Don't panic

Living with someone who has depression can feel in many ways like being in a parallel universe. Often it feels like a universe which is just slightly out of kilter with the one that everybody else lives in. It's only a fraction out so you can see each other and hear each other; but the two worlds operate in subtly different ways.

I wish I had a guide to this universe. And if I did, it would also have on the front cover in big bold print the words: DON'T PANIC. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did its bit to get me through adolescence and its advice has proved salient many times since.

Since J started showing signs of depression again I felt like I was falling into the deep end of a very cold pool. But anyway, panic is what I did. It wasn't a daub myself in ochre and run laps around the bathroom kind of thing. (Doesn't everyone panic like that?)

It's just that my heart started to beat faster and more loudly, my breathing was more shallow.

Luckily all the reading and thinking and listening to the advice of those who have inhabited similar places for longer than I hasn't been completely wasted on me. I surprised myself by pulling back reasonably well.

And so far things haven't been too bad anyhow. He was properly down for a full day. He seemed to spring back a little the next day and was able to discuss what he was feeling. I could even suggest that he see his counsellor sooner than his next appointment if need be, to which he agreed.

Is this progress? Either way, panic is best avoided. But there's definitely a bit of a gap between what I know intellectually about how to handle this and what I know emotionally. Emotional me is running a little behind.

Flo

It's back

Well of course it is.

I'm glad we did all the things we did while it was away; glad we had the chance to remember our relationship, do some repairs, build on it a bit.

(You know, I think I'm getting too involved in those reality house make-over shows. All my metaphors are structural.)

Do you remember a book called The Time Traveller's Wife?

Young lovers often believe themselves crossed by fate or by time, but those in Niffenegger’s spirited first novel have more reason than most. Henry suffers from Chrono-Impairment—a quasi-medical condition that catapults him, unwillingly, from one random point in time to another. Clare first meets him in 1977, when she is six and he materializes near her parents’ garden as a thirty-six-year-old from 2000; he returns regularly throughout her childhood from different times in their shared future. At last, when Clare is twenty and Henry twenty-eight, they meet in his present, and the relationship begins in earnest. But romance proves even trickier than usual when one person keeps vanishing to distant, and occasionally dangerous, times... (Read more: The New Yorker - Books briefly noted) 

When I first read this novel I felt like she was writing about our relationship. It's perhaps the best fictional description I've ever read about living with someone who has depression.

It's just that J was present for such an extended period this time, I really hoped (foolishly) that it might be for a very long time.

I don't know yet how long it will last. He had a bad day yesterday, all day. He still attended a social occasion though. He didn't spend the day in bed.

But the physical contact has stopped. His emotional presence in our household has diminished. He has retreated. So while he hasn't entirely disappeared I can see him fading. I can almost see through him.

So I guess now is the time to remember all of things I've learned about how to deal with this. Go over my notes. Something about giving him the space he needs yeah? Maintaining the boundaries right?

Flo

The king is dead. Long live the queen.

Australia has its first female Prime Minister.

I happened to be sitting in a café when it happened. There were no TVs or radios or laptops about. I found out because friends had been texting during the morning, keeping each other appraised of the latest we’d heard.

I felt like I should stand up and make an announcement: People, we have a new Prime Minister. We have our first woman Prime Minister.

(I didn’t of course. I just stared about, trying to read the faces around me, wondering if they knew.)

Julia Gillard seems to be an incredibly competent person. She’s handled several portfolios at once. Her electorate seems happy with her representation. When she was acting prime minister (which was quite often) they say she got through the paperwork like nobody’s business.

She deals with the media calmly. In fact she kept them well in their place at her press conference, no easy feat, making them wait their turn to ask a question.

She communicates her intentions very clearly and her statements are informative.

Importantly she does not conform to many of our society’s conservative expectations of womanhood or of politicians.

She is not married. She does not have children. She is not religious.

I am sorry that her leadership came about this way – impatient factional powerbrokers bowing to the polls and buying a little into the Opposition’s frenetic rhetoric about an electorate who would not/ could not (sorry, that’s a bit Green Eggs and Ham) support the outgoing leader, Kevin Rudd.

I think they underestimated people’s ability to be patient. I know big things take time. I can wait to see where a leader will take us.

It’s a bit like an emergency Ceasarean section. It’s not the birth that was planned - no transition period, not a lot of choice for the main participants. But it’s the one that happened.

And now here we are. Suddenly we have our first female Prime Minister.

