Eight Years

Tags

anniversary, depression, family, life, love

Yesterday, we were sitting around watching Stephen Fry’s Q.I. on Youtube when Perfect Husband sat up straight.

“Oh, SHIT.” He covered his mouth. “I forgot!”

“What?” I was alarmed. I wracked my brain. Were we supposed to be doing something that night? Was there something vital that I had let slip through my calendar?

“I have to call a prostitute right away! It’s my last chance for the seven year itch!” he said.

I leaned back on the couch and stuck out my tongue.

Eight years ago, we were married. 

Eight years ago, he was my rock, my prince who made me feel like the luckiest person in the world. I couldn’t believe that I was getting to spend the rest of my life with this man who worked so hard to make my life better.

He was the kind of person who cooked dinner and then washed the dishes, while insisting that I sit and rest. He was the kind of person with whom I could talk for hours and never grow bored.

The best part of it all was the fact that he thought he was the lucky one – he actually felt lucky to be with this socially anxious awkward girl with weight problems who loved to take care of pets and babies but also desperately needed to be taken care of by someone else.
Ten years ago, I started dating my best friend. I avoided it for so long, because it sounds like such a terrible idea, but within days we knew that this was it.

We knew that we would move in together. We knew that we would get married. We knew how many kids we would have and what their names would be before he even formally proposed.

Sometimes you just know.

Eleven years ago, he emerged from years of crippling depression, and I discovered that the man who had always been my best friend because even better when he was free of his chains. The man who had always been willing to talk for hours about books or argue with me about hypothetical situations, who had always been willing to give the shirt off of his back to help a friend, stepped out from under the clouds so I could really see him in his entirety. He turned out to be a sunny optimist with a can-do attitude that I found deeply attractive.

Twelve years ago I stopped him from committing suicide. Even then, I knew that I couldn’t live without him in my life. Even then, he was part of the furniture of my mind. Even then, I was willing to sacrifice his happiness to keep him alive. Even then, his pain mattered less to me than the continued beating of his kind heart.

Thirteen years ago my parents met him for the first time, and they thought, “that’s the one.”

“That boy is in love with you,” my father told me later.

“Yeah… we don’t talk about it, though,” I replied, and my parents wisely kept their mouths shut. But they told me later that they knew from the first moment that they saw us together that this would happen. That he was meant to be their son in law.

His parents have said the exact same thing.

Let’s face it, Perfect Husband has said the same thing. “I knew it was just a matter of waiting,” he said.

Show offs.

Fourteen years ago, I sang a Lorne Elliott song with one of the actors in the production of Hamlet that I was stage managing. Almost no one knows Lorne Elliott and we were both delighted to find someone else who did. Almost no one else has read Gordon Korman, but he had, and we talked about it for an hour. He liked Who Is Bugs Potter. I preferred I Want To Go Home.

Fourteen years ago, I found a new friend.

So here we are, fourteen years in, thirteen years in, twelve years in, ten years in.

Eight years in.

I don’t have a photo of us, now. He doesn’t want his picture taken. He doesn’t want to remember this.

Life is different now.

The depression is back and has been raging for years. Most days, he isn’t the sunny prince that I married, but he is still the best friend that I couldn’t live without.  I have met this side of him before and I married him knowing I would probably see it again. So it doesn’t scare me. He is still kind. He is still my best friend. He is still the man that my parents knew I would someday marry.

We have two young children that demand almost all of my time. I feel a constant gripping anxiety based on the fact that I want to work more, because we need more money, but I also want to work less, because I feel overburdened as it is, and I can’t afford to shift too much of that burden onto my husband, and I really can’t afford to pay someone else to take on some of that burden.

I struggle constantly to hide my stress because he blames himself when it emerges. A stray tear, wiped away too late, and he will be pestering me, asking what he can do, beyond the impossible. He thinks that I will blame him, or should blame him, for this.

I don’t.

I was there, you see. I saw how he couldn’t make himself wake up and go to class. I saw how he sometimes backed out of plans because he couldn’t face a social scene. I knew him. I married him.

