Recognising limitations

I wholeheartedly accept that the world is round and that I need to pay my taxes and even that Colin Firth can really act if he needs to. But I don't have to do anything about those things do I?

I mean the world will keep on turning (with or without us, hopefully, but let's not get into climate change right now). And unless I suddenly morph into a corporate entity with so much money that I can find ways to keep every last cent of it to myself, I will need to keep on giving Caesar his due along with the rest of the great unwashed.

And as a member of the great unwashed, it's people like me that keep Colin Firth's career afloat I suppose. Heck, my ramblings have inadvertantly led to me to find some way to make a difference...

Anyway my point is that it's a lot harder to actually accept that being in a relationship with a depressed person will mean living with limitations specific to that. And in the process of figuring out precisely what I can in fact live with I have to acknowledge what these limitations are and how they'll manifest and whether I'm ready to deal with them.

Travel is one that I've bumped up against this week.


I travelled a bit in my youth. Many of my friends are still doing it. And although I've become a bit of a homebody in the last few years (a 14-hour-flight where I wasn't allowed to put the toddler down once without glass shattering wailing can certainly take the joy out of life) I still like the idea of a small trips for now, bigger ones later.

The bit I love most is coming home with your mind still very much in travel mode so that you can look at your own city with a visitor's eye. Everything sparkles. The familiar is once again beautiful and exciting. (I know that sounds like an argument against monogomy but I really am talking about travel.)

But for J travel is very stressful. In fact as I write this it is now two hours since he left the office and he still isn't home. (It takes me about 45 minutes.) I thought he was having me on at first. Surely he was lying about this, nipping off for a quick beer on the way or something.

But then I made the journey with him and saw first hand how overwhelming everything about the trip home in peak hour is for him - the cattle/people streaming through the tunnel, the lines for tickets at the train station, the crowds on the platforms. He can't make his way to the front of the hordes, or even the middle of them, to get himself onto a packed train. So he gets left behind, train after train after train.

So holidays are often a fraught experience that always involve anxiety and a bout of depression. Depending on the length, it's often not worth the trouble.

It's a bit hard to accept that we won't be having many family holidays. Not for us the happy snaps of frolicking on the beach, riding the highways and byways and singing favourite songs (in between "I'm feeling sick mummy, I need the toilet, are we there yet...").

It makes me sad but I think I can accept this compromise without resentment as long as it doesn't mean I don't get to go on holidays at all. And I need to be able to do it without fear of reprisal.

For us this is part of the greater subject of control and levels on independence within our relationship. I want rather a lot of the latter and for me that's a bottom line thing. It's just that it's hard to put into practice.

J feels insecure when he's depressed. If I am out of sight I may enjoy myself too much to ever come home again.

In the past when I've gone out with friends he's sulked and picked fights, made a fuss about being left to look after T on his own just so I can have fun - basically just made the price too high.

So while it's relatively easy to make a resolution that I'll just go on holidays without him I know it's going to be hard to do it. And I know equally that I must do it or I'll be right back at the beginning of all this.

There's a test case coming right up - a bunch of close friends going down the coast next month for a weekend.

Off the bat I see the stress factors. It's like being offered a bottle of Grange and seeing the hangover in my mind's eye.

This is not the way I want to live.

So I'll take a deep breath and just ask him if he wants to go. And if he doesn't then I'll figure out a nice way to say "I'm going anyway".

Flo