All in

“You come to this place every year,” he tells me. “You hate your job, the house, everything. You think that if you just had a bigger house, or a different job, or more or different friends, you’d be happy. But you wouldn’t be, because you’d still be here, and it would still be winter, and you’d still be depressed.”

I ask him if that scares him, knowing I have a pattern of behavior–of depression–that I can’t see clearly and don’t realize I’m in.

“Actually, no. It’s comforting, because after four years of it, I know what will happen. Sometimes I don’t know what to say to you, and that’s hard. But I know what will happen.” He pauses. “I thought long and hard about this, before I asked you to marry me. I know that this cycle is not something you can help. It’s part of who you are. I had to decide to accept it, even though it’s really hard to live with you, and I have to bite my tongue and blow off some of your moods. And in the summer, I don’t get on the crazy train with you, but I stand by and watch and make sure you’re OK.”

I cry a little, feeling the weight of my seasonal depression settling around my heart. I hate that I’m this way. I want to fix it. Lord knows I’ve tried to fix it.

“I watch you struggle and search and try everything so you don’t have to go through this anymore,” he says. “I see how somethings almost make it better. Last year, with the Wellbutrin, was pretty good.”

I say, “And then it was horrible. It was the closest I ever came to actually killing myself. I was so close.”

He looks at me, soothes my arm, twines his legs tighter around mine. “I know.”

We sit silently on our green-gray couch. The TV is off, and I can hear the neighbor’s set through the connecting wall. The voices murmur like a rush of water through pipes. I ride along with the sound for a moment, then drag myself back to the conversation. Sometimes, sleep is the only escape from the physical discomfort–even sleeping with my eyes open feels better.

“You just have to use your lightbox, and get to the gym, and take your supplements. You make it through it, you always do, even when you think you can’t. You make it through.”

For the first time in the conversation, I meet his gaze. It is warm, and full of love and support.

“What I need,” I say, tentatively because I don’t like expressing what I need, “is for you to chase me when I push you away. When I’m a bitch, hug me. When I am unresponsive, kiss the back of my neck. I know that’s hard. That’s a lot to ask. But I really need to know you’re there.”

He’s a retreater, my husband, an introvert. A conflict avoider to the nth degree. He has permanent gouges in his tongue from biting it with me, at work, in life. That’s his choice, his nature. I am asking him to be more like me–the me I am from March until October–to engage.

He tells me he’ll do his best. “I just don’t want you to think that I’m going to leave. I am here for you, for good.”

I feel a sense of letting go inside my shoulders, knots of worry I hadn’t identified untying themselves. For as long as I can remember, I have had to hold myself up during this time of year. I wonder what it would feel like to totally let go, to go with the flow of this river called depression instead of fighting it.  I have never before had someone sitting on the bank to make sure I don’t drown.

It’s mid-December, and I am all in, up to my jaw in the river. Mornings move in slow motion, I am scatterbrained, I am short-tempered. I don’t care about anything, yet I feel deeply. I have no enthusiasm for Christmas this year. I struggle to engage with the external world. Every little thing that I could blow off six weeks ago feels like a world-ender. I know that, six weeks from now–unless I find some miracle of a supplement or treatment–I will barely be able to function. I will struggle to keep myself afloat. I will contemplate suicide, then think of Lauren and push the thought from my mind. I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to do THIS anymore.

I don’t want to think about six weeks from now. Now is hard enough. And yet, I have this man, my husband, telling me it will be OK, that I will come out of the other side, and I will be there, and he will be there, and he will still love me. I have to remember that, every morning, every evening. That will keep me going.