If you look back at this blog, you will see a lot more activity and posts before 2018--
I wrote to record our homeschooling and creative adventures and different thoughts I had or was learning at the time.
But in the middle of 2018 my world completely changed. It couldn't NOT change at that point, but it was hard, it was traumatic and I became like the goo a caterpillar goes into. I couldn't talk much about it and I just needed to mostly stay still and listen and learn and allow the changes to take place.
After our 14th wedding anniversary (July 2018) my husband told me that he had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. I knew he was going to therapy and had been for about 6 months, but I didn't know the full reason. I could see his anxiety and stress, and alway saw this throughout our marriage -- this panicky drive to do certain things like, even when there wasn't an emergency there actually was, sort of overreactions. But of course I couldn't see his thoughts or how deeply depressed he was. He then told me that apart of his depression was that he had suicidal thoughts and plans and that he always had, as a kid and growing up and all through out our marriage.
I was stunned.
What people with depression maybe don't realize, is that normal brains don't consider suicide as a possibility. We might be depressed because of situations or sadnesses or grief, but it was so beyond shocking to me. I had considered other possible terrible scenarios as one might morbidly do, but I honestly could not think of anything more terrible than a spouse dieing by suicide and I hadn't had that in my possible terrible outcomes. I was overwhelmed and scared and didn't know what to do, but I wasn't allowed to talk about it because, "it wasn't my secret to tell" -- yet, it WAS my secret. It was a secret my husband kept from me for 14 years of marriage. What person would his choice effect more than me? I looked back over our marriage and saw all these moments that hadn't made sense or were painful and then things began to click into place. First, if you don't know anything about suicide ideations you might wonder "How could someone possibly think of leaving their family?" -- But you have to understand that their depressed brain thinks that everyone would be better off without them. They think no one wants them around and the emotional pain that they are experiencing seems so overwhelming and feels so never ending that the idea of suicide is a way to stop the pain and, in the depressed lens, a way to give everyone what they want. Of course we did NOT want him gone let alone dead! He didn't behave like he wanted to be around us though and that hurt even before we knew what was going on. The trauma that he went through as a child would come up in emotional flashbacks or memories (Like ptsd) and what happens in a persons body is that when they are triggered (by a sound, smell, etc) their nervous system responds not to the present moment, but to the memory of the past trauma. Which is why it would look like overreactions or mismatched reactions to the real moment in time. A normal stressful adulting moment could be felt as terrifying and an emergency for instance. So was our life hard enough (objectively) to understand a person feeling suicidal through even good normal moments? No, but our current life wasn't the cause of his depression.
Over the months I learned all I could about trauma and depression. It is a topic so misunderstood in the church and one where people can cause so much harm if they don't know what they are talking about. First, know it is NOT a sin issue. The best analogies are physical illnesses or like a broken leg. I realized (after 14 years) how unfair I had been to expect things from my husband that he just wasn't capable of doing, without knowing it, because marriage and having kids and all that is very much like running a marathon. I didn't understand why he couldn't keep up at times or overreacted about small (to me) stuff, but of course he couldn't behave "normally", how can one expect a person with a broken leg to run a race? It isn't fair to expect that. Depression is also not something they can work harder to overcome. Likely they have already BEEN trying so hard to not be depressed that most people have no idea from looking at the outside of their life that they are depressed. If any of you know my husband, it is important to point out that the person you knew who seemed so happy and goofy and fun had depression, right then, right when you knew him. Suicidal ideations were always there as well, but from what I understand were more or less rather than totally absent.
