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What It's Like (my side of the story).
May 13, 2005 | Category:
* Note, this entry is PG-13 for language. The topic is close to my heart, and I'm not in a mood to censor my words. Also, this is MY side of the story - not his. It has taken me a year to figure out when and how to finally write this and and I have tried to write in such a way that doesn't violate his privacy.
On NPR, Brooke Shields was talking about her bout with postpartum depression. About finally getting medication and therapy, and then when she felt a little better deciding to go off the medication. Of visions of death and blood and a feeling of disconnectness from her child and hopelessness about her life.
Briefly, she touched on the reaction of her husband Chris. About how the experience still affects him. Them.
Yeah, from this I know.
Not that I have her book deal. Or her legs. Oh, her legs... Or her situation.
No, I had her husband's.
After the birth of our son, I had this life. This husband. This baby. This house. And then a dark cloud rolled over the sky. I didn't understand. I kept expecting my husband to "snap out of it".
Not so much.
So I got a clue that it wasn't just a bad mood. But even then I was still a mushroom in the dark about what was to come.
So maybe, OK, that cloud wasn't going to float away. Yeah, a storm was rolling in. But then, THEN things would eventually return to ... this life, that I was loving so much. My husband would awake one day and be once again that amazing, strong man I'd married.
So I faced the storm and did what I could to respond. If my life had been a house, I would have been boarding up the windows and putting sandbags on the perimeter.
The equivilent was to join a support group and gamely take on my husband's responsibilities on top of the ones I already had. Something bad was happening to us, and I couldn't stand idly by. So I went back to work and pumped my milk into bottles a caregiver could administer. I bought a suit, balanced the checkbook, and made all the sacrifices necessary to be two people.
Looking back, I realize I was living in a fog of just "get through today".
That is what it is like to be married to someone with an illness or a dependency. It happens not just to the them, but to everyone around them.
I had no idea how bad it would get.
One afternoon, I called our religious marriage counselor guy from a parking lot in tears, begging for advice. I told him about the dark cloud that only seemed to grow. I asked for help.
But even with his wisdom, by the time Bear was a year old we were broke, miserable, and in deep trouble. Yes, despite all our best efforts. Despite the counselor, the help, the constant battles to make each day the turnaround. Despite the compassionate support system of friends and family and neighbors all in the siege with us.
Not that he could see any of that goodwill. As I learned later, CD was completely isolated by what was happening inside his mind. There's a sort of tunnel vision of being the one going through it.
As he was striking out and hurting, he couldn't process his environment in any productive way. The pile of bills, the collection calls, the unwashed dishes were all just additional pain triggers if he saw them at all.
I'd grew tired of trying. So I kicked him out for a while. And he stayed away a little while more.
I did it because I was a heartless bitch whose internal alarm clock had gone off. I couldn't understand why everything wasn't better already.
The horrible, agonizing thing, was; neither could he.
The anger and frustration and pain were grew like a demon. The love and forgiveness and faith were all exhausted and hiding under the bed.
Fighting endlessly to keep the darkness from consuming every fucking thing. Watching all the good and light in your life fall under the shadow of what's happening to your partner.
I missed Bear's first steps, while on a business trip. Endlessly on the road trying to make enough money to keep us afloat while impotent against the cloud that was pressing us all flat. I was selfishly, endlessly frenzied. And screaming inside. I kept saying "This is IT. This is bottom. I won't take another step." But then I would.
And sometimes, he would reach out. A heartbreaking smile. A sympathetic expression. "How are YOU holding up?" I was asked. And it was my cue to put on a brave face and be ever so grateful that for a few fleeting moments when I was actually remembered in all the drama.
And as Brooke said in her interview, the weeks quickly become months. There are no quick fixes when you're talking about the human mind. Not medication. Not therapy. Not group meetings or behavioral change. No. It's gonna be a slow climb and it's going to be full of steps backward.
I was in therapy for over a year just to deal with MY anger and hurt. My counselor and I were able to cobble together enough coping mechanisms and skills to help me live my life without always being in reactionary mode. To live with reasonable expectations so I wasn’t constantly feeling disappointed. To drain away enough of the bitterness to allow my soul to breath. To teach me that I absolutely couldn't fix HIM and had to keep my focus on what was in my control instead of what wasn't.
And there's no happy ending. A corner has been turned, but it is a shallow one. There is no moment when the doctor comes in and says everything is going to be all right. The best you get is that everything is better - for now.
And just like in Brooke's marriage, where her husband still holds his breath waiting to see what the mood of the day is, still hunts for signs that darker clouds are rolling back onto the horizon - I, too, have had my facility, my lightness of being, shattered and taped back together. Nothing is clear anymore.
The full cost of what has been lost is only just beginning to be counted. There is no way to go back to that time when I had that life. And so very, very much was lost.
Not that life stopped when the clouds rolled in. No, it continued. And there were still good days and even good weeks. Moments of subdued but very real joy. But it was life under a cloud, shrunken and colder from what it had been before.
And I still mourn those early, sunlit days of being a mom and a wife living such a halcyon dream. I am more fragile now. I am still angry. I have to remind myself to exhale.
Trust and forgiveness (of us both) are coming back in tiny, teeny steps. Feelings of love, long since roped back, aren't reawakening in a burst like the magical last 15 minutes of a movie.
So far, I am deciding to stay. There is no right answer, although many may tell me otherwise. And often do – and on both sides. But there is no right answer.
Things are better, and that gives hope. And hope is a powerful elixir. It can get you through the day. When I can’t picture next year, or next month- I can surrender it to hope.
A day at a time.
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