I'm having it bad right now

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After accidentally losing my anti-depression medication (long story), my new wife did not realize the danger I was in. Eventually I fell into a suicidal state and was hospitalized in the mental ward for a week. I get out and begin the arduous task of quitting drinking after 25 years of daily alcohol intake. Right now, I’m on day 14 of sobriety and my medications have not kicked in yet. Depressed and sober. Well my grouchy mood has pissed off my wife who will now not touch me and will barely talk to me. (Well, she said “You’re selfish,” and “I’m learning a lot about how you really are.”–ouch) On top of that I’m in the middle of a move that should have been completed in November but has dragged on with no end in sight (it’s a military move–she’s in the Army). Due to that, most of my meager possessions are 1,000 miles away. These include two of the best therapeutic things I own, my guitar and my exercise machine. Also my driver’s license is there so I can’t drive. I’ve been unemployed for months pending completion of the move (because once my stuff gets moved I’m overseeing an interior remodel and putting the house up for sale and I can’t start a job and then take 3 weeks off after my first week). So I sit in this apartment and have to rely on my wife for everything, which just pisses her off. I unwound a successful law practice to follow her, so I’m in this position for, and due to, her. But I just sit helpless, and that just pisses her off more.

I try to count my blessings, and I’m not all that miserable, (I know some people have it worse), but damn if it isn’t all hitting at once.

2

Was I being selfish when she chose to watch her mobile DVD player about 12 feet from my head during the college national championship, and I got irritated? I tried to watch it on the computer in another room, and I said “You win.” But I couldn’t get it on the computer, so I watched it on the one TV we have here while listening to her movie (which she could have watched in any room in the house.) Other than a handful of football games, I pretty much let her control the TV.

3

Dude, stop being passive.

Go out and do something to help yourself. Rent a guitar or ask around to see if you can borrow one. Go walking or jogging. Hit Goodwill and pick up a set of weights. Get a part time crap job or volunteer somewhere until your stuff gets in.

Stop worrying about your wife. Get out of your head. Go to an AA meeting and get a sponsor. But DO SOMETHING.

4

What **phouka **said.

However, I will throw in a hug Congratulations on 2 weeks of sobriety :slight_smile: One day at a time, hon.

Now get offa here, go read some of the Big Book and go to a meeting and don’t leave until you have a sponsor.

5

Did your wife just now learn about your depression and alcohol struggles?

But yeah, what phouka said x2. Get out there and active. Ruminating ain’t gonna help things any. Sounds to me like you’re already on the right track. Good luck!

6

It would be good, if you have high points, to pick one of these and sit your wife down and let her know she is not helping - that you are trying, but if you are going to dig yourself out of this, she needs to stop carping. I understand her POV - it’s very hard to live with a deeply depressed person - but right now she needs to back off just a bit.

And yes, get active. You may not enjoy it at first. Force yourself. Just say, “No matter what, I will go for a 15 minute walk every day”. And then DO IT. From there, slowly increase your activity.

Congrats on 2 weeks!

7

Is there at least any way you could get access to your driver’s license?

Your wife isn’t being supportive. She knew you had a problem with depression and knew you were leaving a profitable job to support her. And presumably she knew that you wouldn’t be able to re-start your career until after the house is complete. What did she expect? If you have no way to drive, no employment until after the move is completed and no way to blow off steam, how are you supposed to magically be all upbeat? Now that you’re in a tough spot, why isn’t she supporting you, too?

You definitely need to sit down and talk to her and see if you can get out of the apartment somehow. When you do talk to her, keep things about yourself. In other words, don’t start with, “I moved because of you, and now you won’t support me even though I’m having a problem with depression.” Instead, you could say, “Look, I’m feeling really set adrift here. I had no problems moving to support you and your position in the army, and I love you. But sometimes I feel like you don’t understand what I’m going through. I want to have a job and I want to be productive - can you help me think of ways I can be productive, even though I’m not working?”

Surely she understands why you can’t suddenly start a high-powered job - if you make this more of a collaborative effort and emphasize that this is short term, things might be better. Also, it doesn’t sound like she’s being specific. Has she actually told you what she thinks would solve the problem, or is she just criticizing? As far as I’m concerned, that’s in appropriate - she shouldn’t take out her frustration on you.

8

That sentence really reminds me on my way of thinking when I was going through the same thing. Feeling bad, but thinking you don’t have the right to feel bad really puts thing into a horrible, vicious loop of depressing thoughts. Try not to feel so guilty about being depressed. Even for people who don’t have diagnosed depression, bad days happen. Yes, there are people worse off, but that doesn’t invalidate how you feel. Don’t force yourself to be happy when you just aren’t.

I learned that we are composed of three fundamentals: thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. One feeds into the other (feelings affect thoughts, thoughts affects behaviors, etc), and feelings are the hardest to change, so don’t force that. What is the easiest to manage is behavior. You can’t will yourself to be happy when you’re not, but you CAN will yourself to get up and go outside for some fresh air to clear your head. Start simple, and when you accomplish the things you set out to do, you start thinking good things, which in turn makes you feel better.

ETA: Congrats on the sobriety. That’s what I mean about behaviors having positive effects. You go on doing what you’re doing long enough, you will be telling yourself “I’m not worthless! I’ve accomplished this!”

9

Your wife sounds selfish. But she’s had a hard time recently also, and she didn’t leave you. The others are right, you need to find something to do. Guitar and exercise may be helpful for you, but those activities may give you too much time to ruminate. If you can find something to do with other people you might be better off.

Otherwise, you’re on course, things should be getting better day by day. Depression, moving, marriage, and sobriety can really do a job on you, but plenty of people survive, you can too.

