Half my life

I recently turned 35. I’ve been with my husband, Jeb, for 17.5 years. Do the math: I’ve been with this man half my life.

Yet not even the knowledge that comes with time can stop me from sometimes being plagued with doubt. I often worry whether we’re doing marriage “the right way.” I don’t know about you, but I do this thing where I look at other couples and assume they have it all figured out, everything in their life is perfect and wonderful. I go so far as to let others’ lives play out like movies in my mind. Other couples, watching every TV show together, spending all night talking. Agreeing on every single opinion about every single thing in life, ever. Skipping through dewy meadows in their perfectly pressed clothes and clean shoes, then going home to their pristine houses. (Y’all are killing it, in my imagination.)

I wonder if people do that with me and Jeb. We have an exceptionally well-documented life via social media, due to Jeb being a photographer and also knowing a lot of photographers. A quick perusal of either of our Facebook  accounts reveals lots of pretty pics of us, all made up. Tons of snaps of our kids being awesome. Photos from tropical vacations, and warm, cozy holidays. Our social media screams “We’re happy! SO FREAKING HAPPY!”

And that’s about half of the truth. A lot of the time, we are happy, content, doing fine.  

And a lot of the time, we’ve struggled.

Getting married is easy. You find someone you love. You think, yeah, I could spend my life with this person. You have a celebration and your friends and family all show up and everyone cries. The world is your oyster; everything is possible.

It’s staying married that’s hard.

If you’d have asked me at twenty-three, which is how old I was when I got married, I’d have predicted that over the years, I’d change very little—I knew who I was, what I wanted, the road I was headed down. I had it all figured out.

Except I didn’t and I didn’t have enough foresight to see that I didn’t.

People can change a hell of a lot over time, and I think it’s possible that Jeb and I changed more than most. I pursued many years of higher education, and due to that, was exposed to ideas and people and adversity and growth and culture in a way that molded me, shaped me, carved me into a different person. As for Jeb, he left his job as a public school educator and became a full-time photographer/creative. He learned that he needs to be making things, thinking outside of the box, and not answering to a hierarchy to feel fulfilled through his work.

We also became parents of two kiddos in a span of twenty months, so as we were stretching and learning and developing our singular identities, we were also immersed in the task of keeping tiny humans alive.

The years marched on. I got my PhD and started a private practice. The kids started school. We went to family celebrations. We hung out with friends. We did date nights sometimes. We traveled. We pursued individual hobbies and interests. We built a house and moved to a lovely new neighborhood.

And then one day in our thirties we woke up and realized we had no idea who the other was. I won’t speak for his side of it, but my personal awakening came with the question: Why are we together? We had different groups of friends. We didn’t read the same books, or necessarily gravitate to the same kinds of media, or have any hobbies in common. I loved Jeb, but I didn’t know why I was with him anymore.

At about the same time I was grappling with these serious questions about my marriage, I became depressed— so depressed I couldn’t even see straight. It seemed like every decision I’d ever made in my life was wrong. I questioned my entire existence as a human being: where I’d come from, what I was doing now, where I was going. It was hell. And Jeb got angry and withdrew. He didn’t know what to do with me; didn’t understand what I was trying to say when I talked about my questions, about my doubts, about what wasn’t working for me in our marriage. In hindsight, he was depressed, too, but men sometimes look different when they’re depressed. (Google Masked Male depression for more on that.)

And we fought. Good Lord, did we fight. There were tears and storming out and many nights spent sleeping apart. I spent the night of our 11^th wedding anniversary at my parent’s house, that’s how bad it was.

We contemplated separation. We ate meals together with our kids and had our best “everything is fine” faces on, even as I researched apartments, always late at night, or at the office, while I wept my way through my fifth box of Kleenex.  

But in the chaos, something miraculous happened. We fought for each other. Even through all the squabbling and miscommunicating and passive-aggression, we kept coming back to the same point: we wanted to try. We wanted our family. We wanted to see if we could find each other again.

So we tried. We went to therapy together, and went to therapy individually. First, we bent. I started trying harder to listen to him when he was sharing something he was excited about, even when I was exhausted from listening to people all day, and even if what he was saying didn’t interest me. He started greeting me when I came in the door after work, and went out of his way to tell me all the ways he appreciates me. Essentially, we slowly figured out the ways we had been failing each other and made the others’ emotional needs a priority again. We made a few big shifts, but mostly, we made a million little changes.

And after awhile, we had bent so much that we softened; the rigid edges of us melting. I let him back into the places in my spirit that had long been steeled against him. Though he isn’t and will never again be the man I married, he became a man I wanted to stay married to.