Yes, I miss the man who pampered me and spoiled me. Yes, I miss feeling like he was someone that I could lean on. Yes, I miss feeling that he was someone I could come to with my problems, instead of someone that I needed to shield from them. Yes, I sometimes feel envy when I meet people who can just get their husbands to take the kids at a moment’s notice, no problem, or who can go out with their friends or on date nights on a regular basis.

Then again I know people who have husbands that are perfectly well and are just giant dicks, and then I feel very grateful. He may be asleep a lot, but he’s not a dick.

Besides, I knew he was sick, and what that meant, and I said the words, “in sickness and in health”, and I knew what I was saying when I said them.

“You could still run away, you know,” he whispered before the vows started. “Now’s your chance. Look, there’s a door just there.”

I looked out of the side door near the altar. It was open to let in cool breezes. The dandelions swayed in the old cemetery where couple after couple lay side by side. Then I looked back at him and shook my head, “no.”

“Now is YOUR chance,” I told him.

Sometimes I think he should have run. He isn’t equipped to handle the stress of caring for small children. I see how just our presence in the household raises his stress levels. I think about how much  of his time is spent on blaming himself for my own stress and misery.

Sometimes I feel like we are Albatrosses around his neck.

And I know he feels like an Albatross on mine.

We keep telling each other that we have no regrets. We keep telling each other that we prefer this to the alternative.

Maybe one day, we’ll finally believe one another.

Because let’s face it: If there is such a thing as fate, we are it.

So let it be. If we are lucky, we’ll have another thirty or forty years together. And I can’t speak for him, but I would still sign up for that in a heartbeat.

The Time Draws Nigh (In Which I Agonize About Going Back To Work And Am Both Successful And In Deep Trouble Simultaneously)

Tags

anxiety, depression, dog training, maternity leave, parenthood, Perfect Husband, work, working mother

How has it been nearly a year since Fritter was born? Where did the time go?

  
I have spent the last month or two slowly gearing back up to work mode, because in a month I am going to have to go back into the world of unmet expectations and absolutely no down time which is the life of the working mother.

I don’t wanna.

I don’t want my cuddly baby to get bigger.

I don’t want to leave her at daycare because she has some stranger issues (which I will discuss at some point).

I don’t want the stress of having to meet people’s expectations, avoid judgement, etc.

I don’t want to lose the hour and a half of down time I get every day during Fritter’s morning nap while Owl is at school.

I don’t want any of it. I LIKE maternity leave.

 
But, since it isn’t a choice, what I really want is to get my dog training business going, and going HARD. Because training dogs pays between 40 and 70 dollars an hour and working at the vet clinic… doesn’t. Also because it’s one of my life dreams, along with being an author.

The Cancer Principle: Depression is Okay, Abuse Is Not

Tags

abuse, bipolar disorder, depression, marriage, mental illness, relationships, suicide

I joined a support group online for people with depressed or bipolar spouses. I expected to find other people who know what it is like to sit downstairs alone in the evenings imagining life after their husband’s suicide.

What I didn’t expect was to end up becoming a relationship counsellor.

Some people are angry and impatient with their spouse’s depressive symptoms. They use words like “lazy” and “can’t be bothered” and “selfish”. I have to remind them that depression is a disease and should be treated as such. They shouldn’t go around getting angry at someone for being sick.

There’s a difference between “won’t” and “can’t”. People with depression often CAN’T get out of bed, CAN’T interact positively and CAN’T pull it together for important family events.

Others are putting up with horrific levels of verbal and emotional and occasionally physical abuse, and blaming it on the depression/mania/addiction. They talk about how their husband tried to choke them and threatened to kill them and say “I had to call the cops. I felt so guilty, I really hate this illness. I know he won’t understand why I did it, either. He’ll think I am against him.”

I have to remind them that depression or bipolar disorder is not a get-out-of-abuse-free card that gives someone carte blanche to emotionally damage their loved ones, particularly their children. You shouldn’t stay with someone who abuses you or puts your children at risk physically or emotionally just because the person is ill, especially when that person keeps insisting that this is all somehow your fault.

