Entry 3 – November 3, 2024


The harshest reality is knowing that the outside world keeps going even when your world has come to an abrupt halt. Even when I’ve picked myself up off the floor from every depressive episode before, it still shocks me when I realize the days still passed without me. Time keeps edging closer to the darkness and everyone else moves on like it’s another day. 

To everyone else it is just another day. 

Ryan and I left the hospital on Monday evening, later than expected. He still couldn’t walk, but he insisted he should go home to sleep instead of the hospital bed. This stay likely cost us another $20k on top of the first one. Our neighbor, Emily, was the only one around that late to help me get him inside. 

Have you ever tried to walk with a 200lbs weighted vest in a swimming pool? I haven’t, but I imagine that what Emily and I experienced on Monday night was similar.

There is an ache in my soul that I cannot seem to soothe. I spent so many hours and days wasting away on my cell phone or in meetings. The hours go by. The time slips away. Suddenly, I’m 35 with a career and a husband. I don’t have a reliable social life. If I’m not at home, I’m at work or the gym. I have no desire for children. All I want to do is spend time in the gym and write. It’s obsessive. 

I’ve been convinced that I’m too tired to do anything more. I should spend my down time on a screen or in bed. The quality time I’m seeking is fleeting. I have to try each time in order to focus on the present, but the ever approaching end of the road is looming. What is this all for?

Then everything stops.

At least everything stops for you. For everyone else, the present builds upon itself while you fade behind. The only way to catch up seems to be to ignore all the space in between. That space where you were dragging yourself out of bed to care for every other person in your home while attempting to heal yourself. I’m still on the floor, but my body has kept moving forward with time. Somehow I’ve managed to be in two places at once. My therapist would have told me I was dissociating, and she would be right. I haven’t stopped these daytime astral projections. What clever name could you call this? I’m not sleeping, and I’m far from daydreaming. It’s an out of body experience. As if I’m using a remote control to guide my body while my mind stays asleep in bed. It’s the opposite of astral projection. My soul has left an astral indentation on my bedroom floor, and I can’t quite pick her back up. 

Remember when Peter Pan’s shadow kept running away? I need Wendy to sew my soul back to my body. That won’t happen until Ryan gets better. I so miss being able to be a real person instead of this crumbling shell facade, pretending to have it together. 

I’m falling apart, and I’m terrified that we won’t be able to recover from this.

Entry 2 – October 27, 2024


I should start from the beginning, shouldn’t I?

My mental health has been slowly deteriorating for the past year or so, along with Ryan’s. As much as anyone told me I should speak to them, or call them, or tell them anything pertinent to my life. I just couldn’t. Since my last relationship, I have found it hard to trust my small circle of friends and chosen family with anything, let alone my feelings.

Simply put, I was starting to think that he and I were no longer on the same page, but I didn’t know who to talk to about it. He has been struggling to find purpose for the last few years, and it started to wear on me. I never blamed him for my feelings – I simply thought that it was an internal struggle and that I would get over it. The more I blamed myself, however, the less interested in life I became. The less interested in my life I became, I should say. 

Counting the same number of ceiling tiles in a hospital room for days on end really makes you consider what matters to you. (There are 46, by the way.) Although, I can’t say I ever thought Ryan didn’t matter to me, only that I wasn’t sure what I was doing anymore. I knew I loved him, but I started to question if my love was enough.

Let’s go back to a year ago when I was confronted by the idea that my goals were not aligned with where I was physically or financially. It’s all I could think about, and I wanted to focus on training more while building a business. Although I mentioned this to Ryan, he was struggling with his own goals and mine (from my perspective) didn’t seem to be as important. The perspective is important here, because that was not at all true. 

I was overthinking.

Now look at me, I’m telling strangers on the internet about all my deep dark thoughts regarding my relationship with my favorite person. From overthinking to oversharing in T-1 year. 

Ryan is a scientist. He loves science and biochemistry. There are only two things that come before me in his mind. First, his precious kitty, Chance. Second, lifting heavy shit. For him, science and lifting are fundamental characteristics of his personality. If you take those away, he’s a shell. Today, he’s a shell of himself. He doesn’t have a job and now he doesn’t have physical activity. He’s sitting in a hospital bed nodding off from narcotics in the most agonizing pain I’ve ever seen. This is going to make us both insane and broke.

