Northward Midget

Tag: depression

  • Suddenly

    I feel that this has given me the most incredible and wonderful thing that I have ever been given, and also, the worst. […] I’ve had my whole soul undermined by it — on the one hand. On the other hand, in one sense, my experience has been about finding joy.

    It was Memorial Day weekend. The day before, maybe. End of May. Sunday? She was taking the kids to visit with her parents in Rochester. As they went outside and she was about to leave, she turned to me.

    I was sitting on the loveseat (ha), sipping a cup of coffee, facing her and the door.

    I knew that look.  It meant she was pissed off about something, and I probably did not have any idea what that something was or why it made her so angry.

    This time, the something was a Facebook post: a link to a write-up on a role-playing session.  The tragic opening sequence contained characters she felt were too similar to our family.  I’ll skip the details, except to say that some of her … friends had told her that the story was grounds enough to get a restraining order against me.  She seemed more angry and embarrassed than concerned or afraid for herself and the children, and she left that way.

    Maybe an hour later, I get a message on my phone.  She’s not coming back until I’m out of the house.

    “OK.”

    I stayed at hotels most of that week.  I didn’t see the kids.  I frantically searched for an apartment while trying to work out a budget that would allow for us to maintain two households under my single salary.  There wasn’t time for me to feel much (if indeed I ever “feel” anything) except frustration and a kind of passive, harmless anger.

    It’s a month later.  I’ve got my little one-bedroom in the basement of a building in a park.  It’s nice.  Heat included.  I mostly eat tuna sandwiches and cereal, maybe pizza on Friday.  I’ve got Internet, and a great “open box” special of a deal on a big-ass TV from Best Buy.

    I’ve moved a couch, a California king-size bed, a dresser, a desk, a table, all by myself in my trusty old Forester.  I’m very proud of that.  It wasn’t easy, especially that goddamned $25 thrift-store couch.

    I saw the girls a few times while moving things after that first week.  Now I go over after work every Wednesday to spend time with them and put them to bed and whisper “I will always love you” to each of them until they get sick of it or fall asleep.

    They seem to be taking everything remarkably well.  Is that a credit to how they were raised?  Their natural temperament?  Do they truly realize daddy isn’t coming back to stay?

    God damn you.

    Fourteen years together.  Two kids.  Two years ago, she decides she isn’t happy.  Fuck it.  She has her reasons.  I won’t go into them, because quite frankly, I don’t fucking understand most of them.  Part of the problem?

    It makes me angry.  Sometimes, like just there.  However, surprisingly, most of the time, I am happier than I have been in years.

    No more dreading going “home” to a wife who despises me.  Ah, she may beg to differ.  Well, her behaviour, her detachment, the complete lack of any affection over the past years — that’s been a worse hell than anyone who hated me has ever put me through.

    I’m sure she suffered.  Poor thing.

    Fuck you.  This is my fucking blog, and it’s fucking about me.

    She thought I was a danger to the children!  My children. What’s the worst thing you can say to any parent?  That he’s a bad parent.  That he’s hurting his kids.  That he would ever hurt his kids.

    By all accounts, I should be angry, or hurt, or something.  Profane outbursts aside, I’m really not.  I’m content.

    I’ve also learned that I am not what she said I was.  I’m charming, considerate, intelligent, witty, and maybe even reasonably attractive for someone my age.  I add that last part just because it’s important with regards to finding someone else after being with the same woman for the best goddamned years of your life and expecting to be with her forever.

    Through sickness and in health, til death do us part.

    Was I ever depressed?  You know, she’s the one who prompted me to start treatment.  Treatment that has never worked.  Hell, maybe years of anti-depressants have made me worse.

    This was supposed to be a celebratory post.

    I’m as close to “happy” as I’ve been in years.

    I wish her the best of luck as a single mother, but when the kids are no longer kids, well, I don’t like to end on a down note. Here’s a song.

    Turn around.

    Every now and then,
    I get a little bit lonely,
    and you’re never comin’ ’round.

    Turn around, bright eyes.

    Every now and then,
    I fall apart.

    And I need you more tonight.
    And I need you more than ever.
    And you’ll only be making it right.

    We’ll be holding on — forever!

    That’s a joke. She’ll get it, but she won’t be laughing.

  • MAOI Update and the Syndrome With the Funny Name

    No new MAOI dosage, no more late-night milk-spilling slapstick, and no better feelings.  To be fair to the meds, the past month has been a stressful one.  The wife thinks I have Asperger Syndrome.  (Henceforth “AS” for brevity and to avoid the “ass-burger” images.) It fits my career, lifestyle, and personality, and I’ve suspected it myself.

    Unfortunately, if it’s AS and not “just” depression and anxiety, the behavior that causes us so much domestic strife is not so much a symptom of those mental diseases as it is a part of who I am and will always be — more like Tourette Syndrome.  I cannot relate to other “normal” (neurotypical or “NT” in the AS lingo) people.  There’s no pill to make me do so.  (Although I know a certain liquid that helps tremendously.)

    Thus, my condition is no longer something I can overcome through therapy and medication, but something that is just part of who I am.  Hell, AS people seem to embrace it almost as much as the radical fringe of the deaf community embrace their lack of hearing.

    That’s not to say therapy can’t help me deal with others, but now it’s entirely a matter of therapy (and my willingness to make that effort) and not medication and therapy in conjunction dealing with the underlying problem and the symptoms going away.  I’ll still need the medication for the comorbid bedfellows of severe depression and anxiety, but it’s not going to make me into the man she wants me to be.

