I probably could also title this Everybody Into the Therapy Pool.
Over the past few months, I have put up a few diaries looking for advice about my wife's battle with OCD and depression, as well as its impact on our family unit and individually on our 3 children.
Well, I do have an update, not only on what's going on, but on self-realizations that have come from dealing with this. It's not always pretty, it's very complicated, but I'm every hopeful. And that's the first thing - and hence the title of this diary - to get our family what it needs.
First, the latest on my wife. She takes lots of medications - none for OCD, but she is treated for Adult ADD, she has meds for diabetes, and associated things to protect blood pressure, heart, deal with nausea, migraines, etc. Every morning she takes 9 pills, 1 of which is over-the-counter heartburn medicine. The ADD cocktail is a combo of anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, and amphetamine salts (which make you focus). Here's the thing: What if this diagnosis has been wrong for 20 years. She's still taking these meds, and she clearly has more depression and more anxiety than ever, so they are not working.
As I have written before, Mrs. Takenote spends loads of time in bed - in fact, almost all her free time. Every so often, she will take a child out, or agree to have lunch with me, or even go and see a friend, but most of the time, she is self bed-ridden. She sleeps a ton - in the morning, after she takes all that medication, in the middle of the day, and at night. Not to belabor the point, but this also means she is not much of a participant in our household and doesn't really do anything to keep up the house.
Well, over the past several months she has also been developing her network on Facebook. Mostly old college friends, this has expanded to include others who went, but not when she was there. There are too men, one guy who is an author and private detective in So Cal somewhere and the other who seems to be an artist/animator who lives in Maine. They call all the time. At least once every day. Now she's never met either of them, but the guy in Maine even sent her a pair of earrings.
I know she's not leaving the house, so it's not like she's got some torrid affairs going on - and right now she feels terrible about how she looks (I don't know why, she's incredibly beautiful), and she has a temporary bridge in her mouth (the permanent one - the result of a childhood bike accident - needs to be replaced), and she talks about unattractive she feels she is all the time. In fact, she is totally escaping our family by constantly checking in, texting, with these guys and more people. Example: we went out on a Mother's Day picnic and kite flying with the kids, and she could not spend the time with them. She did for a bit, but then retreated to the car so she could have at least one phone call and check in on Facebook.
Worse still - I got really, really angry about earring boy. Well, really, who wouldn't? My first wife left me for a guy (and lied about it and said he was gay). My wife knows I'm particularly sensitive about this, and yet when I told her it was bothering me, she was completely agnostic about it.
So I yelled at her. I didn't insult her - I never do - I just told her how offended and hurt I was at the top of my lungs. Now she says she doesn't want to be married to me anymore. She won't even hold my hand. This wonderful woman who has stood by me at the times I really needed somebody, and was my biggest champion is cold to me now, and it is awful. Bear in mind, I didn't do anything awful, I just acted awful, and this is the price.
So the self-realization: All this happened before I went off on business. On my flights one had to return to the airport because of plane trouble. I don't want to over dramatize this - flames weren't shooting out of an engine or anything - but it got in my head, and started me thinking about this: If I died today, my wife would hate me. Seriously. She said I yell and fight all the time, resist all of her ideas, scream at the kids.
And she is right - I have been - particularly the past few years where job and finance issues have piled right on top of the other issues. So I got mad. Everything I was doing to try to make things better - all with the best of intentions - everything was making it worse. I was frustrated, and I took it out on her and the kids. I went into that angry attitude feeling completely justified. She would pontificate from her bed - about the house, about the kids, about money, and I thought, "How dare she, when she is completely uninvolved in any of that?"
This doesn't mitigate my wife's huge issues, but it certainly didn't help. I was angry, and I realized that I love my wife - still - and completely. And I love my kids. The pressure of handling virtually the entire household, the bills and trying to run a business because I couldn't find another job was too much. I don't want to lose her, really. I'd like to spend the rest of my life holding her hand and die, happily, in her arms. So, off to therapy. All of us. The kids need it, we need it as a couple, I need it - and above all, my wife needs it. Therapy with a nice big group of experts, including somebody to help regulate all that medication.
I have also learned that my wife can't really handle a crisis while I'm away. So new job tactic. Take something not in my specialty exactly, but closer to home and without all the travel.
My family is in crisis, and it is not easy to admit that. I have terrible feelings of guilt - as a father and a husband. I know, too, that no matter how angry I got, I never stopped loving them - and that makes me want to fix it as soon as possible.