Depression (and other mental illnesses) are natural evidences or responses of trauma (like, you break your leg and it hurts, depression is the pain from an injury.) The definition of a trauma is basically something that happens that your nervous system cannot handle. They may be big T (obvious) traumas or small t traumas. A small t example could be low grade bullying over a long period of time. Each incident might not seem that bad, but because it was so much over so long it can becoming overwhelming and triggering. Like dieing from a thousand paper cuts. How well we can soothe ourselves or receive care from others (or get out of the bullying situation) will be the determining factor in how that trauma effects our bodies long term. We might recover like a broken leg can heal over several months or the trauma might go unnoticed for so long that it is like a bone cancer, causing weakness and hidden and slow damage, yet takes a lot more help to heal from. Because my husbands depression was from deep trauma as a child and continued his whole life, it is much more like bone cancer. And because I had no idea what he actually needed in those 14 years of marriage (and he didn't know either) it just added more trauma and stresses just from normal or more difficult adulting moments. If you don't (or can't) work through the traumas of life as they come then they just build and add more injury to injury and it gets worse and worse.
Right when he told me of his depression and suicidal ideations I realized how I truly wasn't loving him as he needed to be loved. When he was harsh or pushed me away it of course made sense now because he was deeply hurting and responding to the emotional frame that he grew up in.
I decided to choose in that moment in 2018 to try to keep loving him and reaching out even when he rejected me. My whole marriage to that point had been built on falseness, I believed he wanted to be married and was happy (for the most part) with our life and was doing what he wanted to do. He didn't always do what I wanted, but I generally got out of his way or adjusted to what he seemed to want to do. I had no idea that I was following someone who often couldn't make healthy decisions, and I would ignore my own better judgement at times to try and do what he seemed determined was the right way. Knowing suddenly how deeply unhappy he was and had been for so long and how he was wearing himself out doing things he did NOT want to do was painful to hear. So I shifted my thinking and chose to reach out and recommit. I now knew that he didn't know how to accept good things and would reject good things (because he didn't feel like he deserved them) so rather than follow his lead in rejecting something good, I could keep offering care even through that rejection. Small things that I had stopped doing that I used to do all the time, like being at a store and seeing something he might like and getting it for him. I was so used to him not seeming to want the offerings (a kiss or holding hands or special food, just all the tiny things one naturally does for the person they love) that I had stopped trying anything by that 13/14 year mark. All the ways it is possible to try to reach out to love someone and metiphorically getting a slap and then going, nope not that way, and reaching out in some other way.. well it just had hurt too much, so I had stopped. He was glad I had stopped trying actually. I had tried so many things before for so many years that got shot down that I had run out of ways to offer goodness. But now I had decided to try anyway even though it hurt when he couldn't accept goodness. I wanted to be truthful at least to my own love for him even if he didn't know how to recieve care.
I didn't know how long he would be with me, and all I could think was how much I loved this person who couldn't accept any goodness. I can't think of anything more painful or traumatic than a suicidal spouse, I felt like (and basically was) a spouse whose husband had a terminal illness. Even though I felt that way, like I needed support around me and casseroles brought and people who could pray for us, mental illness just isn't understood enough for people to really get it, even if we could have told more people about it.
I did tell our pastor and he suggested we go to a new small group that was working through telling our life stories. I could talk about the traumas or pains from my childhood because I had basically worked through those already and it didn't bring more pain up for me to talk through, but talking much about my marriage wasn't possible. My lungs would close up and my throat would tighten and I felt panicky trying to express what parts of my marriage had felt like --this physical reaction is a trauma response. Other trauma responses felt in the body can include feeling like your ears are buzzing or having irregular heart beats. Disassociating (so not being able to feel your feelings or remember conversations.) I have heard of some people coughing a lot or laughing more (like nervously) or scratching and getting rashes. Stomach pains and digestion issues and other tense muscle pains and so on are common. Just things like that where our nervous system is discombobulated. It goes into hyper aware or too low and numb. The healthy level is feeling our feelings and being able to talk about our experiences, but not feeling flooded by our feelings. You can develop autoimmune diseases and other physical symptoms from trauma as well besides mental illnesses. It is traumatic to live with someone who has a mental illness even (or especially?) when you don't know what is going on. Emotional neglect is also quite traumatic, especially for children to experience from a parent. And a depressed person cannot emotionally be there for themselves, so of course they are not capable of being emotionally supportive to the people around them. If we are to love others *as ourselves* we do need to remember that this does not mean to love others MORE or at the expense of ourselves. God wants us to care for our own basic needs and learning to do so is not wrong. I want my girls to learn to feed and care for themselves, and they need to do those things before they can help other people!
