Hola

So I am pretty much sorry for not updating frequently. Life is pretty much mundane wuth the usual ups and downs. Anyways husband has increased his medicines, doubled the dosages as advised by his doctor.

I was sitting in my garden, paying my bills using the phone, when a thought cropped up. I did tell you that I do risk losing my job, right? Right now, I just decided to wait it out but out came the nagging voice that asked me what would happen if I could not find one on time...how on earth would I be paying my bills then....it freaked me out a little...I had to push it out of my mind. Couldn't share it with the husband. It just isnt right to freak out someone who is freaked out most of the time...I feel a little scared, you know...

My savings will not be able to sustain me for very long and knowing my mum, she will start nagging the moment I lose my job.

Sometimes I get so frustrated at the husband. I wish he would be stable, a well paid high income earner with kick ass cconfidence. Then I could mirror him.

Too much complains. Well, you know what the say about lemons. People ask me, what you gonna do...and with a little eloquent arrogance, I said the one who put me here knows how to feed me...but the coward in me whispers what ifs...only I can hear...

Presiding

Going through a smooth sailing period. Waking up and feeling grateful, immensely thankful to see him up, and hungry, waiting for me to make him breakfast.

Sometimes I get a little irritated when he wakes me up in the morning but then I am instantly reminded of the time when I had to beg him to eat something. I will take interrupted sleep anytime, thank you.

So anyway, I dont want to jinx it so moving on...nothing much exciting to update. This unexciting phase feels so good, you wouldn't understand.

A relative will be coming over to do prayers at my house. Its for the deity who takes care of pregnancy division, PechaiAmman. This relative has no idea about my personal dark secret life. Well, how can I explain to her that pregnancy wont happen unless some basic biology action takes place...nope I will take that secret with me to the grave. You better, too!

Question mark

You know...of all the difficult things that I have gone through in my life so far, the hardest part is not knowing why I am going through it. That's always has been playing through my mind, especially now that I get a throng of stuff that is being bumped on my shoulders.

See, both the husband and me will probably lose our jobs soon coz our companies have made the decision to move their business elsewhere. I am just waiting for the date but in the meantime, the projects I am working on has been extra stressful, very much to the point I end up crying every day for the past two weeks. I realize also, that I have starting to become timid as a mouse each day, I don't even have the courage to speak up to anyone. The smallest thing is just pulling my courage down deeper. Today the project is a little better, and all the open ends closed but you know...today the husband is unwell...it's just like a roaler coaster ride (I just realized I don't know how to spell roller coaster)...I go to temple and I just ask, why? Why are you making me go through this? I want to be happy every single day, not cry one day and smile the next? Some spiritual gurus say you have to go through hardship to understand joy. That just sounds like crap to me right now. Even my mum won't put me through this shit. Why God who is supposed to be the ever loving one, put me on this roller coaster and watch me tumble scared half to death?

If only I had millions in my bank...people say money can't buy love, can't buy happiness. Bull. It can. To a certain extent. If I had millions, both me and my husband don't have to work. We can go and live near our parents, keep them company to the end. My husband will have much lesser stress and probably be able to get off his medicines and I could probably have a baby, that I could take care of until I get old. I know a few people whom I care able whom I could help, and I could bring my grandfather who lives so far away right next to me. So yes, money can buy happiness. My happiness at least. I do hope God does not punish me for saying that. I already have enough of my plate.

I was moping around last week when an uncle I know who also knows about my predicament said, don't worry. You know, my company closed down when I had 3 school going children and my mum chased me out from my house. I had to build a shack next to my brother's house and live there. My son had to drop out of college and go to work because I could not pay for his fees. We went through hell and look at us now, we are still breathing.

The only thought that ran through my head when I heard him was, why God? why did you have to put him through that? So he appreciates his life?

Life is such a mystery. God too...

Long hiatus

Hi.

So it has been such a long time since I last wrote here...

I did lose interest in writing, mostly because things had been a big roller coaster ride with my husband from oct last year and I went through new year 2015 handling a difficult project go live and a husband who refused to get out of bed. Writing these stories would mean re-living it again and honestly, it's a phase of my life that i would like to wipe out forever.

