Welllll, yesterday my wife was definitely in 'one of those moods.' She has been cycling through depression, and has been going through a particularly rough cycle the last few days. Yesterday, I asked to stop by the apartment where she stays, to bring our kids by to say hello. (I have the kids overnight at our home every Saturday). She says sure. While we are there (for a total of probably 20 minutes) all hell broke loose. At one point I asked to use the bathroom. While I am in there I notice an empty medicine box in the trash can. Curious, I pull the box out of the trash can to see what it's for.
About ten minutes later the children and I are getting ready to leave and my wife says, "I noticed you were looking through my trash can. I don't want you touching my stuff." Me, being a a dummy and in my bright wisdom thinking, 'What's the big deal? It was an empty box...in the trash can...and I was curious...it's not like I was rummaging through her purse or drawers or something...' So, in my defense, that's exactly what I told her.
Welllll, apparently it's illegal in MLC-land to pick up empty boxes from trash cans to read the labels. My seemingly benign action turned into an argument that escalated to a point where she threatened to call 911 against me. (not the police...911). When I asked her WHY she felt compelled to consider such a drastic action over an empty box, she replies (pay attention folks, it's a doozy...),
"Because you talk too much and you won't shut up..."
So me, being the genius that I am, tried to make light of such a silly statement. Big mistake. She was very agitated and seemed adamant about it. It's very difficult to understand this journey (MLC) that my wife is on but, in that particular moment, it dawned on me very clearly that this isn't about me, my failures (which I need work on, no doubt), or empty medicine boxes. This is about her difficult journey, and her inability to cope with her depression. (i.e. her threatening to call 911 against her husband because he talks too much and because an empty box wasn't in the correct place...inside a trash can...) This is about her having to look in the mirror and face herself and the choices she has made over the last 7-8 months, and the choices she will make into the foreseeable future.
It made me feel really, really sorry for her, and very helpless to help her. I pressed a little further, to try and get her to see her own irrationality, but it was useless. I didn't want to face a situation where she'd actually try and follow through on her threat. So, I took the kids and went home. We had lunch, went to a park behind our house and played for a while, then I put my daughter to nap and let my son play video games for awhile.
It's 3 o'clock in the morning as I type this post. It's really eating away at me at how helpless I feel to do anything to help her through this crisis. I definitely can't do anything based on my expectations or personal assumptions about the world. I feel terrible that our children have to be a part of this process. As we were leaving the apartment yesterday and walking to our car I told my son to go back to the apartment and ask my wife why she wanted to call 911 against his Dad. She didn't have an answer for him. Anyways, to me, it's a good example of what I was trying to say in the first message above of how difficult it is to counter the negativity and depression. When it's being projected outward from her, but on a sub-conscious or un-conscious level, it's extremely hard to detach.
Sad thing this happened on Easter Sunday. Plus, her birthday (the big 40) is only 3 days away.
Hey, I just had a thought. Hope it doesn't sound rude.
My wife is on her period right now, and will turn 40 in three days. Could this have something to do with this particular cycle of depression she's going through?
If it is, and it's something obvious that I should have seen coming from a mile away, hey, please forgive me...I'm dense like that.
I learned my lesson though. I'm not going anywhere near her apartment without her explicit permission.
Man, this is difficult. I feel like my wife is on a runaway freight train that's about to go off the tracks. And, I'm running along-side the tracks, barefoot and running over broken glass or hot coals, trying to 'rescue' her before the train wrecks.
I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe, or that my real wife has been kidnapped by aliens and has been replaced with an evil clone or something.