But she’s no innocent babe. She’s an old hand at this already. Leadership is just the next logical step, the mantle that was inevitably her due.

I'm curious to see what she will do differently; whether things will move forward with respect to matters like mental health, paid parental leave, environmental issues, genuine consultation with other parties and representatives. I'd like to think so.

Enough gushing from me now. I wanted to give an emotional response. There will be plenty of others today from more political and intellectual viewpoints, many of which I’m looking forward to reading.

Politics has a profoundly emotional impact on J and on me. It’s one of the reasons we first got together.

We both cried (yes, really) as we watched Kevin Rudd give his farewell speech. And it felt good to be standing shoulder to shoulder again.

Flo

In defence of repression

I wonder if I'm always going to be nervous at the first sign of a bad mood. You know, a grumpy morning, a string of swear words heard from another room. Every time J stubs his toe (and reacts in the way that anyone else would) am I going to wonder if this heralds the end of a golden era?

I'm vigilant in a fairly low key way about my own mood. Having suffered from depression in the past I know when I need to step in to stop myself from sinking. And I also know when it's an appropriate level of sadness or just an off day.

But reading someone else is another matter all together. Hypervigilance is such a big part of the prison that is living with a depressed person. I am keen to stop myself from falling into that deep dark hole.

But I'd be lying if I were to say that I can be totally relaxed about things. I am quite afraid that this won't go on for much longer. I'm worried that it might be a bit like the start of a holiday, long dreamt of, saved up for, hardly dared hope for. And then before you know it you're back at work and it's behind you.
I have this very vivid memory from when I was nine. I was on my way to the pool. I had looked forward to it all week. And as I was walking down the hall, swimmers on, the smell of chlorine already in my nostrils I suddenly thought, but soon I'll be on my way back up this same hall, on my way home, my swim in the past.

And then (because I must have been one hell of a neurotic nine-year-old) I wondered if this is what it would be like to be suddenly 80 years old. One day I'm nine with countless years ahead and a very short while later I am in fact looking back down that hall at my nine-year-old self.

I have tried hard to forget that thought so of course it's taken up residence just on the periphery of my day-to-day and every now and again, like a recurring cold sore, it replays itself, reminding me that each day brings me closer to its fulfilment.

Of course as I get older I rather hope that I'll get to 80 and that I'll still be remembering things. But for now I wish there was some kind of filing cabinet I could put it in or some device that allowed it out only when it was going to be useful rather than just make make me sweat a little, breathe a bit faster and fret needlessly.

I could of course file my current fear about J's depression returning in the same drawer. I'll stick the folder under R for repressed or N for neurosis.

Then I'll stop having administrative fantasies (it's been pretty much downhill since 1984).

Flo

There's no place like home

Do you rent? Have you ever had the pleasure?

We've been renting our current place for two and three-quarter years (but who's counting). I've spent most of that time feeling like an outsider in this town and it's only been the possibility of actually leaving that has made me realise I am starting to belong.

We're not moving now after all. External factors are partly responsible. A new bus route means I can now easily get to my old suburb to visit friends (so thank you anonymous transport department worker).

Also after seeing some of the run-down expensive hovels in our price range our current house is looking very good indeed.

Just before we decided to forget about moving we found what I thought was the right house. It needed a lot of work. The paint was falling off the walls as if it were large sheets of butcher paper, tacked on many years ago and then forgotten, left blank. It flopped dismally, almost reaching the carpet which if possible was in an even sadder state.

But it was relatively cheap. Sydney is an expensive city whichever way you look at it. You either spend your money on rent or on transport getting in and out of the city.

Anyway, we were willing to do the work so we applied. Which is not like saying we applied for a credit card (though admittedly that kind of application comes already filled out, in my mailbox, with a toll free number to ring to activate my pre-approved billion dollar limit). It's not even like applying for a job which requires some hard work and not a small amount of anxiety.

No, applying for a rental property involves revealing several pages of private financial details, copies of no less than eight payslips (and I'm sorry, but what gives a real estate agent* the right to see exactly what I earn, my employee number, sick days, annual leave etc. Are they priests now, or doctors? Lawyers?)

Then they want personal and professional references from current and past jobs, past addresses, emergency contact details and my relationship with the person listed. (Stasi files anyone?)

I need to provide copies of several forms of ID. If I want to fill this information out online I have the option of paying a private company some money so that the application is sent faster. Or else I can painstakingly type out or write out all of this information for every application.

Oh, and they want to know if I'm applying for other properties too. Why? Does this disqualify me? Is it a monogamy thing now?

