On the Homefront

Well, things could be better. I haven't posted anything yet about the shit storm that is my personal life, but here's a little taste. I work for peanuts and my husband has been out of work since March. I've been paying to keep up his health insurance since he has expensive medical issues, specifically crippling anxiety and depression (which is why he's currently out of work). I found out last week that Mr. Fight's health insurance got cancelled because I paid the bill too late. Well, I paid the bill too late because my husband doesn't have a job and I'm trying to keep us not homeless and I just did not have the money. Bummer. The real pisser is that all the stuff I have to pay for now without the insurance costs MORE than the money I didn't have to pay for the insurance. Grrr....

On the bright side, normally it's a chore to hide all the gaps in my husband's employment history when I update his resume, but at least this time the economy being in the toilet sort of helps cover his tracks. He's not like some low-life who doesn't want to work, he just has a hard time keeping jobs. He gets all worked up over something or another going on in his life or at home and he wants to call out of work because he's so overwhelmed with whatever. Then he's all freaked out that everyone at work is talking about what a loser he is for calling out, which makes him afraid to go back, so he calls out for a week or more, ultimately ending in him getting canned. That's pretty much the cycle. It's hard.

Right now he is looking for a job, but there is really nothing in the paper. He's been looking since August or so. After he got fired this last time in March, I told him to take some time, go to the doctor and try to get a little bit of control back in his life. He's been on every anxiety/depression medication I've ever heard of and none of it seems to help him. What happens is, he feels like shit so he goes to the doctor and they say, "Maybe we should try something else".

Then he has to take the new pills for however long it takes for them to kick in and for him to get used to them. Then he doesn't know how he feels because he can't tell if his body is still getting used to the pills, or the dose isn't right or the combination isn't right. All he knows is that he never feels good. It's not that he wants to feel happy all the time, it's just that he wants to feel not overwhelmed by feelings of being a total failure and obsessing over ever tiny thing that is going bad in his life. I can't imagine how hard it must be for him to be so miserable all the time. I mean, I'm certainly not happy with where I am in life and certainly thought I'd have made something better of myself, but I'm not so consumed by these thoughts that I just can't get up and function. I get up and go to work because someone has to.

He has some breakdown along the way where he can't "suck it up" and look at the big picture. The consequences of his actions aren't what's important to him in that moment, it's not doing whatever the next thing is he would have to do-like go to work or to a family party. He just wants to curl up in a little funk and not leave the house, see people, go to the store, anything. He goes on like this for months until someone (him or the doctor) finally says, "Maybe we should try something else."