Anyways to cut a long story short, husband did try giving up the anti depressants. However, as I said, it reduced his life to the confines of his bed. He simply refused to get up, to eat and to function, like normal. I had to scream at him to get up, cry in the bathroom and silently hate myself for being me. I hated everything, to my house, my husband, everyone i come in contact with, myself and god. Even wondered if suicide would be good, since i could not find a reason to live.

Eh wait, i am not supposed to be writing this down. I really shouldn't.

So he lost the battle to let go of the meds, and all other alternatives like ayurveda and ah..i forgot the name...ah homeopathy didn't work. One homeopathy doctor promised he will be back to normal like 3 weeks, was all ego-ish too...well well, it didn't work and i wanted to hurl the meds to his face...but whatever...i sound so angry don't i? Actually i am not angry...coz i am in a happy place now.

I gave up and took him to see a good doctor, who adviced us to let the other meds flush out first, gave us time and then things didnt work out, so he suggested a very low dose of meds to keep him up..it got him a little better, just a little and then there were some bad news from the work place which hit us hard, both of us hard so it all spiralled back and then, i had to rush him to the emergency room of a hospital because he kept insisting on killing himself...we had a huge fight before we actually went because i was so tired, so tired of a healthy man behaving like he is sick...it is so hard to understand depression you know.....so when we were finally there at the hospital i had to witness a horrific scene...u see in government hospitals, the depressed people and people with actual mental disorders are warded together in the emergency rooms, so i witnessed a really terrifying scene of a man go berserk, with guards trying to sedate him. Something inside me snapped that time, I wished to God, please don't let my husband become that man...i quickly asked the doctors to discharge him and took him back, telling him , actually scolding him ...life is much better at home than the emergency room.


Around this time, was the new year and since my project deadline was progressing rapidly, i could no longer handle the stress and my mother in law and father in law came over to stay with us for a few days. On new year's day, my brother in law came to pick both father and mother in law to go to temple and i remember vividly looking at my sister in law, dressed in her saree going to the temple with her husband, and looking at myself, in my old clothes and my tired face in the mirror and running to the toilet to cry after they left...gosh...the memories...its coming back now...i pushed it all to the back of my head but as i writing this, it feels like having bile pushed down my throat...

This went on and my project successfully went live and i have no idea how i managed it all, until one fine day the doctor told me, now you choose, you want to get him to take stronger medications and continue like this...i was given the medicines and i went home and broke down and cried again, and then wiped my tears and decided, i had to choose the lesser between two evils. So bye bye baby...i can kiss goodbye about getting pregnant naturally and asked him to take the medicines once again...

A few days later, for the first time in months, I saw my husband getting up from the bed and asking for food and smiling. Forget miracles of seeing god's face in the clouds or the sky..this was a miracle to me, a joy so great i wanted to leap to the moon and back...and if god was a man, i would literally wash his feet with tears of joy...


And so...things are slowly improving now..he is smiling, laughing, eating, we went out for movies, went to eat good food in restaurants, he is making jokes, disturbing me, talking on the phone, helping me with laundry, meeting friends....basically he is back to being my wonderful husband now..i cannot tell you how i feel right now..every single day i see him smile, i know how precious that smile is...

Of course, the side effects are back....weight issues, bedroom issues, liver tests are fine so far..thank god, restless legs etc...when he tells me the issues, i wish i could take it all away but like i said, sometimes you need to choose the lesser of two evils...


Antidepressent...one tiny pill, that decides the course of my life.

P/s: Pardon the hastily typed post. I wanted to get it out as soon as i could so i dont have to re-live it for too long..

diwali?

I am cutting through to today and probably will update about the past sometime later.

Remember the last Deepavali  when husband  was in his own moody self and I envying my sister in law?

Well this year he seemed a bit okay and I as usual forgot about my dilemma last year and was thinking to myself, how boring this Deepavali this time...no sooner had I thought about it, he went back to his moody self this morning, and woke up completely distressed. He was also grumpy to the point that the sound of my anklet bell annoyed him. My father in law also was sounded at,basically everyone felt as depressed as he was. I laid in bed crying, and lost my appetite to eat and as I did, my mind started to wind up thinking about suicide myself. Thats when I decided I needed to get away from him for a while.