And then you are rejected. And they don't tell you why. Even though you've spent a couple of hours on this thing they won't spend a minute to tell you why (except once a few years ago when they told us that it was because someone else had offered more money.)

Wow, I didn't realise how angry I still am. (I can tell I'm getting hysterical when I put words in bold.)

I realised after that though that I wasn't ready to throw myself back into the pool, offer myself up for rejection, waste my Saturdays at inevitably disappointing viewings, jostling 10 or 20 other people along narrow and dirty hallways, trying to imagine this place as home, and then going too far and actually hoping it might be.

And I'm not even the one suffering from depression. J tried very hard to cope but it very quickly got him down (so we were synchronised then).

He said, "We don't have to do this." And I took a deep breath and had a cry and realised he was right. I'm fine where I am, really. I will give this place another go because it's infinitely better than going through that process over and over again.

We talked together about what we would do. He was utterly reasonable, acknowledging my need for independence, for eventual security about where we live. But he made me see that I didn't need to panic and up stakes and run for it like I have a tendency to do.

So the deal is that we are working together to save up as much cash as we can and then decide where to go in a year. We want to do it before T starts school so we're in a place where we'll be happy to stay for six or seven years.

It feels amazing to be in a partnership like this, where I don't feel the need to temper my emotions in case they're too much for someone and where I don't have to figure it out on my own.

So I spent a day reorganising my bookshelves and doing a bit of a spring clean. The boxes are going to some other poor sod for now. I hope that's not you, though if it is you can be assured of some sympathy from me.

Flo

*See also: vacuous, over-inflated, self aggrandising, judgmental, "I was only doing my job I didn't know it was the Hitler Youth", never paid a day's rent in my life. Apologies to anyone out there who is one. Maybe you're the one in a million that's different.

A bit of a breather

I've started to write a few posts over the last few weeks but just couldn't finish them. I'd lost the impetus you see, the drive to put things into words. I was about to write "on paper" and the fact that it's not just on paper also made the exercise more wearying.

I no longer wanted to spend so much time with the screen. I didn't want that white light seeping through my eyelids, or to enter another password or verification code, or wait a few seconds for the computer to boot and then a few more while it ran an absolutely urgent update. All these piddling inconsequential seconds amounted to something that was enough to sap my will to live (or my will to post at any rate).

So a day or two off became a week and then several. Really it was a good thing. I continued to read other people's work but less often, and I didn't engage online. I wanted to live only in the physical world for a little bit.There was time to stop and evaluate what I was doing with this blog, why I was writing it, who I was writing it for.

Circumstances have changed. My partner's depression has for the timebeing  lifted. I hardly dare to think that possibility and writing it feels so daring (and maybe even foolish) but it also feels so very, very good, however long it lasts.

While he's been well we've been spending time together, making joint decisions about things and getting things done. I have been sleeping well again. I have energy.

And for a few weeks I didn't want to think about depression at all. I wanted to focus entirely on every moment of this normal life. Every small thing was a marvellous rediscovery. We had breakfast together. We talked about what was in the paper. He touched me in passing, as if our bodies touching was no big deal.

Not that everything is swell. He still has a bad day now and again. He still has his habit of saying no to everything, but then he smiles and says, "just kidding, of course I mean yes."

It's been like, I don't know, winning the lotto.(A reasonable amount - enough for a house deposit and maybe a holiday, not millions, but life changing.)

For example, I had a medical appointment this morning; nothing serious just something I wasn't looking forward to. (Why am I being so circumspect? I discuss my most frightening doubts and emptiness here, my most intimate thoughts, and yet I can't say pap smear?)

Anyway, he's just called to see how I am, check that it went well and tell me to take it easy and enjoy the day, take some time out for myself. "Don't go and do any housework," he said. "We can do it together tomorrow when I'm home."

I know you will understand the significance of these things. You will know how remote the possibility is of being on the receiving end of such warm, loving concern and thoughtfulness.

When J is depressed there is no room for me in his throughts. He would not have called. My day off work would only have been a reminder of the fact that he has his nose to the grindstone, as usual. Perhaps he might have felt guilty for not being able to offer support.

Instead I am living in a relative paradise. This must be what spring is like after a long winter in somewhere like Norway. (And the possibility - please don't make me say probability just yet - of it being seasonal hasn't escaped me. I just don't want to think about it right now.)

I've also realised that I do want and need to keep writing. I want to see where this leads me. I want to know what happens when I don't have to just concentrate on surviving each day.

Flo