I had pizza and gelato with my son. We walked the streets of my favourite town, did funny things, told silly jokes, bumped into an old friend and managed to get a cab just as the storm broke, releasing what's become a regular nightly deluge.
My boy fell asleep in the cab. Now I'm in the kitchen listening to the white noise of rain on the verandah roof, listening to the Garrison Keeler show on the radio. The cat is here with me.
But this is Valentine's Day and J is on the couch, eyes shut. Down. Angry. Really low.
He stormed out of the living room earlier, infuriated by an unwinnable stand-off, the kind that only 3-year-olds have the doggedness to stick out.
J went to bed. I got angry. Got dressed. Got out of the house with T. We caught a train into town where there's people and life.
There were so many ways in which it was great, just fine, what I live for. But today I wanted more.
And yes I was angry to come home - sleeping child, heavy, fumbling for keys, pissing down rain. Putting the child to bed, shoes, bag, wet clothes. He's on the fucking couch. On the fucking internet.
And when I swallow my anger to say hello (the anger liposuctioned out of my voice) it turns out he's mad at me.
So I tell him: You're obviously depressed, that's why I went. When it happens all I can do is get out of the way. So that's what I did. I know this from experience now. I used to try and fix it (I tell him), chase you and try and make you interact. But I realise now that just puts pressure on you that you don't need. This episode will pass. It's the depression we're both angry about, not each other.
I said it in anger but it still helped. I can't excise the emotion from the package that is me. I can use it though, it's a catalyst. It carries the words along. It doesn't inform them.
J and I have to accept that depression is part of our lives; I think part of that is accepting that I'm angry at it. It helps to get me through now that it's more accurately directed and better channelled.
This is so true. I wish I could get my partner to see the depression as the enemy instead of me. So often it feels the anger is misdirected at each other and it's the effects of the depression that we are both mad at.
ReplyDeleteHow often it seems depression gets in the way of the times that should be joy-filled too...like Valentine's Day. Ironic that you wait years to have someone to share it with and then... I can think of countless holidays that are memorable for what they weren't instead of all that they were. It's sad and frustrating.
Hang in there. Ellie
Yeah my valentine's day passed unnoticed. My partner's constant refrain these days is that he is very tired and wants to stay in bed. I think he genuinely is tired he works hard but he also does very nothing to energise himself, he drinks too much, watches DVDs when he is not working, eats badly and does no exercise and hasn't spoken to his doctor about his constant fatigue and most of all he is miserable.
ReplyDeleteI am always the one who shows affection but he never does anymore. Last night I 'cracked' and asked him about why he never puts his arms around me anymore and his constant exhaustion. He said he thought things had been better between us lately and they have becasue *I* have been taking an antidepressant and trying to keep upbeat and I made a pledge (to myself) to never expect anything from him because he perceives my needs as critisism.I have been the one trying to change my unhelpful behaviour( and I accept I am not perfect). But after hearing about other people's happy valentines days and looking once again at his glum face I felt sad, sad for what we once had and could still be having and today I feel sadder than I have done for ages. The strain of living with his almost constant lack of joy, and withdrawal is painful and is wearing me out.I still love him but living in the same house in this weird empty relationship is not good but like you I ask how can I leave? It's not *that* bad and to seperate from his son and set up as a single parent and all that upheaval - well is that really going to be any better? Thanks again for starting this blog.
I had a different problem. I've had a couple of weeks when depression seemed bit by bit to have lifted just a little and my Significant Other has been acting a bit more like a normal human being (a meal cooked here, a phone call answered there...little things, but Big for those with depression), culminating in him actually giving me a card on Valentine's Day. A card! Nothing fancy, nothing overly sentimental, just his signature on a card with butterflies on it - not exactly the height of romance, but the fact that he thought about me and Valentine's Day at all was positively astonishing. And throughout this couple of weeks life started to ease into a shape that was not our usual Soul Sucking Constant Misery, and I started to breathe a bit easier, and then....slam, the day AFTER Valentine's Day, he's suddenly back down again. The flat, dead stare, the cold-shoulder, the self-hatred, the disinterest in dressing or bathing, the whole 9 yards.
ReplyDeleteAnd I feel all the worse and even sadder for letting down my guard last week, starting to taste a life that's just a little, little, little bit easier, and BLAM, it's gone again.
Sometimes even the good days are hard because you're just waiting for the next fall.
One thing I find particularly difficult is the way depression turns him in to the god of the household, by which I mean that his moods, the progress of his illness, his cycles, control the emotional weather of the household for everyone else. His moods are, as I think someone else said here, the air we breathe. I've always been a very independent person, and I don't like feeling like someone else's disease is controlling me. But all my attempts to maintain my own health and spirits keep bumping up against the hard reality that his depression DOES effect me and our family.
I wonder what it would be like to have a Valentine's Day in which a simple card wouldn't feel like a miracle, and one so easily snatched away again. In the years B.D. (Before Depression) I took affection, consideration and loving gestures for granted. I wish I was still that person.