“I think I need to go to the hospital.” he told me as I looked at him with utter helplessness. “I think I need to go.” I swallowed the lump in my throat as he said it. For him to suggest such a thing told me just how sick he was. Not just because he felt he needed to go, but because had he been remotely okay, I knew he would never ask such a thing of me.
“Okay.” I said.
That was it. We needed to go. I couldn’t believe that the last 18 months had led to this moment.
___
Since the January after being diagnosed with bipolar, I’ve been open about mental illness in certain areas of my life. I’m quieter about it in work circles, and often am scared to discuss it on Facebook where certain people from my past may still see the pieces of my heart I’d rather they not know about. But overall, I think people would say I’m open about it.
When I got married to Calvin on a cold November day in 2021, I was naive about what a marriage with two people struggling with mental illness would look like. In fact, I wrote about it a year into our marriage thinking that the hardest part was over and that I understood it a little better.
I was wrong.
Calvin has always been much more private. And although he has given me permission to write this, I will still have to run it by him if I want to share it with the world.
The thing is, Calvin struggles with depression and was also diagnosed with ADHD over a year ago. I know some people don’t see ADHD as an illness, so I will try to keep that in mind as I talk about depression as the illness and ADHD as a struggle.
When I say he has depression. I mean the kind that leaves him immobilized in almost every area of his life. I knew he had it when we got married, but at that point I believe we were not only riding the high of being in young love, but he was on meds that had caused it to slightly improve.
About a year and a half in, the meds seemed to stop working for him. Gradually, and without even realizing, we were two extremely sick people trying to find each other through the darkness– with me often sliding into hypo-mania and wreaking havoc on our marriage.
In the beginning we hoped it would get better soon and approached it with hope and as a bump in the road.
It came to a head in December of 2023. Calvin got the devastating news of a death by suicide of someone he loved, and I got the news my mother had fell and had a brain bleed. He was grieving in his corner and in mine I wondered if Mum would live.
Calvin crashed out a two weeks later. We rallied on Christmas morning for gifts and demonstrating, but Christmas night was spent with him huddled in a ball on the floor of the shoe and me frantically trying to get a hold of Maple (An online medical service)– begging them to do something about his meds or if seeing if they had a mental health professional. We didn’t care what the holiday fees were– I was just scared of him following in the footsteps of the person he had cared so much about.
Weeks slipped by, I went home to take care of my mother as she healed, and he was left alone with his thoughts and taking care of a cat that requires enormous amounts of attention.
That trip home broke me. Yes, it was then I knew the house was going to sell, and everything about seeing my mother battle an invisible injury that she tried so hard to hide, triggered memories of trying to hide my episodes.
But apart from all that, people didn’t know was how unwell I was excluding all the goodbyes and facing the past. However little they knew, I had this feeling that people thought I couldn’t do it. That I was too weak to care for her. I resolved to prove them all wrong.
The first week I was physically sick from trying to deal with it. I tested for Covid every day knowing it wasn’t that. I started disassociating. I was driving down past Staples in New Glasgow, when I remember disassociating so much that it felt like I had come out of my body and was watching myself drive. Terrified of putting people at risk, I pulled into a parking lot and sobbed. I was terrified. I called two people, walked around Staples, and tried to ground myself enough to get back home. Was I equipped to take care of her? Probably not. But I went through the motions, and at night I would stare at the stars on the ceiling and wish my parents had stopped having children before me. Then I would call Calvin and hope for a sign of life in his voice. There was none.
When I returned almost three weeks later, I immediately booked a couples therapy session. I had a feeling what I had been through had put me at a distance and he had been grieving on his own without me. We stopped going. Money, and the will to fight for us dwindled even though this is when we needed it most.
It was then we went in two completely different directions. I took on the stance of needing to fight to survive, and he slipped into more and more into depression and the paralyzing immobility that can come with ADHD.
