The Weight of it All

A child’s first birthday is a joyous event, and my daughter Elizabeth’s first birthday was no different. She had made her grand entrance into the world May 30th 2015, almost a month early, weighing just 4 lbs 4 ozs. Although she came into this world so small, she proved herself to be a force and I was extremely proud of her for how she fought to overcome the challenges she had faced so early in her life. As we proudly hosted a 1st birthday party for our youngest, as I smiled for all of the pictures, I was crumbling inside.

It’s hard for me to remember how bad it got for me in 2015 and the ensuing couple of years. One scene that plays over and over in my mind when I think of the challenging days of 2015 and after, is of my daughter siting on my lap sometime in summer of 2016, reading a book with me just before her bedtime. The book is “Elizabeth’s 1st Year”, a hard cover book of pictures of Elizabeth over her 1st year that my mother-in-law put together as a 1st birthday present. It had quickly became a part of our bedtime reading routine. For months, every time we looked at that book together, tears would well up in my eyes and I would do my best to hide that I was crying. I cried because I could hardly remember her 1st year. I had been there physically over that last year, but I was not there at all mentally and emotionally. There were so many pictures that I was in that I had no recollection of. So many memories captured in time, that I I had no actual memory of. So many happy times and milestone moments that seemed to be from someone else’s life, not mine. Instead of happiness and looking back on those memories fondly, I felt frustration that I had no memory of the happiness, no recollection of those fond memories. Instead of happiness, I felt a flood of sadness, pain, and guilt. My mental breakdown in 2015 and the depression that followed affected me so much that I could hardly remember that time in my life. It stole that time of my life from me, but what breaks my heart even more is that it stole me from my family as well. My wife Kate and I recently celebrated our 10th anniversary this year. We have a great relationship and are each other’s biggest supporters, but this is a period of our lives that we still have trouble talking about together, even after 5 years. It was an extremely difficult time for both of us, one where the emotional wounds still feel raw.

2015 had started out as one of the best in my life, at least from the outside looking in. My wife and I had celebrated 5 years of marriage, our little boy, Jason, had just turned 2, we had just welcomed our daughter Elizabeth into the world, we had moved into our dream home, and I had accepted a new job within my company.

On face value, everything looked great but there was a lot more that went into those things than meet the eye.

I’m a creature of habit, of routine. I have found that I do much better mentally if I have a routine to follow. During this time in my life, I often strove for predictability and the comfort of the known. The 6-8 months leading up to my breakdown were not routine, they were a time of constant, large scale change:

1. I had accepted a new position within my company, a position that was more stressful than I anticipated and I had trouble with the workload. 

2. We sold our condo when my wife was 7 months pregnant.  

3. We moved in with her parents, on our 5th anniversary, when she was 8 months pregnant.

4. Elizabeth was born 3.5 weeks early, while I was out of town.  I started the 6 hr drive back to Columbus when Kate went into labor, but I ended up missing the birth.

5. Elizabeth did not sleep, waking up every 20 – 45 minutes & she cried almost nonstop every night between dinner and bedtime, or later. 

6. We moved into our new house in August.  

7. We had to put our dog Tibby down within 2 months of moving into our house. 

In looking back on it, the weight of all of those things very quickly became too heavy for me. The stress and feelings of failure at my new job, the stress of unpacking and getting the new house ready, the stress of adding a second child to our family, and on top of it all, dealing with major sleep deprivation from an infant who slept 20 mins to an hour at a time most nights. I felt like it all was breaking me.

