They Sent Him Home, But They Never Brought Him Back

 

Part Two: How His War Became Her Own

“That’s why I fucking enlisted in the first place—was to die. And I failed at doing that.”

The first time he said those words, they shattered her.

The second time, they haunted her.

The third, fourth, fifth—by then, they had become routine. A line so sharp and devastating yet thrown around like punctuation in every fight. Every breakdown. Every guilt trip.

At first, she thought he was just broken. Hurt. Lost in the fog of everything he'd seen, everything he’d survived. But over time, she realized—this wasn’t just about war. This was control. This was how he stayed the victim no matter what he did. And somehow, everything always became her fault.

He didn’t just bring the war home. He turned her home into a battlefield.

And now, she was fighting too.

The Shift from Survivor to Scapegoat

He came home damaged—but she thought if she loved him hard enough, she could be his peace.

In the beginning she gave him grace. For the rage. The silence. The unpredictable moods. She knew what he’d been through—she saw the war behind his eyes every time he flinched in his sleep or shut down mid-sentence. She told herself, he’s trying, even when the trying looked a lot like withdrawing.

But grace started to wear thin when he began using his pain like a weapon—when every disagreement turned into another opportunity for him to play the victim and make her the villain.

“You kept repeatedly telling me to get the fuck out of your house,” he wrote after storming out over a payment mishap.

“So, this isn’t my choice. This was your decision.”

She didn’t scream at him to leave—she begged him to stop.

“You could have stopped screaming at me and had a conversation with me, and I wouldn't have told you to get out,” she texted, exhausted.

“I'm not going to sit here and have you talk to me like that anymore. Period. End of discussion.”

But he never heard her. Not really.

Instead of seeing the strength it took to stay with him all this time, he used every crack in her patience to dig deeper into his own narrative.

“Yes I did have to [leave],” he said. “No one wanted me there… I’m the problem… I’m a piece of dog shit, just like you and the boy keep saying.”

And every time, she had to pick up the emotional debris.

“No one has ever said that you were a piece of shit, Chad,” she wrote. “You’re the only one that says that.

"I wanted you to stop fucking screaming at me and have a conversation with me, but you couldn’t do that."

"I can’t keep doing this. Jonny doesn’t need to see that, and I’m damn sure not going to fucking deal with it.”

But somehow, it always circled back to him. His pain. His rage. His trauma. As if hers didn’t exist at all.

When Love Starts to Hurt More Than It Heals

She didn’t fall in love with a monster. She fell in love with a man who had been through hell and came back without a map. A man who smiled at her like she was the only safe place he had left. But somewhere along the way, that love stopped feeling like comfort—and started feeling like a trap that changed faces before she could run.

Every day, she tried. She really tried. Tried to talk, to reason, to calm the storm before it swallowed them both. But no matter what she said, Chad always found a way to flip it back on her.

“You want me to leave you alone, then stop texting me,” he told her, twisting her silence into abandonment.

“I’m not going to starve. I have no money to buy food. I have no life. End of story. Goodbye.”

It was always the same script. If she set a boundary, she was cruel. If she cried, she was manipulative. If she needed space, he called it rejection. And if she tried to get him to see the damage he was doing, he’d bring out the line that tore her apart every time:

“That’s why I fucking enlisted in the first place—was to die. And I failed at doing that.”

There was no winning. No clarity. Just guilt.

“I want you to stop trying to argue with me and validate what the fuck you did,” she pleaded.

“Apologize and accept the fact that you were wrong for that—that you flipped out for no reason. Yes, a bill didn’t get paid, but that does not mean that you need to flip the fuck out like that.”

But he never heard that part. All he heard was what he wanted to hear—an attack. Another reason to lash out. Another reason to turn her love into leverage.

He would leave—sometimes for hours, sometimes overnight—then accuse her of choosing others over him.

“Go move in with Tyler or Scott or Shawn,” he snapped. “I’m a waste of goddamn fucking space.”

She didn’t want anyone else.

She just wanted him—the version of him that wasn’t screaming, blaming, and breaking everything he touched.

“I didn’t want you to leave,” she told him again and again.

“I wanted you to stop fucking screaming at me and have a conversation with me, but you couldn’t do that.”

But the man she loved had gone silent. Not in the way she first met him—wounded, quiet, on edge. No. This silence was cold. Calculated. Designed to punish her for not letting herself be the punching bag anymore.

And the worst part? She still kept reaching for him.

Because even when love starts to hurt, it’s hard to walk away from someone who you once believed was your forever.

You Can’t Fix Someone Who Doesn’t Think They’re Broken

She tried everything.