I had so much confusion throughout my marriage and cognitive dissonance from what my husband would say vs how he behaved, and I tried to improve things for us in so many ways. Nothing helped. I thought living in Dallas would make him happy, but it didn't. All the marriage books were useless, they emphasized submitting and leading and love and respect and other unhealthy human dynamics at the best of times, but in the case of me trying to follow someone who is depressed? No, just, not helpful at all. I needed to learn how to step up and be an adult and quickly. I had to take over bills and finances and all those little adulting stressors that just add more difficulty for someone who is depressed. I had done that before for us, but just wasn't at that time. Our homeschooling fell apart a bit because I just didn't have the where with all to focus on all the fun things that we used to do.
The end of February 2019 he was at a therapy appointment and was so distrait that his therapist (of over a year at that point) had to call the police to have him taken to a mental hospital. He isn't an angry or violent person (except internally towards himself) so the police being brought wasn't a dangerous situation for them or anything. The point is just that he was doing all he could to get better, he HAD been doing all he could to be a good person and good christian and a good husband. Trying to run the marathon right? But it is the difference between someone who can use natural remedies to cure a bad cold and someone who needs a bone marrow transplant. The second just needs a lot more specialized help and it isn't a simple fix. It is a long term healing process. While he was in the hospital I got another giant shock when I talked to his therapist on the phone and she told me how he was planning to kill himself and that he had what he needed to do so. He had told me before that it would look like an accident and he was vague about how he was planning it. And I found out just how specific and thought out and very much not a way that would look accidental. I assume he was trying to protect me, but learning more later just started the whole trauma and learning to trust process over again. So when I learned more specifics and had to untangle more lies while he was in the hospital, I couldn't sleep. I was having panic attacks visualizing him dead (exactly how he would have died because I knew that now.) I had people from the hospital call and ask me questions about his depression and anything he might have at home that he could use to hurt himself. But I had only known at that point for 6 months about his depression. It was overwhelming to be so out of the loop and yet be treated by the professionals as if I was in the loop. Because I should have been, right? It would make sense that a spouse should know what they signed up for.
Another thing to note about major depression is that it doesn't go away like my depression for instance would. It is a totally different sort of thing and I couldn't pretend like I understood. Suicidal thoughts can be much more like an addiction, a way to numb or avoid the pain a person is feeling and breaking that habit of thought is extremely difficult to do. My depression was very different, I would be depressed and sad for a time for specific reasons and I would work through the reasons as they came, but major depression like this has a more complicated cause and a more long term complicated healing journey. And because my husband didn't have a sense of who he was before being depressed, that adds a whole other layer of complication to this.
We can't, as supporters, assume we know what they need better than they do. And we can't brush it away, like out of sight out of mind for us, but it is always on their mind.
It is easy for people on the outside to hear that he has depression and then move on as if this hasn't effected every area of our lives and parenting. Knowing how much worse it could have been is somewhat comforting. Again, he tried so very hard to be a good dad and husband, but what if you just can't walk? No amount of trying will work, it just ends up hurting more.
Fast-forward till he was out of the hospital and again on work leave. We had this whole thing with his car getting a bad oil change that ruined it. He shouldn't have tried to take his car for an oil change to begin with right after getting out of the hospital, but was still in the doing doing doing adulting mode. Anyway, I could see that this car was old and adding stress for him. Like it could break down at any moment. We needed to get him a better car and even (hopefully) one that he LIKED and wanted because he so often couldn't admit what he truly enjoyed and accept good things.
