Have you ever lost an ex to suicide? I came home from camping with my husband and children, retrieved the mail, and found a?

and found a letter in the mailbox from a coroner from the state my ex was living in. They had no next of kin and needed information so I called and gave them the names of his siblings. I haven't seen him in 19 years and spoke to him during a divorce by proxy 17 years ago. We were engaged 2 years, lived together for 4, and separated fro two before the divorce.

So I'd lived with him for 5 years only. He was a horrible alcoholic, secret cocaine user, and refused to go to AA even though I attended Al-Anon regularly for most of the marriage. He went to one marriage counselling session with me where I learned he used cocaine regularly, but only by the counselor's suspicion - the evidence, which he didn't want to admit to - surfaced later. Every day, including our wedding, with him was dramatic. Paying for alcoholc and neglecting the rent, quitting work

or getting fired, cheating on me apparently, with prostitutes despite my appetite for sex, threatening suicide, and being generally obnoxious to me in public, lying at first that he wanted children with me, and then admitting he was infertile 2 years into the marriage. It was a rocky, unstable lifestyle.. I was working full time, going to school part time, and running 7 miles a day. We rarely went out together with our friends, but we did spend a lot of time together at home.

His mother was abusive and I think he actually deep down hated women. I felt guilty when I left him but no longer in love for 2 years before. So...finding out that he committed suicide is really depressing, and I feel guilty that I couldn't him help years before even though I had him sent to a county hospital once for trying. They sent him home sooner than the 72 they're supposed to keep people like that because he said he didn't intend to kill himself but was instead "trying to manipulate" me

because I was finally going to leave him, go back to our home state, and I had the plane ticket and my bags packed.

I feel guilty because I'm not upset or grieving in the "right" way. But if I DID grieve that way, I'd feel like I was somehow 'betraying' my husband. My husband now is nothing like him, and unlike my first childless marriage, we have kids together and we've been together for 19 years all told. Out of all my past lovers, no one compares to the husband I have now, but my now-husband

always seems - and with this news- seems a little jealous. He has no idea the hell this guy put me through, the sadness I feel for my ex as a person. I was never really in true love with my ex, but I loved him like any friend, rotten or not, that you're close to. It's just such a super weird sensation. I've lost people very close to me, and know that kind of grieving. This is just weird. I was really hoping and praying the last couple years that my ex had gotten clean and sober finally,

that he'd married someone right for him, moved on to a happier life, and got right with God. Out of all the nasty stuff he did to me or was to himself, I pitied him because he was abused growing up. But the real reason I finally threw in the towel was because he admitted he'd been atheist all along, and that to me spelled impossibility for ever getting better. I'm a Christian. I stuck to my marriage vows to the point he was making me a sickly person, I was dragging down with him.

Can anyone relate? Though I left him so long ago, I feel somehow responsible for his further downward spiral. He didn't want me to go. But he couldn't stop what he was doing. Or wouldn't. However you look at it.