Trying to move on

[ClingingToHope]

I think W suffers from depression. She was seeing a counselor for it in 2008 and her job -- customer service supervisor for an insurance company, so when you call all mad, don't get what you want from the rep and ask for a supervisor to yell at, that's her job -- makes things worse.

She's unhappy with her life and feels trapped. Can't change her kids, can't sell the house, can't change her mom and sisters, can't find a magic potion to make her a size 4 again, can't turn back the clock to when she was 25 and a dancer, can't change her job because she makes more than $60k without a college degree which is darn near impossible in this town.

There's only one thing she can change -- me.

What still gives me hope -- way down the road -- is that several times in the past three years, even as she pushed me away harder and harder, there would be random nights where she'd come home and she climb over the wall she was building and tell me she loved me, still wanted me and couldn't understand what was wrong with her.

Those nights were so great and then she'd retreat behind the wall. Last year, for three weeks in March, she came out from behind the wall and I thought we had it turned around.

But it didn't last.

For us to ever come together again, she'd need to accept her life for what it is and really work on her own happiness. I was co-dependant, I worked so hard to make her happy and when it didn't work, I'd exhaust myself emotionally and lash out.

The big thing I've learned these past 10 months is that I can't make her happy, only she can do that.

So in a couple of years, if in her search for happiness she figures out I wasn't the problem and wants to work on things, I'd have to be very careful that I wasn't her latest magic thing to make her happy.

It's nice to think about. But W is so stubborn that I can't ever remember her admitting to someone else she was wrong. She'd admit she handled things badly to me, but never to someone else. Her mom is that way.

So even if in her head and heart she realizes she was wrong about us, I can't imagine her admitting it to me.

I still cling to hope. My hope now is that somehow our daughters don't get too damaged by all of this. Lots of pain is coming.