Talking. Explaining. Pleading. Even silence. But no matter what she did, nothing ever changed. Because deep down, he didn’t believe there was anything wrong with him.

“You say I don’t change,” Chad told her. “Well, you haven’t either. You’re just getting worse. You don’t leave the house. You locked yourself away.”

He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see the irony. That she locked herself away because she was tired of tiptoeing through his outbursts. Tired of shielding Jonny from another fight. Tired of pretending that love was enough to survive something that was breaking her.

“I have made all the changes in the biggest ways,” she reminded him. “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m not out all hours. I’m not screaming or picking fights just because I’m bored.

"I give you everything you want, and I still get an asshole in return.”

That should’ve been a wake-up call. But to Chad, it was just another excuse to spiral deeper.

“I’m always wrong. I'm always going to be wrong. I’m going to be everything that everyone ever fucking said about me. I’m hopeless… I shouldn’t even fucking breathe the air because I’m taking it away from everyone else that fucking matters.”

And like always, he used that pain to dodge accountability.

To shut down the conversation.

To paint himself as the broken one—and her as the one holding the hammer.

But she wasn’t holding a hammer. She was holding his weight. Every day. Every night. Every mood swing. Every guilt trip. Every panic text threatening death. Every silent treatment that followed any ounce of truth she dared to speak.

She was holding the whole damn house together while he got to burn it down and cry about the ashes.

“You think the worst of me,” he said. “You just want me gone.”

“No, Chad,” she told him. “If I wanted you gone, you'd have been gone months ago. I want you to work on your problems and talk to me like I’m a person and not fucking scream at me.”

But again… nothing.

He would say “I’m sorry,” just long enough to keep a foot in the door. Just enough to make her second-guess walking away. But it wasn’t change. It was survival. His. Not theirs.

And that’s when she realized—you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help. You can’t love someone into being better if they don’t believe they’re broken.

I Wasn’t His Enemy—But He Made Me One

She wasn’t fighting against him. She was fighting for him.

But to Chad, any resistance, any accountability, any truth that didn’t line up with his own version of reality made her the enemy.

It didn’t matter how calm she was. How many times she said she wanted to work things out. If she said anything he didn’t want to hear, the war inside his head turned on her.

“How come it’s okay for you to talk to me like that but not me?”

“I’m a garbage piece of shit, just like you and your fucking son always said.”

“I was a mistake to fucking be born.”

The guilt. The self-hate. The twisted suffering he puts on himself—it wasn’t just a cry for help anymore. It was a weapon. A way to silence her pain by drowning it in his own.

She wasn’t allowed to be upset. She wasn’t allowed to be overwhelmed. She wasn’t even allowed to need help—because his suffering always had to be the loudest.

“So broke, but we can take care of them now, right?” Chad texted. “Can’t take care of the family that, well I can’t take care of my broke-ass family, but I can take care of them and their animals and their dog and feed their shit.”

 All because she had called a friend over while crying after he stormed out. As if needing support when he left her alone—again—was betrayal.

“They came because I was crying, Chad,” she told him.

“You left me. You chose to walk out that door.”

But instead of understanding, he got territorial. Possessive. Cruel.

“Go get the guy who you want more than me,” he spat. “You probably have a lot of money coming your way now that the piece of dog shit stepdad is gone.”

Those words carved into her like razors. Because he wasn’t just lashing out—he was rewriting history. Erasing every sacrifice she made, every time she stood by him, every sleepless night spent praying he’d come back home in one piece—mentally, emotionally, alive.

She wasn’t his enemy.

She was the one person who hadn’t given up on him. Who saw the man behind the wounds. Who kept hoping—begging—for just a sliver of the man she fell in love with.

But love can’t survive in a place where accountability feels like attack, where apologies are whispered only after hours of blame and emotional wreckage.

“I want you to fucking come home,” she told him. “But you’re too fucking stubborn to just get the fuck over your shit and come the fuck home and fucking apologize.

"I want my fucking Chad back. I don’t want this miserable prick who’s been here for a fucking year and I can’t get rid of him.”

But the version of him that could love her?

That version hadn’t shown up in a long, long time.

He Left, But He Never Really Left Me Alone

When Chad walked out, it wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t peaceful. He didn’t leave her with clarity or space or even a plan. He left her with chaos. Emotional whiplash. Guilt in voice memos. Blame in text blocks. And the ghost of another breakdown always waiting for the next notification.

He might have been gone physically—but he was still in her head. In her chest. In every moment she braced herself for the next emotional bomb to drop.

Because the second she started to feel calm again, he’d message something like:

“I’m not even worth a goddamn grave.”

“I’m taking air away from people who actually matter.”

