poison...

The past couple of weeks have been epic in the sense that not an ounce more stress could have been crammed in, and no, this has nothing to do with taxes.  Our taxes were a rather pleasant experience by comparison.  I’m not even sure where to begin, or if I should write about this at all.  Feelings might get hurt, however at this point I’m at an impasse. Feelings are going to get hurt regardless of my actions.

So here goes…

We have a stressor in our lives right now.  It’s a loved one, a close family member, who has disregarded my husband’s PTSD since he came home changed from Iraq almost 9 years ago.  This person is selfish and ridiculous in many ways that I can overlook, but some things are inexcusable.  I have spent every day since I met Chris minimizing anything that exacerbates his PTSD.  We have carefully crafted a beautiful sedate life that he can feel safe in, and I cannot overlook this person’s intrusion into his haven any longer.

I won’t go into past hurts, they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things and they are a separate issue in my eyes.  To begin, my husband’s medical issues are many.  Extreme stress causes him to have what are called pseudo-seizures.  They are not epileptic in nature, but are physical manifestations of emotional distress.  Usually he seizes for around 20 minutes; this leaves him horribly sore the next day.  He eventually loses consciousness and also loses varying amounts of time.  He’s suffered from them for a couple of years, but we’ve minimized their occurrence quite successfully until now.

For the past several months, this family member has brought their life problems, problems of their own building, to our house, our haven.  Chris hid his distress from me for long time, and he hid it well until Easter.  Since that day, he’s had two major episodes that have come very close to me calling for an ambulance.  Just last night he admitted to me that suicide has been on his mind since this person came back into his life. 

So what do I do?  Immediate family members are hard to remove from your life especially when they’ve burned every bridge and you’re all they have left.  I have talked and explained until I am blue in the face about my husband’s needs but I have hesitated to get mean.  I fear however time is growing short and my inner fighter is starting to surface again.  I will not allow anyone to ruin what we’ve built.  But how do you tell someone that they’re poison?  That their presence is the finger that squeezes the trigger?  How do I tell this person whom I do care about, that they’re not welcome in my home anymore unless they can come over and not covet everything we’ve built in an attempt to create guilt, not cry and whine over unimportant non-issues in an attempt to bask in sympathy, not talk about how depressed or how horrible and sad their life is when it is no different than anyone else’s reality, and not expect him to solve all their self-made problems when they’ve not spent a single moment trying to help or understand his condition and what he’s been through?

How? 

To be continued when I find a solution. Wish me luck.