vignette: mental health break
Sep. 28th, 2011 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7We have no fire, so we sit in camp chairs illuminated by the glow of a distant electric light, drinking corn whiskey from pewter mugs. It’s cold out, really cold, and the night is dark even though the clouds have cleared. I’m wearing almost all the clothes I brought, including the fur-lined hat he made for me, years ago. The cold doesn’t seem to bother him, but I know he’s lived rougher than this.
“She still has depression,” he says. “It’s pretty bad, but it’s nothing to what it was.” We digress, the conversation going off in a different direction for a while, as ours do, but he returns to it.
“For a period of about five years,” he says, “every day, every day I would come home from work and not know, as I opened the door, whether she’d be there to greet me, or if she’d have killed herself."
I say something softly horrified, something sympathetic. He shrugs. "It got to me,” he says. "It was hard. But I couldn’t be mad. People kept asking me why I stayed with her. And I didn’t know how to even answer that. If I left, I knew there was no goddamn way she’d live through that. And I couldn’t do that to her. I love her. And people don’t seem to understand what that means.“
We sit for a while, digressing again, refilling cups. The bottle’s nearly gone.
"I think the worst part was when it was getting better,” he said. “She brought me these journals she’d written. Really intimate, soul-searching stuff, and it was hard for her to share it, but she made herself do it. Because she wanted to show me she was better.” He drinks. “She was writing about how she’d finally fallen in love with her husband again. And I thought, ‘how sweet,’ and then I stopped and thought about it for a second.” He is leaning, elbows on knees, cup in one hand, staring past me in the dark, the light coming through his hair.
“She didn’t even have enough of herself left to love me, all that time.” He shakes his head, and sighs. “It wasn’t like I could say anything, or be mad, but it makes it even harder for me to think back on those years. And now I think I’m on almost as much medication as she is. But God damn it, I love her. I couldn’t do anything else. Can’t do anything else.” He shakes his head, then laughs, a little bitterly. “But that’s why I had to get out of [state redacted] for the weekend. She does, actually, literally drive me crazy sometimes.”
mostly true, paraphrased, details removed
“She still has depression,” he says. “It’s pretty bad, but it’s nothing to what it was.” We digress, the conversation going off in a different direction for a while, as ours do, but he returns to it.
“For a period of about five years,” he says, “every day, every day I would come home from work and not know, as I opened the door, whether she’d be there to greet me, or if she’d have killed herself."
I say something softly horrified, something sympathetic. He shrugs. "It got to me,” he says. "It was hard. But I couldn’t be mad. People kept asking me why I stayed with her. And I didn’t know how to even answer that. If I left, I knew there was no goddamn way she’d live through that. And I couldn’t do that to her. I love her. And people don’t seem to understand what that means.“
We sit for a while, digressing again, refilling cups. The bottle’s nearly gone.
"I think the worst part was when it was getting better,” he said. “She brought me these journals she’d written. Really intimate, soul-searching stuff, and it was hard for her to share it, but she made herself do it. Because she wanted to show me she was better.” He drinks. “She was writing about how she’d finally fallen in love with her husband again. And I thought, ‘how sweet,’ and then I stopped and thought about it for a second.” He is leaning, elbows on knees, cup in one hand, staring past me in the dark, the light coming through his hair.
“She didn’t even have enough of herself left to love me, all that time.” He shakes his head, and sighs. “It wasn’t like I could say anything, or be mad, but it makes it even harder for me to think back on those years. And now I think I’m on almost as much medication as she is. But God damn it, I love her. I couldn’t do anything else. Can’t do anything else.” He shakes his head, then laughs, a little bitterly. “But that’s why I had to get out of [state redacted] for the weekend. She does, actually, literally drive me crazy sometimes.”
mostly true, paraphrased, details removed
