Something has changed

I’m feeling better since the weekend. Nowadays, when I leave the office in the evening, I don’t feel like falling into this deep hole that I fell into day after day. Of course, I do cry here and there. And I don’t feel so bad about that. It’s a healthy thing to do. But my outlook is better now.

It changed after I visited a therapist on Friday night. Friday was a bad day for me. I cried ALL THE TIME. That was the case also when I was sitting in front of the therapist. But he is good! I left and felt relieved and felt that something can be done. I will definitely go back in two weeks. On my way home, when crossing the river, I decided to get off the tram and sit by the river for a while. The weather was wonderful and people just sat there, drank wine and enjoyed the sunset behind the city’s magnificent cathedral.

~ Evening sun, skyline, and the mighty Rhine river ~

It helps to be in this beatiful city. The people here love their city and the city wants to be loved. The picture above is proof for it. And not only that. Everyone I have met here so far is just so friendly and warmhearted. I really enjoy wandering through the city and talking to random people in the stores.

Then Saturday was just a great day for me and I came home exhausted and happy. That continued on Sunday. I had a very slow morning and then took my bike on a tour to a beautiful park and arboretum. I found a place to quietly read the weekend newspaper and then walked through the park a little bit. I had to fight back some tears. We both loved botanical gardens and rhododendrons which they had plenty of. But still, it was a wonderful day that I truly enjoyed!

Today’s achievements

Everybody tells me to take baby steps. I try. This is what I did today:

• I went for a run this morning, the first one since I got here. Mainly I was too busy trying to distract myself and I’m always afraid of thinking too much about the break-up when I’m by myself. I did shed some tears during the run. But I also enjoyed the beautiful nature around here.
• I left the house without my wedding ring for the first time. Not sure whether I will leave it at home every day from now on. Probably not. But it’s a start.
• I signed the contract for a smaller apartment. The current one is too large and expensive for just myself and far away from the city. (I thought that this was what you needed.) It means I have to move again very soon. But it will be good to be in a place that I found for just myself.
• I joined a city tour with Internations. It was fun to meet new people. Afterwards some of us went to have Libanese dinner. We had a great time!

Pretty big! It was a very good day and now I’m home and damn tired. It feels good!

The new life

This is week two of my new life. It’s been incredibly difficult to come this far. During the week after our break-up I packed almost everything in our apartment and moved away as planned. Except it wasn’t planned to leave without you. A whole new life started for me, but I’m still haunted by the last.

Sometimes I understand your decision. Most times I don’t. And sometimes I’m angry. At you for taking only a few days to end a relationship of nine years and that went through the most difficult time for the last 2 1/2 years. At your depression for making our marriage a series of terribly bad days and not letting us experience the good.

I’m still crying a lot. Not as much as in the beginning. But enough to make my head hurt every night. Sometimes it’s even hard to breathe. Sometimes I want to scream as loud as I can as if that would bring you back to me.

I’m scared of every new step that I’m taking because I’m taking it without you. And each step will take me further away from you.

I’m slowly getting used to not hearing from you. We texted and talked every day for the last nine years. And now we are not. I don’t know what you are doing and how you are doing. This is by far not easy but I’m getting there.

And sometimes I’m also hopeful. It never lasts long. I distract myself, don’t think of you for a while and do something fun. But as soon as I return to this large empty house I fall back into this deep deep hole of loneliness. Still, I can sometimes see where I want to go. So that one day I can be happy again. I will not have to worry about you anymore, about suicide attempts of yours. Some friends even say this may have been the reason why you broke up. I can find out what I need and what is good for me. Things that I mostly gave up during the last years. And maybe, one day, I will meet someone I can love again and who I can lean on when I feel weak.

Happy Birthday

Today is your birthday. I visited you at the clinic, brought you flowers and gifts from me and my parents. You really liked the gifts and my visit but it was hard for me to celebrate your birthday at the clinic. One and a half years and you are still in there. When does this nightmare ever stop?

You were very close to coming back home again. Lately, you were home on weekends and I felt you are doing fine. When you are able to leave the clinic it is so much easier for me. I can just do my usual errands without scheduling my trips to the clinic. And it’s great to have you home. A little bit of normality.

However, your condition got worse and now you are not allowed to leave your station and you have to check the nurses’ office every hour. You call it suicide watch.

I’m totally lost in what to think about it. In a way you made great progress in opening up to the doctors before you were in actual danger. I’m so glad that you did because the doctors wanted to send you home and we both got more and more worried about you. But at the same time I cannot understand how you are still so badly in danger. On top of that, I thought I learned from your last attempt. I thought I can read the signs. Last week taught me that I cannot. I was relieved to hear that you can stay at the clinic longer, I didn’t know that you have to be on suicide watch.