I became more and more scared. I watched him get up at the last second for work, go to bed for his entire lunch, and then go back to bed at six when he got off.
The dishes piled up, the floor became dusty, the smell of Mo’s atrocious poops permeated the house at any given moment, and I often forgot to switch the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer.
The only fight I was willing to battle was that he show up to work. Since moving into the shoe it has been my greatest fear to lose it. I was scared one of us would lose our job. I begged him to work hard for those working hours, and I pushed myself to do the same.
We fell apart. But yet to our friends, we showed up to the Duke on Thursdays, went to obligations, and then went home to a house I was starting to not recognize.
To be completely honest, resentment began. My entire life I’d been taught to push through. To be okay. He hadn’t been. So as I played the part of continuing on, he slipped into bed. I knew it wasn’t an option for both of us.
He slept, I cried, and the distance grew. Brushing teeth and basic hygiene was gone– the only fight I was willing to make was over work.
The walls in my heart went further up as every Saturday I tried to make the house a place I could somewhat live, and he napped and asked me not to be upset.
He was scared to go to the doctor. When he had approached the doctor about mental health things in the past– the doctor had made awful and stigmatizing remarks. How could he possibly get help from him? We tried maple again, but the cost was high and always a different person. On top of that, they couldn’t touch the ADHD. His individual therapist wasn’t a good fit. It got to a point that he didn’t want help. Telling me he planned to sleep for the rest of his life.Sleep was the solution. Once, I did ask him if he wanted to go to the Waterford. We both cried together. He went back to sleep.
Hypo-manic episodes would hit me. I would get irritated, irrational, and angry. I knew it was important to not make them his problem. He would stay in bed. I would shop. Buying things I didn’t need. I stopped cooking, and it was our neighbour who helped get some balanced meals into us. The paranoia would slip in and I wouldn’t feel safe speaking in the house. Every word I said I kept in mind someone might be listening.
It would subside. I would slip back into my own depression.
Except when he left for brief intervals, 2024 was the year of being in bed. Went to work. Then he went back to bed. Sometimes his friends would reach out to game, and I would silently thank them with everything in me. We’d go to the Duke and slip into silence on the way home. Back to bed he went.
In order to keep myself from completely resenting him, I started to think of him as a child. Someone I needed to feed and keep alive. I hid myself from him. It worked. It kept the resentment at bay as I reminded myself of our vows.
I retreated into a world of my own. On the days I felt comfortable leaving him alone, trusting him to stay alive, I would cry on the way back. I didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to feel unloved as I watched him sleep and felt alone in a marriage I’d entered thinking we were a team– and selfishly, have someone to be there for me in my episodes.
I no longer felt like a woman or someone who was loved in a romantic and intimate way.
Sex slipped further and further away and deepened the gap that could have possibly brought us back together for brief moments. I wish this is something that could be discussed more openly within conversations around mental illness.
Despite all this, love remained in the darkness. I knew he loved me—even if it didn’t feel like the romantic love that had once resulted in love letters.In the middle of the night, on the nights we slept in the same bed– I would find myself reaching out to make sure he was there and put my arms around him. I would wake up to find him doing the same. In the middle of the night, in the blackness, we still reached for each other. “I love you.” I’d whisper in the dark. When he was awake, he’d say it back.
On Mondays I demonstrated, but I had no energy to cause a ruckus or be a voice about anything else. I watched many in the advocacy community eat each other alive publicly online. I was scared to do something innocently wrong and have them come after me. I felt unspeakable anger about being denied help I’d been told I needed by a psychiatrist. Anger about access to mental healthcare was boiling in me and I didn’t have it in me to remain kind. I hated myself for not being able to get Calvin help and for not holding onto hope. I felt like a hypocrite.
I did speak to students and was as open as possible about my journey. I didn’t have to be cordial to the government with them. I wonder if they knew they were helping me just by listening.
