Hi Tizzy
While I've only been married for 22 years and my 19yo son and 21yo daughter still live at home, I can relate to some of the challenges you mention. My heart goes out to you so much as you face such an incredibly stressful and depressing time in your life.
Over the years, I've come to realise that with any major mind altering and life changing quest in life there are gong to be a heck of a lot of questions. Such quests naturally come with a lot of questions. While that sounds like somewhat of a romantic take on life, it can be far from being all zen-like and positively liberating. Actually, it can prove to be incredibly stressful and depressing at times. If we're sensitive enough to be able to sense or feel the nature of certain parts of our quest/s, I think we have to be fair on our self and say 'It's not my fault I can sense or feel what's depressing, it relates to my ability to feel the nature of what I face'. There are plenty of people out there who are inclined to think or say 'A person with mental health issues is 'broken' in some way'. On the contrary, they can be feeling what no one else may be able to feel. In other words, your ability is not your fault. As a gal who used to drink, to turn down the volume dial on my sensitivity, I can relate to this way of managing as presenting far more problems than solutions.
I've found it's the truly mind altering revelations that make a difference. One of the biggies for me involved waking up to the constructive nature of disappointment, especially in my marriage. In the beginning of our marriage, I think most of us appoint a certain number of roles to our partner, for them to fill. The more obvious ones are appointed through traditional wedding vows. With a slight variation on those vows, 'I appoint you to be the person who will be there for me during the best of times and the worst of challenges (including deeply soulful or soul destroying challenges). I appoint you the role of he/she who is there for me for richer or for poorer (including when I cannot feel the richness of life on my own). I appoint you the role of he/she who is there in sickness and in health (including times of great soulful and/or mental health challenges). I appoint you the role of he/she who will raise me through the worst, through various forms of poverty and through sickening (anxiety inducing and depressing) challenges'. A depressing form of disappointment comes when instead of our partner raising us, they let us down, bring us down or leave us to feel down on our own. We can definitely sense of feel the downs. The constructive side of disappointment involves us doing the dis-appointing...
- I officially dis-appoint you from the role of 'raiser' in certain situations and appoint you the role of 'downer'
- I officially dis-appoint you from the role of 'He/she who will often be open minded (in search of relatable solutions and visions of the way forward)' and instead appoint you the role of 'He/she who is closed minded, while lacking positively mind altering solutions and visions'
- I dis-appoint you from the role of 'He/she who has a soulful sense of life' and appoint you as 'He/she who's largely materialistic, egotistical and self serving'
and the list goes on but that's only half of it. The other half involves finding the people in our life who are going to be raisers, open minded visionaries, deeply feeling soulful people etc. Who are the people who are going to accept the appointments? They will be the people who we may struggle to live without, those who can raise our consciousness, our spirits and our sense of greater self understanding (which includes understanding why we struggle in the ways we do).