I will never forget the night that I started to feel that I was buckling under everything. It was a Sunday night shortly after we had moved in. I am a person who uses Sunday night to get ready for my upcoming week both mentally and logistically. That particular night, we had had a social engagement that went on for much longer than planned and as it went on, the panic set in. With all the chaos of my life, I needed that time that I could control on Sunday nights. As that night slipped away, I realized that I wouldn’t have that time – my quiet before the storm of the upcoming week. I started to feel the weight of it all. Up until this difficult time in my life, I had a safe place. When my son was a baby and we had that hard time at home, I had my job to go into, one that wasn’t super stressful. It was my “calm” place for lack of a better word. With a more stressful job, coupled with the feeling that I was failing at it, combined with a home life consisting of the chaos of unpacking, 2 kids 2 and under, with one not essentially not sleeping at all – I didn’t have a safe place, a quiet place, a place where I felt like I had some control. It was chaos and stress everywhere I looked. The scariest thing was, I didn’t see an escape from any of it. I can’t remember what exactly changed in me that Sunday night, but I always think of that night whenever I think about my mental health issues in 2015. To me that night will always be the night when I started to feel the weight of it all bringing me to my knees.

Our neighbor stopped by on on that Sunday. I’ll never forget the look on the woman’s face as I opened the door. In a way, her face represented how I would have reacted to the chaos from the outside looking in. We had friends of ours over who had a 2 year old and an infant as well. It was early evening and our son and their daughter were running around, being loud, like any 2 years olds. Our dog was running with them and throwing a playful bark in every minute or so for good measure. The two babies were letting themselves be known vocally amongst the loudness for good measure. All the while, the 4 adults were trying to talk and catch up over the mayhem. The hectic scene in our living room was far from a Norman Rockwell painting. The doorbell rang so I went to the door to answer it. As I opened the door, I could see it was one of our new next door neighbors. Kate came to join me as I was opening the door, holding Elizabeth who was crying. The woman’s kind eyes and charming smile quickly gave way to a wide eyed look of fright as she took in the wild scene of the living room over my shoulder. I could almost hear her say to herself, “what in world is happening in this house?!?!?” I found myself quickly trying to alleviate her concern, explaining to her that we had friends over and the kids were being a little rowdier than normal. We carried on with some small talk, she dropped off cupcakes and wine, then we said our good byes. There’s part of me that thinks that I was reacting the same way to the inescapable chaos as the woman did, but I had to hide it because I had no choice but to live in it and accept it as my new realty.

To be honest, in looking back on it, that time in my life was, and still is, all a blur. I don’t remember a lot of the specifics, I just remember the overall feeling that I had. I felt hopeless, I felt utterly defeated. It was as if I had lost hope in the blink of an eye. But as I look back on it, it wasn’t as sudden as it seemed. It had started months earlier.

I had told myself that I was “ok” for far longer than I actually was. I think that I was just trying to convince myself that I wasn’t losing control. I had mental health issues in the past, but I had gotten so good at suppressing and hiding from those issues. I was also very good at shutting emotions and feelings off. The problem is, that led me to be numb inside. All of the change in my life over those past few months was too much to hide from, too much to suppress. Each change found a chink in my armor until my armor was useless and it all flooded over me. There had been things bubbling under the surface for years, and the stress of everything finally caused them to boil over.

I began to only see chaos all around me. At home it was kids crying, unpacked boxes all over the house, not being able to keep up with the yard work At work it was unread emails, work piling up, sitting at my desk in a zombie like state from being up all night with kids. I had nowhere to get away from any of it. It was the most overwhelmed I had ever felt in my life.

I was drowning and there was no life boat or land in sight.

My wife and I worked extremely well as a team and we worked very hard sharing parenting responsibilities, trying to keep it at as balanced as possible. We did that very well with our son Jason, before Elizabeth was born. Now that we had two kids, I was failing miserably.

Kate was dealing with so many issues on her own – being a new mother of two, recovering from childbirth, postpartum hormones, being at home all day on maternity leave with an extremely irritable Elizabeth, who cried most of time, nursing Elizabeth at all hours of night, and trying to help unpack the house in any free time she had. I helped with Elizabeth at night when I could, but Kate’s sleep deprivation was exponentially worse than mine. In addition to all of that, she could see that I was retreating into myself more and more. I’ll never know how truly hard this time in our lives was on Kate. And there I was, becoming less and less capable of doing my part. I was trying, but it was so hard while I was struggling each day to not lose my mind. I was terrified that I was slipping into an irreversible state of hopelessness. I was struggling to be the husband and father that I wanted to be. I felt like I was falling so far short of that because of my internal struggles. Kate and I are very open with each other and have put a lot of work in on our relationship, yet to this day we have trouble talking about this time in our lives because it was so hard. To be honest it’s difficult writing about it because it takes me back to an extremely dark time in my life, one that I don’t really dig deep into anymore.

