Sometimes its hard, sometimes its sad, sometimes I don’t even know what it is. But this can’t be what life is about, this cannot be all that I’m destined to be.
It is easy to judge my outlook if you are from the outside looking in or if you cannot relate to this situation, but chances are you likely would not understand.
Brief backstory; When I met my spouse, the affection we felt for each other was palpable, it was almost a little unnerving. I didn’t think that kind of love was going to happen to me, I assumed it only happened in movies. Wrong. I embraced it though. I knew way ahead of time this was the last stop in my journey of relationships. I felt it. I actually tried to avoid it because I was a little desolate, saddened that I met my life partner this easily. I wanted to see what else was out there. (i’m a guy, what do you want from me..) But no matter what I did it became more and more apparent that this was it for me. So we fell madly in love, together for years and finally got married.
I was always comfortable with the anxiety and her little quirks, in fact that is what made her unique and so lovable. What they didn’t tell me at the time was that anxiety and depression are unlikely cousins who tend to like to hang out with each other. I have a friend with depression and I always marveled at how depressing, pun fully intended it must be to be married to him. He is a great person but realizing that his wife had to deal with his internal demons on a daily basis, the threat of coming home to a macabre scene always lingering in her hippocampus was something I could not bear to imagine.
Until that relationship happened to me.
At first I didn’t understand the reason she avoided large gatherings, friends, acquaintances, the incessant paranoia about frivolous issues, the constant sleeping for 15hrs and waking up tired, the constant self deprecating and self loathing soliloquy she had with herself while walking around the house. This was all before I went to grad school in the medical field. At times she didn’t even realize what she was saying about herself or that she was even talking to herself. It can be a little disheartening being a fly on the wall on these conversations. Sometimes I feel it’s God’s own little way of teaching me about depression, oh have I learnt so much.
Despite the negative features of depression, she was compassionate, loving, caring, and had glorious moments of clarity and lucidity that reminded me that I was not crazy when I made the decision to marry this person. Can I imagine what she is going through? of course not. It must be horrible.
I tried to be supportive, leading the charge in trying to see a therapist and maintaining a stronghold on reality, sometimes these efforts were akin to filling a big bucket with water using only a test tube. You were doing something, but it seemed largely futile. AF.
This also sometimes coming from someone who can be in denial of their own depression. Humans and objectivity are always estranged friends it seems.
There were moments of anger at myself for putting myself in this position, moments of anger at her for not agreeing to seek help, moments of doubt, moments of fear if I was going to get that call, was I going to show up at the house and see the gruesome scene I had imagined for someone else in the previous paragraph? was I going to be discovered in my marital bed by the authorities; a product of a murder suicide by a suicidal wife?
Point being the plethora of thoughts crawling through your brain almost made you seem- …crazy by definition. By the way, crazy is a vague term, which is specifically why I use it here. Oh, now you think you have become mentally ill yourself. Great, this thing is infectious too? Was I being paranoid? paranoia! (paranoid delusions..) I am mentally ill now. Intermittent moments of anger and sadness, sometimes right after the other (mood swings..)….Clearly I need a therapist myself as well.
Truth is I’m ashamed and angry at myself for picking this woman out of all the options. I’m sure there’s some metaphysical/otherworldly reason for that. Sometimes I take out this anger at her and truthfully, it’s not her fault. I chose her it was never the other way around. In fact, I was dating someone that was super fun before I met her, and somehow I saw something special in her. I’ve tried so much I’m exhausted. And I don’t quit, and it makes me even angrier at myself for quitting trying with her. I’d be hard pressed to say I don’t have intermittent regrets. I know, regrets are a futile endeavor and I generally abstain. You can love someone and hate being with them, the two emotions are not mutually exclusive. It can be suffocating spending time with her sometimes. I realize why she avoids making friends, typically she is loved but she herself feels her ‘real self’ will soon emerge and she’d be hated. She hates that judgement of others but routinely indulges in destructive and deprecating self judgement. It’s the weirdest scenario ever. However, how could I be so shortsighted, I’m typically the logical entity, yet I picked the most illogical entity I could ever find in a pool of partners. Irony is a fucking bitch.
Eventually she agrees to see someone. Wow, amazing. Celebrate the little things has always been my mantra. This was worth celebrating. She ended up being assessed and given SSRI medications. Then it became an issue of taking the actual medication. When she did, the difference was again palpable. I felt a little validated that I convinced her to get help, but then the implications of successful treatment: It is really that bad if she improved to this level.
She has taught me a lot about myself. My spouse made me become even more introspective than I have always been. I realized I’m surrounded by depressed people, I tend to like some depressing music if I’m honest (KA, Scarface, Joe Budden, Claire Guerreso), am I depressed? what do these people see in me that they gravitate towards? In fact I was having a chance conversation with someone I met at a train station and they mentioned they were going through depression. I immediately felt the need to help them achieve clarity, to tell them there’s so much more about life, that we have great medications and therapies these days if they were willing to take that step, that… WAIT, what? Get out of there. What was I thinking? I was thinking I had enough depressed friends. I politely exited the conversation and ..RAN. I didn’t want to end up making another depressed friend. Is something wrong with me?
Yes everyone gets depressed every now and then due to life stressors, but staying in depression is the exception not the rule. I’ve never had suicidal ideations or felt like the world was too overwhelming because I always realized that whatever I was thinking about life could not be worse than death. Secondly, these thoughts are really in my head. Pause… I think this way because I can have a logical train of thought about such an issue, that is something that depression robs people who are clinically depressed of: The logical train of thought. While there are moments of clarity (shout out to Jay-Z!), there are really never sustained moments of rationalism and objectivity. That is why it is an illness. So please stop telling people with clinical depression –
“It is all in your head” Or “think good thoughts”, here’s an oldie but a goodie, “Just relax, stop worrying”…
This all was convincing me I could not be depressed. Otherwise I would not think this way. I think?
Back to the wife. I love her so much that I’ve cried about the possibilities of waking up and knowing she is gone. I can’t even imagine a future without her. That scares me because I like to be prepared about things as much as I can..”If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready”..
What if she is gone? I have to live here don’t I? How do I survive this? I just don’t know If I can. It feels like having an insurmountable weight on your shoulders, and worse, that you have no control over the outcome. It was depressing for me just thinking about it.
In all honesty, I’m curious to see her blossom if she does decide to address her mental illness properly. I shudder to think the amazing and lively person we are missing. I know what she’s like when she did try some medications; she felt better, I saw her happier, more relaxed. I can’t imagine what that would look like with dedication including therapy. I feel like she is not living life to her full potential. It can’t possibly be wholesome living like this. Tired all the time, paranoid, forgetful, scared, nervous. It would be nice to witness her making friends again and connecting with them. I want to see her have a full troupe of girls night out etc. oh my, what would that look like…
I am concerned I’ll miss out in seeing all this because it frankly will never happen. She has become a shell of her former self, a prisoner of her own untreated anxiety. She can’t wait to use anxiety as a reason to scare herself into not doing things. It is disheartening to see.
I just take it one day at a time. I don’t even have the answers.
Prometheus..
LIFE OF PROMETHEUS 