Mental health. Mental illness.
This is extremely hard to write but I want to use my platform to reach others and will continue to be fully transparent. My life has been an open book, except I’ve been hiding our families “secret” for the past few years. I have been silent about something that impacts our daily life: my husband has severe and debilitating PTSD.
Masking our smiles. Faking ok. A complete nightmare.
I am so sick of living in fear.
Ty is a combat vet and has been a police officer of 10+ years. We have been best friends since high school and I was so excited to marry him and start our lives together. We knew I was going to stay at home to raise our family and we added our beautiful girls one by one.
While we were dating, he worked as a cop. After we got married, he landed his dream job: SWAT team. He was determined to make it on the entry team and was quickly selected because of his expertise in tactics and firsthand experience from Iraq. He is brilliant and exceptionally good at what he does.
Then, the shifts began. 24/7 on-call. And I started noticing dramatic changes.
- Irritability and constant edginess
- Night terrors and panic attacks
- Dry heaving and vomiting before callouts
- Shaking, sweating, and trouble breathing
- Withdrawing from family
- Texting me during callouts for reassurance that he wasn’t dying
The trauma he was experiencing reignited dormant PTSD symptoms from combat.
The Breaking Point
A police officer was murdered on duty, and Ty was gone for days hunting for his killers. Except, it turned out that the officer had faked his own murder and died by suicide.
Something inside Ty shattered.
We had to make a choice:
- Keep his job but risk losing him altogether.
- Find a way out and save our family.
We couldn’t tell anyone what was happening because of the stigma. His job—our family’s livelihood—depended on secrecy.
We made up an excuse: I told his boss that MY postpartum depression was so severe that he needed to be home more. I didn’t care what they thought of me as long as it saved him.
