This Too Shall Pass

Senator Smith,

I am reaching out in the hopes that I can get some sort of accommodations legally & financially since my husband, John F Zittrauer who ran for county council in district 4, has cut me off in every way possible after he left. I have been disabled and sick for over 5 years now. We didn’t know of any county services and we couldn’t collect SSI due to my husbands finances. My husband abandoned me on 13 December 2023 & I was told I was no longer his problem. I was also physically sick the day he decided to finally leave (he tried to leave in September and is known for walking out the door all the time, leaving me screaming for help. He wouldn’t come back until after work like 11:30pm and he wouldn’t check in for hours). He is using his status to contact elected officials in our county to kick me out & have me put in some sort of housing for mental illness (I’m not mentally I’ll—just CPTSD & depression from situational abuse & trauma!) and some sort of financial help. He’s not really aware that we’re still married and his money is technically half mine but I would need a lawyer to help me get a petition in court. That takes up to 90 & the new law for divorce is 6 months now! But I’m guessing he isn’t aware of permanent alimony as well as there is no date as to when I will be able to work. He campaigned on homeless people, which I find ironic because he’s trying to kick me out into some sort of sub par living arrangement which would be far below what I’m used to. He lied to them about my health issues and made false statements about me not being complaint or wanting any help. I have a paper trail that can refute that. For years we have been looking for help but there is no treatment I haven’t tried and with my disorders there is nothing but time to heal according to specialists. It’s brain damage, neurological disorders, CPTSD/PTSD from abuse growing up and into my adulthood, Akathisia (NOT mental illness but caused by medical malpractice: It’s been over 5 years but the doctors have continued to throw drugs at me to try and cover up what happened to me. No I’m not crazy. I can back this up with doctors notes and specialists), Tardive Dyskinesia, dystonia (muscle disorder), chronic pain, tinnitus, and a whole long list of what I suffer from on a daily basis. People don’t believe it even though there is medical documentation & specialists who can confirm them all. I even went public for awhile because no one believed me, they all think I’m mentally unstable and ill. I have never heard voices, no psychosis, no mania. I didn’t even know what those things were until I started researching recently. I even contacted a lawyer about malpractice. No one gets how debilitating these things are and my family doesn’t get it and thinks I can just be fixed by going to another specialist they choose behind my back. I am already signed up in the system for a specialist, PA Nicole Lamberson of Witt-Doerring Taper Clinic, but we have had no money & now I have no income due to my husband cutting me off financially and in every way possible. I am trying to taper off the psychiatric drugs as I’ve been misdiagnosed.

