Breakdown
The last few months have been the most difficult of my life, and last month I had what I can only describe as a breakdown. Something happened many many months ago that I blocked out, suppressed, refused to remember and recently it all came back to hit me and I couldn't cope.
My S.O. had relapsed and cheated on me for the second time. They seem to go hand in hand since he found drugs on craigslist from gay men who were looking to 'party n play' the last time this happened. This time, he had gone missing for several days - left abruptly with no money, no clothes, left our dog, didn't go to work and no activity on our bank account or his iPhone. His family flew out here to help find him and we began looking into all possibilities as 2, 3, 4 and onward to a week passed.
I found out about the cheating by going through his phone bill and calling numbers I did not recognize. I talked to many people outside of our circle of friends, and 2 of which admitted to sleeping with him. The third agreed to meet me in person, and although he didn't tell me what happened, I knew. This sent me into a frenzy where I began turning over everything in the house looking to find even more evidence of him cheating. This is when it happened.
I found a second gmail account with a vague name he had been using, with craigslist ad response chains. Most of which were deleted to cover his tracks, but I found some still in the trash that had not been emptied. The one in question was him responding to someone looking for 'taboo' fun. When asked what he was into, he said "incest" and "yng". As i progressed through more trashed e-mails, amongst many of the usual "hey are you looking" and "can you host", there was a conversation with a guy about their interests and again the word "yng" came up.
He told this guy he had became very good at surfing the 'dark web' and had lots of content they could check out on an old tablet. I knew about his old tablet that was 'broken'. It had been broken for years though. I knew it was broken because it looked like shit and it was kept in a storage box under our bed with lots of other junk. I did not even know what the dark web meant until right then when I googled it to understand what was going on. That's when it happened.
I was completely broken. I really felt like I had an out of body experience in that moment. It was as if I had died. My entire life was just shaken. I can't even remember what happened after this, my memory of the rest of the day is just not there.
He turned up on Day #9 and me and his mother got him into rehab again. This time we sent him out of the city. I was so scared to lose him and so scared to leave him at the same time, and when he came back we were both so fragile that it seemed like there was no other option but to go on. I truly believed if I left him that he would commit suicide. And I thought if I was alone that maybe I would do the same. I held on tight, and when he started drinking again, it was ok and I just let it go. And when he began working late again, I didn't look into it. And when he started whitening his teeth and brushing them and buying way too much gum, I tried to look past it. I was totally in denial about what was happening and then it hit me right in the face again. Crystal Meth, hidden in the air conditioning vent. I made him leave and he went to sober living. I told him that was it.
From then on, I had an emotionless and numb journey of just not dealing with it. I distracted myself by working too much, exercising too much, drinking too much and just struggling to keep moving forward without dealing with what had happened. This is all I ever do. I do not deal with things, I either pretend they never happened or distract myself so that they do not consume my every thought. This process lasted me for many many months, and then in August I finally filed for divorce. That night, I had a breakdown. I experienced a panic attack like i have never felt, I cried uncontrollably, I thought I was having a heart attack, I called a suicide prevention hotline 3 times in the same night. I took the next 4 days off work and had block sessions with the therapist. I spilled everything, including the child pornography stuff he had referred to on his old tablet. It gave me little sense of relief, but i had at last broken a barrier to be able to even talk about it. He was the only person, excluding therapists, that I had ever told about my CSA. And reliving those moments of discovering what he had done just made me feel sick to my stomach in that room. I was actually processing what had happened for the very first time.
At the end of our session, the therapist told me that by law she had to report what I had told her to the authorities. That sent my head spinning even more and my anxiety went through the roof. I spent those 4 days attending alanon meetings and back to back therapy. It's been a few weeks of continued work and I'm physically and emotionally exhausted. I'm a 29 year old man that has cried probably every day for the last 3 weeks. I need your help and support more than ever and am thankful that I have you guys here to reach out to.
Typing all of that has really taken it out of me. I'm heading off to try and get some sleep.
Night.
My S.O. had relapsed and cheated on me for the second time. They seem to go hand in hand since he found drugs on craigslist from gay men who were looking to 'party n play' the last time this happened. This time, he had gone missing for several days - left abruptly with no money, no clothes, left our dog, didn't go to work and no activity on our bank account or his iPhone. His family flew out here to help find him and we began looking into all possibilities as 2, 3, 4 and onward to a week passed.
I found out about the cheating by going through his phone bill and calling numbers I did not recognize. I talked to many people outside of our circle of friends, and 2 of which admitted to sleeping with him. The third agreed to meet me in person, and although he didn't tell me what happened, I knew. This sent me into a frenzy where I began turning over everything in the house looking to find even more evidence of him cheating. This is when it happened.
I found a second gmail account with a vague name he had been using, with craigslist ad response chains. Most of which were deleted to cover his tracks, but I found some still in the trash that had not been emptied. The one in question was him responding to someone looking for 'taboo' fun. When asked what he was into, he said "incest" and "yng". As i progressed through more trashed e-mails, amongst many of the usual "hey are you looking" and "can you host", there was a conversation with a guy about their interests and again the word "yng" came up.
He told this guy he had became very good at surfing the 'dark web' and had lots of content they could check out on an old tablet. I knew about his old tablet that was 'broken'. It had been broken for years though. I knew it was broken because it looked like shit and it was kept in a storage box under our bed with lots of other junk. I did not even know what the dark web meant until right then when I googled it to understand what was going on. That's when it happened.
I was completely broken. I really felt like I had an out of body experience in that moment. It was as if I had died. My entire life was just shaken. I can't even remember what happened after this, my memory of the rest of the day is just not there.
He turned up on Day #9 and me and his mother got him into rehab again. This time we sent him out of the city. I was so scared to lose him and so scared to leave him at the same time, and when he came back we were both so fragile that it seemed like there was no other option but to go on. I truly believed if I left him that he would commit suicide. And I thought if I was alone that maybe I would do the same. I held on tight, and when he started drinking again, it was ok and I just let it go. And when he began working late again, I didn't look into it. And when he started whitening his teeth and brushing them and buying way too much gum, I tried to look past it. I was totally in denial about what was happening and then it hit me right in the face again. Crystal Meth, hidden in the air conditioning vent. I made him leave and he went to sober living. I told him that was it.
From then on, I had an emotionless and numb journey of just not dealing with it. I distracted myself by working too much, exercising too much, drinking too much and just struggling to keep moving forward without dealing with what had happened. This is all I ever do. I do not deal with things, I either pretend they never happened or distract myself so that they do not consume my every thought. This process lasted me for many many months, and then in August I finally filed for divorce. That night, I had a breakdown. I experienced a panic attack like i have never felt, I cried uncontrollably, I thought I was having a heart attack, I called a suicide prevention hotline 3 times in the same night. I took the next 4 days off work and had block sessions with the therapist. I spilled everything, including the child pornography stuff he had referred to on his old tablet. It gave me little sense of relief, but i had at last broken a barrier to be able to even talk about it. He was the only person, excluding therapists, that I had ever told about my CSA. And reliving those moments of discovering what he had done just made me feel sick to my stomach in that room. I was actually processing what had happened for the very first time.
At the end of our session, the therapist told me that by law she had to report what I had told her to the authorities. That sent my head spinning even more and my anxiety went through the roof. I spent those 4 days attending alanon meetings and back to back therapy. It's been a few weeks of continued work and I'm physically and emotionally exhausted. I'm a 29 year old man that has cried probably every day for the last 3 weeks. I need your help and support more than ever and am thankful that I have you guys here to reach out to.
Typing all of that has really taken it out of me. I'm heading off to try and get some sleep.
Night.