As someone who has excelled at making myself smaller and submitting and following for decades of my adult life, it was extremely hard to step up, initiate, and lead the process of buying a car (I don't know anything about cars either.) But, persevering, tiny steps at a time, even with him continually trying to get a car he wouldn't like or would be a bad choice or saying he could do it alone, I at least knew enough by that point to stick to the plan. If I hadn't gone through the whole process with him then I would have thought his expression as we were buying the car was that he didn't want it (it wasn't that, it was that he felt like he didn't deserve it.) It is a longer story than that but in less than a week we DID get his dream car! And going on drives at night especially are a great way for him to unwind and still are.
Of course, the pandemic happened and other changes in our world, friends moved away, the church we went to changed pastors, etc, etc. The world was talking about trauma and stress and depression and it was sort of like, everyone else kind of was finally understanding what we had already been experiencing.
It is statistically extremely likely that a person whose depression is so severe that they end up in a mental hospital will be there in another year or at some point again because they fall back into the patterns and habits of mind that got them there. And while that didn't happen to my husband (yet), it probably could have if it weren't for the pandemic. To explain it mildly, he was not doing well, even with all the new coping strategies that he had been learning. Basically, he didn't make eye contact with any of us for 2 years at least. He responded and talked and did some things with us, but just couldn't engage and constantly played games on his phone. I wasn't mad about this because I knew he was just trying to find something fun to do. I wish he could enjoy being with us. But there are worse adictions to cope with sucidal ideations than gaming. But it is traumatic for kids to have a parent that just isn't emotionally available (because a depressed person can't be emotionally there for themselves, let alone for someone else.) I was trying to come up with other contingency plans, to be able to earn some money at home or get a job so that whatever might happen we could be prepared for it, and to get our savings in better shape and so on. It is also extremely difficult to go from homemaking homeschool mom to working mom when you aren't emotionally supported by a spouse either. And every time he expressed some of his depressed thoughts or trauma, I would struggle to overcome that new pain and secondary trauma and have to work through my own depression at each stage as well. I would start to move forward in good ways (like publishing my coloring books!) and then lose traction in that forward motion as I had to work my way through another revelation. He had been on the fence ever since the hospital about even if he could handle staying in our marriage. As I said, marriage and a family is a marathon, but he was only now just healing enough to learn to walk.
Last year when we went through the process of moving, it was pretty awful. I don't know how to talk to and plan with someone who is so depressed and suicidal that they can't engage in any normal problem solving adulting type decisions and conversations when those moments come up. It is honestly scary, what with trying to balance out the real life financial choices and what the family needs and what is even possible with someone who is telling me that he is more depressed and suicidal in that moment, well, how would you even bring up normal decisions to make together? Rather than trying to work through a better choice (like I had with buying the car and went through the whole process with him) I could see that the only safe way to handle the move was to let him make the choice he felt like he needed to make. I honestly didn't know how it would turn out, it could be better or worse than I had calculated financially. It ended up worse, and costing all the savings that I had earned from my new job (plus my own mental health coping strategies I had developed- like my tiny garden and bird watching) to make the move happen. And it was so much extra work for me to do all the packing and uproot our home while working and trying to homeschool. Every time I tried to make things better over these past 5 years it just seemed like the cloud of his depression would swallow all the goodness up.
It was a lot of sacrifice with not much reward. But the new apartment did seem to slightly help our middle daughter who herself had been struggling with depression and suicidal ideations. I had been learning so much about trauma and depression over the years now, that I knew more ways to help her and she actually felt better when I reached out to her! She is stable now, but not "happy" yet. I could see my husband doing a little better maybe with his own office space here. My 11 year old and I have struggled with the move the most. -- All that to say, our family has been going through a lot even recently just trying to find where stable or "normal" is for all of us that could actually be sustainable. So is it sustainable? What we had going wasn't healthy (as I have been explaining.)
But the biggest question, how can I love my closest neighbors? My husband and children-- What do they all need and what would be the most loving thing for them moving forward?
