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.

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.

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/

The husband

So, the husband has depression. I knew this for almost as long as I know him. And it was hard to believe for the first four years of our relationship. He is such a sunshine. He finds new friends immediatly, wherever he goes. And he cracks jokes at impossible times. Oh, he really does! An otherwise boring dinner can be turned into non-stoppable laughter when the husband is around. I always wonder: How can one person alone think of all that silliness? Let alone a person that is permanently sad deep inside? I guess this made it hard to believe. Adding to this was his ability, despite telling me that he is depressive, to hide it very well.

I didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, that he was suffering from a chronic depression. The diagnosis of a chronic depression is quite new. But it has been inside of him for most of his life. All those happy moments! And he was suffering from chronic depression. Always sad deep inside, with only some light moments interrupting those heavy feelings. How could I not see it, even though he told me so?

Then sometimes, just like right now, this chronic depression is topped with a severe depression. And this is when his depression actually becomes noticable for me and for others. It’s a depression so severe that he doesn’t want to live anymore. That makes him so hopeless that not even those happy moments we shared or the people that love him could keep him alive. Nothing gets through, nothing reaches him. It is as The Elephant in the Room describes it:

“Telling people I felt suicidal was an incredibly cumbersome matter. Whilst I felt nothing they felt a lot, they cried, yelled and hit me to express that.” (see post here)

Except, he never told anyone. I found out much later what have been actual suicide attempts. And then I was the one that cried, yelled. How can he not see how happy he makes me, how complete, how important he is to me? How can all this not matter?

And yet, my depressive husband taught me to enjoy life, seize every moment, and enjoy it to the fullest. After each great day we spent together he used to asked me what I liked best, making me remember all those happy moments we shared. I want to go back to have these happy moments. I want both of us to share happy moments again. And I think we are on a very good way, already.