But how, people are always asking, do you know what is okay and what is not? Why is okay for my wife to sleep through our daughter’s birthday party, but it isn’t okay for her husband to swear in front of the kids?

So I have developed a litmus test to tell what should, and what should not, be tolerated from a spouse.

The Cancer Principle

Since depression is a deadly disease which causes a wide range of known physical symptoms, I find that cancer makes a good analog because it is a deadly disease without the stigma that comes with mental illnesses. Depression is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Like cancer, some cases are worse than others, and some kinds are more curable than others.

Really, though, you could use any illness that is serious enough to put someone in the hospital. The point is to consider it from the point of view of “my spouse has a serious disease” and not “my spouse is abnormal”.

So, when your depressed husband or wife does something that makes you angry (and they will – it’s hard NOT to be angry when they suddenly sleep through an important event, or leave you scrambling for child care at the last minute, or snap at you for no good reason), ask yourself this:

Would this be considered acceptable if they had cancer?

For example – I go out for a walk with Owl and Perfect Husband is perfectly fine, watching football. I come back and discover that he has crashed in the hour that we have been gone. He is now in the throes of a suicidal misery. He snaps at me twice, then removes himself to the bedroom because he realises that he is growling like an injured bear.

Would this be considered acceptable if he had cancer?

I conclude that the answer is yes – if he had cancer and he suddenly started to feel sick or his pain medications wore off and he became very painful, it is understandable that he would become snappy and then retreat to the bedroom to be alone.

On the other hand, if he had gone onto a verbally abusive tirade calling me a “selfish whore” and threatened to hit Owl, that would NOT have been okay, no matter how much pain he was in.

For example – Perfect Husband agrees to watch the baby while I go to train a puppy. When the day arrives, he has been unconscious for two days and is clearly going to sleep through today as well. I have to cancel the appointment and reschedule it with apologies.

Would this be considered acceptable if he had cancer?

Yes! He was feeling better and thought he could handle it, but then he had a relapse and had to take medications which made him very sleepy and unable to take care of his child. If that was due to cancer, that would be totally understandable.

So I was not angry with him.

On the other hand, if he had agreed to watch the baby and then went out partying with friends and didn’t come back until 5 am, only to fall on the bed dead-drunk, that would not have been okay whether or not he had cancer, so I would have had the right to be angry with him about it.

For example- I watch Breaking Bad. Walter White’s wife discovers that her husband is manufacturing and selling meth, and his contacts with the drug underworld is putting himself and her family in serious danger. He has cancer. Does that make his behaviour okay?

No!

The Cancer Principle. It works every time.

Once someone argued with me, saying “I think there’s a caveat – if they aren’t seeking treatment. My husband sleeps all day and snaps at all of us and he won’t get help and that’s not okay.”

Okay, so then you ask yourself, if he had cancer, and it was making him sick and miserable and yet he refused to seek treatment for his cancer (not even palliative/symptomatic treatment), would that be okay?

No!

The Cancer Principle, man. It WORKS.

Thank You, 2015

Tags

depression, family, life, maternity leave, new years, parenthood, parents, pregnancy

I have mixed feelings about the passing of 2015.

Some parts of 2015 really sucked. My husband nearly killed himself, I ended up heavily pregnant, with a bacterial infection, working and caring for our four year old who also had a bacterial infection, while he was stuck in the hospital and unable to help.

My father broke his hip and overall has deteriorated markedly in his health.

My relationship with my son deteriorated, as my capacity to tolerate his extroverted highjinks hit a new low.

I spent a significant amount of this year coughing, exhausted, diabetic, extremely stressed, half-expecting to become a widow at any moment, researching the potential cost of burying my husband, and wearing Depends because I kept wetting myself.

On the other hand…

This year also brought me the generosity and love of the friends and relations who came streaming in to help during these difficult times. There were friends who picked Owl up at daycare when I was stuck at the hospital, and friends who brought Chinese food so that I wouldn’t have to cook, or took Owl for play dates so I could nap.