10

Thanks all. I do walk the dog a few times a day and get a little fresh air that way. With temperatures below freezing and most of my winter gear 1,000 miles away, I’m too far from most things to walk to them. (The metro station is a few miles away). Due to the fact that the wife works nights and sleeps days with sporadic days off, we run one or two errands a week, and getting a new driver’s license is at least one week away. When I get that, I’ll be much more able to be productive/active. If I could get a metro pass, I could at least go downtown and visit the amenities of our Federal theme park (I’m just outside DC).

11

I told her when we were first getting to know one another that the one time I went off my meds I attempted suicide, and she has certainly been aware of my drinking. But I don’t think she really understands it. And she won’t talk to me, so sitting her down to discuss it is not an option.

12

Man that’s rough. How does she expect things to improve if she won’t keep a line of communication open?

13

Is your wife a heavy drinker as well?

If so, is she possibly worried that you will eventually pressure her to quit?

(I am also thinking that she sounds less than supportive—If you were dealing with a serious physical illness, would she be as cavalier about your health then?)

Good Luck Flipshod!!!

14

I hate to sound like Ann Landers, but get her help and information. If she’s only ever seen you ‘up,’ she needs to know that this is a serious illness and not just you being grumpy. Would she be angry if you’d lost your insulin? (Well, maybe, but would she act as if the symptoms were all your doing?) Much of the literature and online information about coping with a loved one’s depression centers on getting them help or to just acknowledge their state – she has half the battle won.

15

She’s really good about physical illness and injury because she is trained as a nurse. She doesn’t drink that much, and she volunteered to quit completely (mostly just so it wouldn’t be in the house), but I promised her she didn’t have to quit and after awhile could even have it in the house, once I’m sure the sobriety is going to stick.

But yeah, the not talking thing is the worst. Our relationship has heretofore been grounded on absolute openness and honesty. We each know more about each other than anyone else knows about us. We talked online and on the phone for months and had fallen in love before we ever met each other.

And yes we are going into counseling together (she’s in the Army and they are requiring it), so I hope that hearing a psychologist explain it will show her that I’m not just making excuses).

She responded “I love you too,” when she went off to work a while ago. So there is hope.

16

Just curious about a few things…if you lost your meds, why didn’t you get a refill right away? And why is your license not in your wallet in your pocket instead of 1000 miles away? Did the moving away from your stuff happen while you were hospitalized? And will she not give you the $20 for a Metro card? You know you can buy day passes right at the stations, right?

17

Kittenblue, It’s kind of a long story, but I was 1,000 miles away at my house because of a mix-up in communication. The wife told me she would make an appointment for the Army to move my stuff on a certain date, which I took to mean that’s when they would arrive, so I went down there. What she meant was that she would make the appointment on that date, and they would actually arrive a few weeks later. Two months later, that appointment has still yet to be made. Then she calls and says she is so ill she was being hospitalized, so worried, I jump in the car and begin driving. I stopped at a Motel 6 to get a few hours sleep, and ended up leaving my meds there. I discovered this about two hours up the road, but I had kept no documentation of the stay, so I drove back about two hours and checked multiple exits but did not find the one I had slept at, so still worrying, I said the hell with it I’ll deal with that later, and continued on. For the next week or so, I cared for my bed-ridden wife, the apartment, the dog, etc without thinking about the meds. But by then, I had already started sinking, and the bad thing about psyche meds is that when you go off of them, you lose the judgment to get back on them. So I just spiraled downward until I became suicidal.

As to the license, I had to renew it just before we left. They gave me a paper version that lasted a month and mailed the plastic version to my house. Due to the delays, the paper one expired and was thus confiscated by the cops who took me to the hospital, and the real one is sitting in a pile of mail inside my locked front door back at the house. If the move had happened as planned, I would have been able to get the real one before the paper one expired.

I have the money for a Metro pass, but I would just have to walk 4 miles in subfreezing weather with no real winter clothes to get to the station. (It’s a park and ride, not a walk and ride.)

To help deal with this I started a blog. http://flipshod-phasetwo.blogspot.com/ The first entry is a detailed description of the situation and my time on the mental ward. The friends and family I shared it with have all enjoyed reading it.

Update: today she made one sentence of small talk. She still refuses to talk to me or touch me beyond that, but I think it’s a sign that it will work out eventually.

18

And to be clear, like I said, I don’t blame my wife. She just doesn’t understand. As I was sinking, I told her my brain chemistry was getting bad, but she didn’t realize the danger I was in. When I told her I felt suicidal, she had me arrested and taken to the hospital, which was really the right thing to do. She visited me every day on the psyche ward. She’s just never dealt with such a thing on a personal level. I just think it’s all a bunch of bad luck happening all at once. We are both under tremendous stress related to the move and our situation, and the not talking to or touching me is just a symptom of that.

19

Glad she is going to get help too. She NEEDS it. She is your partner and this is a period of time in your marriage that will either tear things for good or allow you both- with the help of others- find your way back to your shared life.

I wish you the best of luck, a good marriage is worth the work.

20

It sounds like she is just pretending nothing is wrong or wanting things to be “normal” when they aren’t. She married you and all that you are and she needs to get that fats. Why you decided to quit drinking before your meds your adjusted is what I don’t get tho. But not my whole point. If you just got out of the hospital and you were on meds there that is 3 weeks of being on the medication so I am guessing it is time to call your doctor. Your drug isn’t working because before it worked because you were drinking too. You might need a different med or an additional one. And please talk to your wife but really get your drivers license too. Your in that stage of making excuses because you can. It is easy to do that when your depressed and it is harder on yourself and on those around you. She should be supporting but show her that you do want to help yourself so that she will want to help you too. Gook luck you can do it is hard but I highly recommend calling you doctor.