Day 13

(part two)

I’m definitely not adjusting to sleeping without my husband.  That has been the hardest thing to get used to – and obviously I haven’t.  

So since I can’t go to sleep and am thinking about it anyway, maybe it will help to get the thoughts into actual words and sentences.  

First: when I visited tonight, he said that his doctor had told him that the best case scenario for his release from the hospital is that the first three ECT treatments will go perfectly and he’ll see such a marked improvement by next Wednesday (that’s right, a week from today) that he’ll be able to discharge him.  Apparently the doctor suspects that it will take more like 6 treatments until he feels comfortable enough with my husband’s improvement to let him come home.  This means that we’ll most likely move into his unpaid leave at work, which in turn means that we’ll be responsible for paying his insurance premiums.

Second: We talked a little about the day that he tried to kill himself.  He told me that he’d been in the attic while I was home on my lunch break.  

He went up to the attic right before I should have come home for lunch, which he knew because he’d asked me what time I take lunch a few days before.  I wondered why he had asked, but never suspected anything like this.  Did not enter my mind at all.  It scares me now to realize that he’d been thinking about doing this for a few days.  

My husband has some severe depression.  I didn’t realize – never wanted to realize, probably – how severe it is until all this happened.  I can’t imagine depression that deep; I suppose I should count myself lucky.  I feel more ineffectual.  

Third: and I have to keep reminding myself of this, but he reiterated tonight that none of this is my fault or about me at all.  He said that I have been nothing but wonderful this whole time.  I know that, but it’s good to hear him say it again.  No matter how hard I try to control my illogical emotions, they’re always bound to pop up anyway.  When I think – as I always do – that I wish I could do more to help him…well, I need to remember that I’m doing all that I’m capable of doing.  I’m being the kind of person who I would want to be married to, and I don’t know what else anyone wants.