You need help. To break this cycle. You are not to blame. You are not to blame

My wife drank herself to death the night of her 29th birthday, 2011. We’d been together for 10 years, and I had been trying to force her into getting help for her alcoholism for the previous 4. 2 months before she died, I told her she had to go back to her mom’s place. I told her “I can’t watch you destroy yourself any more.”

That’s tragic man. Addiction is a slow-motion suicide and it’s an awful thing for anyone to go through, or to watch a loved one to go through. Just tragic… In your case it was alcoholism that took a person who you loved away, but it could have been so many other things too beyond either of your control, and it could still haunt you.

You can’t blame yourself for what happened to your wife, how you felt after, or even how it still effects you today. The truth is that you had every reason to be sad, angry, depressed, lonely, and more. Who the fuck wouldn’t feel like that, living through what you lived through?

Her death destroyed my career in the Navy. I lost my deployable status on submarines because I needed antidepressants, I couldn’t focus, my performance slipped even though I had landed a cushy shore rotation job, and a year after she died I decided not to reenlist.

Again, I don’t blame you. We live in a harsh world where you can lose someone who you love more than anything, changing your life forever, and people just expect you to come back into work and grind away at some bullshit?

From then, I’ve failed at everything I’ve attempted, gradually becoming less and less able to leave the house. I’ve lost so many jobs because I’d wake up in the morning and just couldn’t go anymore. The VA just tries to load me up with medications, even though I’ve been begging for trauma therapy for 12 years.

You need professional help to deal with this heavy shit man. There’s no shame in it. Figuring out how to come to terms and live with this is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your life. More important than work, more important than arbitrary social constructs like “success” or “failure”.

If the VA is failing to help you, well… You’re not the first vet to have been failed by our government… It’s not that they’re bad people, but let’s face it… if you relied on them to change your light bulb you’d spend the next 15 years sitting in the dark…

Look up trauma therapists in your area, some of them will be able to help you with costs or adjust their pricing based on a sliding scale of what you can afford. On top of that, you might want to look into social workers in your area to see if anyone can just help you with things that you need help with.

And try to get out of the house. This internet stuff is fine in small doses, but it’ll drive probably anyone crazy if it’s all you have. Even small things like going out for a walk around the block, going to the convenience store to buy a drink, and so on… Touching grass and even just making small talk with the people who you come across isn’t gonna solve your trauma or anything, but it’ll help you cope with the day to day. Try to get some kind of job going, maybe do something that you find rewarding or meaningful. Save up some cash and find a new hobby that you can get into that isn’t too expensive that’ll get you out of the house once a week. Hell, I’m an atheist, but if you need to join a religion to have an excuse to get yourself out there each week, then go for it.

I dunno, man. In the end of the day, what you’ve been through is just tragic. But your life isn’t over. I doubt your wife wanted her life to be over either, she just fell to addiction like many others. And though I don’t know her, I imagine that she wouldn’t want to think that she left you alone and suffering for the rest of your life. What would she say to you if she was here today? What would she want for you?

You’ve had 15 years of hell, but that doesn’t mean the next 15 years need to be hell too.

Good luck, buddy. I’m rooting for you, bro.