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.

The battle is lost

The battle is lost. Not yours, but mine. My loss is the foundation of your continious fight. Sometimes I can understand what happened yesterday when you told me you want to go on by yourself from now on. Most times, I don’t understand. You are still here. You are still my best friend. A friend like I never had before. And even after our break-up we feel close, we support each other. But I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that we will separate, divorce, live in different countries, on different continents.

Looking back at our nine years as a couple some incidents and patterns can explain your decision that you finalized this week. I tried to hear your opinions, tried to make decisions with you and not for you. It was difficult, you were insecure. But your great talent of covering up not only your depression also covered your insecurities. I never really knew the reason why I was the one making decisions for us while I was wishing for an equal partner. Your insecurities in relationships made you decide to go on from here by yourself. It’s the path you have chosen for yourself and I have to accept it.

Mistakes were made on both sides. And the depression brought out the best and the worse of us. Nobody is to blame for this, except this malicious illness of yours. I will tell myself that at least I could help a wonderful person and friend to go through clinic life and help recover from depression. All these therapies helped you find your way. For the first time you can make decisions for yourself without the thoughts of suicide in the back of your mind. I wish you all the best for the path you are going to take and I’m so deeply sad that my part in your life will not be the same anymore.

I’m packing boxes, separating your stuff from mine. Next week I will start a new life, in a new city, with a new job. It’s a life that was supposed to be ours. Now it will only be mine. We have one more week together and I have no idea how life on the other side of this week will look like. I’m on the floor crying, I cannot eat, I cannot sleep. Right now I cannot imagine having a restful day ever again. But experience tells us that it will be possible again, at some point.

TGIF

This week was very special. I was on a week long and very productive business trip. I feel exhausted now but it sure was a success!

HIGH – Getting to know and spending this week with wonderful people in a relaxed atmosphere, with lots of time to think about and discuss new research ideas. On top of that came spending this week in a picturesque city and enjoying beautiful sunny fall weather.

LOW – My low of the week was being away from the husband. I still get nervous whenever I’m away. We talked every day on the phone. But one day I couldn’t reach him right away and I was worried sick.

BOOK – Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. It’s a humorous approach to depression. Sadly, I’m not very far into the book yet. I just don’t read much when I travel.

WORKOUTS – Not much because of my busy schedule. I went on a quick bike trip on Sunday and plan to go on a long bike ride tomorrow.

MONEY – I didn’t spend much money at all this week. The best money I spent was probably on very tasty pizza and good wine last night during good conversations.

WEEKEND PLANS – A bike ride, coffee and cake with a friend, and we’ll see from there.

How was your week?

Perfect Bliss

When I ride my bike next to you, on the way home from the station, to a restaurant where we are meeting friends or just doing errands, that is bliss right now. We weren’t able to do this for such a long time. Now we can and I’m enjoying every minute of being with you.

You started day clinic about a month ago. And you are doing wonderfully. You have therapies at the clinic during the day but you are home in the afternoons and over night. There are still some struggles, on both sides. And more so on yours than on mine. But we can do this and our life is slowly returning to normality again. And when I ride my bike next to you it feels as if you were never gone.

Bright like a diamond

Today I had the chance to meet your therapist and take part in your therapy. It was such a great meeting! I learned so much!

After so many treatments didn’t work out for you, they assigned you to a therapist who doesn’t follow the book. He looked at what lies underneath your depression. And today he explained to me (and us) how his approach works and how I can support you.

We also addressed some issues between us. Such as problems talking about feelings.

Then you worked on a time schedule for your next steps. You might be coming home soon. It will be scary and you will need a lot of support. But it is an important step for you. You need to take this step to move on and out of the clinic.

I had all kinds of worries and questions for your therapist that were related to my worries. They were all blown away as soon as we started talking. And tonight I feel a big relief. We haven’t reached the finish line yet, but we are close.

In the end your therapist and his student (who also joined the session) did something really neat. They let us listen to their de-briefing in which they talked about us as a couple. I’m not sure how much of it was for therapeutic reasons, but they mentioned how close we were as a couple, how gentle. At one point the therapist called me “a diamond“. It felt so good to hear that, after spending the last days and weeks contemplating about how I feel so alone in supporting you with our families being so far away. And he wondered how we’d be doing once your depression has passed. How much energy we’ll have at our hands, energy that right now is going into fighting your depression. And this thought just made me so very hopeful! It made me see light at the end of the tunnel. FINALLY! I even forgot how that feels!

So, today I will spend the rest of the evening thinking of our future together. A bright future. I will be hopeful for the first time in a very long while. And my smile will just be bright, like a diamond. Maybe even brighter ☺

On guilt

I wanted to write about this a long time ago. But it was difficult to even start this post.

It’s about who is guilty of my husband’s depression. I’m not sure if that is even a relevant question or not. You can also say that this is how it is and we’ll have to deal with it. But somehow it matters for me. Partly because I’m always a fan of rather talking things out than having it still floating somewhere, unspoken of. And partly because it makes me terribly angry that the people that are responsible seem to care so little about my husband although they should be the ones to care most.