I thought his depressive state over the past year was simply him adjusting and preparing to pivot his career. I internalized his responses and actions as something I was doing. I was prepared to leave, because I thought I was bad for him. I thought I wasn’t doing enough and that he would be better off without me. I wanted to be better and I wanted him to be better, but I didn’t know what to do to fix whatever seemed to be broken.

We were both depressed and we each thought that the other one didn’t want to be with us anymore. Sometimes you lie to yourself and believe it without any evidence. 

My world suddenly stopped on September 28 for the second time in my life, and I was met with the harsh reminder that everything moves forward even if you don’t. Ryan was laying in his bed, drenched in cold sweats as I begged him to let me call an ambulance. He pushed it off for days because he doesn’t have health insurance. (Something I previously suggested he needed for emergencies.) He was septic with a 6 cm abscess on his glute. We spent 8 days in the hospital and they sent him home on 10 days of antibiotics. 4 days after the last dose of antibiotics, we returned to the hospital because the back pain he was experiencing had him bedridden. Neither of us wanted to be back here, especially so close to my birthday.

Now I’m sitting here, listening to the rhythmic sounds of him napping, hoping this infection is finally being treated correctly. Glad he’s finally getting some sleep, even if it’s not deep sleep.

I’m so scared I might lose him. 

Truthfully, I was scared to lose him a month ago, too. Not for the same reason, but a void would have been there. He is my best friend. I know a lot of people say that about their partner or spouse, but I mean that. Even believing I didn’t want to be married didn’t stop me from seeing him as the best person I know. Ryan will always be the person I want beside me through any fight I face. 

Fight with me, fight for me, and fight me. I didn’t know that’s what I was looking for in a partner, but that’s what I found on every level. 

He will make it out of this. We will make it out of this. Bruised, beaten and held together by duct tape and dreams. I have to believe that we’re strong enough to fight this. It’s what we were made to do.

Entry 1 – October 26, 2024


This is not a story. It’s not a poem. It’s a little bit of both and I’ll try to clarify as I go, but I need to tell you something or I may explode. There is no moral. No happy ending in sight. There is only strength. There is only suffering at this point. I’m certain it can get darker in here, but I can’t tell if there are any more lights, aside from the hope that burns bright within me. If I tell you the ending, I would have had clairvoyance the entire time. 

The autumn air is chilly, and I’m sitting by a window sill on the fourth floor of a hospital building after having had a fight with my husband about a peanut butter sandwich that inevitably ended up in the garbage. 

A month ago, I thought I wanted a divorce. Fast forward to now and I don’t know what I’m going to do if he dies here. Life or the universe or whatever cosmic being is adding these twists for comedic effect must really be enjoying the 180 I have done with my emotions the past 30 plus days. It’s almost the end of October, my favorite month of the year, and I’ve barely been outside to enjoy it. 

I can see the leaves on the trees and foliage below me. It’s a beautiful cascade of hues painting the greenery. When I was in college, I used to sit on the second or third floor of the library at a large window overlooking the campus. This specific spot makes me think of that. There’s a single cloud rolling by in an otherwise open blue sky that looks like a cartoon turtle. The parking garage, full of cars owned by the staff and people who are in a similar predicament as myself, sits across the way and I can see the dingy white sides contrasting against the colorful trees.

This is not how I thought I would be spending my 35th birthday. Honestly, I was hoping for the sushi I was promised and a day of binge watching my favorite shows. All I can think about are the echoes of Ryan’s voice saying “you deserve more” as the tears fill his desperate eyes. I would say he was right, but I am doubtful knowing what I know. Knowing how I felt only a few days before he became ill. Knowing that I would have left him then. Not knowing that now, after seeing him at his most vulnerable, I never could.

I don’t know what that says about me or our relationship. I can’t explain how this peanut butter sandwich in the garbage can shows me that I’m more committed than ever, but it does. Maybe it’s because I know my stubbornness and his will always clash. Or perhaps it’s because that’s the thing I love about him the most, for better or worse.

Today would have been a beautiful day for a wedding, and coincidentally that’s where I’m supposed to be right now. Instead I’m sitting here, typing this, and hoping that maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe this afternoon will be better. Maybe 20 minutes from now will be better. It has to get better at some point, right?