I sometimes worry whether you will ever be ok again. I know you want to feel better again. You work so hard. And we have so many plans. And there is progress. I can tell that there is. But then again, these steps are so tiny. And then I hear stories of depressed patients for whom no therapy worked out. Like this case in Belgium that everyone is discussing right now.

Tonight I worried so much about you that I called you again and we talked a little. It felt very good. You explained more about how you are feeling right now. And that you told exactly that to the doctors last week. I hope they can work with you on it.

Today

After being in shock for two days we both finally felt better. I visited you and we talked, talked, talked. It was good to see you! We remembered happy days. Very happy days, like a vacation trip two years ago. When you say you want to be that happy again, I know you can do it. You want to keep fighting!

You also had a chance to see a doctor today. Apparently, your suicidal thoughts didn’t go from 0 to 100 within minutes. Your worries about adjusting to life outside the clinic may have piled up over the last weeks and resulted in a suicide attempt as soon as something must have triggered it. This is good news. In a way. This means you can work on identifying the warning signs and react to them. Just another step towards recovery. It’s not a small step. But it can be done.

On how I feel

A few weeks ago, my colleague asked me whether I plan to end my marriage, now that the husband has been at the hospital for so long. Although that thought never crossed my mind, I can’t really blame her for that. She was born into a very poor family in a third-world country, a completely different world compared to mine. I assume, her life was driven by completely different options and choices to make than mine was. My choice to marry the husband was a choice completely made out of love, not considering it as an investment at all.

Yet, of course, I imagined our marriage to be different. I imagined it to be happy and easy-going. But for about a year, there are other feelings that dominate my life. I want to write about it here as I hope this can be a resource for other spouses that may be in a similar position.

This is how the husband’s depression makes me feel quite sometimes:

Sad

Of course, a lot of times I feel sad that the husband is sad. I want him to be as happy as everyone else and it makes me sad that so many times he cannot feel that way.

Hopeless

It doesn’t happen often. I’m a very optimistic person. But sometimes I do feel hopeless, when being deeply disappointed by yet another setback. Most times, these feelings never last long. Fortunately, he usually recovers within a week and his assurance that his moods generally show an upward trend brings me relief.

Scared

Especially after learning about the husband’s suicidal tendencies I was completely scared. Whenever he was at home on weekends, I watched him all the time. We live very high. And close to the river. When you hear that a person you love thinks about suicide, you cannot stop your mind from going crazy. You cannot! I was worried when he stayed in the other room for too long. I woke up on Sundays in shock from not hearing him breathe. We talked about it a lot. And luckily, because we are very open about it, we trust each other with it. He knows he can tell me how he feels, even (or especially) when he feels suicidal. I can trust him that he will do so and this stops me from worrying about it constantly.

Angry

I’m angry about all measures that have failed in the past to help the husband much sooner. How much different his life would be today, had his depression been diagnosed sooner. Much, much sooner. I’m also angry about the people that made him feel this way and caused so much misery in him and that don’t seem to even assume to have any part in this now.

Betrayed

I feel betrayed at times for not being able to feel happy these days and for being so uncertain about how our future will look like. And for, instead of making plans to have a family of our own, having to worry about the husband, especially that he might end up being handicapped due to his mental condition.

Stressed, nervous, and weak

More and more, when the stress is too much, I feel nervous and weak. My knees get shaky and I feel that I really should stay home and rest. Then it is hard to set one food in front of the other. Then I have to take deep breaths, take smaller steps and take time to recover. This is often hard, especially in an office that has a very fast pace.

Optimistic

As I said, I’m a very optimistic person. I think this trait helped me cope during the last 12 months. I mostly feel optimistic about what is to come. But I realize that my horizon of optimism (if that even exists, I don’t know) shrinks. At first I was optimistic about getting back to our regular life again. Now, I’m optimistic about the next step of the husband’s therapy, not thinking too much about its outcome yet. Sometimes the only thing I can be optimistic about is the next weekend, not being able to think of anything beyond that.

 

I understand that many spouses also feel hurt by the way the depressive patient treats them. I hear such stories frequently in support groups and counseling sessions that the hospital offers for relatives of depressive patients. Luckily, the husband never treated me in any bad way. Unfortunately, though, mistreating people that are closest to the patient is a very common symptom of depression.

If you are interested in reading more about the experience of spouses of depressive patients, here is a link to a very good post by Olive who talks about her dealing with her depressive husband: http://timandolive.com/what-its-like-to-live-with-a-depressed-husband/

If you want to read about the other side, too, this is her husband’s, Tim’s, take on it: http://timandolive.com/befriending-my-depression/