Why is he getting worse?

[isilme]

Back. Huge ugly fight last night, he poured a drink over my head, told me he had thought about killing me.  God, how that sounds.  I am still numb, haven’t let myself cry, just been dead all day.  Maybe he is killing me, I’m just still breathing.  Maybe he is dying, and just trying to take me with him.

NOTE: I have no where to go.  Telling me to leave isn’t something I can really do.  No family.  No shelters. No friends I’d tell this to.  At best, I can go try to sleep on the floor in my office, where there is no heat over the weekend.  And hope the custodial staff doesn’t call the security on me.

Had 3 days of travel Monday to Wednesday.  He had to go to a meeting at ‘the mothership’ for both our jobs.  We work for separate entities under one main conglomeration.  I arranged with my work to also go, set up a meeting with one of my remote superiors, and helped drive 5 hours there.  Prayed the whole time it would be ok, and other than him getting a migraine the morning we left, leaving me driving the 5 hours back without a break, which is honestly normal-he’s willing to drive part way up, never the way back home, it was an ok trip. 

He tried to pick a fight a few times Thursday, but I caught it, avoided it.   Yesterday, he said he had a cold, I think I do too, but that never matters.

Got of work, things seemed ok, even though I wasn’t able to meet him for lunch, I had a presentation. 
Strike 1.

A blanket on the bed apparently had cat vomit on it and he said nothing, so I didn’t change it (and of course he didn’t change it)
Strike 2. 

Changed it when he mentioned it yesterday, cat promptly gets sick on the foot side corner.  I clean it up, but blanket 1 is still washing, so I leave number 2 in place in case of another sick cat, until I can swap them again when number 1 is dry. 
Strike 3. 

I ask him about dinner, he wants pizza.  Ask if he wants it now, no, he wants to try to nap, and doesn’t want pizza cold.  Fine.  We doze a little, he’s snoring loudly, by 9 I figure we need to eat, not sleeping, so I ask, I order.  10 pm pizza arrives. Last week it was burnt, had garlic all over the crust.  This week was not burnt, no crap on crust, so I tell him it’s not burnt.  I’d ordered  his request cinnamon rolls, and some stuffed bread for me. 
Strike 4

He comes in 30 minutes after the pizza arrives, looks at it, states it looks like crap.  He says this often about food, so it meant nothing to me.  My pizza looked off, too, but I’m exhausted, have a cold or something myself, and just want to sit down and watch a movie, relax, have a decent night.  On impulse, I’d grabbed a beer from the fridge, a Guinness, to have with my pizza
Strike 5

He comes in, with his plate, and starts in on the pizza, sees me struggling to grab my blanket from the armchair I use and I drop a slice of pizza.  Apparently a cat had yet again gotten sick on this blanket, I did not see it being cognitively challenged and half blind from being tired, I am griped at for being clumsy, I’m too tired for this crap, I snap back that it’s not as if I meant to drop things.  I sit, use the blanket I did not know was soiled.
Strike 6

He starts telling me I need to check pizza while on the porch and send it back.  I say I need him to look at his own pizza and can’t juggle boxes with the delivery person itching to go by myself.  That I need him to look at food when it’s delivered, not 30 minutes to an hour later.  Explosion.

He hides from anyone at the door.  He lurks by it, listening to me half the time, so he can criticize how I interacted with who ever visited.  I can ditch salespeople, missionaries, and people he’s hired in the past for yard work who ripped us off.  He never goes to get food, he never orders food, he never steps outside to check it or bring it in. So I just called him out on this weird behavior.

By now, his sugar is low (for him.  He never measures, runs high, so my guess is ‘low’ meant meat 130, 115).  He has a fever. He has pent up stress from the trip he never released.  He’s tired.  He k owe I a, tired and resents it. His assistant has been ‘disrespecting’ him by prioritizing her class work and projects over her part time job with him.  He wanted to go yell at her professors, or her, over this on Thursday.  He made the weird comment, ‘she likes them more than me’.  Showing his boundaries are effed up and he sees it as an affront. 