It’s a long complicated story with my husband but here goes: He threatened to leave all the time since at least last year, May 2023. That’s when I started realizing what was happening. I had been coming off another unnecessary drug too fast in November 2022 (more malpractice which includes the fact that I was given several medications that are not for what I was supposedly diagnosed with. I’m not bipolar 1 or 2). When I originally got sicker in November 2022, I wasn’t believed by my doctor or my husband had checked out of the relationship it felt like. He went on vacation with his secret friend he’s been keeping in the dark when I was at my worst. John exchanges money frequently with a man named Blake Wilson. Blake is paying for vacations again at the end of January. How do I know? His email. It was accessible through our laptop. He would leave, abandoning me for the whole day & not check in on me for hours, ignoring me & walking off during conversations. He wouldn’t even come back when I would call him. He would walk out the door as I scream after him for help. The cops were called frequently but they never recognized the abuse and can’t understand why I’m screaming and crying. Silent treatment & stonewalling was used. I was being gaslit to the point where he made me feel crazy and I felt like I was starting to get dementia—I thought it was just my disorders getting worse (I kept questioning my sanity after talking with him & told him he was making me feel crazy & I was dismissed and told “I can’t help how you feel” & it would go in circles until I just gave up & that was that, but emotionally I was not ok), John emotionally & verbally abused to the point of wanting to kill myself (I begged him to stop and he wouldn’t — he kept going. I was told “everyone has their breaking points”), threatened about cops being called and how they will take me away & lock me up or whatever & he would say things like “if I talk to them, it won’t end well for you”. He made me afraid to reach out & get any help. I was blamed for the cops being called & my husband made me look like I was crazy & told the cops that I was very unwell. I got in trouble for the cops knocking on the door because my husband felt threatened I guess. John refused to come out and talk with me to anyone. He threatened to sleep elsewhere constantly because I was disruptive of his sleep by having flares from my disability. No clue where he was gonna go & that made me distraught. Who tells their wife they’re going to sleep elsewhere unless they shut up? The love bombing, the triangulation: telling another woman, Holly, he loves them publicly (he wrote “I love you” publicly & I thought the worst but talked myself out of an affair. John was supporting Holly’s disease & not mine. He advocated for her and constantly supported her, but he wouldn’t even get support for people dealing with people with my disorders. John was/is spending money we don’t have and even on his campaign without my consent. He was spending a lot of money on his hair. $300 every 2-4 months up until last year some time when we actually needed that money for my medical expenses. I wasn’t even asked if spending that much was ok. The hairdresser? Holly: the woman with the disease he advocates for & tells her he loves her. He was lying about finances to me, lying to my family about everything including health & finances, lying to the police. He told the cops “my wife is very unwell” but of course the abuse was not taken seriously & he wasn’t questioned properly. They told me to walk away while they talked to him, he refused to talk to the cops with me. When I came home I was walking on eggshells and he was angry that the cops knocked on the door and had their hand on their gun & I was once again made to feel bad. He had cut me off in conversation and refused to talk to me anymore & just went to sleep like nothing happened. I came home crying. I was very upset. John is also lying to the property manager, lying to neighbors, etc. He took me to the ER in May 2023. It felt like he wanted to just shut me up so he could get some sleep. Days later I was love bombed on our anniversary with “you’re still the best decision of my life”. But the behavior & patterns just kept happening. The words didn’t match up with actions. And I told him that & he was upset again. I was almost trying to avoid him and asked him once if it was safe to come home. He told me to leave him alone from then on. Which was confusing as hell for me. He ignored me while I cried and then said he didn’t want to come in to even check on me. I didn’t know I could ask for more or better help, I didn’t want to be a burden and that’s how I felt at times to him. I grew up where needs were not met so I became the adult that has a really hard time saying what she needs because of the guilt, but I started in 2023 & it wasn’t met with much enthusiasm. I was shut down frequently & had to follow his timeline & was treated like one of his workers at the brewery or a bad costumer. It was a huge disconnect—the Jackal & Hyde persona. I had also been too sick to know how to ask for things. I would scream for the torture & pain to stop, but he didn’t know how to comfort people & early on I was held down while I had Akathisia flaring. I was screamed at and told I was an addict & I would never see my Benzo again. My husband and the AA program ostracized me back in 2018 & my husband did nothing to stick up for me when I was wrongly sent to the wrong place for care. More malpractice but no one believes what happened to me because it seems nuts. But this is happening to people in the world where they are cut off drugs cold turkey & the patients get deathly ill but the doctors aren’t aware of what they are doing & what is withdrawal that has turned into protracted withdrawal due to the doctor I saw in 2018. There IS documentation & specialists who can confirm protracted withdrawal & the Akathisia that was misdiagnosed by my doctors for years. My husband didn’t know what to do as we were getting the wrong information from all the medical professionals for years. I guess he was oblivious—I hate to think he just didn’t care or was maliciously letting doctors rip me off my drugs too fast. He took my “there’s nothing we can do” about these disorders other than give it time and used it against me it feels like because he never looked for any services or help for me until weeks after he left. But that’s to benefit him so he can kick me out so I don’t feel like that is genuine help. No emails have been forwarded to me as I would see what he’s trying to do I suppose. Things just kept getting worse the more I worked on myself and tried to understand what I was going through with my ex who I was still not fully healed from. My ex groomed me from 15 & I was abused for a decade. I never received proper treatment from medical professionals—they didn’t know how bad it got. I had cognitive dissonance & brain damage from that relationship.

