Hospitals and Divorce

People always tell me I’m a bit too honest, and they are right. Hopefully you can appreciate that side of me, because to be perfectly honest, I think we could all use a lot more of it in our lives. Let’s dive back in-

In March of 2013 I was in my 4th hospital stay. My family and I were 13 months in to the hardest time we had ever experienced, which is saying a lot for my life. Both of us were exhausted and we didn’t have much hope that there would ever be answers. Let me clarify something first (and I will do a different blog post about this) I have always been diagnosed with a Mental Illness. I suffered with severe depression and anxiety since I was 15 years old and from that time until now I have tried over 100 medications to help alleviate the symptoms. With a Traumatic Brain Injury, metal illness is very common. After I had my babies, my normal ‘mental illness’ state was magnified 10 times because it was compounded with the hormonal imbalance that caused my severe postpartum depression.

So back to March. I couldn’t take the strain I was causing my family. I could see the most stoic, calm, confident husband start to crumble under the pressure. He was in his 2nd year of Pharmacy School and he was in the middle of one of the hardest quarters of his entire grad school experience. The divorce talks started. I fell apart. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have been given a more ‘normal’ life experience. And just so you know, normal doesn’t exist. It is such a facade. Please don’t ever compare yourself to someone else’s normal. Constantly comparing yourself to the others in this world will place you in a state of captivity and you are the one who builds the jail. My personal prison was 100 miles thick. But there are ways to break the prison walls down, and hopefully I can teach you how at some point. It takes a lot of practice, patience and compassion – yes, for others – but mostly for yourself.

Anyway, I pulled myself together enough to get released from the hospital. I felt a bit better. I organized a clothing drive because people would come into the hospital with nothing, just the clothes on their backs. They would be given paper clothes to wear and it was completely degrading, especially for the women. Midwestern University and my neighborhood rallied together. I ended up washing at least 20 loads of laundry of donated clothes and taking them to the hospital. Needless to say the hospital workers were shocked, and grateful.

That was a moment of clarity in my endless storm, but it was just masking the underlying symptoms that I tried to keep at bay. I was still depressed. I still had big problems. I had a hysterectomy in December 2012 from complications (will be another post) and we still hadn’t figured out the right hormone balance. Finally, June 27th I cracked. Worse than I ever have in my life. It was my oldest daughters 7th birthday. I couldn’t get out of bed to help celebrate it, all the medication I had been given over the hospitalizations made me lethargic, apathetic, basically I just didn’t have the energy to care anymore. But not being able to care enough to celebrate her birthday ruined me inside. I saw the last 7 years of my life as a complete failure with no hope in sight. I won’t go into detail of what transpired, because that is not what my blog is about. But that is how I ended up in my 5th and final hospital.

Knowing that my future with my husband would be centered around our impending divorce, I decided I had to pull myself together and try to get better for my kids. I knew my marriage couldn’t be saved, but I had to try to find a way to become the mother I had always wished, wanted and prayed that I could be. I told every person at the hospital that I was planning on staying there until I actually felt better. Truly better, no temporary band-aids. I worked hard. I went to all my groups. I tested out more medications. While I was in the hospital my husband came to visit. We had a very civil conversation about how the divorce would go, who would end up with the kids, where we would live, how to divide our assets and debts. It was the calmest conversation we had ever had. We had decided the best thing was for me to not come back home, that I needed to find a temporary place to live while we worked out the divorce details.

I was finally released after almost 4 weeks. I felt better. I felt I had finally planted my feet on solid ground. The medication was helping and I found a place to stay with someone who needed a roommate. But my heart would ache every single day, longing for the love lost after 11 years of marriage. Knowing that what tore us apart was something we both admitted was out of our control. My illness was making everyone miserable, and we had kids to think about. In our days apart thoughts would fill my mind. My future would be filled with scheduling my visits with my kids around my husband and his potential new wife and family. I would never remarry because I would never place the burden of my illness on another person again. I knew that I would have to live with the feelings of loneliness for the rest of my life. Talk about renewed depression!

Then, the day of all days happened. The events of this day I will NEVER forget. July 22, 2013