He explodes, tells me I am a fat obese slob who likes sitting in cat vomit, piss and PLEASE READ.  I have no business eating bread cuz I a, so fat, no business drinking ‘his’ beer (been in the fridge a year, claims he can’t drink it anymore), I’m an ugly slob, lazy, he’s tired of my mast cell bullPLEASE READ, I’m not sick like he is, I can’t understand what he goes through, the pizza is crap, we’re not having Halloween this year because I just effed it up for him, no pumpkins no going anywhere, nothing.  Lots of crap is said.  Rants about how I ruined his weekend because I’m too stupid to recognize the pizza was crap, storms off, says he’s going to bed.

I sit in my chair.  I freeze when it’s like this.  Y’all are the only ones I tell the unvarnished story to.

I commence writing to Pizza Hut demanding a refund for the ‘meal’, since calling them routes me to a city two hours away, and writing has helped in the past.  I ty to eat, my pizza is also pretty yucky, cold, and I am too upset.

He comes out in an hour, tells me I’m just like his mom, letting him starve like she lets his dad starve, he’s not going to be married to a fat obese pig who sits in her own urine and in cat vomit. 

(Had a horrifying incident several years back.  Went to visit for Christmas. The parents are hoarders.  The high strung sister was coming.  Nothing at all had been cleaned.  13 people were coming to eat, there wasn’t even seating for us.  The mom has incontinance problems, apparently peed herself before she could run to the bathroom.  She sleeps, lives on a love seat in the living room.    It has a plastic sheet, and towels on it, we presume to catch the urine

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

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[isilme]

It cut most of my story, didn’t see I was over the limit.  The parents living conditions are bad, but technically they are cognizant adults even if they don’t understand email, so until things change on that front, we can’t go ‘fix’ them. 

So he is accusing me of being his mom.  She’s on his mind, the holidays are coming. He’s decided I am her, even though he’s the bad diabetic who does no chores and sits in the living room all day, making snippy comments at me.

He poured the beer on me.  Accused me of being fat and happy while he was starving.  I was supposed to have magicked food into the house while he was ‘going to bed’.  He’s never wanted me to take food back, he insists it will be spit on, so I didn’t not consider doing this.  He claims it’s because I have no standards, I am lazy and slovenly. 

I take the bad pizza, go to the store, they look at me and I must haven been a mess, they had no argument, refunded everything, remade his pizza. 

I get home, still yells at me for an hour and a half, tells me he doesn’t  want me in the room, yay, I can leave and he won’t follow.  Take my shower, prepare for bed, he comes in after a while, snores, so I leave for the couch as usual.

He’s not said a thing today.  I am just acting ‘normal’.  I washed everything he claimed was contaminated by the cats he never cleans up after, and have just been a zombie today. 

What is happening?  He is getting worse.  Are the migraines causing him to be even more erratic, more violent?  Is it his sugar?  I know high and low sugar mess with moods and can make you kind of crazy, but seriously?  We had improved.  He is spiraling right now.  He’s close to losing it with his student assistant.  He loses it on me about once a week or two, now.  I’ve lost 14 lbs since August, I’m down a size in pants.  He’s having trouble fitting his.  But he calls me ugly fat and lazy, downplays my own illness, I can’t even talk to him about it, but I’m still supposed to feel sexy on cue.  Undercooked pizza is grounds for hours of shouting and abuse.  WTH. 

Seriously.  What is going on?  He claims I have ‘changed’ and he can tell all I do is quietly tell him FU.  That I hate him like I hate my dad and argue with him like I did my dad, who was right to beat me. 

Note: I lived in total terror of my dad.  He grabbed knives and threaten to murder suicide all of us. Often.  He beat me as long as I can remember, back to age 2.  I had bruises I had to hide in long clothes, and two permanent marks in my arms from being grabbed and shaken.  I don’t care what a 2 year old says, nothing warrants beatings with a belt that a 42 year old can remember. 

