I think I need help dealing with his illness. It sometimes overwhelms me, scares me, makes me feel helpless. and I've been feeling lately that the therapist isn't helping me, cos she is his therapist firstly. everything she does or says comes from the primary goal of helping him learn how to live with his illness. I feel lately like that's not helping me, at least not in the same way I had hoped it would. She doesn't respond to my messages or emails anymore either. and there is literally no one I can reach out to, who would understand or help me when he is in that frame of mind, expressing it as anger directed at me. sometimes it feels like there's been no progress at all. sometimes I feel my life is not mine. sometimes I don't know how I will smile tomorrow and forget. and how I will deal with it again because there will be an again. cos this is not going away. the therapist told him in his session today that he was much better. and soon after that we were watching a movie he thought was brilliant and I disagreed and thought was bad because I felt it was trying to create horror out of (what seemed to me) terrible tragedy and bad parenting (possibly a mentally ill mother); that caused him to be annoyed at me and when I didn't understand why it turned soon into anger and accusations. I have walked out many times, sometimes out of the room, sometimes out the front door without a purse or warm clothes, just to preserve myself. I have also tried shutting up, holding his hand, listening, ignoring, trying to reason, ... nothing helps till it passes, and that can sometimes take very long and is unbearable while it lasts. it's like he can't take it that I don't share his anger and he keeps lashing out trying to invoke it in me too. anything I say then gets distorted in his mind. and when he starts shouting I just can't think anymore, I feel trapped and constrained, I feel numb and tired and I want to hide or run.

when we did not live together it was easier. I would shut my phone off or throw it under a pillow. he would go on calling till he got tired. and I waited for him to cool off, for it to pass. now there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to wait. 

and yet most of the time I am glad we finally live together. especially in this pandemic. and when I hear news of death. today I heard from another friend who has lost her husband. I gasped when I read her email, I knew he was sick but I didn't think he would pass away. 

life is unreal.