Part 3: Depression
DE·Pres·sion
(noun): “a mood disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness.”
This part of the story picks up in the summer of 2019. My husband had tried to get sober about a month prior to where this part of the story begins, but it didn’t last long, and after this relapse, I lost all hope that he could ever get sober. I just didn’t see how it could ever be possible after so many failed attempts and broken promises.
We hardly had any communication with one another at this point. He had moved downstairs to the guest room and I had taken the master upstairs. We didn’t speak. We hardly looked at one another. It was brutally awkward, painful, and lonely. Every night, when the kids were finally asleep, I’d walk by the stairs back to my room and stare down at the light glowing from underneath the doorway, knowing exactly what was happening on the other side of it, and feeling completely powerless to do anything about it. I felt trapped in my life, in my marriage, in the extreme disappointment that I felt it had become, and I wallowed in self pity over how I had been robbed of the husband and life I had once dreamed of. This was so far off of what I thought life would become and the dreams I had for us and for our family.
I didn’t feel the burning, hot anger that had become my companion for so long any longer though, now, I felt nothing. I felt like a stranger in my own life, like a robot, devoid of all emotion. Every day felt like I was living outside of myself, watching my body do the things it needed to survive, but like it was all happening to someone else.
I was finally beginning my slow surrender to the disease of alcoholism, but this type of surrender didn’t bring me peace or freedom in the ways that it would later, it only brought deep, dark depression like I had never experienced before, and it clung to everything around me like a thick, numbing fog. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t enjoy anything I once had. Nothing could snap me out of this black hole I had sunken into.
I had surgery around this time and the combination of pain medications and periods of heavy sleep followed by severe insomnia, sent me even further into the darkness. I had lost some weight and I know now that my family and Al-Anon group were beginning to worry about me. I was worried about me, too. I knew I wasn’t well in any form of the word, but I didn’t know how to take care of myself any longer, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
I clung to my group and The Promises as hard as the fog was clinging to me. Those Al-Anon promises were the only thing I looked forward to in the week, even though I didn’t believe they would come true for me. My husband, his sobriety, and our marriage was too hopeless in my eyes, but each week we read: “courage will be replaced by fear,” “we will begin to feel and know the vastness of our emotions, but we will not be slaves to them,” “our secrets will no longer bind us in shame”…and so many more promises like these, aloud, and the embers of hope would flicker for a few seconds in my soul. I so badly wanted them to be true in my life. I’d leave, and the embers would die out as quickly as they had been rekindled, but I had made it another week.
I went on like this for a few more months.
The final breaking point came on the morning of October 20, 2019; the worst day of my life. It was the day that I kicked my husband out of our house. I didn't know where he would go or what he would do. I was terrified and relieved and empowered all at the same time. Miraculously, God had given me the courage to make the most difficult decision I have ever made, all in the midst of my deep depression.
I had had a sinking feeling for many months that this was where we were headed, but on this particular day, He took over for me. He carried me when it felt like my whole world was collapsing into rubble around me. It took everything in me just to get from one day to the next all while trying to care for two kids under the age of 5. God was my rock and my shield and my strength when I had none left. This was the last day, the last lie, and the last betrayal of trust from my husband that I could take. The line had finally been drawn in the sand and I would go no further.
We stood in the kitchen and I knew this was it. This was my final straw. I refused to let alcoholism break me even more than it already had, and I refused to continue to live in this house with him another day, growing sicker and sicker together. So, squaring my shoulders, I looked him in the eye and told him to pack his bags.
He did.
As much as I had wanted him to leave that day, after he left, I sobbed on the floor of the shower for so long that the water was freezing by the time I forced myself out. Time didn’t feel real. It was like living in a nightmare where you scream and no sound comes out, you try to run but your feet just won’t move, and you know that you can’t wake up and it’ll soon fade into a distant memory because you’re already awake and there is no escape from the present reality. I truly feared that kicking him out that day meant I might’ve just signed his death certificate. I didn’t know if he would leave and go drink himself into the ground knowing that he was losing his family. I didn’t know if he’d get drunk and try to drive, harming himself or someone else. I knew he had been depressed, like me, and those thoughts terrified me. I didn’t know where he’d go or what he’d do, but I knew he would drink.
Even under the layers of anger and pain I armored myself with, I still loved my husband, but the person that left that day was not the same person that I had said “I do” to years before. I didn’t recognize him. And I can say now that I don’t think he recognized himself either.
I called a few close friends and family in the hours after his departure, and they poured out all of their love and support in the midst of my crisis, but it was still the loneliest, hardest day of my life. It was a day that I never want to live again or wish upon anyone, but it’s also the day that I discovered the true meaning of the word ‘faith’ and the truth behind who God claims to be. He had asked me to go where I did not want to go. I begged, I pleaded, I bargained for there to be another way. Kicking and screaming, I finally went…but when I got there?
That’s where I found more of Him.
That’s where I found freedom.
That’s where I found surrender.
That’s where the best part of this story begins.
Go to Part 4