And suddenly, it didn’t matter what he had said the hour before.

Didn’t matter that he screamed in her face while strangers stood outside the house.

Now she was the one who had to save him again.

Now she was the one who had to respond fast enough to stop something awful from happening.

Now she had to carry the weight of whether he lived or died—again.

But it was never enough. Even when she was still begging him to come home—after everything—he twisted that, too.

“You say you love me, but it’s been a year since I felt like you do,” Chad told her. “Maybe I will make it to tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just pull out in front of a semi.”

It wasn’t just manipulation.

It was emotional hostage-taking.

And the ransom was always her peace.

She couldn’t cry without guilt.

Couldn’t set boundaries without consequences.

Couldn’t even ask for basic respect without being dragged into another loop of “I’m the problem” and “I should be dead.”

“You think I’m calling you a piece of shit?” she texted. “I never said that, Chad.

"I said you were hopeless—because you won’t change. You won’t listen. You won’t even try.”

But just like always, he heard what he wanted.

And somehow, her voice never got through.

This Wasn’t the Life I Signed Up For—But I Loved Him Anyway

She didn’t sign up to be screamed at.

She didn’t sign up to have her words twisted.

She didn’t sign up to explain, over and over, that asking for respect isn’t disrespectful.

But she stayed.

Not because she was weak. Not because she didn’t know better.

She stayed because she loved him. Because she saw who he was underneath it all—not the yelling, not the chaos, not the guilt trips. She saw the man who used to make her laugh so hard her sides hurt. The man who used to pull her in and hold her like she was the only steady thing in his life.

But that version of Chad was disappearing. Slowly. Quietly.

Until the only thing left was the shadow that kept pushing her away, and somehow always blaming her for it.

“I’m the one arguing, yeah,” he texted. “If you wanted me home, you should’ve just asked instead of keep blaming me for everything."

"Your life sucks because of me. You’re miserable because of me.”

She never said those things. Not once.

But it didn’t matter. He said them for her, twisted her silence into a confession, made her pain about his shame. And then used it to hurt her.

That’s when she realized—it didn’t matter how many times she told the truth.

It didn’t matter how many times she said, “I love you. I want you home. I want to work through this.”

He didn’t believe her.

And it’s hard to keep loving someone who refuses to believe in your love.

She wasn’t perfect. She knew that.

She had moments where she snapped. Where she shut down. Where she couldn’t take another fight and just walked away from the conversation. But she always came back. Always tried again. Always wanted to fix it.

“I’m not going to sit here and have you talk to me like that anymore,” she told him.

“It’s unacceptable. And that’s not how you talk to somebody that you love.”

But instead of hearing that as a line in the sand, Chad heard it as a push out the door.

“Several fucking times you told me to leave,” he said. “So, I left. Now I’m the villain.”

And maybe to him, he was.

But to her, he was still the man she loved—he just refused to show up as him anymore.

Loving Someone Shouldn’t Feel Like Surviving Them

There’s a difference between fighting with someone—and fighting because of them.

And at some point, she realized she wasn’t in a relationship anymore. She was in a battle zone. Again.

Only this time, it wasn’t his PTSD that was blowing things up. It was his choices. His refusal to take ownership. His need to stay the victim, no matter how much pain it caused her.

She stopped sleeping.

Stopped eating right.

Started second-guessing everything she said, everything she did—because even kindness was a gamble. One wrong word, one misunderstood sentence, and it was back to war.

“I’m not even allowed to not want people at the house,” Chad snapped, angry she had let friends over while he was gone.

“It’s okay for you to not want people over, but not me.”

He missed the point completely. They weren’t just guests—they were the only people she could lean on when she was breaking under the pressure of keeping everything from falling apart.

“They came because I was crying, Chad,” she told him. “You left me. You chose to walk out that fucking door and leave.

"I asked them to come here, and they were in the middle of heating up food when you decided to come home… They came for me.”

But he didn’t care about that.

Only that he didn’t want them there.

Only that she had someone else around when he had walked away.

But her side of things never mattered.

Only that he felt replaced. Ignored.

Cut out of a narrative where he never once tried to listen in the first place.

And when he came back, nothing changed.

“The second you walk in—really?” she said, fed up. “I was clear about your fucking attitude. Why the fuck did you come back if you were just going to continue to be a prick and cause more fights?”

She was tired.

Tired of trying to de-escalate things she didn’t start.

Tired of begging for basic empathy.

Tired of pretending like love meant taking hit after hit—emotionally, mentally—just to keep someone from feeling abandoned.

But she was the one who felt abandoned, even when he was right there.

He could sit in the same room, feet away, and still feel a hundred miles gone.