H is confusing me with his sister, who openly fought with the parents.  With his mom.  What is causing this?  Is he having a break? 

[isilme]

I still can’t feel a lot.  I know a big part was the low sugar, but wth did he let it get that low?  He claimed I refused to get him food.  He’s in a fantasy of being the victim he sees his dad being.  I run my ass off to feed him.  I clean house regularly.  If anyone is his mom, it’s him.  He’s the one hoarding crap, can’t even let me toss junk mail ( I hide it in gross trash so he won’t stop me tossing it. He pulls it out of the bag if he sees it, outs it in a shred box that never gets shredded.). Anyway, he usually eats an apple if he knows he’s not eating dinner soon. 

I’ve got a 102 fever of the thermometer is right.  Going to take my shower.  Maybe the tears will come. I can cry pretty quietly.  I just need to k ow where I can ask why he’s doing this more and more.  Since last year, Halloween actually, he’s been on a spiral. 

[Chosen]

Hi isilme,

I'm so sorry you're going through this.  It sounds like a fun weekend... not!  I follow your posts when I come on here because it seems like our Hs behave rather similarly.  I don't have an answer as to why it's getting worse in your case; do you think he is feeling worse off physically these days?  That would definitely cause them to lash out more.  Or you have changed the way  you react to him (e.g. you used to react to him doing something, or be overly apologetic about it, but now you don't anymore)?  It *could* be an extinction burst because he feels he is losing control?  I remember you said you've recently been diagnosed with some illness.  Maybe he feels that he is no longer the "victim" and he subconsciously want to stay in the victim role?  I mean, it's a lot easier when he's the only one who's ill and it's everybody else's fault...

I just want to say that I know how it feels.  Maybe not completely, but part of it.  uBPDh would often say I'm just like his dad and my dad (i.e. the "black sheep" in the family).  Mind you, these were the ones who abandoned their families, were irresponsible with money & relationships, and so on.  I haven't done those things but to my H, I'm just as bad because I've ruined his life just as our dads ruined ours, and he is the victim.  I used to react to this accusation big time, because I was really hurt that he would compare me to these people, but I don't anymore.  Whatever.  In a way I try to detach from those accusations and logically attribute it to his black/white thinking.  Since he is (and must be white), then I must be black.  His hurts must have been caused by me. 

Also, I guess pwBPDs have a self-destruct mode.  Like they could do something to help themselves, to make the situation go from bad to better, but instead they usually take a route which takes it from bad to worse just so they could put all the blame on you.  I've heard countless times how I've ruined his entire weekend.  I mean, I might have made some wrong decisions and said wrong things, but he has a choice on how to react too.  For instance, he could choose to just shut up instead of yelling at me for hours.  But he would choose the yelling instead and also yell at me more because I "made" him yell at me and now his throat hurts.

Sorry I'm rambling on.  I don't have any answers to offer.  Just want to say I know this sucks.

[isilme]

Chosen,

Thank you for replying.

I don't come for answers most of the time - I know the big answers are: stay, if a miracle happened and it was available ehre -  therapy, or leave.  I've done about 10 years of working fro radical acceptance, of looking at it as a disability, of working to be less codependent but also try to be mindful of perceived abandonment.  I think the change he's mentioning and the change he's mad about IS me being ill, predominantly because I am so tired all the time I am actually a dead zombie with few feelings (it's not the meds, I am just tired, moving forward on what remains of my force of will) so my reactions are likely different to him.  He's never liked me needing sleep, in the past it seems he felt abandoned by me being unconscious, while he fights sleep like a toddler, hates it, even though his body desperately needs it. 

Now, if I doze off on the couch, or even sitting up in my chair, it makes him think of me as his mom who sleeps on the couch/lives on the couch in the main front room on the old family home (I am assigned that role as I am female, regardless of whether it fits.  She is a predominant cause of his OC/BPD, I am sure, now.  His birth father was abusive, not sure in what ways, the mom left him when H was 4, his sister was about 8.  She moved home, ended up getting remarried and pregnant with H's little brother and going back to school all in quick succession - the middle child felt super abandoned and had the right chemical make up.  All 3 kids have major issues.  The sister hides them best through rigid schedules and attempting to appear super successful.  The little brother is the opposite, H believes he's the only one the parents look down on, has all this bad luggage in his brain).