There was my mother in law, who is terrified of flying and financially limited, flying in TWICE to spend a grand total of three months sleeping on our couch, just to help.

On the first visit she made me diabetes-friendly meals and arranged snacks for me at a time when I was working and exhausted and could never have kept up the dietary management that was expected of me on my own. She put my son to bed at night and made him breakfast in the morning, she read to him and joked with him and brought some humor and pleasantry to a home that was seething in stress.

On her return she cooked and cleaned, entertained Owl and then held the baby so I could shower, get dressed, eat meals, and spend some quality time with my son.

And in between those visits, my parents flew in for four months. They took money from their nest egg to rent a place nearby, and my mother drove back and forth making meals and snacks, cleaning, and reading Owl bedtime stories.

Not only did it bring me much needed aid, but I got to spend time with my father while he still knows who I am.

And this year brought me Fritter, who made a safe landing on the shores of time and gave us the gift of a colic-free fourth trimester. She brings me joy every day with her grins and chortles, and I wouldn’t change a thing about her.

And with all of those months of support from our family, PH was able to retreat and rest and begin healing. While he is still very ill, I have seen more of the old Perfect Husband in the last three months than I have in the past two years. There are mornings when I come downstairs to find breakfast laid out for me, afternoons when he greets me at the door to take my coat and offer me a drink, and evenings when he rubs my feet and offers to run me a bath.

Whenever he has a good day, I feel like I could suffer another two years just for a chance at more days like that.

I feel like I could kiss 2015 for bringing me even one day like that, let alone as many as I have been gifted with these last few months.

2015 also brought me maternity leave, which I love because I am a lazy slob. I love being home with my baby and watching The Walking Dead or writing during her naps. It’s way better than working. I’m sad that there are only a few more months left. I have a lot of writing to get down in that time.

Yes, over all I am very grateful to 2015. I feel like it got handed a terrible set of cards but it played them all right.

2015 for me was a year of defeat and renewal, of family and love.

We survived it, and maybe it has made us stronger.

If 2016 can keep up with this upward trend, I think I can look forward to the coming year.

And if it can’t… well… Bring it, 2016.

On Our Own

So, our inlaws flew home at the end of July, and we’ve been hacking it on our own for the first time since January.

That’s right. We haven’t had to be proper, full fledged adults in EIGHT MONTHS.

I’ve forgotten how I did it all – how did I get dishes washed and Owl’s face wiped and keep him entertained ALL ON MY OWN?

Luckily, PH’s mood is more stable these days. He’s still struggling, but he’s further from the edge. He has a bit of energy – enough to get Owl his breakfast in the morning and help him into bed at night, and sometimes help out during the day either with laundry/tidying/dishes or simply taking our extrovert out of the house. Of course, he still thinks that he isn’t doing enough but compared to what he was able to do eight months ago, I consider this level of help freaking miraculous.

Besides, we’ve organized a bit of help for ourselves.

Last week we put Owl in a preparing for kindergarten camp which took him from 9 am until 3 pm every day, which was fantastic.

This week we could only find a gymnastics camp from 1-3 pm, so that’s where he is.

It’s wearing us out, but we’re managing.

PH deals with Owl in the morning and lets me sleep until Fritter wakes up between 8 and 9 am. Then I get up, shower, dress, have a diet pepsi, put Fritter in a carrier and her and Owl out on a looooong dog walk with Beloved Dog. Sometimes Fritter falls asleep on the long walk and so when we get home I can do some dishes and clean a bit while she snoozes.

The biggest problem is not the baby, although she complicates things and fills my arms for the majority of the day. It’s TALKING TO OWL. He wants to talk all the time. He wants to move all the time. If I take him out of the house it’s not so bad, but in the house he wants to be bouncing or swinging or climbing within my personal space while saying “Mom? Volcanoes esplode lava, right mom? Lava is hot rocks. Mom? The rocks are hot. Right Mom? Hot rocks make lava. The lava is so hot. Mom? What if lava esploded IN YOUR HEAD?”
It’s exhausting to introverts like PH and me.

So we take him out places. 