We all try to be kind to each other and there has never been big arguments or anything dramatic like that, just normal sister squabbles and those sorts of big growing up feelings. But if you have cared enough to read this far, you might actually have a tiny bit of understand why we had to come to the decision that we had to make. My husband and I have decided to separate. While this is a mutual decision, he had the final say and he has chosen to file because it is about his own mental health and healing that we are talking about. Our choice is between seperating as kindly as we can for everyone's health, or for trying to stay together at the expense of everyones mental health, and the very real possibility of the lost life of my husband at some point in the future, and all the pain that would cause everyone in our family. He needs to focus on his own oxygen mask and metaphorically learning to walk. And I need much more support with the girls than I have now. He loves our girls and wants the best for them and agrees that this is the best (though extremely hard) choice that we need to make. We all agree (the girls too as they have been apart of this decision) that it is better for them to have a father who is alive and growing healthier at a distance, than to have a father who is suffering and suicidal or dead. We all love him and want him to live! Even if that means he has to choose to be apart from us.
Idealy, I would have wanted to stay together, for him to be able to heal IN our relationship. For him to be able to accept the goodness I offered instead of pushing me away. This was never what I wanted or saw for my life, and I am grieving the lost future and hope that I had.
There is no possible way for me to love him more or do more for my family than I have already done. I am grateful for these past 5 years to fully see this. One person cannot carry all the responsibilities to keep a relationship going. It needs to be both people. I realize that making this decision will result in judgements. People do not understand mental health issues and how serious this can be until it is too late, and the go to solution for religious people is to say to "try harder" or to "be better" even when it isn't possible for either of us to do more than we already have.
Minimizing someones mental and emotional pain is also very common, just because you do not know it all (and you still only know 5% after reading this post and also only my viewpoint) just know that the most loving response is to support us right now, even if you disagree. Please also know that if you share your disagreements with us (even if you mean well) it feels like being told that sweeping this under the rug and keeping the status quo and our marriage together is more important and comfortable to you than my husbands actual life.
As much pain as I have expressed here about my own experience, my husband has experienced much more pain in our years together because of his trauma, depression, and emotional flash backs. I fully recognize this and do not want to minimize what he has gone through by sharing my own point of view. I am proud of him for being strong and loving us well enough to admit the truth now and to seek his own healing as well as supporting us in ours.
I cannot overstate this enough. I do not want him to die. I want the best for him and my girls (and so does he!) He is not suicidal because of our life together. This would be happening no matter who he married or didn't marry. But if your theology does not result in the actual fruit of loving the hurting, then your theology needs to shift. I had to shift. This is not what I envisioned my marriage to be, but there was no way to live in truth and still remain the same person that I was 5 years ago.
Our plan moving forward is for me to move the girls up to Washington to be near my family at the end of August so that I can work as long as possible at my current job here to save up enough to make it all happen. I won't have much savings even after working and saving as much as possible to do all that and will have to find a job up there somehow. And I know, divorce isn't something totally understood in the church either. There is this idol of marriage, as if God wants the institution of marriage to continue even if the people IN the marriage are suffering. But Jesus wouldn't say divorce was permissible if it were a sin (see what he says about lust or hating ones neighbor in your heart for how he responds to sin) he doesn't go easy on actual sins. But, is divorce ideal? No, it is really really painful. We were all crying when we told the girls that we had made this decision. This isn't as painful as the thought of my husband dieing by suicide though, or being miserable with us and not getting better. It definitely could be worse. We are choosing to create the most gentle off ramp that we can from our marriage and he will always be welcome to visit the girls as much as he likes and is able to! Actually, if you saw us in person together and didn't know all this back story, we would probably appear the same as we always have (minus me trying to hold his hand).. There really isn't a side to take in this separating of ways. It is natural in cases like ours to try to pick a side or decide who is the bad guy in this, but no one is the bad guy in our situtation. The people that truly care about us can see that.
And it turns out that this decision is actually us all loving our closest neighbors well and following Jesus through it all.
In the end, surprisingly, I just keep feeling grateful.
