Learning to say "No"

This week, I have learned to say, "No".

I have learned to say, "No, it was not my fault".

For the first decade together, my husband and I struggled to cope with the fits he had, caused by diabetic hypoglycaemia. There was then a gap of 5 glorious fit-free years before he began having semi-regular seizures again.

I wrote about it at the time, here

and here

The very first time he had a convulsion, I blamed myself. I hadn't spotted the signs of hypoglycaemia in time, even though I knew he was diabetic, and I didn't take the correct action. I even got angry with him because he was acting so strangely.

I was told by a doctor at one stage that a first fit often paves the way for others. I felt that if only I could have stopped this first fit from happening, then he never would have had any. If only I had noticed in time, been more intuitive, been less suspicious, been more alert, been a better person...

But that's bullshit. Even if it hadn't happened sooner or later, I didn't cause his fits, because I didn't cause his diabetes. I did the best I could at the time.

Neither was it my fault that he continued to have them, and continued to not manage his diabetes as well as he could have. I wasn't a failure as a wife, it wasn't because I was a bad person, and not loving enough, supportive enough, caring enough. It was, and is, his own responsibility to manage his condition. I've always poured out my love, my support, my care, onto him. That's got nothing to do with why he has seizures. It is HIS job to take care of himself, first and foremost.

When he began having fits again, I was away over in Hastings with my partners of the time. I felt guilty for not being present when it happened, and I believed I might have prevented it if I had been. One of the partners in question was angry with me, unreasonably, on a matter unrelated to my husband's illness. She cut off communication with me for a while, and this compounded the feeling that I'd done something terrible and wrong, which I was being punished for. Somewhere along the line I connected the two things and deep in my heart, I felt I had caused my husband's fits to re-occur.

But that's bullshit. It was not, and is not, my fault. I had done nothing wrong, now or then.

I knew all this intellectually, but on sunday night I woke up at 4am, knowing it, unquestionably to be true, in my heart.

And so in such small ways are we healed.

The last year of my life.