Thanks, both of you guys, I know we're all in this together.  And, lankylozenge, it really resonates when you say you had to give yourself permission to think about that forbidden thought.

I try to keep my brain focused, but late at night I wake up and I"m so, so, so angry with the judge who pushed the dogshit settlement on me.  He treated me like I was the problem, he didn't believe what I'd tried to show him about my husband's stealing money.  He forced a deal on me like a used-car salesman, the deal memorandum I had to sign said I wasn't under any emotional duress even though I was crying.  It said I had not been pressured into entering into the deal, even though he was repeatedly telling me that the next judge who saw me would be twice as punitive, and that he was saving me from this fate worse than death.  In reality, though, he didn't have my best interest in mind.  He wanted to force any settlement he could get, collect his fee, and leave.

I'm going to be living at a poverty level for the rest of my life, and my husband will enjoy an affluent retirement using the money he stole from me.  I have reminders on an hourly basis of how little money I have available to me, and the problem with "moving on" and keeping my thoughts positive, is that every tiny little reminder of my financial situation is another reminder of how much that judge fucked me over, and how he sided with my crooked lying stealing philandering gasbag of a husband.

I"m not sure whether I believe in karma.  I mean, I think back to this one time, when my daughter was little and I was working, she got sick, and I took a day to take care of her, but the next day at work was a really important court appearance and my boss really wanted the whole team to be there first thing in the morning.  My babysitter told me she'd be able to get to my house by the afternoon, but I had nobody to cover me for the morning.  My POS husband volunteered that he was really slow at work and would stay home.  I should have known he was really up to something, because the last thing he'd ever do is sit with a sick child.  Anyway, I was keeping a written list of what time I'd given her medicine, what her temperature was, etc.  I went over all the instructions with my POS husband.  So that night (the night before my important thing at work), my husband went out.  I stayed up with my daughter all night, and he was out till 5 a.m.  In the middle of the night, I realized I'd used the last of the childrens tylenol, so my husband would have to run to the store (about 3/4 mile away) as soon as it opened in the morning, because she'd need her next dose at 9 a.m. or her fever would spike.  So before I left for work, I woke my husband and told him he absolutely needed to get that tylenol and make sure she had the 9 a.m. dose.  When I got to work, we had to turn our phones off (these were the old-fashioned kind, so they didn't vibrate or anything).  At 12:30 we were done, and when I turned on my phone, there was a long, long list of missed calls from the house.  I was panicked.  I called the house, and my daughter picked up, begging me please to come home, that she didn't feel well, that she had a temperature, please mamma come home right now, where are you why didn't you pick up.  I asked her where Daddy was, and she said he was sleeping.  he hadn't given her the medicine.  He hadn't fed her.  He hadn't given her liquids to keep her fever down.

So I raced home, stopping just long enough to grab the tylenol, and got home about 1 p.m.  My POS husband was fast asleep, snoring away.  I took care of my daughter first, and then went down and woke him up and he was all like "What are you doing home?"  I was so angry I couldn't even bring myself to yell at him.

As I said, I don't believe in karma, but I hope that was the night my husband got HIV.

Another forbidden thought, but I can't help it.  I hope that was the night.  And, even though I know that these days HIV is no longer a death sentence ... part of me hopes he finds out first-hand what it feels like to be sick and abandoned with nobody to give you medicine or care whether you are suffering.  I hope he learns that first-hand.

I don't want to simply blame my longtime GID narcissistic, emotionally abusive wife for my own mental health struggle.  However, so many things have become so much clearer once she came out.  I always knew she was manipulative and narcissistic.  I knew she was controlling me.  I figured she must love me if she was bothering to do that, and that if I just worked hard enough and became successful - became the husband she wanted - I could make her actually love and respect me.  Hahaha.

After almost 2 decades of denial in every form, I could no longer contain my muttering.  "I'm going to kill myself."  People were scared of me.  They could see the incredible strain I was under but they figured that I was faulty and that my outward image obsessed wife was the healthy one.  Or that is the way she made it seem to everyone.  

"I'm going to kill myself."

I still say it every day, even if I don't think I mean it.

If anyone is having suicidal thoughts, call your local Suicide Prevention Hotline immediately. Their telephone staff is well-trained and can save lives.

I am not trained and will always give the answer above if someone states they are thinking of dying by suicide.