  
On really good days, I can arrange to meet a friend for a playdate, and then I can stand around and cuddle my baby and watch Owl playing with his friend and it’s adorable and I feel happy.

  
On days like that, I have time to reflect on how lucky I am. I’m lucky that so many of my friends have boys about Owl’s age. I’m lucky that I live in such a beautiful place. I’m lucky that Vancouver hardly ever has rain in the summer and so I can take Owl outside because otherwise I don’t know what I would do.

  
I was lucky to have so much help for so long.

And I’m lucky to still have a husband who can take Owl for a couple of hours in the morning, and help him brush his teeth at night, and sometimes even clean the house while I’m out on a playdate.

We have each other.

So really, we’re not on our own at all.

Does Not Happen

Tags

antidepressants, depression, husband, spouse, suicide

‘Not this one, Mau thought, as loudly as he could. Not now. No one goes alive into the dark. I served you, Locaha. I walked in your steps. You should owe me this one. One life, back from the dark!

And a voice came back from the gloom: I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no ‘should’.

[….]

Does not happen, he thought, and the words became a declaration of triumph and defiance. ‘Does not happen,’ he said, and the words got bigger and dragged him to his feet, and ‘Does not happen!’ he shouted at the sky. ‘DOES NOT HAPPEN!'” – Terry Pratchett, Nation.

This is me, standing in front of my husband, refusing to let him die.

When he tells me to stand aside, because he does not want to hurt me, but he can’t take the pain any more.

When I think about telling our little son that his Daddy is dead.

When I think about telling my mother in law that she will never see her son again.

When I think of a life spent next to an empty space in the bed, a ring on my finger with no match to it, a daughter who doesn’t remember ever having a father, a son who grows up wondering why his father left him behind.

Does not happen.

So I stand outside in my bath robe, leaning on the car door, calmly telling him that I will crush his fingers if he tries to pry it open again. He will have to hurt me. He will have to push his pregnant wife to the ground, knock me unconscious maybe, because I can not stand aside.

In Which We Attend The Quidditch Global Games 2014 and are Blown Away by Awesomeness

Tags

balls, bludger, brooms, feminism, gender equality, global games 2014, Harry Potter, lgbtq, muggle quidditch, quaffle, quidditch, seeker, snitch, sports, trans equality, transgender, transgender rights, Vancouver

We found out about it totally by accident.

We were at an indoor play gym as part of our constant battle to keep our little extrovert entertained on the weekend. PH picked up a local paper to flip through while we sat in the overwhelmingly loud atmosphere.

“Hey, the Quidditch Global Games are in Vancouver,” he said.

“Like, where people run around on brooms?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, we need to see that. When is it.”

He scanned the article. “Today!”

So we packed Owl in the car and headed down to see.

It took us a while to find it. International competition not withstanding, the Quidditch Global Games had not attracted a large crowd. Most of the spectators were family and friends of the players.

We were geeking out.

“They have MERCHANDISE!” I said, running over to the booth. There were shirts from many of the international teams. After much hemming and hawing I bought shirt from the Mexican team, where were newcomers this year and could only afford to bring half of their team.

The shirt says “Viva Quidditch, cabrones!” and really, how often do you get a chance to buy a shirt that says (loosely translated) “long live Quidditch, bitches!” in Spanish?

We showed up at the perfect time, because Canada was just starting their match against Australia. We watched as all players bowed their head while the “Snitch” – a heavyset dude in yellow with a sock hanging out of the back of his pants – ran off of the field to hide.

When the Snitch was out of a sight, a whistle blew and all hell broke loose. The players grabbed their brooms, mounted them, and then fought to get a “Quaffle” (which, confusingly, was white) through the other team’s hoops. Since they were all holding onto their brooms, all throwing and catching was done one handed.

It all sounds pretty silly, until you watch it played.

This sport is FULL BODY CONTACT, guys. They were tackling each other like mad. We saw at least one person carted off of the field in a stretcher, and several more down for a good 5-10 minute count. This isn’t about some silly geeks LARPing in a soccer field. It’s like Rugby with extra balls and literary roots.

