I nearly cried last night.
I've finally come to understand that I am the bad guy in my marriage. I've spent a full decade feeling noble and virtuous and aggrieved, all while doing nearly limitless damage to my husband's heart, mind, and finances.
Tonight, I finally comprehended the breadth and depth of what I've done to him.
I am poison in human form. I am-- there is no way to sugar-coat this-- evil. (I am not a religious person, so the idea of evil is not exactly a core part of my worldview. This is rather new for me.)
At an absolute minimum, I need to be walled away from all other things innocent human beings.
(I should note that this is not my original reason for being suicidal. That's been the case for 40 years, and more intensely true since March or so.)
I need to start doing a better job of protecting him. Because, as the saying goes, "hurt people hurt people," I need to insulate him completely from my pain. I thought I was doing that, but I have to level that up by several orders of magnitude.
I have to change all of my priorities, all of my behavior. I have to stop being me, because my "me" is a form of cancer. He almost died of cancer once, I can't let that happen again. (That's right-- all the horrible things I was doing, I did to a *cancer patient.* If anyone needs proof that I'm a monster, there it freaking is.)
And then, as soon as I possibly can, I need to leave here. It's the only way to protect him decisively. It would be better, I think, if I could wait on CTB until I've left the marriage. A layer of anger and hate will help him get past my death more easily. I don't have the resources to leave yet, so I have to focus on that. (I have sounded him out several times this year about whether he would feel better if I absented myself and gave him space and he says he doesn't want that. If he did want it-- or even if he wasn't able to affirmatively and enthusiastically say that he wanted me here-- I would leave immediately, even if it meant sleeping on the street. )
The first time we really had to talk about my being suicidal was 10 years ago, right before the interval where I wrecked absolutely everything. I wish to heaven that I hadn't told him. I wish I'd just stayed firm, kept silent, and proceeded with my plan.
If I'd killed myself then, all of this could have been avoided.
We're now in the worst of all possible worlds, and in a thousand ways both microscopic and macroscopic, it is my fault, and my fault exclusively. To the extent that I'm going to live at all, I have to live with what I am, and what I've done.