(CW suicide/SH, Substance abuse, Eating disorder)

I'm 29 and been divorced for two years now but we were separated three years before the divorce happened.

Anyway, today I watched a series again that I watched alot of shortly after the separation. After just 20 minutes into the episode I found myself getting extremely emotional and instantly remembering all the feelings and thoughts I had in those months after we separated so much so that I burst into tears and felt like I was grieving the loss for the first time again.

I thought that I had moved on and recovered from the emotional trauma I went through.

It was my decision to divorce and separate in the first place. I never originally wanted to marry but was pressured into it as when we were dating she would regularly say things like "ohh nobody truly loves me as they always leave me" You'd marry me if you truly loved me" and of course the worst being "I'll kill myself if you ever left me" Even the way we ended up together in the first place was very messy and chaotic.

So after just over a year of being in a committed relationship I proposed. She of course said yes. I knew of the mental health issues she had. BPD, Bulimia, Alcohol and drug dependency, self harming and suicide being the main ones. A while after our engagement she referred herself to a mental hospital and was there for 6 months in recovery. She saw improvements mentally and physically while there I actually thought that she'd get better and we could live a good life.

After the 6 months she got out and we'd planned to go to a music festival just a few weeks before the wedding. I understand you might think it a bad idea to go to a music festival so soon after that kind of recovery but I didn't really have a choice. She controlled basically every aspect of my life. The clothes I could wear, my job, the time with my friends and even how long I could walk my dog. At the music festival her behaviour rapidly deteriorated with alcohol and drugs. I'm not a big drinker and with the exception of weed I don't really like drugs. However, we'd gone with a large group of friends some who very much embrace the full nature of music festivals and would bring a lot of different drugs. My ex proceeded to get royally and monumentally fucked up over the next two days. I learned a few years later from one of my friends there that over £200 of his pills went missing and he suspected it was her but he didn't say anything because he couldn't prove it. For the record I believe him entirely.

The wedding and honeymoon progressed much in the same manner as the music festival. Afterwards she enrolled in University while I worked in a kitchen washing dishes just 4 hours a day. We were lucky that we had a place to live that didn't need rent we just paid bills otherwise we'd have been broke. Even so my money was tight all the time but my uncle had passed away leaving me inheritance money which is how we had survived the years financially. Though of course that quickly runs out... She wouldn't let me get another job or even enroll at university myself as she wanted me to be at home all the time.

Things got progressively worse and worse over the next few months after the wedding. Eventually she dropped out of university altogether, had multiple suicide attempts, began self harming again, became very verbally and emotionally abusive towards me and constantly berated everything I did. I was always wrong and to this day if someone says "are you stupid" to me It triggers me. Her alcohol and drug dependency sky rocketed. She would be awake literally all night drinking a bottle of wine and I don't even know how many beers while smoking alot of weed and for context she's only 5'1 ft and was weighing under 6 stone or for the US readers less than 40 kg / 90 lb. So her alcohol consumption was ridiculously high each night. She would wake up 6 or 7 in the evening and scream at me for not waking her up when I got home from work in the afternoon but if I tried waking her up she'd scream at me to let her sleep. I'd go to bed around 11 so I'm ready for work the next day. For the past month I'd say this cycle continued until I'd had enough.

I was 23 /24 when most of this happened and unless you've been through it yourself it's impossible to describe exactly how it makes you feel at the time. Since then I studied at university graduated, moved countries, starting a business had healthy long term relationships and overall been having a really incredible life. But today brought everything back and it's shocked me as I genuinely believed I was past it all.

I know this post maybe a little convoluted and not concise but the emotion i felt after watching that show has really thrown me off balance. I'm just wondering has it happened to anyone else even after many years?