While Chasers fought one-handed over the Quaffle, Beaters were throwing dodge balls at the players. Whenever one of them got tagged by a “bludger” they had to dismount and run back and touch their hoops before they could re-enter play.

After 18 minutes the Snitch returned to the pitch and then the play became (if possible) even more intense. The seekers tried to tackle the Snitch, who wasn’t afraid to knock them down repeatedly, while opposing team members tried to interfere with play. Meanwhile, the Chasers are still trying to get the Quaffle through the hoops while also helping out their Seeker.

You don’t even know what to watch – keep your eyes on the Snitch and miss another incredible goal? Or watch the Quaffle and miss the capturing of the Snitch?

Craziness.

We were able to stay long enough to watch Canada come in third. We had to take Owl home to bed before the final match, which the USA ended up winning (Muggle Quidditch originated in the U.S, and the page for the international association is actually called USquidditch.com, which bothers me. Hopefully as international teams increase, there will be a truly international page set up).

Some friends of ours who are both sporty AND geeky also came out to watch.

“Why don’t we play this?” one of them asked.

Good question.

PH has been missing sports in his life for many years.

In his high school yearbook, you can find his face in pretty much every team photo. Soccer, baseball, football, curling… he did it all.

In University he refereed several sports. But it’s surprisingly hard to get involved in sports here. There’s a big population and a lot of demand. When we moved to B.C. he tracked down the local baseball league and was rejected several times – they just didn’t have room for more players.

He did curling for a year or two, but since he had to take what he could get, he was shunted onto a team of lackluster players who he never quite jived with. He gave up in frustration after two seasons.

So then he decided to try refereeing.  He got qualified as a soccer referee, but was only every called out to a few games, earning a grand total of a hundred dollars over a whole season. The next year they only called once. He didn’t bother re-certifying the next year.

Last year he decided to get certified as a softball referee. It cost us $150 and they never called him at all.

Quidditch, on the other hand, could be a whole other ball game.

PH tracked down a Quidditch referee to ask how he could get involved and they practically leaped on him. Turns out that there was a team in Burnaby that was looking for players, and they are short on referees.

By the time we left the field he had exchanged emails with several people and they were hoping to see him on the Quidditch pitch next Saturday.  Today he downloaded the 150 page rule book and began memorizing it.

Quidditch rules, by the way, are awesome.

Not only is it a delightfully geeky and yet truly challenging sport to play, it is also heartwarmingly unlike other sports.

Besides being the only sport to involve multiple balls in play at once, the International Quidditch Association is dedicated to inclusivity and equality.

Teams MUST be co-ed, and it specifically addresses transgender issues in the rulebook. The co-ed rule reads:

Each team [is] to have at least two players on the field who identify with a different gender than at least two other players. The gender that a player identifies with is considered to be that player’s gender, which may or may not be the same as that person’s sex.

That is AWESOME.

The rule goes on to acknowledge that some players may not identify as male OR female, and that is okay, too.

If that rule wasn’t enough to make Perfect Husband and I fall head over heels in love with Quidditch (we consider ourselves ardent LGBTQ allies), our hearts were entirely won over when we learned that Quidditch also had a decree called Title 9 3/4 (a play on Title IX) which is devoted specifically to gender equality in the sport.

It’s so awesome, and I’m proud that PH is getting involved. I can cheer on Quidditch in a way that I just can’t with other sports. The literary roots of the sport generate some interest in me, and the gender-equality factor makes me want to support it.

I can’t wait to attend more games.

 

Sucking It Up Starts Now. Right After I Whine For A Bit.

Tags

depression, determination, love, the second shift, tiredness, whining, work

So, PH has been worrying lately about my mental health, probably understandably.

I’m not particularly depressed PER SE. My self esteem is okay right now – could be better, but I’m not suffering the crippling shame that I had back in the crash of ’09.

I’m just… beat.

Part of this is because I’m a spoiled Princess. PH has known from day one (hell, from day -730, because he knew me when I was in another relationship and he could tell even then) that I am what you might call “high maintenance”. I like to be cared for. I don’t like too many responsibilities. I love to have things to care for – pets and children – but I need someone doing the same for me.

