I would have valued it if you had been available

I'm two years into the fully blossomed onset, after a gestation period dating back to 2010, of non-responsive PTSD and depression.

I do wish you had been on my team as part of the solution, Mina.

Or even available.

And maybe a little less critical and unhearing and bored and largely absent for the darkest parts. Investing your energy everywhere except in our love. 

Most of our marriage, I was uncertain whether you were mad at me or cared for me.  The quality and quantity of affection I received was indistinguishable.  

I need love. Particularly from you since we were married at the time. When I say love, I mean something similar to what I experienced from my parents, Melanie, John Marqusee, Lucretia. It’s a thing you never question. 

Not the kind you grew up with. I don't believe you knew what my version of love was like. I never saw you experience it with anyone when we were together but I saw you seethe with anger at others who believed they had it. So I forgive you for never providing it. And I was satisfied with the periods where you controlled your judgement and criticism, which I took as your best proxy for approval. I learned to crave your approval.  

Now I don't have that, which only makes me realize how much I gave up to be with you, a mean woman damaged at a young age and unable to find healthy attachments in your family system. Genetically exposed to narcissism. I always tried to let you know that I understood, when you weren't sinking your teeth in to my jugular, that is.

How I long for time and attention from you in my long suffering. Plus, as always, if you were with me I'd know you weren't actively working to destroy me—I’d just have to grimace through your debasement of whoever was on your daily shit list.

Now you’ve outsourced your dirty work to your lawyers, hurting me and costing both of us all of our joint cash while we un-build everything we created to enjoy together. 

As if you wouldn't be a worse failure, unnoticed, if we hadn't each made each other happier and better. I might still have some of my old friends. Whatever happened to Beth Cook?  Remember how much you hated her?

It astounds me every day to not receive thanks from you. I really need that. I provided all my own self-esteem from an early age, but primarily during our three decades together. I was happy in spite of you.  But a leading part of depression and PTSD is not being able to self-heal or self care. The shock and wounds are too deep. Sufferers like me are alone and we are certain that there will never be enough kindness or remedy to make us well enough to dependably function in the world again. So now it feels far too late.  I have surrendered.  The terrors of facing our fears are so great people in my state hide, until we die alone, connected only by the air we breathe. . 

There is no VA for citizens mortally wounded by their civilian or pacifist life. We live by ourselves, in pain, without resources, afraid to leave where we sit for hours and days and weeks etc. We cannot work. Sex is repulsive when you see yourself as an ugly cripple, which is how you described me to others for decades. We fear the mail and the phone. Travel is impossible. It is never anything different or good. 

I wait on this couch for the signs of care that never come.  And never, as I now recall, came to me, or anyone else, when we wasted all those years living together.  The love I needed and can’t ever reclaim now that my self-love, which saved me for so long, is also buried under shame and sadness.