I was extremely disappointed in how I was unable to handle this new life. I felt like less of a husband, less of a father. Did my dad ever feel this way? Is it normal to feel like this after second child? After changing jobs? I felt completely incapable of handling any of it. I felt as if I was failing miserably in every facet of my life. I had been through much more difficult times in my life. Why couldn’t I handle this?

I couldn’t say, “I’m not good enough for 2 kids. Let’s just take them back”, I couldn’t leave my job because I was having a hard time adjusting. I was so scared because I couldn’t do anything about two of the major things that were affecting me so much. I couldn’t see a way out and that was what scared me so much. Without saying it explicitly to myself, I was thinking

“If I can’t handle this now and there’s no where to escape from any of it, how am I going to go on like this?” I wasn’t having any thoughts about hurting myself or any thoughts about suicide I’ve had those before, but not at this time. I was just feeling so hopeless and so defeated, and not seeing any reprieve from any of it.

In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” I felt as if all I was doing was staring blankly as my life went on around me. I was rarely present in my life, especially with my family. I tried so hard to be there, to be present for my kids but I was a shell of myself. The Avett Brothers have a song with the lyrics, “I know you need me in the next room over. But I am stuck in here all paralyzed”. Every time I hear that song, it takes me back to this time of my life and my heart still hurts. Even if I was in the same room as my family, I was stuck in my mind, paralyzed by my feeling of being overwhelmed, as well as my emotional and mental struggles. I was still trying to do my part with the kids, baths, dinner, packing lunches, bedtimes, etc, but I was just going through the motions as I tried to deal with the chaos in my head.

For most of my life, I let external validation define me. I believed that the next step in life would make me happier. Even when I wasn’t necessarily unhappy, I thought the next thing would help me be happier. The next step would always be the one where I would have it all figured out. A different title at work, a better house, a different car, etc. I thought the next big thing would be the thing that completed my life, that made it go from good to great. But, there I was, in a life that I thought would make me feel better, and instead I felt like my world was falling apart around me.

My struggles were becoming an issue in all facets of my life. I was as low as I had ever been. I had to leave work one day because something in me snapped. I just sat there staring, frozen in front of my computer. I couldn’t think straight, and I felt like I couldn’t even talk. I collected myself enough to talk to my boss, explaining what I was going through as best that I could, She could see that I was visibly shaken and not at all like myself. I went home for the day, and that day turned into another day, and another, and another… I was broken.

As I discussed in an earlier post, I had never been one to talk about my feelings and Kate knew that about me. I typically handled adversity calmly and quietly. This was different, I was imploding internally. There was no steady ground for me to stand on, it felt like it was all shifting and crumbling beneath me. I was scared.

Kate had never seen me like this. I can’t imagine how hard it was on her. She was genuinely worried for my safety. I reassured her that I wasn’t thinking about hurting myself, but she couldn’t shake that concern, that worry.

I had never seen myself this way either. I had bouts with depression and anxiety off and on for my whole life, but this was worse that it had ever been for me. I realized that I needed help. I had never been to therapy before. I wasn’t a person who talked about their feelings or struggles because vulnerability was a weakness in my mind. But I realized that I desperately needed help. Things weren’t going to get better on their own. I called a couple of therapists to see where I could get in to see them faster. As I detailed the events of my life over the past few months they both said something along the lines of “Wow! No wonder you feel overwhelmed.”

I ended up going to two therapists at first. One seemed to be more qualified on paper, but the other was more personable. I had read about how finding the right fit with a therapist was key so I decided that I needed to feel them both out.

