Down the rabbit hole

“I need to talk to you about something,” he says this morning. I follow him into the bathroom.

“Actually, I’ll just email you later.”

“No, please, tell me now,” I say. His eyes are flat and a paler blue than usual. He has that heavy gait he gets when things are bad.

“I can’t go on anymore. This is not a life. I never feel happy about anything. I’m not going to make it.”

This morning he doesn’t say, “I want to die. I want to kill myself.” Sometimes he says that.

Instead he says, “I’m going to call someone and get into a hospital somewhere. I just can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to live.”


I’m staying calm. I’m trying not to let the panic rise. It doesn’t matter how often I hear this, it always scares me.

“Okay,” I say. I try half heartedly to convince him to walk some of the way to work; it might clear his head. But then I stop doing that pretty quickly because I recognise how and why this is frustrating for him.

I just say, “Okay, let me know what ends up happening okay? Let me know how you go with that. If you think that’s the best way to handle it, I’ll support you.” And then I let him go to our room and dress for work.

He's trying very hard today to keep things ticking over smoothly because our son is going to my parents' place for a three-day-holiday. It's such a long time for him to be away and we're both going to miss him desperately. He doesn't want to be sad in front of our son.

You know, I think there are very valid reasons why I feel resentment and anger and frustration. But it’s dawned on me that a big component of it is the need to push out other feelings – fear and sorrow.

When I hear him say things like this I am deeply saddened that the man I love feels like this and I can’t help him. The word sad is so inadequate really. I want to sob. This is despair. This is desolation.

And I am frightened that he will lose this fight and die. There, it’s said now. I’m scared that he’s going to die. Absolutely f*****g terrified of it in fact.

These are the feelings I try not to speak out loud in case voicing them makes it happen. I hold them in a tight knot in my stomach all day at work while I pretend to care about the tasks I’m supposed to be doing.

There have been so many days like this but somehow that doesn’t erode the fear or make it smaller next time.

Flo