I don’t think that Jeb’s my soulmate. This is because I don’t believe in soulmates, this idea that you can meet someone and POOF, love happens and it’s forever and you don’t have to do anything to make it work. I used to buy into this stuff, and sometimes that wily belief wants to come weaseling back in—mostly when Jeb and I are struggling. I think, during those rough times: “Oh, if only I’d found my soulmate and married him, then I wouldn’t be going through any of this arguing or pain or doubt.” But you know what? I call bullshit. What I really believe in is two people fighting for each other and choosing each other again and again and again, every day. I can’t think of any better definition of love than that.

I didn’t write this for some kind of “atta girl.” I’m not aiming for you all to see me as a paragon of morality, because believe you me, the level of fuck uppery that I’ve reached during these years of growth and struggle has been unreal. I also fully anticipate that I will in some way, at some point, mess something up again.  Our struggle isn't over. It's not a thing that ends. I think marriage/partnership is less like a straight line with some kind of destination that a couple can arrive at, and more like a circle with little pit stops along the path, some happy, some sad, some totally fucked up. And round and round the circle you go, hopefully learning how to navigate the rough times as you know yourself and your partner better.

I also didn’t write this to shame those of you who have divorced or ended long term partnerships. I don’t think every relationship can be saved, or should be.  

I wrote this for the folks like me, who are sitting there comparing their imperfect relationship to everyone else’s “perfect” one, lurking and hiding in secret shame. If your marriage is messy, if there’s some stain on it that you wish wasn’t there but is, if you’ve hurt your partner or been hurt, if you’ve wondered if you made the “right” choice in a partner—you’re not alone. You’re more normal than you think. The more I talk to people who I’m real with, and who are real with me, the more I realize that every long term romantic relationship has problems. It’s what we do with the problem that matters.

As for me, I’m going to keep trying with Jeb for as long as it makes sense to try. Being with him for half of my life hasn’t been nearly long enough.  

Photo: Sarah Gudeman   http://www.sarahgudeman.com

The face of high-functioning depression

So I struggle with depression. And I’m a therapist.

This whole arrangement is craptastic.

I help people with depression. It’s sort of (not sort of—it really is) my job. As in, people pay me actual money to help them claw their way out of this stuff.  So, it's pretty demoralizing to be grappling with one of the things that I went to school for umpteen years to learn how to treat. It feels shameful. It feels like I’m not supposed to have these kinds of difficulties, because I’m supposed to have this stuff all figured out.

Ha. As if being a therapist somehow makes me immune to human difficulties.  (Spoiler alert, therapists-in-training: You’re still going to be messed up when you’re done with school. Just sayin’.)

So I’m not a superhuman. I can accept that. And my training didn’t save me from this bullshit. I can (mostly) accept that, too. What would be unacceptable to me would be not using the insight I have gained from this bleak period to maybe help someone else. Possibly, by virtue of being trained as a therapist and HIGHLY experienced as a depressed person, I can shed some light on the subject for y’all. Here goes:

Depression isn’t all sadness and crying and moping and couch potato-ing, even your mental image of “depression” might look sort of like that.  True, sometimes depression looks like this:

But sometimes, it looks like this:

I hope you guys like my face in that top one. Also, my hair.
(Long story. Actually short story: the Mai Tais did it.)

Yeah! That cheerful, silly face is the face of depression, kids! These pictures were taken at the height of my misery. Many of us who are depressed are quite good at masking it. Especially those of us who have high-functioning depression.

What’s high-functioning depression? It’s the kind of depression that isn’t completely disabling—which means I can work and parent and play volleyball and other life things— but the tasks often feel harder, sometimes take longer, and they wear me out more than usual. I've had bouts of this stuff since college-- it comes and goes in waves, some keeping me underwater longer than others. The current wave has had a wicked undertow. 

For me being depressed is a lot about heaviness. Everyday tasks can seem impossible. For example, I’m someone who feels at home in the kitchen. Baked goods= love, in my book. In September, I had a friend who had a baby, and what better way to say “I’m happy for you” than chocolate revel bars?

These things are delicious. I’ve made them a million times before. Yet, making them this time was so hard. The reaching down into a lower cupboard for the mixing bowls, the measurement of dry goods, the having to go to the basement pantry to retrieve a bag of chocolate chips…every step took monumental effort. And this is so not me. On a non-depressed Saturday afternoon at home, I can bake two or three things, and maybe also rearrange the Tupperware cabinet and do some gardening and go on a 3-mile walk, and then whip up supper, and it’s no big deal. I like being energetic. I like getting things done. So this feeling that my body is perpetually moving through water? No Bueno. 

