remodeling this life

There I said it.

I won’t begin to try to describe what depression is like, because I don’t know. What I do know is what it is like to live with someone who has it.

First of all, I don’t know the proper terminology. Is it that he has depression or is depressed? Maybe it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to offend anyone.

His depression, has, from his own telling, been around for over half of his life. Manifesting itself in different ways at different times of his life. When he was younger, he was a loner – spent lots of time traveling alone to other parts of the world escaping the day to day grind and replacing it with exciting adventures like climbing mountains in Nepal.

In recent history, it has manifested itself as anger, resentment and bitterness toward a lot of the same day to day life things that he shrugged off as a young adult. He now has a wife (she’s pretty nifty) and 2 kids (even niftier) and that means he can’t just run off to Nepal and hide at the top of a mountain when he’s feeling sad.

We’ve been through a lot dealing with his ailment? problem? disease? I don’t even know what to call it. One wouldn’t ever guess I have a degree in Psychology. In hindsight, so much of the 10 years we have spent together has been colored by his depression. His inability to stay in one place for too long. His disdain of the day to day grind of a constraining 9 to 5 job. It’s been presented in our life in many different ways and we’ve always worked through it.

The only time it got really bad was fall of 2006 – I can’t believe it was a year and a half ago already – when we had sold our old house, were in the middle of moving to our current home and seeped ourselves into a crapshack, he was (and still is) in a dead end job, and things were just not looking great. We’ve made the best of that situation, but only after a lot of personal hard work and determination to stay together and to keep our family intact.

We realized, after hitting rock bottom, that there are a lot of things in life that we had let ourselves worry about that just didn’t matter. If we weren’t together and our family wasn’t working, did it really matter what size our house was or what our income was? Not really. What did matter was that we figured out how to stay together and how to keep our daughter’s parents a united force.

It wasn’t pretty – depression never is. There was a lot of fighting. A lot of ugliness. And only because I have chosen not to – there is no regret. I can’t look back and regret what happened. I can’t look back and wish things were different then. I think that what happened to us and the challenge of depression for our family brought about so many GOOD things – like appreciation for the little things in life, appreciation for each other because we know that we’re not invincible, understanding that what is truly important in life is people and not things.

Through this hardship, I have learned a lot about myself. I could sit here and tout myself as a savior. I helped save my husband from himself. I could, really. My in-laws regularly call me to tell me so. They want to tell me how much what I did and continue to do to make their son happy means so much to them. I could pat myself on the back for standing by my man. But the truth is, I don’t always feel like a savior. I got just as angry at him as he was at me. I got just as hopeless as he did and I wanted to throw the towel in a lot. I mean, who doesn’t want to walk out the door when they’re being screamed at that they suck? But I know that was the depression talking. I am not superwoman for making our marriage work. He’s the one who did the work. He’s the one who went to the doctor and got on medication. All I had to do was come home and keep loving the person I married. That’s the easy part. I don’t have to battle demons like he does. I know he has thoughts that stray from the norm. I know he has days he wants to sail off into the sunset never to be heard from again. HE’S the one doing the work to stay here with us and be part of this life. All I did was feebly tell him he had a problem that needed to be worked on, walked out the door and didn’t come back until he’d done it. How noble is that? Maybe not so much, but I can only look at today and see that it worked okay for us. I’m here. He’s here. Our kids are here.

We still have our moments. He still has his bad days, his times that make me ask if he’s remembered his medication. It’s still not always pretty. Heck, just last night it wasn’t pretty. But we work through it because we both know now what matters. No person is perfect. We all have our problems. The best we can do together is help each other and find our way together. I just have to remember that when times get hard. I have to remember that people matter more than anything. And he’s the most important person to me.

I usually have something from my day to day life to share here – you know, inspiration for my writing. Today, all I have on my brain is my butt. Yes, my butt. I went to the doctor last week for a pestering issue and was sent to a specialist today to take a look. Aren’t you so glad you’re reading this right now? I know, it’s fascinating. They didn’t like what they found. I won’t give gory details. I don’t even like the words so I am not going to use them here.

I go in 2 weeks for surgery. For some reason everytime I have said or typed that word today, my eyes have welled up with tears. I know it’s silly. It’s all routine, I think. I have never had surgery. I have only ever been to the doctor for physicals and for pregnancies and I’ve spent a total of 72 hours in the hospital for 2 childbirths. I don’t know what to expect.

There are all sorts of funny jokes I can crack about how I’ll be a perfect butthole when this is all over and such. I know I’m a little scared. I know I’m fine. I just want it to be over.

I guess the only way I can tie this to frugality is that in the past week, I have spent $70 in copays to have my butt examined. They should be paying me. Trust me.

I have had it. Over the past 3 days, I have slowly been working my way through the playroom. Instead of just tossing toys and having a huge meltdown happen courtesy of our 3 1/2 year old daughter, I let her be part of the process. I explained simply that my brain was going to explode I was feeling overwhelmed by the toys and constant cleanup and tripping over magnetic alphabet pieces and wooden blocks was making me crazy. She was really gung-ho about it. Couldn’t wait to help. She started by choosing all of her favorite toys and putting them in the bag. Um…NO. I may be a decluttering nazi but I am NOT a fool. I know better. I knew we had to be realistic about this. So slowly we ridded the playroom of many more than 10 items. Some she was okay with, others not so much, but I am feeling mellow and in the end, she understands that a child only needs so many primary colored plastic toys.

Now, here I am, asking all of you. Anyone out there that has just been itching to buy my children gifts – DON’T BUY THEM TOYS. So many go unused, untouched, unappreciated. And not because of any reason other than that there are just too many of them. We live in a small home. 7 feet of tents and tunnels is not practical, Grandma. So even though they were on sale at Marshall’s and you just couldn’t pass up the deal, we don’t need them and we don’t have the space for them. It would’ve been SO MUCH COOLER if you’d sent a $50 giftcard or put $50 in a bank account or sent $50 so we could’ve spent an afternoon as a family experiencing something that the kids would have memories of to last a lifetime.

I know that it just feels so good to pick up something tangible and put it in a box and wrap it up and put a bow on it. It feels so much more loving and giving. But it’s not. All you are doing is adding to our stress level. I don’t want to sound unappreciative, I’m not. It’s wonderful that anyone wants to do anything for my kids. I just want you to know that there are better things than toys to offer them. Things that won’t get outgrown, things that will be used, things can last a lot longer and add much more value to all of our lives. So, please, when it comes to your mind to buy one of my beautiful children a gift…think of me tripping over them, picking them up, swearing softly mumbling under my breath, and then think of the smiles and memories that would come from learning and experiencing something new from a gift that will last.

Thank you.