My (42f) husband's (39m) birth father is this big military commando mercenary type who contracted with “security” companies after he got out of the Army. He was a special forces and basic training drill instructor while he was in and as you can guess was a real monster as a parent. He hammered in the idea that a man's only value to his family is that of financial provider and protector.
My hubs tore his ACL in high school football and has scoliosis that was never treated so he was disqualified from service. I'm sure you can imagine how that went over with GI Dad.
At the end of 2019, my husband (Will) fell very very ill and was ultimately diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Juvenile diabetes. Insulin-dependent for life. As an adult. The internal medicine doc at the hospital said it is becoming more and more common. I would like to know why but that's another sub.
Since then he's been trying to keep it steady but it's pretty fucking impossible. Stress causes his blood sugar to skyrocket and he gets really sick. Then he'll work too hard for days on end and go low day after day after day to the point where I'm afraid he's going to pass out at work and not wake up.
He picked up a gig early last year at a convenience store and took a pay cut because I insisted. His other job was too dangerous. He worked too many hours to try to compensate and inadvertently got promoted to manager. I didn't like it but he needed the validation so bad I couldn't argue. I'm not complaining about the money but for real I worked as a stockbroker for 10 years and I hate our economy. I would rather be poor and feed that monster as little as possible. Sometimes the two are mutually exclusive.
Fast forward to last Christmas. Will works 6 days every week on salary and gets diabetic ketoacidosis. Lands in the hospital over the entire holiday. Tries to die on me AGAIN. Naturally his boss expresses his annoyance at being inconvenienced. Will immediately goes back to work. His boss begrudgingly takes over two of the easiest tasks Will is responsible for “to help out.” One task is writing the store's work schedule. The other is doing the daily cash and sales accounting. The boss quickly uses both tasks to make Will's life miserable.
Now we are here in March of this year and Mr. Big Boss man announces that he lost $20,000 last quarter and that he's selling his store. He tells Will that he'll give him 3 weeks to find another job, but that he's keeping pretty much everyone else on and transferring them to another store. Will is devastated. He asks why he's the only one being let go when the workers at the boss's other store always ask for him to come help over there and love to see him. He asks why his boss didn't tell him the store was losing money. This is particularly important because the store is a franchise and Will worked really hard with his corporate contact to make sure he was doing all he could for the store and the corporation. All I know from there is that whatever answer he got wasn't good enough and Will deeply internalized the rejection. He has always taken pride in his work and his ability to manage complex tasks and solve problems.
The boss sends Will home that day because he can see how upset he is. Will comes home and immediately is viciously sick and we spend the night fighting his blood sugar and trying to keep him out of DKA. I insist that he stay home the next day because we're not out of the woods yet and for once, Will agrees to put his health first. He tries to call his boss and gets sent straight to voicemail. Leaves a message and goes back to sleep.
We wake up later that day to a text that says since Will couldn't show the commitment to come in that one day after he found out he's being let go, he's fired. That's it. Will starts seriously circling the drain at this point. We can't get his blood sugar under control and he's lost ten pounds this week alone. He can't afford to lose any more weight because he still hasn't recovered from being sick over Christmas. He also doesn't want to go back to the ICU because we're in the US and now almost $250k in medical debt. I have lupus and haven't been working this entire time.
Three days ago Will got a call from his corporate contact asking why he's not at work. Will tells him what happened and learns that he's the FOURTH manager IN A ROW his boss has blamed for the store taking losses and fired. His boss never even told his corporate counterpart that he fired Will. Most of the losses, it turns out, are from the boss refusing to make repairs and upgrades that resulted in fines from the corporation and from failing to keep the store properly staffed. It takes more than five people total including the manager to keep a 24/7 convenience store up and running but somehow the crew did it with Will for months only for him to get scapegoated and shafted.
Will doesn't get out of bed to do much other than vomit now. He has nightmares that I'm going to leave him and take our daughter and pets with me (I won't, the house was paid for in cash and I actually like my husband). I told him we can file for unemployment and disability but the nightmare that process represents is terrifying and we could end up being forced to sell our home and wind up on the street before we get help. We both know that but I'm trying to stay positive.
I can't make him go to the hospital until he's too weak to argue. I'm not even arguing with him anymore, I'm arguing with the trauma his father caused him. So I wait, and I don't sleep all night in case he suddenly drops low or spikes high or has a nightmare. And I hope that when I do sleep that I won't wake up to him dead because he just gave up, or took too much insulin and dropped to low, or didn't take enough and went into a coma.
This is real. I'm a person. So is my husband. This is happening. We're not just trying to scare each other with ghost stories out here in antiwork land. I might legitimately wind up without my person because he's been physically and mentally abused by so many employers and it has become too much for him. This is what slavery is today. Work or die; or work until you die.