics. I put my pencil away, put the book on my bookshelf, got online and did something else. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t open the book again. As far as I was concerned, the subject and goal were over, dead. He knew I wouldn’t give up smoking for this. Especially since it was pretty obvious if I did give up smoking, he’d just come up with something else.

I think I was upset a couple of days. I remember I was mad about it for a long time. Just the fact he used a dream of mine to play games with me. And it was a building block of our marriage problems. It was a stone against him that never moved. I never spoke of it, but it was always there, influencing how I perceived his motivations.

A couple of years (!) later, he comes up to me and says: You can stop yelling at me about Egypt.

I kind of snort and say, I never said a word.

I know, he says, but in my head, you’ve yelled at me every day. So I’ll take you to Egypt. Except you’ll need to get better, health-wise.

And there it was, the third impossible task. COPD doesn’t ever get better. You can stop getting worse, I’m told, but you never get better. So I patted him on the knee and agreed. When I get better. Knowing it would never happen.

I’m thinking of this because I’ve been thinking of picking up hieroglyphics again. It was fun, I did enjoy it, and I shouldn’t let his being an asshat stop me from doing something I like. And I just this second realized, it will probably remind him of his dick move every time he sees me with the book. And that will just be a side order of sweet.

Hey, I never said I was a saint. Or even very nice, although I used to be. I got over that.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Last three-ish months have been quite nice. It’s common for him to go a while as Mr. Nice Guy. Makes a girl relax, you know, so when the sucker punch is thrown, she doesn’t see it coming, right? Only, I’ve been expecting it.

Every few weeks he’ll mention; ‘You need something, just ask. I’m here to help.‘ So when I’m having trouble breathing, I’ll ask him to get me some tea. (Hot caffeine is good to relax bronchial constriction and I can’t drink coffee as it hurts my stomach.) Which he does, cheerfully enough. I’ve even woken him up to do it for me – sometimes a cup of tea is the difference between being okay and calling emergency.

A few days ago he started saying his back hurt. I tried not to bother him as much as I could. I was having fair days, so it was okay. I told him to wear his back brace, and he said it helped but that it was still painful. So I gave him some over-the-counter pain meds, the ‘good stuff’. 😉 Then the next day I had a spike. Couldn’t even go to the bathroom without having trouble breathing. I (breathlessly) asked him if he could get me tea. He said sure, no problem.

While he was getting me tea, I went and took a nebulizer treatment. This took about 5 minutes and I started to feel better. I felt like I could make my own tea, so headed to the kitchen. The water was heating and I told him I could do it. He said, no no, I’ll get it! I said, I’m feeling better, I can do it. Again, he said no, he’s on it.

Now, I’m not going to argue with the man over this. So I said ‘okay’, turned around and went back to my computer. I think my ‘okay’ might have been a touch too cheerful.

Five minutes later he comes hobbling into the room. He says, ‘I didn’t fill it all the way, I was afraid I’d spill it’. He sets it down and turns away. I watch. He’s bent over like he’s a 150, he’s taking baby steps like he’s hobbled. He says: ‘Im okay when I’m sitting still, but moving is painful!’* He groans, he huffs, he literally inches across the room. He’s overacting so badly it was embarrassing to watch. Once he was out of the room, and couldn’t see me (and I guess, thought I couldn’t see him) he straightened up and walked normally.

See, I was supposed to feel guilty for asking him for help. This is an old theme of emotional abuse: say he’s there to help and if you ask for help he will do or say something that is supposed to make you feel guilty for asking. It used to work, too. At one point I swore to myself I’d crawl over broken glass before asking him for help. Then I realized that’s exactly what he wanted – not for me to crawl, but for me to feel guilty. Screw that.

*This is one of the things I truly can’t argue with, as it’s something that I feel. When I’m having an attack, I’m okay if I’m sitting still, but if I have to move, I can’t breathe. And if its a pleurisy attack, the pain is indescribable. I’ve told him those exact words, I’m okay if I’m still, but it hurts when I move. The difference between us, is I’m telling the truth. Maybe he is, too. It just feels like he’s using it as a jab at my asking for help.

Salt poisoning

I know I’ve mentioned the tea before. How when he makes me tea, but it’s not made ‘right’. It’s not every time. This morning, it wasn’t just not made ‘right’, it didn’t taste right. There was something in that tea – way too much of something. I suspect it was salt. I don’t put salt in my tea, so I have no idea how it would change the taste. The weird thing was, I didn’t recognize the taste at all. And it lingered on my lips, I basically tasted it all day. I never did figure out what it was.

My partner likes salt. A lot of salt. On everything. I figure because he’s on TPN, and getting liters of fluids every day, it counterbalances the amount of salt he takes in. Now, when I say ‘a lot’ I realize that is relative. So to be more specific, I’d say in a normal coffee mug sized cup, he puts in about 1/4th teaspoon of salt. He drinks maybe 6 cups of tea a day, so that makes about 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt. And when I say a teaspoon, I mean the eating utensil, not a measuring cup. That’s just the tea. He puts the same amount in/on anything he eats. A sandwich, soup, jelly toast, bananas. If I see him adding it, I panic and say ‘stop, stop! too much!’. That doesn’t stop him.