It was very clear early on that my husband’s parents play a major role in his depression. When I first learned about his depression it was through a story about an unreasonable punishment by his parents for a, in my eyes, minor mistake. For something that kids just do because they are kids. I don’t want to go further into details. There are stories about high expectations and lot’s of taboos. Just as his hospital stay is one of the things that remain secret with only the closest family members knowing about it.

I’m not a parent and I can very well imagine what insecurities are connected with it. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be making mistakes when I might raise my children one day because, let’s be honest, who could be that perfect? But I still believe that maintaining the family’s image rather than caring for the feelings and needs of your child is a different league. On top of that it seems as if they are not even interested in his therapy. But maybe I’m doing them wrong. Maybe occasional phone calls and post cards is all they can do for him right now. But it leaves me as one of the very few that is staying by his side, dealing with his illness.

My husband claims that he sees me and his sister and brother as his family. And that his parents don’t matter too much. But I can tell that his anger towards his parents is still inside him.

And it affects me, too. I feel betrayed of a happy marriage. We were only married for about half a year when my husband’s depression got so bad that he had to go to the hospital. And he has been there ever since. We also wanted to plan to have children together. Now, I’m not even sure whether we will ever have children. What if we are too old when my husband finally feels healthy and ready for it? I hear from others our age, family and friends, who move on, who build houses, have children, travel. And it makes me so jealous that we cannot have any of it right now. Because our life is on hold for one and a half years now with no end in sight. Because two people maintained their family’s image rather than dealing with their child’s needs.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel like this. There were times when I just wanted to confront them with all this. But I decided against it because the last thing I want is getting between my husband and his family. His family is still very important for him and in the end he has to find his own way to deal with it. And he will, once he is ready for it. Today, I had a very good talk with my friend who went through very similar difficulties with her parents. She suggested that I just write it down whenever I feel angry about his parents. This will be a relieve for myself without hurting anyone’s feeling or getting in the way of my husband’s recovery. I think it’s such a great suggestion and today’s post is a very good start. I’m so thankful that I have friends like her in my life who make talking about my husband’s illness so easy and offer so much help.

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.

On suicide, part II

Around 10.000 people commit suicide in Germany every year. That is roughly 30 each day. 30 EACH DAY! And every suicide leaves a family and friends behind that grieve. They probably cannot understand why their loved one had to go so soon and they are grief-stricken by the circumstances of his or her death.

The number of suicide attempts are assumed to occur 10 to 15 times as often. The actual number is unknown because not all suicide attempts are identified as such by helpers, relatives, and therapists. Just like your suicide attempts before December 2013 never became a topic between us. But every suicide attempt, once revealed, is shocking, for the patient and his or her relatives.

I can’t even begin to describe how relieved I am that you survived each attempt so far. But still I often ask myself “What if…?” Why did you even had to get so close to actually trying to die? I immediately start to cry whenever I think of how different my life would be today, had you actually succeded. I would be a widow, of only 32 years. I don’t even have the slightest idea of how to deal with funeral homes, authorities, and such. Your suicide would have taught me. I’m not sure if or how I could manage to go back to my life as it was. Would I have a break-down? How long would it take me to laugh again? What would I do with your side of the bed? Your clothes? Would I ever be able to watch a TV show, a movie or listen to music that we both like without starting to cry? Would I be able to go to the same bars or restaurants or streetfests where we used to go together? Would I ever dare to be happy again? Would I ever have a repationship again, when the past eight years with you were so happy that I could not imagine any reason for them to ever be over? And would there be a note explaining your decision to die? Would I understand your decision? Would it be clear to me that it was suicide or would there be the possibility that it was an accident? What cause of death would be easier to handle by those you left behind?

Of course I don’t know how it feels to lose a beloved husband, a person that I trust and who I’m so used to have around, who makes my days so much brighter. But these questions do make me grieve, although you are still alive. I can usually pull myself out of it. Most times I can tell myself that we are almost over this difficult part of your illness, that you are safe. But on some days, like today, all those questions haunt me.

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 suicide, part I

You learn quite some crazy stuff when you have a depressive husband. Stuff that you never even wanted to learn. For example, the three phases of suicidal tendencies: (1) consideration, (2) assessing, and (3) the decision to actually do it.

This week I learned that the husband can go straight to phase 3, the decision. With no time to assess or use any of the other strategies he learned during therapy to prevent his suicide. In the last minute he snapped out and called for help. This is why he is back at that clinic. After just being released. After months of hard work to learn how to deal with his depression and the constant voice in his head telling him he and his life are worthless.

I was traveling when it happened. But it wouldn’t have mattered if I was there. The morning he told me about the attempt, he also told me that he almost did it again while I was still sleeping in the other room. We cried, we talked a lot about it, and we called the clinic and told them he needs to come back. Then we had breakfast. We took extra long time for it, talked about the past week, laughed together. Some normality, before life in the clinic and frequent hospital visits started again.