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.

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.

4U9525

A little more than a week ago grief came to this country. A German airline lost an aircraft, part of its crew and 144 of its passengers. I can’t remember any severe accident that involved a German airline. All tragic air traffic accidents in the past seemed far away. This one feels close. An airplane coming from Spain, where so many Germans spend their holidays year by year. Sixteen families lost their teenage kids, high school students coming back from a student exchange. Many more lost parents, sisters, brothers, relatives and friends.

Two days later this tragedy reached yet another level. The French police announced that it was caused by the co-pilot, who deliberately crashed the airplane into the French Alps. All media attention then turned to the co-pilot. His appartment building and his parent’s home were shown in the news. Everyone discussed about how much his employer knew and should have known about his depression.

And my thoughts turned to the family of this very desperate co-pilot. I can only imagine how it must feel to loose someone you love through suicide. I cannot imagine how it must feel if the suicide took so many more people with him. And how terrible must it be to be confronted with all the media attention, including pictures, private details as well as false information and speculations about his health status and previous treatments.

And it seems that all the effort being done to promote an understanding of depression needs to start over again. Now, patients suffering from depression are considered potential mass murderers. Despite all knowledgable experts arguing against it. And despite not knowing (yet) what condition the co-pilot was in. It’s only the lurid headlines that count.

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.

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.