Thanks Ellie.
He got PTSD and Lupus from the stress following the A, which is I guess a reflection of how much shit and pain he brought on himself. So I worry a lot about that. I still love him so it's hard to leave someone you love if they are sick. I will have to figure out how deal with that.
He's been doing some of "the work" for R since I left, and he's trying as best he can whilst being sick, and that also makes it hard. He has also said some really crappy things though, because of this shame / defensiveness thing and I feel like he still doesn't fully "get it - so whatever he is doing means a lot, but has also not been "enough". It still makes me feel sad though!
We are not at the point he doesn't care. I told him last night that I wasn't coming back and that being alone is what I feel I want and he was crying a lot :( The messages were pretty hard to take to be honest. It made me cry a lot too.
At the same time, I woke up feeling more peaceful than I have in a while.
I realise that since the A, practically everything has been rug swept.
Everything for the first year was about dealing with the insane AP and the real world fallout. It felt like almost every weekend was dealing with police or something else completely crazy that left no space for us to R.
Everything for the second two years was about him being so sick, how long that took to diagnose (for a long period I thought he might be dying and he was put on the cancer diagnosis fast track three times for different cancers).
So somewhere in there my feelings about the A were pushed down.
I have now got the freedom to go through it all - and I have literally journaled, read, cried, written here and felt this pain and anger properly and been able to have long overdue conversations with him.
I realised I needed that so much - that sick or not - I NEEDED this healing work and we could not sweep it under the carpet anymore. I also realise now that although he is helpful, I can also do this healing work by myself.