Still looking for (the old) me. Pt 13

By this time my memory was pretty difficult to work with, just about to the point where we were going to put reminder sticky notes all over the house to help me remember the more common, frequent things. But we had some bigger problems brewing; I didn’t want to live here any more. My mind was convinced my wife had some sinister things going on, and it was trying to get me to make a preemptive strike by packing my stuff and leaving. Logically I knew this to be false and I knew leaving would be a huge mistake, but the irrational part of my mind, my growing paranoia and feelings, had me believing something else entirely and I couldn’t just sit here and wait for her to drop her bomb on me. For some reason I felt the need to get out of the way first.

The way we got through this tricky patch was by talking about it. A lot. Every day. Because everyday I felt this way. I’d spend the whole day thinking she was out to get me and I needed to leave. Then at night after work we would talk about it and I would feel ok. Until I woke up the next morning. This went on for weeks. I know how tiring it became for me, I can’t imagine what it was doing to my wife, and daughter. We even had to revisit some 20 year old arguments because in my head, they were happening right now. Now to me, these were all new problems and issues, I didn’t recall any of it. But my wife did, and hard as I try, I cannot understand how she kept her own sanity during this time. My out of control feelings were really running her through the mill. I even started giving her my permission to leave because I couldn’t imagine living with someone like me…

Another growing problem I had was anger. A lot of it. Almost constantly. I didn’t have a short fuse, I had no fuse. I didn’t break things or yell, because I knew that would just make it all worse, so instead I held it in, shut down, and wouldn’t even look at anybody. And off course give off the aura of anger, mentally leaning on people, creating additional strains. Again very tiring, and again no idea where it was coming from. Fortunately (?) the anger issue lasted less than two weeks, but I was still pretty twisted even after all that had past.

And again, doctors just kept saying wait for the meds to work, try to work through your issues, blah, blah, blah. We know me enough to know alot was wrong, but the doctors were having trouble hearing us for some reason.

Occasionally though we’d get these little peeks of myself, they would pop up for a very short time and go back away for weeks again. Just enough of a teaser to keep us interested in the process, though we did start discussing hospitalization thinking we might get some results faster that way, but ultimately let that idea go, and opted to continue here at home, as we had been. We were learning that constant communication was needed to help me keep grounded, help keep my mind in the present where it belonged.

At one point we visited a neurologist to see if he could help with the memory issues, which he couldn’t find any reason for, (big shocker there!) but he did mention it was odd the amount of medication I was on for the depression/anxiety. Shortly after, talking with a therapist, she made a med comment too. So my wife decided to research the meds again, more thoroughly and began finding that many of the side effects listed matched many of my symptoms. Then she found some only support groups that discussed meds, and found people on similar meds were having similar issues as we were.

SO the search for (the old) me was gathering momentum, again…