And then once I spoke once to the All-Party Committee– offering to present in a hypo-manic moment– of you guessed it– anger. But I did keep cool with a lot of practice.
But otherwise I was quiet and broken. Heading back home to a man who no longer knew me. He’d lost a wife and gained a caregiver. He had done it for me in our first year, why was I finding it to hard to do for him?
In those months, I said goodbye to my childhood home. Faced demons. Death took some I loved. Faced never getting Smokey, and my family splintered into pieces. I felt sorry for myself and let it fester.
It got worse. We felt like strangers. There were moments where we’d be reminded of how close we could be and remembering I was lucky to have him. Like dancing on the patio in Churchill Square as a love song floated over from a nearby concert. And there was finding Quaker meetings. Spending an hour in silence -together- and talking about what it meant to us on the way home. I’m so, so, grateful for those quiet meetings in the dimly lit room.
When I told some that it was getting harder for both of us with our mental health, they asked if we were growing apart or clinging together— I wasn’t fully honest. We did cling together sometimes at night, but the distance I never thought would be there was growing wider.
But in the light it continued to spiral. I felt the need to be okay for him, and he felt the need to stay in bed. His eyes would be empty. I bought a Nespresso coffee machine so I wouldn’t resent the fact he no longer could get out of bed to make it on the first, second, or third request.
We were both alone in a house that once had been a haven. I stopped looking out at the sunrise. The window was foggy anyway. He clung to Mo and I clung to Johnny and Taylor. Even with our cats we were separated.
It all came to a head one morning. Week 200 was coming up and I was feeling myself slip out of caregiver mode and into full blown resentment and desperation. I formed a group chat begging his close friends to ask him to do things because I didn’t want to resentment to slip into anger. To say they stepped up would be an understatement. (Special and huge thank you to Al, Alanna, Charles, Katie, Lukas, Hayley, Sarah, Shelley, and Bernard.)
Every morning of that week he huddled on the couch and cried. He went to work. Then went to sleep.
Until that morning. It was that morning we hit a complete and total crisis point. He asked me if I would take him to the Waterford and I agreed with screams bouncing around my brain. I told myself not to project my fear about it onto him, but told myself silently that they would send him home. Told myself I was ridiculous to feel so scared. But every time he left the room that day, I cried.
Then he changed his mind. We got scammed trying to use an online service. (Remember this was at 6:30-8ish in the morning. Medicuro said it would be at least 24 hours. We called the mental health navigator, but they were on vacation.
“I have to work,” he told me. “I can’t let my team down.” My heart ripped open with guilt because I knew I was the one who had pushed him to work through the mental anguish no matter what. How could I call myself an advocate? Finally, I sent a desperate email to the psychologist who diagnosed him. For 18 months I’d been failing him.
She emailed me back that she was going to call within minutes. And she did. She threw a life preserver to us both.
I went downstairs and cried to her as I explained how immobilized he had become. How he couldn’t go to the family doctor, and how no online service would touch ADHD. She listened calmly and then told me she really felt he needed to go to the Waterford. She assured me she would fight for him. I brought the phone up to Calvin and they made a deal that he would go there after work. She agreed being sent home might happen, but that we needed a record he had gone there for help.
We all agreed he was experiencing suicidal ideation but wasn’t actively suicidal. Downstairs, and out of site, through one of the longest days of my career— I cried as I worked and told myself that none of this was about me and I would need to act strong when I went with him.
By 6PM, we were on the way. I played music that we rarely listened to because I never wanted him to listen to a song he liked and associate it with this moment. I told him I loved him. We were both so, so scared– but for different reasons.
The visit went mostly as expected, and for the sake of this being about marriage, I will leave out my total and utter despair about what went down there.
But I will say this, no-one was unkind to him. The doctor who saw him was nice. But just like we thought, he wasn’t suicidal enough for them to admit him. He was sent home with an upped prescription for anti- depressants and even though we had said what comments his family doctor had made– they said to follow up with him in a month. A doctor who had said most NL women diagnosed with bipolar actually had borderline because they were inbred.