There is also a cognitive delay I've noticed when I am especially tired or feeling poorly.  The mast cells release a lot of chemicals I don't need, and some interfere in the brain, make thinking sluggish, brain fog, and cause migraines.  He reads mistakes of forgetfulness stemming from this, me struggling to speak with the right words, or slowness as me not caring about him.  I've spent about 2 years pretty much in a prodrome/postdrome state.  My IQ tested stupidly high when I was 7.  Online tests still have me up there, so I get frustrated when I can't speak quite right.  Migraine can cause a form of aphasia like a stroke.  It's not that I am incapable of saying the words, they just fly away, out of my brain, and I am stuck paraphrasing my original statement on the fly.  Part of my "handling" of him relies on word choice, so having that impaired hasn't helped I guess. 

And, I think he feels guilt sometimes over being pretty much no help to me.  So that has to be made my fault.  And makes it important to downplay or deny my illness.

Thinking back, I think since 2015 he's had a major issue this time of year, literally Halloween.  Fall reminds him of family and so it's always been an issue, but not this bad. 
2015 - He got mad I was having fun at a party, accused me of being too loud and drunk (we'd just gotten there, I was saying hi to people and getting compliments on being Catwoman), it made me self conscious for the rest of the night, he gave me the cold shoulder so I didn't have much fun.  The next year he got mad a cat had been locked in a room for a few hours and NEITHER of is checked (but it's my fault) so he shoved me in the room and shut the door on me telling me to just sleep in there and see if I like it.  I was tired, and yes, scared, so I just stayed in there until I felt he was sleep.  2017 may have gone ok, last year we were at the Ren Fest so he blew up multiple times because we came home a day before he was ready.  And now this year. 

He has a cold, tried to blame it on me, but I didn't have one until he got sick.  Claims that's what makes him angry.  I have a hard time telling when I have a cold and when I'm just having a bad day as it is, and now that I am on treatment which consists of double the normal dose of 3 antihistamines think don't feel the same for me.  I mostly run fevers.  102 yesterday.  Said nothing, just went to the store, did laundry, cleaned. 

He's home this morning, I'm at work.  He tried to poke at me a bit about a t-shirt he asked me to order for his assistant.  He told me she was a small, didn't confirm which shirt design for weeks finally did, then tells me the small looks too small.  So I exchanged it, it just arrived, but he's pissed she didn't have it for an event this weekend... that we did not know about when we ordered it but now is the sole reason we ordered it?

I went out on a limb, started following a BPD page on Reddit for people with it, but those without are welcome as long as everyone stays civil.

I posted Friday's events. People with BPD told me BPD was no excuse for that behavior.  One PM'ed me, tried to explain splitting.  It helped a little.  I'll try to revise it to share without direct quotes so others can see what one pwBPD says it's like.  It' helped make a little sense of what H is saying, and now how he can get certain ideas into his head that to me come from left field.

Just hoping to get through this week and not have anything more.  I am very tired.  He's put on a little weight, just enough to make him snore again.  Loudly.  He used to snore a lot, but when he lost weight (we did not know it was the onset of diabetes, his body was essentially starving itself, unable to process what he was eating) it stopped.  I don't want to assume each night I will be on the couch, but lately, each night I will wake up and he's sawing away, and it's a foot from my head, I wear SleepPhones, can't do earplugs (cause infections), no noise drowns out the loudest bursts, so I move to the living room, take my iPad as an alarm, and may or may not move back to bed before it's time to get up.

Of course, this too distresses him, convinces him I hate him.  I'm not mad he snores.  It happens.  I'm just tired and need sleep, but I'm not allowed to do it.