In looking back on it, I looked at therapy in a very naive way, I wanted them to flip a switch in me, to tell me the magic thing that I could do that would take the hopelessness away, that would flip my world right side up again. I was thinking that they could “fix” me, that I could talk about what was happening in my life and the weight would magically disappear. I thought I could go to therapy a few times, talk about my “issues” and then boom-boom-bap, I’m back to good.

Needless to say, I was wrong.

I don’t know how many sessions I talked about my current situation but I know it took a few to really get into it. I talked about all of the changes in my life and how they overwhelmed me. I talked about how crushed and hopeless I felt. It was during these initial sessions that I was asked by each of them independently about my life prior to this all happening. I talked about my upbringing, my teen years, early adulthood and so on. As I wrapped up my short autobiography, I was then asked if I had had any traumatic experiences in my life. Fair enough, a legit question from a mental health professional. It was a question I had anticipated, but didn’t know when it would come. It was game on. I quickly assessed my comfort with the person sitting across from me. I have become a master at wearing masks in my life, of playing the version of myself that would fit the best in the room that I was in. I had developed a skill for instantaneously reading a person, or a room of people, and determining how much of the “real” Carl someone would get. I had gotten so good at it, that it was almost done subconsciously. Without even thinking, I would gauge the percentages of how much of each of my personas I would show in order to get the kind of reception I wanted from others. I came to realize that if there was a place where I could come out from behind one of my masks, this was it. The trauma that I was about to reveal had played on an endless loop inside my head every day of my life since I was 19 years old. It was with me every moment of every day. Now I just had to say the words out loud…but that is often easier said than done. How do you put the worst night of your life into words? How do you describe how your life had turned upside down in an instant, and changed the course of your life forever, and not just your life but the lives of countless others. I began by simply saying, “Yes” and then began to try to summarize that hell. In putting that that mask down momentarily, and in sharing a part of my truth that I became so good at hiding, I started a journey that helped me realize that my mental breakdown had deep roots that went back much earlier in my life.

It’s funny, as humans when we begin to feel something going wrong mentally or emotional, we try to justify why it’s happening. We often just look at things that are happening at that time in our life and find something that we believe is causing our issue, and we don’t look any further. That may just be what’s happening at times, but the problem is that a lot of times there are much deeper issues that may be at play in causing those issues that we need to explore.

2015 could have easily been my undoing, but thankfully I didn’t let it. Honestly though, there were times that I thought that it might have been. In many ways, I see my life as pre-2015 and post 2015. It completely changed me. My healing journey started in the depths of that depression. If I didn’t start pulling at the string of therapy at that time, I don’t know what kind of person I would be now. I would be sad for that person, I would be sad for that person’s wife and kids. Deciding to take that first step of going to therapy, started a chain of events over the next 4-5 years, that led me to explore painful memories that I had locked away for decades.

In the past, whenever I was going through a depressive episode I would just wait it out, lay low and let it pass. I wouldn’t do anything to figure out what was going on, or do anything that could possibly prevent them from happening. This was different from those in the past though, this felt far worse, far more debilitating. I couldn’t rely on it just passing on its own. I made the decision to not just be a victim and passively wait for it to pass. For the first time in my life got honest with myself and decided I needed help. It was time to take proactive steps to try to pull myself out of it. I was determined to fight this time because I had something worth fighting for – my family. It wasn’t just teenage Carl or Carl in college who just had himself to worry about. I had Kate. I had Jason. I had Elizabeth. I needed to pull out of this for them and I needed to get help so that I could be there for them, not just a body in the same room, but being present as the best father and husband that I could be – the husband and father that I have always wanted to be.

I’ve learned in my life that when times get so bad that you don’t want to keep fighting, when life has knocked you down so many times that you don’t feel like getting up , everyone always has these two reasons to keep fighting – someone to do it for – or – someone to prove wrong.  For me this time, I had someone to get up and keep fighting for and I am beyond thankful every day for them.

#depression #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #therapy