Those first few weeks out of the psych ward should have felt like a relief but they felt overwhelming. All the choices I was faced with. What to eat, what to do, where to go, what to wear. Naturally it was going right into the holidays starting with Thanksgiving. I dove right back into work because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I was terrified if I didn’t go back to work, I would end up in the psych ward again, since me being out of work was what had landed me there in the first place.
That first weekend I was out I needed to get some different clothes for work. Since I had last been at work I had lost another 10 pounds. My clothes no longer fit at all. They hung off me like burlap sacks. I went out with my friend on Sunday; it was cold rainy and overcast. I had no winter coat or raincoat to protect from the inclement weather. We hit up a few stores around town to see what there was in stock. When we got back in the car, the car wouldn’t start. It was a good thing my friend was with me because I don’t know what I would’ve done. I screamed and hit the steering wheel repeatedly. I regained composure and became silent. I dug out my AAA card hoping my husband hadn’t cancelled my off the policy while I’d “been away”.
AAA answered perkily and told me they’d have someone out as soon as they could. I apologized to my friend and starting crying. It just felt like everything was against me. I had just gotten out of a psych ward, now my car was dead in a parking lot. My husband’s car surely wasn’t dead somewhere on gloomy night where he had to buy clothes for work the next day.
It ended up just being the battery and the car just needed a jump. The battery in the car was the original and my car is a 2015. He jumped my car and told me I would need a new battery, that the jump wouldn’t hold forever. That wasn’t so bad. But it felt awful. Like everything else. It felt like the end of the world. When you are depressed, really, awfully, depressed, the smallest things feels like the biggest. Everything feels insurmountable.
I had only been gone 10 days, but it felt like an eternity. My whole life felt different. Likely because I felt different. I didn’t feel whole anymore. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I still don’t feel like myself, months later. I had a horrible thing happen to me that I should be able to get up from and be objective about, but I can’t wrap my head around it. I keep trying to rationalize how the man I love and said I would be with for the rest of my days had done this and so much more bad to me
I had missed my child’s first collegiate game while in the hospital. With Covid, it was only live streamed, but I missed it. I felt horrible guilt about it. I was not able to pick them up for winter break either. Their dad had to do it. Frankly, I couldn’t think of the last thing their dad had done willingly like that. I guess he really didn’t have a choice since I was behind a locked door, and couldn’t quite leave on my own free will. They had no interest in talking to me; they had told me I was being unreasonable and immature and I needed to grow up and get over it. I couldn’t. I loved him. I loved my husband. I love my husband, present tense. I lay awake at night wondering if he was awake too, missing me like I was missing him, what he was doing, who he was doing…. once it got to who he was doing that was where I started falling apart, every time. I tried to keep my mind busy and think about other things, but I couldn’t. It seemed like I had a one track mind.
My mind and my body were deciding to fail me. I had follow up with my cardiologist to find out that my new antidepressant was causing my QT interval to be just as long as before, just like when I came in the hospital. They recommended I see an electrophysiologist, which is a subspecialty of cardiology. I had to go off the anti-depressant to shorten my QT again. I started seeing a dietician. I had no appetite and my weight was continuing to drop. I was becoming gaunt. I saw nephrology for my inability to hold onto potassium, which had been ongoing, and discovered back when I had kidney stones. I was diagnosed with renal tubular acidosis. I followed up with my PCP. She echoed what everyone else said. Now I was facing going through this stage of my life without an antidepressant.
Our child who remained at home packed up my cat one Saturday and brought him over to my mom’s house. I cried tears of joy when they got there. I have never been so happy to see an animal in my life. I held onto them for dear life. They had been my bed buddy at nighttime before and I was hoping that perhaps they would offer my some respite in the sleep department. I learned that my husband cried when they took the cat without telling him, that he wanted one more day with the cat. I assume he cried when he kicked me out. He cried during the day we talked and I wouldn’t go, but I never have heard if he cried beyond that. I know he wasted no time contacting his girlfriend about his triumph of getting rid of me.
I tried to celebrate little victories; I had all three kids together for Thanksgiving on the day after Thanksgiving. I love the sounds of them all together. Joking, laughing, talking and giggling together. I always say in my head thanks be to giving while I cook for Thanksgiving. I didn’t feel like I had much to be thankful for. Even among three of the people who made me the most happy, all I could do was think about how much I wanted my husband there to feel like we were a whole family. How without him there, I just wanted to kill myself. How deep and empty my insides felt with my 3/4 of my life sitting that close to me. How I wondering if just up the road, he had the same feeling, or if he felt worse because I got to have the 3 kids with me for the holiday and they wouldn’t all get together for him, because as he told me, I ruined that for him.
Never had a white picket fence 