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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

One month is short and a year is not long…

“One month is short and a year is not long…”

This is what my mum’s friend told her about psychotherapy. Today marks one year and one month of your hospital stay and therapy. It’s seven years, seven months and seven days (funny!) since we first kissed. One year, nine months and nine days since we married. Yet, it’s nothing compared to what I hope life still has in store for us.

Unharmed

“Maurice Oulette tried to kill himself once but succeeded only in blowing off the right side of his jawbone. A doctor down in Boston was able to construct a prosthetic jaw, with imperfect results. The surgery left Maurice’s face with a melted appearance, and he went to great lengths to hide it.” (William Landay in ‘Mission Flats‘)

Stories like this make me shiver. There’s this woman at your hospital. She lost both of her legs, trying to kill herself by jumping in front of a train. Then I tell myself at least you got away unharmed. Physically unharmed. You are still the perfect man I married. And I truly hope you stay safe.