I am now a carer. I look after our house, our child, our finances and all aspects of day-to-day life for our family when my partner is depressed.
I also make sure that he takes his medication or whatever he's meant to be doing for treatment.
The former is inescapable. The latter I struggle with - wanting to be hands off with his management of his illness but also wanting to avoid my suffering when he lets things slide.
Also it cannot be in any way acknowledged between us that I am a carer. He equates his illness with weakness and he feels guilt about not doing half the work.
It's hard enough I guess maintaining a sense of dignity when you cannot function as expected. It must be infinitely harder when your illness destroys your sense of self worth.
But the reality is that I take care of things. And I sometimes resent the lack of acknowledgement. I feel like I need to do everything but I have to pretend it's no big deal so that he doesn't feel worse about himself.
Most of the time I fail. I work hard and it shows. I am sweaty and tired at the end of the day. I lose it when my efforts go unacknowledged - when someone leaves plates and knives and crumbs on the table after I've cleaned up.
I want to scream: My time is worth something! I spent precious hours of my life making this place habitable!
But instead I yell, "Clean up after yourselves! This is not a hotel! I am not your slave!" And I hear my mother and I feel like I've become what I thought I'd escaped, like I've made no distance at all in 35 years, like the person I've built has just vanished in a spray of windex.
I feel like such a victim sometimes. After all, what's the difference between a downtrodden housewife and me? On the surface of things, not much.
And I wonder sometimes how our relationship will survive these roles we've been pushed into. It's certainly not what we signed up for.
When he looks at me I know there's so much guilt about what he can't do and some resentment too that I've taken over so much, that I'm in charge.
When we're through this, can we survive having felt this way about each other? What will the scars be like?
Flo
I worry about all these things too. These are exactly the thoughts that run through my mind at 3 in the morning, when I'm unable to sleep due to worry and the stress of supporting our household single-handedly while my Depressed Significant Other lies beside me, radiating misery and hostility.
ReplyDeleteYup. It scares the crap out of me too. We don't even live together and I already feel like I do everything when he is in a bad spell. He is just so overwhelmed with work and "modern life" and all it's "running around."
ReplyDeleteWhenever I say anything about this being unequal, he gets defensive and talks about how stressful his job is and how he always has to work, even when he comes home. My job, which is admittedly less stressful (but also much more rigid in terms of scheduling, so that I can't leave to do errands or anything like that) doesn't really count in this case, because it ends when I leave the office. He sometimes also tries to guilt me by saying that his ex used to say stuff like that (and since she was clearly evil, I should not want to be compared in any way...)
I often think that if we could just be on the old school model of provider and housewife, we'd actually be ok. I wouldn't feel so resentful of doing all the house-type stuff because I wouldn't have to do it on top of working all day too. He could focus on his job, which he makes a superhuman effort to keep up with, no matter how he is feeling, and I could do the rest. But it's a two-income world these days, and that's not going to happen.
The result is that we end up exactly as you say-- me doing everything but unable to acknowledge that because it will make him feel bad, and guilty, and anxious that I'm going to leave. Truth is, I might. We're not married and don't have a child to keep us together. And as much as I love him, I'm not sure I want to sign on for being the strong one forever. ..