DH is in the armed forces and is away for the next few months, he left last weekend.
I miss him and I'm worried about him but I'm also feeling quite angry at him right now.
Before he left we were both a bit stressed and on edge, waiting for him to leave. It's always a difficult time, you try to be normal, try to cram in as much family time as possible, days out and trips to the park etc, DH does things around the house or with the car etc so he can feel that he has left us as prepared as possible, but all the time we know the deadline is looming and we are waiting for him to leave so sometimes it shows and instead we were a bit snappy with each other.
We've had problems with his parents for a long time now, I don't see them at all, DH sees them rarely. Because they knew he was going away they started to send messages asking/demanding to visit us and I think DH was worried they would turn up on the doorstep so in his last day at home he went to see them.
His parents are awful. They've spent his whole life bullying and manipulating him into thinking he and his siblings (DH is the youngest) are responsible for making them happy or causing them to have a mental breakdown and depression if they don't let their MIL have their own way.
They've tried to continue that throughout all the years we have been married and it's been hard but for most of the time I tried to tolerate them for DH's sake.
When we lost two babies to stillbirth and prematurity in the same year it nearly destroyed us. They witnessed our grief but I can't stay they really shared it, MIL was bullying me three days after our stillborn son was born demanding to know when we would be trying for another baby, asking for all the details of his birth, wondering allowed if it still hurts to give birth if your baby is already dead. At the time I was in a bubble of shock so it didn't really hit me until months later just how cruel she was being. She's had four children of her own, she must understand what giving birth is like for anyone.
When our daughter was born prematurely eleven months after we lost our son she survived for two hours before she died. MIL spent a lot of time telling me how my daughter does not count as their first granddaughter, why neither of my children are 'proper' grandchildren and how she obviously loves BIL's living children far more. When we finally had our DS, now age three, she started to make nasty comments about his brother and sister, ending with asking if our daughter was born with a whole face or not.
It was very distressing. DH did tackle them on it at the time but they are very good at manipulating him into believing it was our fault for being upset, that MIL spoke without thinking or that we misunderstood what she meant.
I made the decision to see less of them and in response they told lies about me to DH, to the rest of the family, stalked me with phone calls, letters and even following me in their car as I walked along the street. They would disown DH in one phone call and then weep in the next because he hadn't been to see them and deny they had every told him not to go.
They did their very best to destroy my marriage with their lies and accusations and so I stopped seeing them completely and refused to allow them to see DS either, after MIL tried to lift him off the floor as a nine month old by putting her hands around his neck. I'm scared of what she will say to him about his brother and sister and worried about how they will try to manipulate him as he grows older. I have also told PILs to stay away from our babies grave because of the things she has said about them. FIL supports her in everything she says and does to anyone else, even though he has also complained that he cannot cope with her stubbornness, controlling nature and need to have everything her own way.
Twice they almost succeeded in splitting us up because DH believed their lies and threatened not to come home. Once he had heard my side and realised they were lying he was sorry but on the second occasion they had pushed me too far and I was ill with what the doctor diagnosed as delayed grief related depression and panic attacks brought on by stress.
Anyway the point of telling you all of this is that when DH went to see them he was late back, only by just over half an hour but enough to worry me as the last time he saw them they upset him so much he just drove about for ages afterwards in a temper, trying to calm down instead of coming home.
He knew I was upset when he got back but apparently this visit had gone quite well so he told me that by worrying I was just making up trouble in my own head and it wasn't their fault, it was mine. And it probably was but I think they've given me plenty of reasons to worry about what goes on when they get the chance to speak to DH.
We had a small but really horrible argument which we then sorted out. We were due to go out to the cemetery to leave flowers for our babies before DH went away. When we got there we realised they had been before us, thrown away the flowers and left something else instead, something the cemetery ask people not to leave as they can encourage theft or vandalism, and which had marked the marble stone and was very difficult to clean off.
I feel it was a very deliberate thing to do, mostly done to make sure we knew it was them and nobody else and it has shaken me a lot. DH realised it was them straight away too but we very carefully didn't say anything about it because neither of us wanted another argument, especially not over our children's grave.
There were some other small things as well. Since all the trouble with them DH has been very quick to snap or sulk or take offence over nothing. He can even be annoyed by me reading a book because I am "ignoring him". I can say something just ordinary that he takes personally, snap at me and sulk about it and then if I challenge him he will deny it and say it's me causing trouble and that he was fine until I "just changed" and started to pick a fight.
I've started to feel really worn down by it all. I know it's not all him, like when he was late, but mostly he really does react like this over nothing, like me reading and 'ignoring him' or my not hearing something he said and asking him to repeat it (I am half deaf and having trouble with my good ear at the moment) especially if we are eating. He will say something and then put food in his mouth, I haven't heard and will ask him to say it again and he will be annoyed because he's chewing and thinks I've not heard him on purpose, so he will make a bit point of chewing and gesturing before snapping at me with whatever he said.
I'm not sure now if I feel so angry at him because he is away or because we didn't really talk or even fight about all the things before he went so they are festering a bit. He never used to be so angry at me so easily and if I could bring myself to see his parents again then I would do it for him because I know it hurts him even when they are so awful. But I am frightened of them and feel sick at the thought of being around them again.
But right now I feel angry at DH, angry at me, angry at them and although I love DH I know that more and more I really don't like him very much and I suspect he might feel the same about me sometimes.
And I know I need to talk about it but how, when he's away in a war zone for months now? It's not the sort of thing you can cram into a two minute Skype once a fortnight.
Not sure really what the point of posting is, just getting it out somewhere I suppose.