About 2 months ago, he came up to me and asked; I’m watching a show, and this guy kills someone with belladonna. Where did he find it? … I explained what I knew of belladonna, which isn’t that much. I asked him why he didn’t just google it. He says because I probably know it, and it’s easier to ask me than google it.

And so help me, it only dawned on me now, it might be because google leaves traces.

So I looked up salt and belladonna poisoning just now (if you find a search record, oh ye police officers) that was me 😉 The belladonna symptoms didn’t line up at all, but I found this quick google definition on salt poisoning:

Too much sodium in the bloodstream can damage brain cells, and lead to seizures, coma or even death. Fluid can build up in the lungs, causing trouble breathing. Other symptoms of salt poisoning include kidney damage, nausea, vomiting and weakness.

And yeah…. ticky box, ticky box. This past month, breathing has been worse than normal. I started a course of antibiotics and prednisolone, and it’s improving. Nausea and vomiting – I’ve been throwing up a lot. It takes a lot for me to throw up, I fight it as much as I can before I let it, ah, go. I had thought it was my new medications causing it, but … I stopped the meds, and it’s still happening. And it doesn’t seem to be after I eat, anyway, sometimes its 6-12 hours after I’ve eaten. But not that long after I’ve had a cup of tea. And lastly, the weakness, holy crap. This last week, I’ve been asking him to cook/get tea because, and I quote what I said: I feel really weak, and can’t do it. Can you cook something?

And it makes me sound so paranoid, damn it to hell.

Later today, he asked if I’d like another cup of tea. I said sure. And as I handed him the cup, I said; no salt this time, okay? He was like: oh, did I put salt in? My mistake! Then he rambled on for like 2 or 3 minutes, telling me how he’s gotten the cups mixed up before, and have to ‘trade out our cups’, so I didn’t get his. Except, I have never gotten his cup. His physical cup. I’d recognize it. He lied.

I didn’t talk to him about my realizing he was trying to scare me to death (which he quickly gave up on, thankfully) because I didn’t want him to try something else. I didn’t want him to get inventive. But I’m starting to suspect he has, anyway.

As with the scaring me to death thing, salt poisoning can be an ‘accident’, and I think one of his criteria for my death is plausible deniability. It was an accident, officer. I don’t know what happened. *puppy eyes, bubbling sobs of sorrow* I’ve seen this act, he’s pretty good at it.

Lier – literal lying

It took me a couple of days trying to think of where to start. The easiest – or at least, shortest, subject would be lying.

At the start of our relationship, I thought he would be normal. Or at least, default with telling the truth. Sure, everyone lies. It’s a requirement in the human race. Children learn to lie around 2-3 years old. Telling the truth is not his default. Lying is. He lies about everything. Not so much as what he had for breakfast, although he has, but… his emotions, his thoughts, his beliefs, his morals. Some lies are huge, those he’ll keep track of for a few years, before blowing his cover and changing the story. Some lies are off the cuff, whatever pops out of his mouth. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. So long as it isn’t the truth, it’s all good.

The problem is I remember.

And as the years built up, lie after lie, I started to realize. Nothing he has ever told me is the truth. Now, there are times when I still believe him (I’m damn gullible), but I also know, 90% of what’s coming out of his mouth is a lie. He is lying literally, by tone or silently. And sometimes, like a normal person, a flat out lie to protect himself.

How is this abusive, you ask? Only someone who’s ever lived with a determined lier can understand. “I love you” is a lie. “I left the puppy at the farm” is a lie. “We don’t have enough money to pay for medication.” is a lie. Living with a lier is warping. And when they stick with a lie, it can become gaslighting.

Examples: Literally.

I ask him if he has 20 bucks. He says no. Later I find he has 25 bucks, in 5s. Literally, he didn’t have a 20, so ‘he was telling the truth’. Or how about this one. It’s a set up for a later day, when he may be asked a question.

I suspect I’ve had a heart attack and ask him questions about woman’s silent heart attacks. His response was: ‘Silent heart attacks are a great way to die! No pain and boom, you’re gone’. Two months later, he comes up to me and said: ‘I’m going to make us something for dinner. If you think you had a heart attack you should go to the doctor. I’ll make us tuna sandwiches.’ Turns, and walks away quickly. And I knew instantly, it was a set up so he could say ‘I told her to see a doctor about her heart‘, if the way I died implicated him in some way. He’d just neglect to mention it was two months later. That’s the thing about literal lying. It usually leaves something out, sometimes very similar to lying by silence.

He’s disabled. Severely in medical terms but in quality of life, not so bad. He used to go to retreats but they asked him to stop coming. He told me that they said ‘he takes up too much room.’ I got really angry about this – he’s disabled, he needs some things, and yeah, they can take up maybe 3 or 4 square feet. I was ready to go down there and give those guys a piece of my mind, it was discrimination! He talked me out of it – it’s their choice to make, etcetera. A few years down the line, he puts his computer station in the living room. Things started piling up there. Grooming products, a little bed, boxes of ‘to do’ papers. Within a month, he’d taken up their entire living room. And I remembered the comment, he was taking up too much space. He’d told me the literal truth. He WAS taking up too much room.