Depression That No Amount Of Exercising, Reading, Thinking, Talking or Praying Could Alleviate

About five years ago, after a surgery that required several months of rehab, I found myself in a depression that no amount of exercising, reading, thinking, talking or praying could alleviate.

I didn't know that during this time and the months leading up to it, my husband was not in a months-long depression, as I had believed, but he was an active sex addict, whose addiction was escalating in frightening ways.

One day as I expressed sadness into his cold, disconnected eyes, I became so exasperated, that I threw a phone into the wall!  I had never done anything like that before, and it forced me to look at myself.  I was miserable.  Obviously, my old coping mechanisms weren't cutting it anymore.  I had resorted to throwing objects to get his attention!

I was sick, and I knew it.

Although I had confided my sadness to my close friends, I found my outer happy facade cracking to mere acquaintances.  Like a friend's husband, who called our house for something, and I ended up in tears when he asked me how I was doing.  I think I cried to a few people in the grocery store.  My sadness dam broke and spilled over, and I was powerless to fight it.   God seemed like a distant relative, with whom I had lost contact.

I was filled with fear: if I allowed myself to crumble, then our entire family would crumble.  My husband cycled perpetually in and out of family involvement, and I realized that even in my needy, post-surgery state, he could NOT stay present and emotionally support me, let alone pick up the slack with the kids and around the house.  The day I realized this was a horrible day: the man I married was not available for me when I really needed him.  I felt weak and alone and desperate.

Not too long after that, with my two year old on my hip, I walked into my pediatrician's office (I didn't even have my own doctor), and I asked for an anti-depressant.   I was brimming with shame that I couldn't handle my life.  Next I came home and made a counseling appointment with a therapist out of the phone book.

These were my first baby steps towards healing, and although it would be another three years before my husband finally disclosed his addiction, I began to learn about self-care and co-dependency and the grief process.  As painful as it was then, I believe now that God was giving me a head start on the things I would need to know to survive the future.