Why are you someone’s reason for needing a therapist?

Crisis and Consequences

Why are you someone’s reason for needing a therapist? I came home from work the day after my dad’s funeral and found my fianceé lying in our bathtub with his wrist cut open.

His goodbye letter was taped to our mirror and the poem he wrote for me back in seventh grade was playing on loop. My brain flashed back to that day four years ago when I came home from dad’s funeral and found Christopher in our bathtub.

The fake blood was everywhere, smeared on the white porcelain and dripping down the sides. That poem from seventh grade was playing on repeat through the bathroom speakers, the one about forever and always.

My entire body went into shock as I started physically convulsing. My whole body started shaking so hard I couldn’t control my arms or legs.

I wanted to drop next to him and start pulling him out. I remember reaching toward him because I thought he was dead and then my vision went completely white.

But I have an extremely weak heart and I’m prone to heart attacks and seeing my fianceé dead less than 24 hours after I buried my own father triggered a severe stroke.

I collapsed onto the floor where my vision went white and I don’t really remember anything besides him suddenly leaping out of the bathtub and grabbing my shoulders before screaming, “It’s a prank.” over and over as my world shut black.

Everything just disappeared into nothing. I apparently died and was resuscitated. I woke up 13 hours later in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of my arms.

And when I woke up in the hospital 13 hours later, my fianceé was beside me holding a bouquet of flowers. The doctors told us that my heart is now three times weaker than before, and I was now at extreme risk of sudden cardiac death.

The doctor stood around me with these serious faces and told me my heart was now three times weaker than it was before. One of them, an older woman with gray hair, looked right at Christopher and explained that another shock like that could kill me instantly.

They put me on 13 different medications and made it crystal clear that stress, even another prank, could literally kill me. They put me on 13 different medications, lined up in orange bottles on the bedside table.

A younger doctor made Christopher sit in the chair next to my bed while they went through each medication and what would happen if I didn’t take them. He explained that stress wasn’t just bad for me anymore. It was literally deadly.

That night, my fianceé came to me on his knees. He was crying and literally graveling.

That night, after the doctors left, Christopher got on his knees right there beside my hospital bed. He was crying so hard he could barely get the words out.

His face was all red and wet and he kept saying he’d be better, that he’d be the man I fell in love with again if I just didn’t leave him. I don’t deserve you, but if you give me another chance, I promise I’ll be better. I’ll be the man you fell in love with again.

I knew the safe decision was to say no. I knew saying yes was probably the stupidest thing I could do.

But this was the only time he’d ever done anything so stupid in the 13 years I’d know him. But we’d been together for 13 years and this was the first time he’d ever done something this bad.

I told him I’d stay, but gave him a list of rules he now had to follow. So I told him he could stay, but gave him a list of rules he had to follow.

For the first few months, he kept his word. For the first few months after I got home from the hospital, things were actually good between us.

We went to coup’s therapy. We went to couples therapy every Tuesday evening and slowly started laughing again.

We slowly started laughing again, putting donut cream on others noses and licking it off. We did silly things like putting donut cream on each other’s noses at breakfast.

He puffed my pillows and learned to cook for us. He learned how to cook my safe foods, the ones that didn’t make my heart race and fluffed my pillows every single night before bed.

And when my grief about my dad hit, he’d find the perfect balance between giving just enough space and attention. When the grief about dad hit me hard, Christopher somehow knew exactly when to give me space and when to hold me.

Somewhere along the line, I started believing that nearly dying was the best thing that happened to me. But then he started going back to his old ways.

But then he started slipping back into his old ways so gradually, I almost didn’t notice it happening. Suddenly, he was blaring music while I was trying to sleep, groaning about being too busy to get my medicine when my chest pains hit.

The music got louder when I was trying to sleep, bass thumping through the walls. He started sighing really heavily when I asked him to pick up my medications from the pharmacy.

He cut his work hours down so I’d be motivated to get back to full-time and even started drinking at bars after work because I was stressing him out.

He cut his work hours down to part-time and said it was to motivate me to get back to full-time, even though my doctor specifically said I couldn’t handle that kind of stress yet.

Soon he was telling his friends he never wanted to stay in the relationship anyway. I had to start locking myself in our bedroom because he’d yell about how I demanded all this from him but couldn’t even give him intimacy.

That’s when it happened. One night, I came out of the bathroom after getting my period, and Christopher jumped out from around the corner.

I came out of the bathroom after getting my period. And when I turned the corner, he suddenly jumped out to scare me.

My heart literally stopped beating right for a few seconds, and I collapsed straight down onto the floor. I felt my heart literally freeze and ended up on the floor palpitating and clutching my chest.

I was clutching my chest and gasping while he just stood there watching me. I had to crawl to our medicine cabinet because he wouldn’t help me.

I had to crawl across the carpet to the medicine cabinet by myself because he wouldn’t help me get up. My heart stabilized and that night I ran away.

That’s when I knew I had to leave. I grabbed what I could carry that same night while he was passed out drunk on the couch.

I locked myself in my car with two bags of clothes and my medications, and my hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold the steering wheel. I drove to a women’s shelter across town.

The numbness that settled over me during that drive felt safer than the fear, like my body was finally protecting itself the only way it knew how. I immediately threw myself into my healing process where at one of my support groups I met Cameron.