    Is that the man I want to be?  I want to be happy, I want to sympathetic if not empathetic towards my loved ones.  I want to be a “good” husband and father.  However, before all this, before my attachments, I never wanted any attachments.  Yet, I was lonely — but was it lonely for relationships, or lonely for physical intimacy, for sex?

    When I was a kid, a lonely dateless high-school kid, I dreamt of just skipping ahead in time with some girl to the family and the white-picket fence.  Towards the end of high school and into college, as I became more depressed, well, I don’t know what I wanted then.  I was still lonely, God wasn’t returning my messages, and I became an atheist.  Once I found the Internet and started actually interacting with girls(!), at least virtually, I became vehemently against marriage and kids and the rest.

    But, it happened.  Maybe, knowing who I was, I should have objected, but who I was (and still am) is also someone who avoids conflict (and change, to a degree) at all costs.

    Anyway, what was this about?  The title says an MAOI update.  I see my psychiatrist tomorrow and I’ll ask him about AS.  I’ll also give my 1-10 “how do you feel” scale and downgrade it from last time’s six to a four or less.  I don’t know how he’ll react to that.  MAOI is kind of the end of the line for me on the medication train.  I don’t want to switch to something new, primarily because it means being off everything for two weeks, then allowing the new stuff another month or so to start working.  Nevertheless, 40MG a day is still a pretty low dose, he says, so maybe he’ll try something higher before giving up.

    As for AS, I mentioned it to my therapist and she said that people with AS usually can’t function as well as I do.  That threw me, because AS is on the “high-functioning” spectrum of autism and plenty of people live successful and fulfilling(?) lives with it.  She didn’t think my psychiatrist would agree with the wife’s “diagnosis.”  In any case, she said she’d mention it to him and look into any local therapists or psychologists who have experience with it.  We’ll see.

    Back to the MAOI for a moment before closing.  I’ve done remarkably well with it, physically.  The dietary restrictions aren’t really so bad, and I haven’t made any big slips or had any hypertensive crises.  Plus, last night, I took the kids across the street to their friend’s house for a bonfire his parents were having.  I wrote about one of those nights before, and this one was similarly satisfying — and booze-infused.  The upside of that side is that I had two beers and at least three cocktails and the only effect was my feeling relaxed and socially comfortable.

    Plus, the kids had a great time.  We didn’t go home until 10:30PM.  They played hide-and-seek with flashlights, and the girls put on a couple of their unique plays, with an encore of “The Mummy.”  The eldest is one demanding director, nay — auteur.  Her younger sister gets the parts of the vampire, the mummy, the ghost, the ghoul, the … hunchback.  And, of course, all the male roles.

    So, that’s life right now as we enter the summer season.  Things will probably be a lot different when the girls start school in the fall.  The anxiety is about whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, and the unknown encounters on the path from here to there.

     

  • MAOI Stage 4 – Crash!

    I sat in a pool of milk and wondered how it got on the floor.  I knew I’d spilled it on the countertop trying to pour it into my cereal, but how did it get all over the floor?  I stood, shakily, and saw that the half-gallon cardboard container of organic whole milk was tipped over, as was my cup of cereal.  Milk was everywhere, soaking boxes, creeping under the toaster, dribbling into the sink.

    Wednesday afternoon, my psychiatrist upped my dose of Parnate to 10mg four times a day.  He said I could start immediately, and that some people take two in the morning and two at night.  That’d be a lot more convenient  and better distributed than the three times a day I had been doing: 8AM, 1-2PM, 5-6PM.

    After the appointment, around 2PM, I took my second of the day.  When I got home, I waited, as I sometimes did, and took the double-dose right before putting the kids to bed between 8PM and 9PM.   The eldest was sick (just getting over it), so the youngest went separately in our bed, and didn’t take too long.  Then downstairs to put the sickie down.

    Around 11PM, I rolled out of her bed for a snack.  Nothing wrong yet.  Got to the kitchen, grabbed my glass (I eat cereal in drinking cups), poured some knockoff Wegmans brand of Cinnamon Life, got the milk, began to pour, then…I started to lose consciousness.  Not straight-away faint, but light-headed, and the milk wasn’t hitting its target.

    So, I slumped down to the floor to give my head a rest, then rose a few minutes later and tried again, but now the carton was tipped over, the glass was tipped over, milk was everywhere, and my ass was wet.  I grabbed paper towels, then towels from the dirty basket, then took off my shirt and wiped with that.  I may have tried another few times to make cereal, but ended up just eating a few scoops of the dry stuff after sopping up most of the milk, then gave up and put everything away.

    The light-headedness lasted for a few more hours.  By Thursday, the next morning, it was gone, tested by my wet-shaving with the safety razor and taking a shower.  I went to work, and all seemed well.

    That day, I waited until noon for my first 10MG, then another when I got home, then another around 11PM.  Today I did the usual 8/2/5 and I’ll try the fourth as late as possible tonight.  Maybe Sunday, when nobody has anywhere to go, I’ll try the 2/2 morning/night schedule.

    All this after I’d told the doc “No, no light-headedness at all!” when he’d asked about what is a common side-effect of the drug.

    In any case, my mood does seem somewhat improved on it, and it’s only been a little over three days since I began the initial 10MG/day dose.  This is the worst side-effect I’ve ever had on an anti-depressant.  Not the most interesting (that would be the chronic wet dreams), but the worst.

    Maybe it was an empty stomach, maybe it was the combination of my nightly 1MG of Klonopin.  I dunno.  We’ll see.  I’ll be careful.