The Rut

It’s hard to draw clear boundaries between being in a funk, grieving, and suffering from clinical depression. I’m still not sure which label belongs where on my past couple years, but they all go somewhere. I know it got a lot worse when I moved from Holland, MI to Pittsburgh at the beginning of 2013. You could probably trace it even further back, to when I graduated from Hope in 2011, but the move was when it got real. I was in a new city with no job and virtually no friends in the area, living with a wife who was going through a depression-fueled existential crisis of her own, cooped up  in a teeny house with her family, a well-intentioned bunch of people with a whole pile of deeply entrenched issues of their own. I was not setting myself up for success.

Myers-Briggs personality typing isn’t very applicable to everyone, but if you google up ENFP, you’ll find some pretty solid explanations of how I operate. I’m energized by being around others, and I find fulfillment in exercising creativity and sharing myself with the outside world. In college, opportunities for these things were everywhere, and I was the happiest and most alive I’d ever been. In Pittsburgh I was starving.

By the beginning of 2014, my wife and I were living in an apartment in Mt. Lebanon, a close suburb to Pittsburgh (instead of way on the outskirts of the region with her family). I’d found a job writing closed captions for TV shows, grateful to have found a place that actually hires people with English degrees. She had part-time work, and although we were sharing a car, working in opposite directions and on opposite schedules, and not seeing much of each other except on weekends, we were making it work. We were independent again, and putting together a foundation to build upon.

But the funk was building. While I’d started making friends at my job, working 3-11 every weekday doesn’t leave a lot of room for going out into the world and making new friends. And the work, while tolerable (I was assuming I’d find something better to do by the next year), was draining at best and soul-devouring at worst. Some people can look at a screen and type the words they hear for eight hours a day, confined by the isolation of office partitions and headphones, and come out of it feeling fresh and accomplished. Most people that major in creative writing aren’t those types of people (and they hired a lot of us). I was not thriving. I was having trouble getting into a creative rhythm with my mornings — either she was home and I wanted to spend time with her, or I was alone and exhausted — and I felt drained constantly.

Some bad marriage dynamics started settling in. I’m not going to tell her story here, but suffice it to say she was frustrated with a lot of things, and I’d gotten so used to taking care of her through college, a thing had developed between us where I, her confidante and biggest fan, was the one who heard it all. But I was no longer equipped to handle it like I’d been in college. I didn’t have the energy, the stability, the faith that I used to. And soon I was the source of the frustration. Feeling constantly numbed and drained doesn’t help one deal with a strained budget, a lack of forward momentum, the daily drag of sharing a car with opposite schedules, and especially the struggle to make time for each other when there was hardly time to be found. I knew she wasn’t happy, and I began to blame myself for that.

By the summer of 2014, it was clear to us both that something needed to change. To me, my long-awaited raise and transition to the morning shift at my job were plenty of change. I was optimistic that in the absence of the biggest daily stressors, we’d finally be able to relax a little and get to work on the deeper problems. But she wasn’t as optimistic, and she called for a separation and moved back to her parents. I don’t blame her for that – me forcing optimism without any progress to show for it had become a recurrent pattern by this point. The idea was that we would keep our lives separate for a while and work on our individual shortcomings and patterns, but by this time I was barely functioning, breaking down at the slightest provocation or accusation. I needed to heal, but I wasn’t equipped to make that happen – I sought psychiatric help, I joined and quit a dysfunctional support group, and I only felt more hopeless.

I was given an ultimatum — she wouldn’t follow through with the divorce until I decided what it was that I really wanted, whether I wanted to get on the divorce train or fight for the marriage. In speaking with my therapist over the last year, I’ve realized I didn’t really have a choice at all. It was all I could do to get out of bed, go to work, and feed myself. I wasn’t quite suicidal, but I would have loved to just disappear — save the step of dying and just skip to the next thing. On top of all this, the thought of fighting to reclaim the trust and affections of someone who wanted to cut our ties and move on from me, even while I was at the lowest I’d ever been, was overwhelming. I didn’t want to choose either choice, but the one thing I was sure of was that there was nothing I could do to save the marriage. So I let it happen.

It’s been 10 months since the separation and a handful since the divorce was finalized, and it’s been the worst year, but I think I’m coming out of it. I’m sure Depression striking back from my adolescent past played a role in it all, but having a really dark year is also a pretty natural outcome of a years-long rut leading into a huge tragedy. I’ve been living on my own with some newish friends, getting professional help, and doing my best to keep moving, and conditions in my head are starting to clear up. The only person telling me I’m inadequate now is myself, and I’m getting better about it. I’m meeting new people and watching myself start to resemble my old self. I’m writing some of the best songs I’ve ever written.

But it’s not enough. I’ve made some strides, but the factors that started the rut are all still there. The stress of slowly losing a beloved wife is very different from the grief of actually losing her, but the degree of the pain isn’t any better now than it was then. Maybe it would be fair to say I’ve climbed out of a deep pit and poked my head out into the bottom of the rut.

I’d have left this ridiculous job long ago if it wasn’t the only thing getting me out of bed. It’s not worth sticking around here for. I’ve made some friends here that I really value, but it’s not the same as the community of friends and family waiting for me in Michigan and Illinois. There’s a part of me that would love it if the girl I married wanted me back, and I’ve told her the door isn’t totally closed for that, but actually forgiving her and coming to trust her again would be a pretty huge deal, and I can’t say it’s even possible. Wendell loves me and I love him, but she can take better care of him than I can, and she needs him more than I do anyway. And my ex-in-laws and friends-in-law all cut me off pretty thoroughly once she left. City of Burned Bridges.

And that’s why I’m leaving Pittsburgh.