“You're not going to stay in this sour-ass mood and go lock yourself in the room,” she told him.

“You're going to talk to me. You're going to deal with our problems like everyone else. No more deciding we’re not.”

Because love shouldn’t feel like survival.

It shouldn’t feel like waiting for the next outburst.

It shouldn’t feel like walking through your own house and not knowing what version of him is going to show up.

“I want you here,” she said. “But I want you present. I want you real. I want the man I fell in love with—not the one who disappears into anger and refuses to come back.”

And that’s when it hit her—maybe he wasn’t coming back.

The Love Was Real—But So Was the Damage

There’s this idea that love is enough. That if you love someone hard enough, long enough, deep enough—it’ll fix things. It’ll hold everything together.

But she learned the hard way—you can love someone with your whole heart and still be completely destroyed by them.

And she had. Over and over.

Through every meltdown. Every shutdown.

Every time he threatened his own life and dropped it like a grenade in her lap.

She carried his trauma like it was her own.

And that’s what broke her.

Not just the yelling. Not just the manipulation.

It was the emotional isolation—being right next to someone, still in love with them, but realizing they’re not even trying to come back to you.

He loved her, maybe. But he didn’t protect her. Not from himself. Not from the pain he caused.

And after a while, love without protection just felt like betrayal.

When “I Love You” Isn’t Enough Anymore

She used to think that saying “I love you” was the anchor.

That no matter how bad the storm got, that one line would always keep them from drifting too far.

That no matter how loud the yelling got, or how many times he stormed out, or how many apologies came with strings attached—those three words would bring him back.

But they didn’t.

“You’re 100 percent right with everything you just said,” Chad texted. “I’m a hopeless piece of shit. In fact, I’m not even that. Because shit once was worth something before it became shit.”

And it wasn’t just once. It was every fight. Every time she tried to talk, to get through to him, to help him see how much he was pushing her away.

“I’ve been apologizing for hours,” he said. “But I’m still wrong. I’m always going to be wrong.”

He wasn’t sorry. He was spiraling. Again.

And somehow, she was always expected to clean it up—emotionally, mentally, and sometimes literally.

But this time? This time it hit different.

“You could have just said, ‘I’m sorry, babe. I love you. I want to come home,’” she told him.

“But no—you’re going to write a bunch of shit that pisses me off even more.”

It was all she wanted. Just a real apology. A real effort.

Not the same loop. Not the same guilt trip.

Not another threat to disappear or die.

“You never fucking listen to me,” she told him. “You hear what you want to hear and twist it into some bullshit.”

She realized that every “I love you” was starting to feel like a distraction.

Like a wall that went up every time she tried to talk about the real issues.

Like a shield he used to deflect any responsibility—until the only thing getting hit was her.

And the hardest part of it all?

She still loved him.

Even after everything.

Even after the emotional exhaustion.

Even after begging him to stop hurting her and being told he’s the one who’s hurt.

But love without change is a slow form of emotional death.

And she was tired of dying just to keep him breathing.

She Wanted Him Back—But Not Like This

She never wanted to lose him.

Even after the screaming. After the blame. After the emotional mess he left every time he walked out the door and made it seem like she had pushed him.

She still wanted him. Still hoped—somewhere deep down—that he’d show up one day, knock on the door, and actually mean it when he said, “I’m sorry. I want to come home.”

But not like this.

Not full of resentment. Not cold.

Not still calling her the enemy while pretending he’s the one who was wronged.

Not showing up just to sit in the bedroom and sulk while she tried to hold what was left of them together.

Not while saying things like:

“I was about to come home… then you started flipping the fuck out again on me.”

“I guess it’s better if I stay where I’m at because I’ll come home and make things worse.”

“I’m just going to be there and hear how I’m the problem.”

Even in coming back, he made himself the victim.

Even in trying, he reminded her how hard it would be to have him back.

“You're really going to stay locked in the room and not do one thing that I’ve asked of you?” she messaged.

“You're going to stay in your shit mood… not try even a little to fix anything?”

Because the truth was—she wanted him home,

but she couldn’t survive if this was the version of him that came back.

The one who refused to try.

The one who used depression as a wall and guilt as a leash.

She wanted the man who fought with her, not against her.

She wanted the man who held her when things got hard, not the one who became the reason everything was hard.

She wanted the Chad who made her laugh at 2 a.m. and let her be soft and safe—not the one who made her cry and then blamed her for the tears.

But he wasn’t showing up as that man anymore.

And maybe he couldn’t.

Maybe he didn’t know how.

But she couldn’t keep losing herself in the hope that someday he might.

Because loving him wasn’t the question.

Surviving him was.