The Spouse Of

Sometimes I feel really awful for Brent.
Sometimes I wonder if he will ever be married to a long term happy wife.

Sure I'm not in the depths of depression like I was last year, but this year is turning out to be harder than I expected. I thought a few months after I weaned my baby my life would just pop back to where it was three years ago. Well here we are and now its been almost four years since I got pregnant with Mr. A and my health isn't where I want it to be. (I mean everything with my health not just my mental health.) Every time I get something crossed off the list something new shows up. Its getting old, its getting to the point that I've stopped saying, ok once such and such happens we'll be good.

It use to be maybe I should wean the baby maybe I'll feel better.
Once I wean the baby I'll be better.
Once its been two months so once my body is free of milk I'll be better.
Once its been three months, I'll be better.
The doctor says its going its going to take six months for the hormones to flush out. Ok, only two more left until he is 18 months old.
Once the kids go back to school, I'll feel better.
Here we are in September. I got pregnant in November of 2011.

I don't know if I'm accepting my new normal, or if I'm giving up. Hopefully the first.

Back to the first sentence, I sometimes I feel bad for Brent. Brent is the rock and I'm like a crazy piece of lint floating around. Maybe if we are going with nature, he is a rock and I'm a dandelion seed.

At the point I'm overwhelmed, so I feel like I've been depressed most of our marriage. (He does not feel like than thankfully!) But I had bad anxiety when we were in engaged, I dropped about 20 pounds in the six months before we got married, and if you know me I don't normally have 20 pounds to lose. When I was pregnant with our first I had pre-natal depression. I was on bed rest with our second baby, I had postpartum depression with our second baby. I had seasonal affective disorder for many winters on and off. In fact that was one of the reasons we choose to move to Colorado, because they have a sunny winter. The first winter we were here, my husband looked at me one day smiling, saying I've never seen you happy in the winter.

So lately I was feeling bad for him, that he married this trial. Then I remembered when we were engaged. About a month before we got married in a particularly trying bit of anxiety. I said, I'm so sorry you have to put up with this. I'm not always like this, normally I don't cry every day. Hopefully soon I'll bounce back. He looked at me and asked, you won't cry every day? He was genuinely surprised. He was willing going to marry a woman he thought was going to cry everyday for the rest of his life. That is devotion. That is love.

I brought this up with him the other day. Its true, he is the best. He would rather have sad Lesli than no Lesli. That's both good and bad. Good that he feel likes that, but bad that we even have to talk about that. About two months ago, he thought he saw our divorced neighbor go on a double date. He said to me, no matter what happens, never leave, we'll always work through it. What he though he saw was totally wrong, it wasn't a double date at all, it was family friends, stopping by. But I appreciated the sentiment, more than you can express in a blog post.

I recently read an article written to the spouse of someone with mental illness. The author ended the piece saying its now been years since I've had problems with depression. I wondered will it ever be years?

Hopefully.



P.S. If you are wondering if this means I'm sick again. My answer would be like anyone could ever know that. If my returning hot flashes are any indicator, then yes, maybe. What I'm more hoping is the returning hot-flashes are one more hick up on my return to normal. Its been a bumpy winding road, I missed the exit for the smooth interstate.