But now I have all the responsibility.

From the moment I get up almost until the moment I go to bed, I am needed by someone for something. Owl needs me in the morning to dress him and get him breakfast and then force him into the car to go to daycare.

Then work needs me for 8 hours straight with no lunch break – chatting with clients, getting patient histories, wrestling dogs, cleaning up poop, and trying to squeeze in 10 hours of extra job responsiblities in between appointments. If someone schedules appointments poorly, I get in trouble for it. If someone’s estimate is higher than was quoted, then I have to deal with that. If we have fewer new clients this week than last week, then that is SOMETHING I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR.

Then Owl needs me again  – bring him home from daycare, play with him, put him to bed.

“Play with me? Play with me, Mommy!” is a constant refrain whenever I try to sit down, from the moment I get in the car with him until his second trip to the potty at night.

Except on the nights when I train dogs, when I bring him home from daycare, play with him, and then go and talk and yell things like “YAAAAY PUPPEEEE!” for an hour and a half straight.

Once Owl is asleep, I get some time to collapse. But this is basically my only chance to interact with PH who seems to, you know, want to interact with his wife occasionally.

I avoid going to bed, because the time when PH is asleep and so is Owl is basically the only time I can get true solitude – something that I desperately need to recharge.

It’s not enough. I’m not recharging.

I’m in constant energy-saving mode. I’m not washing dishes any more. I’m not cleaning the bathroom, or sweeping the floors.

I’m not really even interacting with poor PH any more, who clearly misses his wife. I’m having trouble keeping from snapping at people at work. I AM snapping at poor Owl, who is the most innocent party in all of this.

I find myself obsessively fantasizing about being locked alone in a white room with a window.

And PH sees it, and it makes him feel bad. He blames himself for putting such a load on me. He feels guilty, which he shouldn’t, because he’s not well.

But the problem is, he’s better than he was.

When he was in crisis, it was obvious to both of us that I needed to take on as much of the load as possible. I was wage earner – working two jobs – primary child caregiver, dish washer and garbage emptier.

But now he’s a bit better – not well, but not in as much crisis – and he feels like he should be able to do more. He IS doing more, in fact, but that gives us both the illusion that he actually is better. So he takes on more, and I expect him to continue taking on more. But he isn’t all better, so when I forget and lean on him, half the time he falls over, which does neither of us much good.

He told me today that basically, my own exhaustion/near-tears aura of defeat is probably one of the most significant contributions to his current level of depression.

He told me this not in a way to induce guilt, but simply to be honest about his level of concern for me.

His wife is falling apart, and that makes him feel terrible. 

The problem is, I’m falling apart because he can’t reliably take on more of the load. He can’t commit to putting Owl to bed every night, so that I can rest on the evenings when I’m not training dogs.

He can’t even commit to HELPING put Owl down on the days when I’m not out training dogs. He can manage Owl the couple of nights a week that I’m out training. Anything more is asking too much.

I know, because I asked.

So, this puts us at what Terry Pratchett would call a Klatchian Standoff.

His depression is made worse by his awareness that I’m sinking. He can’t stop me from sinking because his depression prevents him from taking on as much of the load as I need him to take on.

So. Three options exist.

Either I push him to do more than either of us feel he can really do, and take the risk of him going back to crisis mode… or we stand there and hug each other while we sink like Atryu and Artax in the Swamp of Sadness….

…Or I suck it up.

I’m not depressed. Not really.

I’m just really, really, really tired. Tired of being the responsible one. Tired of having everything be my job by default. Tired of knowing that there’s no one to help if I sink.

But my life is not THAT bad.

There are tons of single mothers out there who work two jobs and have to do everything. I’m better off than they are because really, PH still does a decent amount. He handles laundry, and he can cook most days, and he plays with Owl when he can.

Hell, he took Owl for most of this morning, just so I could get a good sleep in.

I don’t do everything. I just do a lot more than he does. Because he’s sick.

