In 2009, my life would take a dramatic turn and fall apart, and over the next following year, I would begin to piece it back together. But before that, I met and fell in love with my husband, and we faced the first of our challenges together. In this week’s video, I share the third chapter of my memoir, about the first real challenges we faced in our relationship, which would set the tone of our relationship during my “year” of shadow and light.

 

You can watch my YouTube video (link below) or read chapter 3 (provided below the video in this post). Please let me know what you think.

 

3. Two Become One

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.

—Rumi (used in my wedding vows)

 

In the fall after losing my job and moving in with Mike, I started my first year of grad school, in health communication, and Mike started his second year in the health physics doctoral program. I don’t remember much specific about these two years that’s really worth mentioning, except me losing my remaining grandmother to lung cancer and then volunteering  in a hospice program, and Mike’s struggle with getting his PhD.

The classes required for getting the PhD weren’t so hard for Mike. Instead, he was challenged by the demands of an advisor whom he just couldn’t seem to please. He worked his tail off to give his advisor what was requested of him, then his advisor would get angry at Mike for not doing enough work; in frustration, Mike would stop doing everything, and his advisor would tell him he was doing a great job.

Mike didn’t get to choose what kind of research project he was doing and then writing journal articles about for publication—the publication being a requirement for him to get his degree—and the projects changed at least two times in the two years I was attending school there. While his graduate advisor gave him lectures about being disappointed that Mike just wasn’t applying himself, I was watching Mike work himself to death, losing sleep because he was so frustrated, and pulling away from me, withdrawing from the world in his frustration. Then a new project was created, and Mike was given a co-advisor. Now he had two advisors who were supposedly working toward the same goal. I say supposedly because they constantly gave him mixed messages, further increasing his frustration. He was seriously considering leaving the program and grad school, and I really couldn’t blame him. The politics and the craziness were just getting to be too much.

To top it off, his original advisor seemed to think Mike should not get vacation days other than school holidays, including in the summer. Mike already often worked nights and weekends in addition to taking classes and teaching. When my grandmother was in hospice care and we knew she had only a couple more weeks to live, I had Mike ask his main advisor how many days he would be able to lose Mike for the funeral. After all, we were approaching summer, so Mike wouldn’t need to teach, and he could write articles while we traveled. His advisor told him he couldn’t go: It was my grandmother, not Mike’s, the advisor reasoned, and the advisor hadn’t even gone to the funeral of a close relative of his wife; he didn’t think it at all odd that Mike wouldn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral.

When I learned this, I immediately began looking up the school’s policy on vacation time, family leave, grief time, you name it. The policies were vague for deaths of a significant other’s loved one, but they didn’t disallow it. A few days later, at 3 AM, I got the call from my parents telling me that my grandmother had passed away and I needed to make flight arrangements for the three of us and Mike. After all, he was part of the family at this point. We weren’t married yet, but we’d been together almost two years, and we already knew we would be married once we were both done with school. In fact, Mike and I had planned school so I would get my degree at the same time he got his.

I promptly made the reservations for our flight and our rental car, then called my parents back to let them know the plan, and I called Mike’s advisor. I simply said that my grandmother had died and that Mike was going to the funeral because he was part of our family and my grandmother had loved him. I asked him if he needed any forms to be completed or signed, and then I told him good night. I think I woke Mike up to start packing, and I told him I was sorry if this was going to make his life more difficult when we got back but that his advisor would get over it.

I don’t often do such things. I try to leave people to make their own decisions, to do the best they can, but in this case, I knew his advisor was using Mike and would guilt-trip Mike into staying because it was what he wanted Mike to do, rather than what Mike needed to do for me. Mike had not been able to take time off to visit my grandmother with me earlier in the year when we had found out she was dying, when she had wanted to see him, so he was at least going to her funeral, because that’s what families do. I don’t know if Mike understood that yet, but this was one of those few social and family responsibilities I don’t think he even thought of arguing with me about. He knew what family meant to me and that I needed him on this trip. He had seen me break down in the months leading up to my grandmother’s death. He knew what she meant to me and the guilt I felt about not being able to be with her more in her last few months.

As far as I know, there were no repercussions for Mike being gone for several days to attend my grandmother’s funeral and spend time with her grieving family. And he chose not to write while we were on the trip. He made a conscious choice to leave that crap behind him. I supported him no matter what choice he made.

After we got back, his advisors once again changed his research focus and we learned that Mike would have to stay another year because he wasn’t getting any publications out—because his research projects kept being changed on him. This year got even more stressful on Mike, and he considered quitting even more. I told him it was his decision and I would support him in whatever he chose. He wasn’t the same man I had met, not at all. He was sullen, easily angered, sad, distant, touchy. He wanted to see it through, but he was miserable. Even though he hated this school at this point, he decided to stay for the third year.

