Feeling bad about my mild irritation at his self pity

[isilme]

Ugh.  H is going on 6 days of flank pain from likely a 2nd kidney stone in that many days.  He passed one this weekend, thought he was okay, then the pain ramped right back up Sunday, was bad enough I got prepped for another ER visit in case it's too large to pass.  Instead, it's kinda just sitting there.  The pain was terrible Sunday until about 4am, then it hovered all day yesterday and he stayed home hoping it would pass.  It did not.  He is at work today, but is still in pain.

I am not mad at him.  I just get tired of the refrain that starts, "I am broken, I am dying, I am useless, I'm going to get fired, I am geriatric at 40, I am as useless as (name of former friend who sponges off his wife and smokes pot all day and passes out in his yard), I deserve this for haw bad a person I am, you married a lemon... ."  

I know he feels bad physically so of course, he feels bad emotionally.  And I know in my head he has trouble managing those emotions.  And I don't respond to or encourage these comments, but also try to not be invalidating about them either.  I know kidney pain is supposed to be one of the worst a person can feel - some people say it tops even childbirth.  

It's just wearing.  I am a very light sleeper.  I've been having chronic sinus-migraines all winter that seem to have morphed to include the occipital nerve in my skull, so my head is kinda hurting off and on most days, stabbing, mirgainey stuff, and I don't want to be drugged to treat it.  Any disturbance in his sleep wakes me so I've had pretty much no sleep the last two nights (not his fault, I insisted he sleep on the bed as it's better for both our backs), but I am sitting waiting for him to say, "yes, it's hurting at about 7 out of 10, lets go the ER", I am working, I am trying to do normal house stuff and find time to exercise, I made it to the grocery store yesterday since we were out of everything, and got home so tired, but still could not sleep.  

So I know my own reserves are low, and I am mad at myself for feeling irritated at his constant string of "I am dead and dying," comments.  He has a right to feel how he feels, and I do not need to share it, agree with it, or fix it.  

I just needed to type that out.  I am trying to remind myself of that above so I can refrain from being the cause for a fight.  

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[Tattered Heart]

I totally understand. It's hard to hear the same complaints day in and day out. When you are not feeling well yourself it just adds to the irritability. You feel bad about getting irritated with him. Why? What self talk of your own triggers that?

What makes him think he will get fired?

[isilme]

I get frustrated with wallowing in self-pity.  There are times he does it when I know he has the power to change things and so I feel I've used up my resevoir for coping with the self-pity over that (I'm ugly, I feel fat, I ahve no friends - none of which is true, he is not fat, he is not ugly, and he has friends but he exerts litle ffort to spend time with them) and now he's got a genuine concern but the broken record keeps going, but it's shifted to another track. 

His job - he was in a job for about 5 years before this one which triggered many of his health issues, but his lack of documentation and not following my advice to get checked out by a MD WHEN things happened made it unprovable, and his boss was pretty much on par with my mom in her manipulation skills, and she painted him black.  BPD meets BPD/NPD and she won.  It was in a preservation vault.  Humidity free, UV light free, kept cold), like when they refused to let him stay warm with a small space heater (other employees had them) and he came home essentially with hypothermia multiple times from working in 60 degree weather at a desk, processing historical materials and programming a database to catalog them.  At least if he'd been moving around outside, his body would have warmed.  Instead, he'd come home and be freezing until I stuck in the hottest water in a shower he could stand.  The boss was good at the "game" and made herself out to be a poor victim of the men in her office (when she actually liked to grab them and shove them) and under the protected statuses of our workplace, she was the person the workplace feared the most about legal action, so all younger male complaints were written off.  He was also the one assigned to remove mold from old books - everyone else claimed an allergy (it's mold, no one should be exposed) so even with the PPE, he developed sinus issues and his immune system stopped working as well as it did when he ran an after-school daycare and was around snotty children for hours.  So, he'd be on the brink of using up all his hours being out sick, and the boss would tell him he could make up hours if he needed to, and then tell her boss she gave no such permission. 

Anyway, we decided it would be better for him to leave that place and not work at all than to stay under her foot.  A miracle happened, and another posting for another information science job, in our town, in the SAME complex of buildings but with a different management group was open, he was selected, and he got it.  But his self-worth was seriously shaken, as tenuous as it was to start, and he is now convinced all bosses are out to get you fired, some are just nicer than others.  And he has some serious health issues now, and with us going to see specialists and trying to get him treated, he is still using up a lot of his time.  So he is convinced he will be fired.  This then falls down the line of Isilme will then leave him.  He will end up living in his mother's attic.  He will die alone. 

He had to leave work at lunch today, the pain was too great.  His current boss has had stone herself, so I am hoping she does not come down on him if he's a few hours short this period.  I am just tired myself, I feel useless to help, all I can do is be on standby to get him to the ER to get scanned if it does not come out and the pain stays/gets worse.