I am grateful for my beautiful and wonderful girls and for the hope that I can now see for their growth and health moving forward.
"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11
I am thankful that my husband is still alive in this world and has a glimmer of a possibility of what life might be like for him without depression.
"Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me." Psalm 23:4
I am thankful that I can emerge from this gooey mess and realize that I might actually be able to fly after being so undone and so taken apart for so many years.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you. Psalm 139:7-12
I am thankful that our family seeks to be kind and understanding with each other.
I am thankful for a loving extended family that I can go to who love my girls and delight to have them near!
I am grateful for all the tiny blessings that God placed around us all through out the years. All the ways he directed our steps, protected our lives, and led us to where we are even now.
We do not have a movie version happily ever after going on, but once you realize that you aren't in a romantic comedy (as I thought), that you are actually (surprisingly) in a tragedy, and then the tragedy doesn't happen, well.. maybe you realize that this IS the happy ending after all?
Our family will look different of course. The daddy (or Papaya as our youngest calls him) will now be the vacation daddy, but he actually loves to travel and is looking forward to taking them on adventures. He is able to be much healtheir when he has a lot of alone space as well as a lot of out of the house time. I know this will surprise people, but we have been moving towards this outcome for a while now. It just took me the longest of anyone to fully accept our reality and that my husband doesn't want to be my husband anymore, but I know now that this is the right decision for everyone.
We are all ready to move forward and heal.
And this healing is what Jesus came for and wants for all of us, as he said--
“The Spirit of the Lord ... has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are bruised," Luke 4:18
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If you would like to learn more about mental health and trauma on your own, I would recommend reading--
"Try Softer" By Aundi Kolber
"This Beautiful Truth" personal journey about ocd by Sarah Clarkson
"Burn out" by Emily and Amelia Nagoski (who are twins, this is a secular book but many helpful points about stress and our fight/flight responses and how to move through them.)
"Complex ptsd, from surviving to thriving" by Pete Walker
"Suffering and the heart of God" by Diane Langberg which honestly every christian should read to learn how to love the hurting among us.
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Places to listen to or to watch about trauma and mental health
"The place we find ourselves" podcast with Adam Young (a therapist who takes evidence based mental health knowledge and explains things from a christian point of view.)
"Therapy in a Nutshell" on Youtube (short videos with very practical advice for understanding trauma, anxiety, and so on.)
And one that we have all just enjoyed watching together! "Cinema Therapy" with Jonathan Decker (licensed therapist) and Alan Seawrite (filmmaker) if you are nerds about movies and like to see examples of healthy or unhealthy relationships explained through fun movie clips with them talking about it, then this is a great one!
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For women who especially need to learn to see their worth and to grow in bravery, I would recommend--
"Worthy" by Fitzpatrick and Schumacher
"The Making of Biblical womanhood" by Beth Allison Barr - a christian medieval historian professor explaining when and where through history women in the church have been silenced and how it has changed through the middle ages to now.
"Women Rising" by Meghan Tschanz (personal story of her experiences working as a missionary for trafficed women)
"The Samaritan Woman's Story" by Caryn A. Reeder (deep and meaty into historical context, but still readable.)
"Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood" by Aimee Byrd (A complimentarians scholarly critique on those who have taken gender roles too far and how that caused harm.)
And the historical account (that reads like a novel, it is so well done) about how women, a little over a hundred years ago, were put into insane asylums by their husbands even though they were actually sane. Very difficult, but important account-- "The woman they could not silence" by Kate Moore
Also, listen to "The bare marriage" podcast with Sheila Gregoire (and her books)
And many episodes from the "Flying free" podcast with Natalie Hoffman (and her book if you like the podcast)
I also would recommend the "Give her wings" accademy that is a year long course (which I graduated from last year) to become an advocate for survivors of abuse.
There are many other ministries that I follow that you will see connected to the resources that I have already shared as you begin digging into this.
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I have read and listened to many others besides these, but of all, this is my short list of the best of the best to start with for people wanting to understand and learn in this area.
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