He left with no resources given to him. An outdated number on the sheet. 24 hours passed without a follow up, and then 48 hours. One week later he received a short follow up. That was it.
The psychologist texted me that night. The next day she called. She formed another plan. We were going to use Medicuro until we found a doctor who took ADHD seriously. The hope was they would ignore the fact he had a family doctor, prescribe the meds, and that his increased dosage of antidepressants would kick in.
A few days later we got the Medicuro doctor. At Calvin’s request, the doctor agreed to let me sit in on it. He was kind and immediately agreed to write the prescription. I cried with relief when I picked them up from the pharmacist.
I told myself it would take a while even though they said the meds would likely kick in quickly.
But it didn’t take a while. After about 72 hours there were little improvements. A spark came into his eyes, then a light– then he didn’t nap at lunch for the first time I could remember in months. Each morning I’d check in and the answer would get better.
One morning he made me coffee. Then he told me he didn’t want to die.
They warned the ADHD meds would taper down. That elation may show itself for a little while. The anti depressants seemed to kick up quickly. Something I’d been told was possible, but didn’t expect.
But whatever it was, he was becoming unrecognizable to me in a different way. He was slipping from a 1 on the scale to 7-8.
One day I looked out the window at him and Mo sitting happily in the sun. How was it possible to improve so quickly? This time my tears were of relief and yearning. I was over the moon at his improvement, but selfishly knew that I likely would never get better like him. I hated myself for even thinking about not getting better myself.
He was back from being dead while alive, but he no longer knew me. Months of being pent up and keeping my mental health to myself as I tried to keep us both alive had changed me.
We were strangers, but this time he was okay.
How do you go forward from here? He told me in the first year of our marriage that it was hard to slip from husband to caregiver and then back to husband.
This time it was me who was there.
My friend had been the one to realize I’d completely gone off my meds after I went back to Nova Scotia in January. She had been the one to realize I was sicker than I’d been since high school. He hadn’t known me for months.
For him I’d slipped into caregiver and completely shut him out. Suddenly I was supposed to be a wife again.
Why am I sharing this? Well, it’s been tough– but a part of me wonders if this is common in marriages when two people are struggling. Maybe I’m wrong, but Calvin and I discussed it, and are willing to share because #1, I need to process the past year, and #2, we both want people to know they aren’t alone.
I’m not ending with us going on a date and magically reconnecting and declaring everything is perfect and rainbows again.
I can tell you he’s treating me like a woman again. I can tell you he’s back to making coffee daily. I can tell you he did the dishes several days in a row. I can tell you he wrote me a love note for the first time since I can remember.
I believe there is a love between us that is special and sacred. I think Kylie is the only other person I would enter the Waterford for. I think I’m the only person he was getting out of bed for at all . Also, if you read my blog about the first year of marriage, you would know he had been there for me the first year and with a much better attitude.
How do you go back to what it was in the days of young love? I don’t think you can. But you can try to use it to learn and get stronger.
We’re going to try and get to know each other again. I’m going to try and show him my heart once in a while.
Because I want to be his wife again.
____
I can’t begin to say how thankful I am that he let me share this. I think it speaks to his strength and willingness to address toxic masculinity. I’m embarrassed of how selfish I sound in this, but it’s also the truth. I hope you understand why it’s being shared. He has been through hell and is so, so strong for addressing it even though he was scared to.
___
If you’re going through the same thing, you aren’t alone.
___
“Luck of the draw only draws the unlucky
And so I became the butt of the joke
I wounded the good and I trusted the wicked
Clearing the air, I breathed in the smoke
Maybe you ran with the wolves and refused to settle down
Maybe I've stormed out of every single room in this town
Threw out our cloaks and our daggers because it's morning now
It's brighter now, now” —Taylor Swift
