my failure as a savior and other personal theories

I heard this story on NPR today - about a Marine veteran whose life was ruined by a BCD (bad conduct discharge) for behavior caused by PTSD. Earlier in the morning I heard a similar story, similarly upsetting.

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/11/250283871/after-discharge-upgrade-marine-finally-finds-a-reason-to-live

Anyway, before I get lost in how upsetting I find this whole BCD business (after all, they ruined their lives for the service and as a thank you they get a persona-non-grata label slapped on for behavior they wouldn't have exhibited, wouldn't it have been for the psychological damage the war inflicted upon them in the first place.) ... Ok, so now I got it out anyway. But, what I wanted to actually discuss was the relationship between this vet (Michael Hartnett) and his wife, Molly. It made me cry, for I completely identified with what she was saying. That she felt like she couldn't give up on him. She couldn't leave him like everybody else had. ... That is exactly how I felt ... so many times, when my reason was telling me to go, when everyone, including his own family was telling me to leave him, and I couldn't. I couldn't tell him to go and be done with him.

But, ultimately, I did tell him exactly that. I failed him.
If you aren't religious, you aren't going to understand what I'm about to say .. but, at that moment, I realized that, if the purpose of my unconditional love for this man had been to save him, then I had failed God. I failed. I couldn't do "my job".

I was crying as I listened to Molly speak, begging for forgiveness. In fact, the tears in my eyes now, as I am recounting these thoughts, are making it difficult to write.

I tell myself that J couldn't be saved. That he was ill and that I brought him as far as I could on this journey together. In the beginning, he was a full-blown drug addict, violent, criminal, having alienated his entire family and all his friends, living with the conviction that nobody loved him. In his drunkenness, I have heard him whisper it so many times. And, last but not least, of course, the complete lack of connection to his young daughter. All this changed in the time I spent with him. When he died, he knew I loved him (he must have known it), he knew his mother loved him, he had left his criminal street dealing days in the past, he graduated from Columbia, he started building his own business, he had built a beautiful relationship with his daughter, he had begun to repair his friendships, and, I think, he recovered his faith in a greater power. J was hyper-religious (a side-effect of the bi-polar disorder) but, I never was quite sure, whether he actually believed in God. I think, when the goodness returned to his life and he began rebuilding everything, his faith in humanity and divinity returned. The latter, of course, can only be a speculation. I know, there had been times during which he very much believed in God. In fact, he once told me a terrifying story that left me speechless. It was in the beginning .. during his worst drug use days ... after his divorce ... his life feeling like not worth living. He had taken a gun from one of his dealer friends and marched up to the park behind his house to end himself. He told me how he sat on a park bench, crying, sobbing, putting a gun to his own head when a man, completely dressed in white appeared in front of him to stop him. Commanded him to stop. I don't remember the exact details but I have written them down somewhere, I think. But, it doesn't matter. Point is, that J had it in him .. spirituality.

I once heard someone say that the whole purpose of your life is to have faith and experience love. I'm going to have to look this one up because I want to get this right verbatim, however, the essence of the quote is there. I think, J left this life having finally found both of these conditions, if they are conditions to allow us to pass. ... Oh my, I'm hopeless ... "allow us" to pass. ... Clearly, I still have a death wish. I feel guilty when I catch myself practically excited about my time of death. It would devastate my children. I must not die. For a long time, anyway. Until my daughters are grown, with children, independent, and it seems natural for me to go. Gosh .. I really don't want to live that long. .. But, who knows, I may change my mind so let me not put that thought out there. God knows what happened the last time I thought about death. I can't remember if I wrote about this, yet, ... but ...

... there was a moment in time ... not too far in the past ... that I thought to myself, very frustratedly, that I would never leave this guy; that he was the one for me - despite everything - and that my life was just going to be this roller-coaster and I'd better accept it, for this is what a bi-polar disorder (or whatever it was that was wrong with him) will bring with it. The only way this relationship will end is if one of you two dies. Literally, til death do us part, I thought to myself. I remember clearly, thinking exactly this ... and being annoyed and angry about this supposedly romantic notion, which was so utterly unromantic. Unconditional love isn't easy. It's f--in' hard and it's no-one's choice. It just happens.

Could I really have willed him to death? Let me just say that I am careful these days about what I put out "into the universe" as my new-agey friends call it. There is something about it. "The universe", or whatever dynamic this is which makes life happen, doesn't seem to distinguish between good and evil. It's whatever wave or direction you put yourself on .. or whatever wave you're included in .. if you think on a bigger scale. That's just a theory, of course. One of my many speculations about this thing called life.