John was telling me “I’m doing things I hate because I love you” or what not. I was told to shut the fuck up one night when he was half awake. He would wear headphones to drown out my noise from being in pain and feeling like I’m being tortured. He would constantly make exasperated expressions of disgust and frustration: his hands were always covering up his face “great, this again…” is what I got from it. I opened his email to find: He contacted elected officials and lied to them about my medical history. He’s trying to kick me out and take back the apartment. We are both on the lease. He’s telling them we agreed to separate which I never did. And that I’m “non complaint” and will need to be talked out of living in our apartment. That I’m “refusing help” despite years of getting the wrong care and now we can’t afford a specialist because we’re spending all our money on cannabis to treat me. He doesn’t do finances and he wouldn’t do a budget or tell me the truth about finances. He lied to my family as well about everything being under control and not having financial difficulties. They don’t get it or don’t want to help me find a lawyer. They are dismissing it all and treating me like I’m crazy and the one who caused all this. I tried contacting family in May 2023 about what I thought was abuse & was told I was too sick to know what was happening or something similar. The abuse was ignored by two of my aunts. I was told that I should not be diagnosing my husband and then I was cut out of finances by them and my husband. He’s contacting a lawyer with our money. I can’t get legal representation because the House of Ruth & Abused Persons is taking their time. Right now we’re looking at 9 business days for a DV counselor & 5 business days for DV legal aid from House of Ruth. Then APS is coming on Wednesday. If they don’t help me, the Abused Persons will hopefully. None of the organizations will help me get a restraining order (so I can change locks) and are telling me to go to the court house despite having severe mobility issues. Plus it snowed. I cannot get out there. Again, having invisible illness, people don’t see it.

I’ve tried the following county resources & they haven’t done much of anything except for House of Ruth, Abused Persons & now APS but it’s taken forever to even talk to the right people (a month): Maryland access point, County Court House Silver Spring, Commissioner, Domestic Violence Advocate, Kelly at Dept of Health & Human Services from 911 call, Adult Protective Services Terri Redman, Abused Persons Program Cassandra has been emailing & did intake which took an hour, tried Non Emergency Services (Police), Maryland Legal Aid, MoCo EVERY MIND, MyMDTHINK portal, CRISIS CENTER, HOUSE OF RUTH & their legal department. I was told by the crisis center “if you’ve been abused why are you just calling now?” And the APS minimized my concerns & the fact that I was in a crisis. I was told “maybe call the mental health line” and things like “people walk out all the time”. Also, “he left you with a way to call for help and water, right?” So it’s now financial abuse—John cut me off and opened a bank account. I was not notified. I had access to his email and took photos of this, also the fact that he’s lying to elected officials, getting a lawyer, & is getting a trip paid for by his secret friend, Blake, that I’ve never met or even talked to. And on his social media he’s cut off all his hair (looks like the hairdresser he has a relationship with did this after telling me she wasn’t taking any appointments) and is posting hurtful things to get a rise out of me—going to places we used to go to like the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC (this was my place of refuge during hard times and I introduced him to it & we went to mass there), on my birthday (13th) he’s out at another bar and posting all over with no regard to my welfare whatsoever. All smiles with no ring! Someone paid rent but that’s probably him because he’s planning on trying to kick me out based on some really bad information that he’s feeding to elected officials at the office of David Moon & Evan Glass. Hope Klein was one of the responders. They all think it’s mental illness thanks to my husband who’s not telling the truth or the whole story. They are suggesting housing for mentally ill and mentally disabled people, despite the fact that I don’t have a chemical imbalance or whatever he has them believing. They are telling him to hang in there and take care of himself first without knowing what he has done. So here I am rotting and on edge as I have no clue what he will do next. I cannot calm down. I am in constant panic because of John. He’s gone rogue & has no regard for me whatsoever. John won’t contact me other than to get stuff and did not abide by my wishes not to come into the apartment, even to get clothes. I am scared of my husband. I feel he left me to die, like he wanted me to kill myself when he just abandoned me.

I’m locked me out of Amazon, he changed all our passwords, NO TV services, NO clue what the bills are and how to pay them, he hasn’t paid the internet, the Pepco bill bounced and I had to use emergency funds to pay the phone bills so I at least have a way to contact people. He’s been isolating me and taking over my AA meeting I used to chair for years—no one is holding him accountable despite some of them knowing what he’s done. My AA friends are taking his side it feels like and telling me to abide by his wishes & “I’ll pray for you…”. A lot of people don’t get what a crisis is. They don’t think it’s that bad or “she needs to pull herself together” & “push yourself!” Etc is used. John is still coming to the apartment as if he still lives here (I ran into him walking away from the building, I have video). John is taking my mail and putting it out for everyone to see. Has illegally picked up my prescriptions and I didn’t know where they went & thought I would have to call the police. I tried the pharmacy. I have since started ordering them. He is going to restaurants & bars we don’t have money for and leaving the tab on our account despite having another account and funds from this stranger he’s been seeing for gosh, years? Our account is almost negative $600 but I’ve been having issues with my emergency funding being taken out of the bank account due to a technical issue with my PayPal account. I decided to take out money after he left because I was afraid he would leave me with no money—and he has.