So it’s not THAT bad. I’m just being a wuss. I just got tired of being brave. I just started to feel like PH should be able to help again, because he’s clearly doing better.

But when I asked him about committing to helping put Owl to bed every night, I saw the look on his face.

And I knew that he is not as much better as we pretend he is.

I really want him to be better. I’m afraid to push him, afraid he’ll go into crisis mode, afraid that if he pushes himself, he’ll go off the edge entirely and Owl will grow up without a father.

And then I’d REALLY have no one to help  – I would really learn what being on my own would mean then.

I won’t let that happen.

So I need to stop thinking that he’s better. I need to stop waiting for someone to step in and save us.

I need to find a whole new battery pack.

And I’m going to do it.

Because I don’t want to see that look on his face again. I don’t want to feel disappointed like that again. I want to shut up the voice in my head that keeps waiting for things to be “fair”. Because life isn’t fair. My husband is sick. I need to work more than him, carry more load than him.

This is PH we’re talking about. That man wouldn’t ask me to work harder than him. That man wouldn’t expect me to work a full day and then pull the second shift unless he physically had no choice.

When he’s well enough, he won’t be asking me what he can do, only to tell me that I’ve asked too much.

When he’s well again, he’ll just do it.

And until then, I can do this.

Role Reversal

Tags

anxiey, collectibles, depression, ebay, projects

PH has been experiencing anxiety lately, which is a strange experience for me, because I’ve been thrown into the role of reassurer, which is a complete role reversal for us.

As an example, I came home from work and PH complained, “Only three items have sold today. If we can’t sell all these items, we might not break even before the VISA bill.”

“Didn’t you just post them, like, two hours ago?”

“Yeah.”

“So… three items sold within two hours of you posting them online?”

“Well, yes.”

“I THINK WE’LL BE OKAY.”

But it keeps happening. He was fretting again yesterday. “Hardly anything’s sold today. If this keeps up, we won’t break even before the VISA comes in.”

“We’ve sold over a thousand dollars’ worth of stuff in 5 days, and the pile still looks completely untouched. I THINK WE’LL BE OKAY.”

All the shipping and checking for new sales is keeping him busy. I think it’s wearing him out, too, though. I hope it doesn’t do more harm than good. Once we start making profit, though, I think he’ll feel better. It might boost his self esteem a bit, and it would certainly relieve his anxiety.

I don’t even care about profit, though. I just want him to be happy.

Who Needs Science Or Logic? Not Star Trek: Into Darkness!

Tags

benedict cumberbatch, Enterprise, fail, khan, logic, movies, reviews, science, star trek, star trek: into darkness

A friend took Owl so we could go to a movie this weekend, so I dragged PH to Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Not because I thought it would be good but because I figured it would at least interest him.

It definitely INTERESTED him.

It also may have shrivelled his soul.

I’m not an original Star Trek fan. As much as I love George Takei, my knowledge of Star Trek starts with Captain Picard.

But PH is a genuine Trekkie, he even owns a detailed manual to the Enterprise, which he consults occasionally, so I was surprised that he was so accepting of the 2009 reboot. He was okay with the ending – he felt it left room for the director to make new story lines instead of simply rehashing old stuff.

So I figured this movie would be about the same.

Yeah, about that…

PH’s brain nearly exploded about two minutes into the movie, and it just went downhill from there. Even I, as a non-Trekkie, was offended.

If you are a Star Trek fan, you probably shouldn’t see this movie.

The funny thing is, when we mention it to people, including people who claim to be fans of the original series, they have all said “What? It was good…” Then PH starts pointing things out, and they go “Oh, well, yeah… yeah… you’re right… that didn’t make sense…”

So allow me to rephrase.

If you kind of liked Star Trek and you like movies that are shiny (like me), you should see this movie.

It is VERY shiny.

If you are a Star Trek fan and consider yourself a PURIST, which I think all true Trekkies DO, you should NOT see this movie.

Nor should you see it if you have an interest in, oh, SCIENCE.

I’ll start with non-spoilers, so don’t be afraid. I’ll warn you before I give away anything remotely important.