Depression

My S/O gets depression.  I hate it.  I have lived with it, around it, through it for my whole life.  I guess it was in my blind spot when we got together and then, about a year after we had moved in together I looked.  I knew there was something not right.  I screwed up my face, furrowed my brow and shook my head....what is it...then it hit my like a baton of lead in the back of the head.  Oh yes, this.  I know what this is.  This is not so good.  FUCK. 

My mother is a chronic depressive.  I watched her, always trying to please, to make her happy and it was never ever enough.  I was never enough.  I was never enough because nothing was enough because she was not enough for herself.  Then one day I stopped and said a big FUCK YOU to everything...

I see my S/O who is a fantastic person, devoted and driven stop his usual life, not sleep.  I see the circles forming under his eyes, that he needs to sleep 20 hours a day (he doesn't - he is high functioning as was my mother).  I see his back as he sits on the computer trying to block out life.  I see his temper short, his expression vacant.  I see the desperation spilling out of him.  He walks through the house under a black cloud, raining on everything, wind whipping everyone's heels.  Some days the cloud is bigger, some days it is smaller some days I think he manages to shove the cloud in his back pocket and pretend it is not there.

After 3 years of hounding he went and saw someone.  He didn't take the medication he was recommended.  He scored 11 out of 13 (13 being the worst you can get, clinical diagnosis being over 6).  He refused to go back and see her after a while.  He promised to see someone else.  He got so bad he moved out.  He came back promising to see someone new.  He didn't.  He has managed so much better.  His bouts were about three to forth monthly, two to three weeks spiraling down, about 3 weeks at rock bottom before he would acknowledge there was something wrong and then a steep two to three weeks climbing back out, a few weeks for everyone to recover and then we would start again.

It has been about nine months this time.  I know things are getting better in terms of his coping strategies BUT every time we hit this it triggers the most massive panic in me.  I feel like I need to run faster and further every time.  I hate him for putting my kids through this, our kids I suppose.  ((I say my kids because he was so badly depressed for the first few years that I was solo parenting.  Infact when he moved out it took the children 3 days to notice - and they were 8 and 4 at the time.  So yeah, there is a bit of hurt there and yeah I do feel self righteous and yeah I do just want to curl up in a ball and cry some days but someone has to be the grown up. ))I hate him for putting me through this.  I hate him for putting him through this.  I hate looking at him and seeing such a pathetic weak piece of shit, unable to make a choice.  I hate that if he does it is a selfish choice.  I hate when he talks to me that it is to either passively sit in morose agreement or to start a fight.  I hate that he is so weak he can't admit to making a mistake.  I hate that I can't truly communicate with him because he can't hear outside his own head.  I hate that I am the only one really here.

I know that it passes, as is the nature of the beast in this case.  My mother was slightly different - she lived permanently wrapped in her blanket of depression, cocooned inside, protected from the world, inflicting her pain on everyone, blaming the world for her emptiness.  He sees it as a failure, that he is faulty, deficient, wrong.  He inflicts his wallowing but it ebbs and flows, goes and comes back.  I am not sure which I hate more, the uncertainty and the pathos or the certainty and the venomous anger.

I look at both my husband and my mother and I understand the rupture.  I see the pain that echos outward, reverberating back, reinforcing itself as THE self, radiating different textures but the same feelings of helpless loss of self.  None of it matters.  In those moments where I hurt I don't care anymore why they feel sad I only wish I didn't have to live it and then I feel bad.  Really bad.  Like I am abandoning a baby because in those moments I know that they aren't there, can't be there for themselves.  I see my husband is getting better but every single bout is hard, almost worse than the previous.  Just when I think I have him there, a real person who I can deal with, talk with and build with, he is gone.

I look to Mr and I see someone who has a big lot of stuff going on.  He talks but from strength - no matter how tough his situation.  He does not anger with me.  He does not blame me.  He does not mope.  He does not goad me into a fight to release his tension.  He talks.  We talk.  He listens still. Importantly, through all of it, I still exist to him as a person.  Most importantly he still exists to me.  He is the same man.  Clearly stressed but present.

That is the thing I think that makes me feel like I am suffocating with both s/o and my mother, like they are gone and I am gone to them. 

That is why I can't keep running to Mr because he breathes for me when for the whole of my life I have been breathing for everyone else.  I can't fix my relationship by outsourcing my coping - that is why I tried to call it off (it was wholly unsuccessful).

That is why I can't stop running to him too.

Plus, truth be told, I care for him far more than I ever ever intended.  That to me smells like danger.