NO ONE knows what’s going on with me (his friends, our mutual friends & his family have no clue—or they do and don’t care. His mom won’t respond to my text from New Years) and how he’s abandoned me to fend for myself despite him being my unofficial caretaker.

I can’t do all this on the Maryland portal where you can apply for every service possible. This is being thrown all out me at once while I’m so sick from my disabilities and the shock of him leaving me suddenly.

My hair needs to be cut really short like a pixie because he wouldn’t get me a hair appointment from his hairdresser. It’s a birds nest and I can’t scratch my scalp. My dystonia was keeping me from brushing it and it hasn’t been washed in months. I’ve done videos showing the neglect and the fact that he left me sick and throwing up and having diarrhea the day he left, I was so physically sick I was begging for help & I was ignored. He didn’t even call paramedics. I ended up in the ER the next night. He didn’t care or respond. I was there by myself and couldn’t get any help from the doctor who didn’t get that I’d been abandoned & abused but a closer look at what I was wearing and my hair would have told him.

I was basically told to “fuck off” by several friends of his despite reaching out for help in a crisis. They don’t know or don’t get it. I don’t know how to stress how bad things are and I’ve tried so many organizations and I’m really scared. There is no immediate help for disabled and abused persons—the DV hotlines just care if you’re wanting to kill yourself and then just throw resources that won’t help right away. I have a very long record of trying them over and over. Again, the wait time is so long that people like me can’t even get a petition in court for my husband to support me financially.

I have no clue what you can help me with but I thought someone should know that my husband, John F. Zittrauer, who ran for county council in our district, is doing these things to his wife of 7 years and together almost 10.

And if we want to go further, let’s look at his ex fiancé who he left 10 years ago in the same way (also at Christmas) and she was cut off in every way too. He was then with me by March & moved in when he should have been marrying his fiancé. I find that strange looking back, but people thought it was adorable (“he REALLY loves you” & I was swept off my feet with the amount of love bombing coupled with blow ups which made me think something was wrong with me. I was constantly told I needed to change or something was wrong with me by John for years despite the love bombing at times) and I didn’t see it as a red flag. He accused his ex fiancé of being abusive but if he’s acting like this towards me behind closed doors, what’s her side of the story? And even his ex wife, she had to deal with his alcoholism. I’m not trying to be an asshole, but this is a pattern of his. He lied to the meeting he chairs on Wednesday that he will have to do something he never would have done if he was drinking — that he’s never done this sober or some bullshit. But he has done this before & he was thought to be sober despite his ex saying he was drinking again. Again, who’s side of the story is true? I have 21, almost 22 years sober as well. His ex wife left him because he was a child trapped in an adults body who couldn’t stop drinking. I stupidly started dating him after he got 1 year sober and I had like gosh, almost 12 years and should have known better. But I consider myself sober despite using cannabis for my disorders. I do not use anything to get high. Unless you’ve been in abuse or what not I don’t really expect you to understand but I want a paper trail to show I have been looking for help for a month & am not going to lay down & be slandered — the smear campaign must end.

I need SSI, Medicaid, food stamps, rent help, bills help, restraining order, a lawyer, money for medical bills and expenses. I need to see my doctors & specialists. I need money for cannabis every week—something he just let me run up the bill and didn’t work with me around the purchases so we could avoid running out. I was constantly told the money was gone like I could do anything about it. I finally said I wanted to do finances when we ran out of money again on the 13th of December.

I wish someone would take me seriously. I’m not making these things up & can prove a lot of it with documentation, journals, photos, videos, etc. He has grabbed me & tried to shut me up by raising his hand. Just subtle abuse really. I was too sick to notice or even know what he was doing. There is a lot more like him leaving and going to someone’s home for the Holidays. We weren’t having a meal together. I dropped him off one time and was so upset that he wanted to go elsewhere but let it slide. On Thanksgiving this year he was gone again & just gave me leftovers. He even made cranberry sauce for them. He stopped cooking for me years ago.

So thanks for all you do. We always voted for you since we moved in, in 2017. And you helped with a situation with our MPDU apartment if I remember correctly. And I remembered the kindness. I thought I would try your office and what not since you are technically above Moon & Glass, correct?