Brace yourselves, long story.
There’s probably far too much detail but I felt like I needed to explain my whole situation.
Back in late 2017 I got married to my then partner of 5 years. Everything seemed perfect our families got on amazingly & it was a laugh a minute.
2 weeks after our wedding my husband woke in the night claiming he could hear someone in the house, he crept half way down the stairs, looking extremely paranoid & then out of nowhere had a seizure & fell to a heap at the bottom.
He was checked over in A&E was sent for a CT scan & sent home.
Come beginning of December I found out I was pregnant, all seemed good again.
Then the night paranoia started again, no more seizures, just a lot of pacing the bedroom, turning lights on & defending himself from things that weren’t there. We went to the doctors & he was referred to the neurological department where he had eeg scans & sleep studies all which came back negative (for obvious reasons, which I will get to)
I continued to deal with the strange way my husband was acting for months, often feeling sorry for him & worrying about him. I even left work early when he’d locked himself in the bathroom & phoned me too scared to come out because he thought someone was in the house.
Come October & baby arrived. I’d had such a wonderful pregnancy & though my labour didn’t go quite as planned (induction & emergency section) I was still caught up in that newborn bubble.
A couple weeks past & hubby went back to work. While I was home alone one day my MIL popped over to see me & ds & chat about what was going on with hubby. She asked one question & everything made sense. “Do you think it could be drug related?” How could I not have seen this? I was so caught up in my newlywed/pregnancy/newborn bubble that I’d completely ignored all the signs. An unusual amount of cash withdrawals all of similar amounts, constantly blowing his nose & the odd behaviour.
Maybe a week or so later I ended up in day surgery due to mastitis from bf & needed incision & drainage surgery. Hubby was at work so my parents came to look after ds while I was in surgery. Hubby had agreed to pick me & ds up when I was out of surgery, but hours had past & he’d left us & decided cocaine was more important. My parents who live 30 miles in the opposite direction ended up driving me home after realising he wasn’t going to turn up.
Late November came & the blocked milk duct came back, but this time I ended up with sepsis & another incision & drainage surgery.
So now I’ve had 2 surgeries, whilst looking after & still breastfeeding an almost 2 month old & a hubby with a drug problem.
The new year comes & my grandma passes away which means I have to drive 8 hours to germany with a now 3 month old. Hubby didn’t come with, he couldn’t get the time off.
While I was away he’d decided he wanted to move house, I was completely fine with this, we’d been renting the same place for years & an extra bedroom & garden seemed like a good thing. Also I stupidly assumed that if we moved to a different town he wouldn't have easy access to his dealer. How wrong I was. Through the coming months I confronted him & did all I could to help. Doctors appointments, substance 2 solution, turning point, even narcotics anonymous. He just pretended to go to them & picked up or didn’t go at all.
As money was getting tight due to his habit & the huge mass of previous debt I had since found out about, I ended up helping out at the village pub. Just a few hours 3 nights a week. This was all going well until I came home one night to find hubby off his face locked in the bathroom with ds in the bath. So MIL decided to step in & watch them both while I worked. Unfortunately it didn’t stop him & he carried on behaving irresponsibly. Obviously I’d stopped feeling sorry for him now & started feeling angry, but often times also depressed & suicidal.
My maternity leave was coming to an end & I had to make the decision on whether to return to work. Well that was an easy no, my anxiety was through the roof, I was having counselling, we now lived a 45min drive away from where I worked, I had no childcare & here’s the kicker, I worked with hubby’s bosses sister. So obviously he didn’t like the idea of me possibly opening my mouth & getting him sacked.
So my pay stopped & I ended up with another added stress.
Part of me kept telling myself this is what i deserved, it was my fault & it can’t be that bad if nobody is helping me. When one day the power went out at the pub & I phoned hubby to see if he could help out. Immediately I could tell he wasn’t all there. I phoned my mum in a mad panic as I didn’t know what to do because I was at work & couldn’t get away. She phoned my SIL to pick up ds & told me to pick him up after work & then drive to theirs. This was the first time my SIL had seen what I’d been dealing with for the past year & it terrified her. She’s a mother of 3 & couldn’t believe that someone would do that around their own child.
So after years of trying to help him, even after being lied to, stolen from & treated like crap I finally told him at the end of Feb that I wanted to separate. I’d realised that I had lost all love for him & could handle the way he made me feel. He has agreed & told the letting agents that come August when our lease ends we won’t be renewing. Things have all taken a bit of a halt due to lockdown, but I thought I should still attempt to get the ball rolling. My only issue now is that me & my 1yo ds have nowhere to go. I have no income, I only get child benefit & have no way of affording to rent somewhere. I am lost as to where to go or who to speak to for advice? Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction or are things about to get a hundred times worse?
Thank you for taking your time to read!