My wife and I are both exhausted. It's cold, rainy, cloudy outside, and the trees are skeletons. The road makes that "wooshing" wet sound whenever cars go by and it sprays cold whatever everywhere. There's no Christmas coming soon, no New Year, we're just in the doldrums of winter. The hallways at her college probably sound hollow and are a bit darker, even with lights - like an empty hospital in an X-Files episode.
I began taking anti-depressants when I was fourteen. At the time my mother's brother was in the midst of an unnaturally colored descent into something like a quiet madness which would, by the time I was seventeen, lead him to take his own life. My father's mother suffered from unspecified mental illness which has only recently been revealed as schizophrenia. My parents understandably sought relief for me rather than watch their son, a sensitive, smart, and oft-bullied young man, push himself further toward desperation.
Of course, being a teenager, that is what I continued to seek, desperation, despite being a member of the first wave of Prozac-nation. I would later shift to Effexor, to Aderral for ADD, at times opting to abandon anti-depressants only to suffer physical withdrawal which wracked my body with vomiting and migraines of the kind that have never been fully understand by any doctor I've encountered. (It was not until my second year of teaching that I was diagnosed with narcolepsy in addition to clinical depression).
My wife suffered similarly though her parents were wary of medication and so she did not meet Mr. Prescription until after she had moved out on her own. She managed high school quite a lot better than I did, at least outwardly so, maintaining her academics at the highest degree even while being involved in a destructive relationship.
Whilst my wife navigated her way through high school I led my private war of attrition against myself. I sabotaged relationships, or the potential for relationships, with any girl who dared near me while at the same time attempting to walk the fine line between earning grades high enough for graduation but poor enough to fall well below any college admission standards. I succeeded though registered with the local community college on a whim as the summer after high school neared its end.
When my wife and I met at Appalachian State University in the fall of 2005 it seemed natural that we, two souls predisposed to poetry and excessive gloominess, spend the rest of our lives together.
Our marriage, which will cross the five-year mark on 16 February 2012, has been marked by precisely what one would imagine. We have struggled both with our selves and with one another through both exterior and interior pressures.
Death has been present and has been actively sought by an immediate family member, took a dear great aunt in the form of Alzheimer's, claimed our twins before their hands were even formed enough to dance in the warmth of my wife's body - nearly took my wife as she sought to deliver my son, his heartbeat stomping and whimpering wildly, only this past September.
We plunge again into winter, oddly enough my favorite season, with our spirits fragile and our minds even more so.
We must watch one another, not in such an overt way, but by way of noticing signs of descent - there is a line, my wife has often told me, that either of us could cross and, in crossing, never regain the will or sense to return.
Yet in choosing one another we chose understanding. We know the frustrations of being misunderstood, being told to "cheer up" or to pretend - who better to support a depressive than another depressive?
I'll end with an excerpt from a letter I recently wrote to my wife. We write one another letters which we deliver to one another in the form of a composition notebook, handed from one to the other on a daily or slightly less frequent basis. This is something we've done, though in stops and starts, since 2005:
We both have to fight the worst in ourselves because our worst is very bad. Both of us have tendencies to depression, hopelessness, anguish, despair - more so than most people, even people traditionally diagnosed as being depressed. We have to depend upon one another for support, for understanding in that - we've got no other choice and it's the only healthy thing to do.
It's warm here, your son is full of your milk and growing fatter by the minute. His feet are flying and he's growing frustrated for reasons I can only guess. I'm wearing my "New Dad 2011" shirt after the black t-shirt I'd initially worn was milked. I'm standing beside his bassinet and writing to you as the geese honk outside and the mallards laugh like morons. The marshmallow peppermint candle is burning and [there is the] overpowering the scent of the diaper I just changed. I'm looking at your small, pink blanket on the bed - flanked by a seahorse towel, reading light, pink legal pad latter, and Baby Einstein DVD case. This is a beautiful life.
I love you.
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