Today is our wedding anniversary. Not a word from him even though we have been getting along well. He called yesterday to say that he forgot to leave something here when he was up this weekend. He had gotten me a Mother's Day present. Huh? He rarely remembers birthdays or holidays. I felt hopeful.
Today is also another anniversary. One year ago today, I spent the day in the ER with a pulmonary embolism and cardiomyopathy. They tell me that 1 in 10 people die within the first hour with a pulmonary embolism. It took almost all day for them to figure out what was wrong. My H stayed with me the whole time and only left to switch off with my mom when he had to get the kids from school. Our son was 7 days old and was 3 hrs away in another hospital fighting for his life. I remember that night when they wheeled me into a room in the cardiac unit, I was so scared and my H slept in a chair in my room all night. I get really frightened when I'm vulnerable but he looked out for me.
But it is a bittersweet memory because that weekend, I had just gotten home from the maternity ward and we had a few huge fights...rather, he was very hostile and unsympathetic towards me. Actually, he would switch back and forth from one extreme to another. I had gone into premature labor the week prior because of finding out that he had switched his pay check to an acct I couldn't access. The day before I had the PE, he had lost his temper with me, screaming and yelling about ...I can't even remember. The day before that, he was taking me to see the baby for the first time. His mom and my sister came with us. He got lost getting there and wouldn't let me give him directions. I was very weak and had difficulty breathing. I wasn't supposed to make a long car trip. I kept quiet. He became very cold and dark and angry. It was miserable for all of us. When we got home, he laid into me. I was shocked. The hardest part for me during all of this ordeal is his extreme lack of compassion or empathy for me. I was the mother of his children and he treated me worse than he would a perfect stranger who was with child. It wasn't like that in the beginning but it just got worse and worse. Then he'd have times of strong love and taking care of me. I was really proud of him and how he took care of this family. But then he would switch again. I was glad that his mother and my mother saw him like that because I'm the one with the feisty temper and I think they always thought I was the problem.
So, I had planned to be happy today and celebrate that I survived this whole year but I keep thinking about how god-awful the circumstances surrounding my sickness and delivery were.
