10 years, but not really
Today could have been my 10th wedding anniversary if my husband hadn’t killed himself. But, to be honest, we never would have made it that long. I had considered leaving for several months, I knew I had to leave when he disappeared for a second time. I needed to get away from his addiction and mental illness for my own wellbeing. This is not to say I didn’t love him or wish that we could have had a long life together. I just don’t want to pretend that I’m grieving for a happy marriage. It’s a complicated set of emotions. I mourned the loss of my husband many times before his actual death. When he checked himself into rehab in 2016 — who am I kidding, when his daughters and I checked him into rehab — I prepared divorce papers. But rehab brought out the best parts of him, the parts that I fell in love with, and so, I threw those papers away, gave it another shot, trusted that sobriety might take hold and our plans of growing old together would work out. What didn’t get addressed at reh