I finished my degree and very quickly got offered a job 75 miles away. We stayed in our apartment so Mike could still walk to work and school. I had just gotten a new car, a more fuel-efficient vehicle, so I drove every day to work. Mike got more and more miserable. I got exhausted. I drove an hour and a half to work each day, put in my 8 hours or so, drove another hour and a half home, and then had to make us both dinner. And do the dishes. And do the laundry. And do any cleaning that was required. And plan our wedding, which was looming at the end of the academic year. Mike had just melted down. He went to school and did nothing but research and write and then came home and played video games. I wanted him to quit school, but I would never say such a thing. I reminded him that he had choices, that he didn’t have to stay where these two advisors were making his life miserable.

We argued roughly every other weekend. It usually ended up in him feeling sad and giving me puppydog eyes that I knew came out when he felt like everything was his fault, and with me crying and/or yelling in exasperation.

Finally, after the first semester of Mike’s fourth year in the PhD program, Mike decided to call it quits and just take a master’s degree. He was told he had enough credits for the master’s, so that wouldn’t be a problem. A couple of weeks later, however, he found out that he had enough credits, but some of those credits were in the “PhD dissertation” category and the department would not just call them equal to or better than “master’s thesis” credits. He was disappointed and angry. So was I.

He was informed that he had a certain number of weeks to get enrolled in a course or two to complete his master’s. But by that time, he was sick of that school, and of the ridiculous limitations they placed, and of giving them all his energy. And I was sick and tired of having a depressed fiancé.

The year 2007 started with hope. Mike and I talked it over and decided that he would take a month to recover and recuperate emotionally and physically and then would start looking for a job. And he did. But after a few weeks, he started to get depressed again—not as depressed as before, but things were getting stressful again, with the wedding coming up in May. We had been planning the wedding for two years and had done as much work ahead of time as possible, and I was including him only as necessary so I didn’t “stress him out,” but still, he was getting stressed.

We had planned for our wedding to be as joyous and stress-free as possible, however, so we made it through that and had a great time. Then we were offered the chance to move out early from our apartment. The buildings had been poorly maintained in the years we had been there, so we leapt on the opportunity to move early. We had already been planning to move in a month, to be closer to my job, so we called and asked if an apartment could be ready for us a month early. The people at our new apartment complex said yes, so within a week of getting married, we started packing, and less than a month later, we moved.

Over the next few weeks, Mike continued to look for a job, and I continued to work, but it was still like pulling teeth to get him to go anywhere, even grocery shopping. If I let him, he would stay in the house and play his videogame all day. It was an online, social game, so I knew why he played…because he felt needed. He’d sit in front of the computer for 20 hours a day if I let him, and if I tried to pull him away, sometimes he’d get angry, because “they needed him.” I couldn’t seem to get through to him that I, his new wife, needed him too. Money was tight because of the move, my personal debt, and my recent pay cut to keep my position at work for a longer-term, “more secure” stint with better benefits for myself and my unemployed husband.

We almost didn’t go on our honeymoon because money was so tight. I was trying to convince Mike to see a doctor or a therapist for his depression. He still wouldn’t admit it was depression. Everyone could see he was depressed. Except him.

He had stopped looking for jobs; he had stopped unpacking boxes; he had stopped doing dishes or laundry. I would get home, then sit in my car and cry in frustration, knowing that once I entered our apartment, I would have more work—and probably an argument—and disappointment waiting for me. I didn’t know how to help someone who was depressed and wouldn’t admit it. I didn’t want to leave him—after all, we had just gotten married. I didn’t want to threaten that he get his act together or lose me—I didn’t want to use my love as a bargaining chip. I thought he needed my love more than anything, and I knew that if I left him so he could “get it together,” he’d just go back to his family in Oregon and hide and probably never pull it back together and I’d probably never see him again.

Finally, the day before we had been planning to leave on our honeymoon, we decided we actually would go. I’m glad we did. Mike learned that I knew how to travel on a fairly tight budget (thus gaining some previously lacking trust in my money-management skills), and we got to do whatever we wanted, on a whim, for an entire week. We had made only one reservation, for one night in a cabin. Otherwise, we camped and stayed in hotels as the whim took us. We ate fast food. We ate hot dogs cooked with water from a coffee pot. We ate steaks cooked on a Coleman grill. We listened to coyotes sniff outside our tent and howl a few feet away from us. We went to free science museums. We went to movies. We saw one of the longest fireworks shows that either one of us has ever seen, in the middle of the desert in Arizona. We were simply together for 10 days—miserably hot sometimes, but worried only about loving each other. And we came back happy.

When we got back, Mike agreed to see a doctor and to go on an antidepressant if the doctor thought it appropriate. The doctor did. Mike started the antidepressant, and I had back the man I had fallen in love with. He had energy again. He would leave the apartment with me, he started looking for jobs again, he performed self-care. He helped me at home. We were a team again.

Then he got a job 50 miles away.

***

Thank you for allowing me to share this part of my journey with you. Please let me know what you think so far and if you want to hear/read more of my story.

 

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