As mean as it sounds, I do need to take care of myself so I dont go insane so I got up, grabbed my car keys and told him I was going to my  but mumsdrove instead to a nearby coffee shop and sat down writing this while cancelling his calls.

As I drove, I thought to myself how lonely and isolated I feel right now and how I never felt sad during Deepavali until the day I got married...

Update

God...

I do have so much to update. A lot of stuff actually happened when I went away, and is still happening.

Been trying to update but first my Iphone crashed on me and I got myself a China brand phone which I am still trying to figure out how to use. I downloaded blogger app to my phone but somehow it just refuses to work for me.

About few months back, remember I told you that we went to seek second opinion from another psychiatrist? Well, we did and she prescribed another set of antidepressants which he started taking and slowly began to stop seeing the first psychiatrist. After taking the meds from the second psychiatrist, lets call her Dr. R (it's easier that way), my husband got better and was functioning like a normal person. Then, Dr. R decided it was time to wean him off. The suggestion given was to take the meds for one day and skip it the next day, alternately.

That's when the horrible withdrawal started and he stopped functioning completely. Was in bed all day and was really in terrible state, I decided to google about tapering of the med by taking it on alternate days and it all pointed on to say, that's like playing ping pong with your brain.

So the husband somehow read up that there was a different way to taper off which is with Prozac bridging which we suggested to Dr. R who has no idea about it but was willing to listen to the suggestion and prescribed to us Prozac. He then tried to wean off the first medicine, Effexor by reducing the amount bit by bit and then supplementing it with Prozac and finally was on Prozac alone and then weaned off Prozac completely. The thing is, both of us had no idea how bad withdrawal symptoms would be.

My husband was no longer functioning like a person. He was unable to go to work, unable to get up from bed. He was always vomiting and had no appetite. He talked about suicide all the time and on giving up and how life was completely meaningless. I was working from home and kept myself near him all the time, always worrying that if I let him go unsupervised for one second, he might do something I would regret later.

Around this time, I bundled him into the car and went to see Dr. R again. Imagine how crushed I would have been that time when all she could say was, " I have no idea what else to do!" She also asked me if I think my husband was pretending. All I wanted to do was to give her a slap but since I was completely clueless on what to do next, all I could do was to sit there, holding back my tears and feeling all numb inside. I felt like the world was crashing on me and my husband could not ingest what she said and I guess he felt even more lost that I was that he started crying in the doctor's office.

I took him out from the hospital and on the way, gave him a pep talk while furiously typing in my phone to find what else I could do. I wanted to find a psychologist instead and I found this person but he was no longer having clinics so I found another who seemed to be very famous in Malaysia and called up the clinic. At first they gave me an appointment after a month which was probably too late and I pressed on telling them that my husband was already talking about suicide and I need immediate help. After rounds of calls, they were very accommodating and the doctor agreed to see us after 3 days.

On the day of the appointment with the new doctor, let's call him Dr.J, I found out that he was also a psychiatrist. Looking at all the withdrawal symptoms that my husband had faced, we were already made up in our minds never to pop another antidepressant again and we made it very clear to Dr. J. He was very understand, acknowledged the symptoms and told us to wait for the medicine to wash away from the system which would probably take about 3 months.

We went home and husband spent his life on the bed, and I was right next to him and after probably 1 month of waking up to a husband who only talks about feeling sad, and wanting to kill himself, I started to lose my will to live as well. At one point, all these while never allowing myself to cry in front of him, I broke down. I felt empty inside and felt like God was being very unfair to me. Why me? Why I need to face all these? What sin did I commit to deserve this? I couldn't go out, I couldn't see my friends, I couldn't smile, I couldn't wake up feeling happy, I couldn't wake up to a smiling husband, I couldn't have a child, I cannot live a normal life, really why me?

I guess me crying scared him a little and he called his mother.

Hi

Sorry. For the life of me, I somehow forgot my password and my mobile phone reset itself automatically hence deleting all my data which I did not backup. I tried logging in with different combinations but to no avail, hence I gave up.

Today I had a Eureka moment and remembered, so here I am.

So anyone still reading this blog? I'll tell you what...quite frankly it's rather boring to keep writing without much response, not that I am fishing for comments, but seeing no response kind of kills the mood..