(Trigger Warning: DV) feels like Q is nearly 'taking me down' with them
I am almost mid-thirties and battling cancer, Cushing’s, atypical cystic fibrosis, and several serious genetic and autoimmune disorders. Before the cancer, my life expectancy was already estimated around 45. After getting Long COVID in 2020, my health completely collapsed. I lost my career, became mostly bed-bound, and have been fighting for disability ever since. I keep getting denied because of my age. Apparently being 34 means you should still be able to work, even when you can barely lift your head off the pillow.
I cannot drive. My Q crashed and totaled my car while drinking. The car was also in his name, and because he never got caught that night, nothing happened legally. I was too sick to file a report or fight it in court afterward.
Since then, he has had four more drinking-and-driving incidents. Just last week he literally lost his vehicle while blackout drunk and did not know where he had left it. Somehow, he still did not get arrested.
We live in a tiny studio apartment. The bathroom is the only room with a door, and it is too small for me to move my bed into, otherwise I honestly would just to get away from him. At night he nearly chokes in his sleep from severe sleep apnea, and I stay awake listening to it, wondering if he is going to stop breathing.
There has also been abuse. Last year he hit me multiple times. He leaves me without food, water, toiletries. He financially controls me. I do not qualify for food assistance or food boxes because I am the leaseholder and the one technically responsible for rent, I am the one who pays it with my account because his is perpetually overdrawn, so he puts the rent money in my account and rent is a lot where we live and he refuses to move us, so I do not qualify for food stamps or hardship help. He had me sign for the apartment because his credit was too poor to qualify, even though he is the one with the work history, but really I think he did it to control me more because he knows I can't leave, I can't break the lease. I had just graduated in 2020 when I became severely ill, so I do not have the employment history apartments expect or need, nor do I work or have income stream. He financially controls me and coercively controls me in ways I cannot fully describe here. When he comes home blackout drunk, he frequently threatens to kill me.
People always ask why I do not leave. I have tried.
I contacted DV shelters, but I have a chihuahua who is terrified of strangers because of the environment she has lived in. She will bite out of fear, even if she does not seriously injure anyone, and my state has a one-bite law. I cannot risk losing her. She is deeply bonded to me and honestly one of the only reasons I am still here.
I also have severe health issues that make communal shelter living extremely dangerous for me like cystic fibrosis as an example, I would need private restroom access and a controlled environment because of my lack of immune system and CSF leak. The shelters here either cannot accommodate that or have years-long waitlists.
I have no real support system. And I mean at all. No friends. No close family I can rely on. My Q’s large LDS family ignores my pleas for help, both for him and for me. I even asked them to help me join the church because I needed structure, faith, and support in my life while facing all this illness. Instead, I got the feeling they did not want me around because they did not want to hear about alcoholism or my “prayer requests.” In fact, they gave him a bottle of wine behind my back at his sisters wedding, despite them knowing he was an alcoholic. None of his family drinks often, so I will never understand why they would enable him like that. It feels almost like they want me to die, get out of the way, and that they almost do not care if he dies. He is oldest of 6 siblings and none of them seem to care too much to help me or him, and they also really do not want to hear from me. I haven't reached out to them in two years because last time I asked them to reach out to Q to give him a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to, they ignored me and never reached out to him. When I met him he was entirely sober, but I am starting to think either they've been through this with him before, or there is some other trauma or something he did to them to make them not really care about or for him, or maybe they are so deeply in denial they can't even think about it idk.
The only relatives I have left are my cousins who are deeply traumatized by alcoholism themselves because their dad, my uncle, suffered severe alcohol-related brain damage, they cannot help me much unfortunately. They are worried for me, and do show some care, but they cannot help me. My mother is also disabled and struggling herself. She genuinely cannot help me financially, physically, or emotionally, I do not blame her, she lives in a house smaller than my 500 sq ft apartment, lost her disability, she has severe narcolepsy, and she just beat lung cancer herself and is spent physically and financially. She doesn't have anything to give, and there is no way for me to help her as I am literally bed-bound by my severe CSF leak/spinal leak.
I have been in counseling, psychiatry, and social work for four years. I see them weekly. I have attended Al-Anon for three. I am trying.
But I am also exhausted.
I have not seen my oncologist in 13 months because I cannot reliably get transportation. Insurance will not cover rides. Free ride services are extremely limited. I cannot physically handle public transportation. I do not know the state of my cancer at this point, and it doesn't really matter truly because I was refusing chemo or other methods due to my autoimmune disorders and other genetic disorders that make chemo or other methods presented by my oncologist would actually just shorten my life. I am supposed to see like 13 other specialists too for my disorders but have not due to transportation issues. I kind of have given up. I was seeing doctors about 3x a week at one point. That was not a quality of life for me, and was worse than what I am dealing with on my own. I finally saw my PCP last month, so its a start, but I do not know how hard I can push to see my other docs anymore.
I think part of why I am posting here is because I cannot fully tell my providers everything. They are mandated reporters. If APS gets involved, I will likely end up hospitalized or institutionalized, separated from my dog, repeatedly getting pneumonia, while my Q spends a few nights in jail and then everything goes back to chaos afterward. None of it feels like actual help.
I know this post is heavy. I do not even fully know why I am writing it. Maybe because I want someone else going through something similar to feel less alone. Maybe because I want to feel less alone myself.
Before all this, I was an extremely strong person. In some ways I still am. I have survived things I never imagined surviving. But sometimes I feel so strong it frightens me, because I am no longer very afraid of death.
What scares me is not getting to truly live before I die.
If you pray, please pray for me.
Edit:
Thank you for your kindness and for caring enough to read or respond. For any of you that do, I really do appreciate it.
I understand why APS is often suggested from the outside, and I know it can sometimes help people. My hesitation isn’t about denying help exists, it’s about my specific situation, medical fragility, and the very real risk of losing whatever stability I have left and my dog if the situation escalates in a way I can’t control. I’m trying to be very careful about what I engage with because I don’t have much safety margin left. If I lost my dog I do not think I could keep going emotionally, I wouldn't kill myself but I'm pretty sure I would decline so quickly.
What I needed most in sharing this wasn’t really solution(s), just to be heard and not feel invisible in it for a moment, and to help anyone else who may be disabled and stuck in an abusive dynamic with their Q.
Thank you for the prayers and the compassion. It means a lot more than I can easily explain.