Love don’t live here anymore

I don’t know what I was like during my initial black. I tried, after some prompting, to be more open about my feelings and all that sorta thing with my wife. It was difficult as I do tend to internalise.  It’s just the way I am. Sometimes I could talk but sometimes I could not. This, I imagine, didn’t make me the funnest of individuals to live with. My wife helped me a lot during those first dark months. After all she was the one who got me to the doctors, the one who cuddled me when I was pouring out with tears and feeling very low and very un-masculine (because no matter how much of a hormonal realise tears are I always feel so stupid crying. Mostly because of the look I know my face is making and the noises I would be making were my voice high enough) and she was the one who offered her ear whenever I needed it. So far so grand. Now prior to the doctors obvious diagnosis I had the odd bout of extreme black, the sort where you can barely talk to anyone or even motivate yourself to leave the house. On one such occasion my wife’s father came along. I was in no mood to entertain less still to go out but I did go out because I knew that my wife despite her telling me that I didn’t have to, would take it badly. Sure enough she did anyway as she said that her father thoughts that he had done something wrong to facilitate my glum mush and quiet demeanor. Weeks later I told her the reasons for said glum face and quiet demeanor. I am still not sure whether she understood or whether she still thinks I was just being a moody glum face for the sake of it. 

Suicide was something that I mentioned during my dark days to her. This was difficult as I knew it would have an effect, I mean, telling your loved one that your keen on the idea of ending your life isn’t going to have anything but an effect and a bad one at that. The thing is, not telling her or anyone at all was hurting me but seeing her reaction was also hurting me so what to do? I’ll tell you what I did. I resorted to something I had done ten years previously during my last big black. Self harm. Or SI (self injury) as some call it. My wife knew my previous on this as she was one of a small group who knew about it. I resorted to it again as things got to be too much. Now SI is a topic all on its own and I’m only going to go into it with regards to my own experiences of it. Why would I do such a violent thing to my own body? I can’t explain it perfectly but basically it is a way of making the black real, bringing it out onto my body so I know that a) I’m not making it up b) there is evidence of this ugliness inside and I can now see it in some sort of tangible form. It can also break through the numbness you feel too and sometimes act as a conduit with regards to the suicidal feelings that get pent up deep within. Now that probably makes bugger all sense but to me it makes some sort of sense and in an illness where sense isn’t exactly brimming over it’s the best yer gonna get from yours truly right now! Now when my wife found out about my latest SI she took it reasonably ok at first but then a bit later on quite clearly did not take it even close to reasonably ok, first being angry and then crying and blaming herself before blaming me. She wanted to know why I hadn’t contacted her during my ‘urge’ to SI and also why I didn’t hold my promise not to SI? I didn’t and still don’t recall this promise but apparently promise I did. So this of course made me feel worse and also made me wary of telling her if I slipped again. And slip I did about a month later. I tried to keep it away from her but when you’re living with someone well, it’s not that easy. The sudden appearance of a bandage kinda gives it away. I tried to keep the marks hidden and not in visible places but of course once unclothed that’s it isn’t it? During my urge to SI I couldn’t talk and the one time I did was when my wife happened to be there during an SI urge. There was no talking as I didn’t know how to say what I was feeling or indeed what to say. Her cure was unconventional but did work. Sex basically. Great, except she couldn’t always be there to replace one of my urges with another.

So all of that probably didn’t help matters as you can imagine and coupled with my suicidal tendencies and well the only outcome is stress. For her as well as me. During this time I was taking anti-depressants (and still am) and they did help but I’d just started taking them and sometimes the side effects could make things worse but considering I was like this before the tablets I couldn’t tell the difference between side effects and the black in me. But slowly things did improve a bit. I’d got a job and I was drawing and trying my best to stay afloat. Unfortunately my wife was becoming distant. She said that I’d changed which made her change towards me. First there was talk of me moving out so I could, ‘get better’.  In talking and in my clumsy way I thought me comparing this to a bad outcome, separation, would make her quickly protest. It didn’t. When again this came up, me moving out, again in my very clumsy way and seeking reassurance I threw divorce in, not a request by me but I was hoping, again, just mentioning the word would make her protest quickly. Alas, no and so it came that just before our 1^st anniversary of being wed we agreed to split. Well, I didn’t so much agree as realise that me protesting; which I did but my rebuke of, I need you, was swatted away with, you say you need me but you didn’t say that you wanted me. So I knew pursuing it wasn’t going to be a good outcome. Seeing a couple of ‘Happy Wedding Anniversary’ cards a few days after that and also finding out that I’d lost my job and that she was quickly moving out and had already secured herself a house made me wonder if I’d really upset the deity up in the sky that some of us follow. It also told me that when the Dogs D'Amour once sang this they really had a point. So facing a divorce I now had to tell my parents, friends and my best man which was pretty damn horrible. It all really hadn’t sink in, until now. And now well, now I’m facing up to it and feeling its effects. So much so that I broke.