Even worse than the heaviness, though, is the thought parade….oh, the thought parade. If you’ve ever had depression, you know what I’m talking about. This is a rather soul-sucking phenomenon: when my brain decides to say really cruel things to me in a really convincing way. It’s like having Cersei Lannister living in my head. After that, my brain takes me down the Memory Lane of Failure. (With my clients, I call this part The Shitshow.) A sampling of Cersei + The Shitshow: You’re worthless. You’re never going to get your life together. You fail at everything you do. And the worst one, the absolute nail in the coffin: You are a terrible mother. And then I relive all of the moments that I have failed, all the ways I don’t have my life together, and all of the times I was a less-than-stellar parent. This is the part that makes me want to stay in bed and stare at the wall for hours at a time.

Art by Claire Jarvis

Here’s a weird thing I’ve noticed about me and depression, though— I’m a pendulum swinger. And what I mean by this is: depression will say to me you’re worthless and everyone hates you. And, in trying to shake this off, I’ll seek out my friends. Put on some pretty clothes and red lipstick, plaster on my most winning smile, and gravitate to wherever the fun is happening. Swing the pendulum. Try to find evidence that I am indeed worthwhile and that people don’t hate having me around. Also, alcohol provides a temporary reprieve from the crippling Cersei thoughts. And then they come back, ten-fold, the next day—because that’s how alcohol works. It depresses you the next day. #themoreyouknow  #friendlyneighborhoodpsychologist

Now, let me issue the caveat that I enjoy going out with friends when not depressed. That’s just me—I like people, and I like laughing—and, for the record, I like singing and dancing and not taking life very seriously sometimes. But when depressed, these times out of the house feel like lifelines in a way that they probably shouldn’t.  

Because of my pendulum-swinging means of trying to cope, it isn’t always obvious to myself (and others) that I even am depressed. That’s the thing: depression can be a sneaky, insidious little beast. It comes for me in camouflage, lays in wait, sniping, throwing grenades—full on guerrilla warfare—and I can’t see it until it’s bad.

It doesn’t help that I’m pretty good at denial and avoidance, i.e., “I’m not depressed, nosiree, I just suddenly hate myself and feel like my life is going down the shitter.” I either couldn’t or wouldn’t look at the evidence: I sucked way more than usual at making decisions—and this is bad, because I always suck at decisions. I hated all of the music that I usually love. Food sounded gross and made my stomach hurt, so I didn’t eat much. I couldn’t fall asleep at night. (Very uncharacteristic. I usually sleep like a boss.) If a client reported these experiences to me, I’d know right away what was going on. But despite the astounding, staggering amount of evidence of depression, I couldn’t see it. Its camouflage was too good, too complete. It blended in with the colors of my life, and I just assumed that the lies of depression were true. (i.e., I really was a terrible person, and people really did hate me, etc.).

Here's the thought that blew my depression’s cover:

“Wouldn’t it be easier on everyone if you weren’t here?”

Whoa. I’d never had that kind of thought before. 

Thankfully, I stopped and self-reflected. For one blessed moment, my internal voice had my back, and she said, “Hold up, sister. What did you just say to yourself?”

Then I knew what was going on. And to therapy I went and to the doctor I went and to the gym I went. Yep, the gym. Because honestly, I’ve never found anything as effective for my own personal mood management as good old fashioned gym torment. 

I’m slowly getting better. I wish recovery was as easy as a few grueling hours at the YMCA or a few weeks of therapy or a few months’ worth of pills. It’s not, though. Healing from depression is like slogging through a field of deep mud. One foot held up and striving forward, one foot sinking down into the goo. Repeat, repeat, repeat. 

So I cope. I read a lot. I do the gym thing. I go on walks. I watch The Office and The West Wing, two shows that comfort me. I attempt to be emotionally present with friends and family. I try to remember that the Cersei Shitshow thought parade isn’t the truth, even though it feels like The Truth when it’s happening, but rather, that these thoughts are depression being a little bitch.

And I write like I need it to survive. This too is a coping skill. When I write I attempt to understand myself, to be understood by others. It’s mightily gratifying to have some thoughts out of my head and on paper instead of rattling around on the inside. If I get to make myself or someone else laugh, that’s a bonus.

I want y'all to know: I’ll get through this. I already am. And I always have. 

I’ll keep putting one muddy foot in front of the other until the ground underneath me dries up again. And it will. It always has. 

And for my functionally depressed comrades-in-arms out there: I’m with you. I’m here for you. We’re all gonna make it. Take care of yourselves, do all the things that help, and the ground will dry. Just you wait. 

***

Author's note: Suicidal thoughts are serious and should be treated as such. If you're having thoughts of ending your life, get yourself to help. Call a parent. Text a friend. 
Call this hotline: 1--800-273-8255. Go to this website: The Hopeline.
Find a therapist. 

You matter. Trust me.