“We all fail at who we are supposed to be”. That is my favorite line from Marvel’s End Game because it feels like the story of my life. I  had so many expectations for myself, that I could save my husband, that me being cheerful enough, hopeful enough, resilient enough, around enough, would make things all better. I thought that me just being there would be enough to save him from his depression. So imagine how crushing it was when those things weren’t enough. And it had nothing to do with my spouse. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t enough and it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t enough. It was just how mental illness works. It isn’t my job to fix it, it isn’t my job to be the end all be all.

No relationship will be easy, that which has the potential for such great joy and fulfillment brings with it the equal opposition of pain and heartache. Because I know how beautiful our marriage is (both now in the little moments and in the joys of eternity) I know that the pain will hurt. I haven’t always been okay with that, that’s what me sharing this journey is all about, that it is okay to not be okay, that sometimes you only see dark. The important part is to keep looking for the good things, this post gives an example of how to do that.

In supporting a spouse with mental illness there can be a lot of fear, a lot of hurt, a lot of anger because it cn feel like so much is out of your control. The hardest thing for me to realize and embrace is that some things you just have to feel, you can’t go over, under, or around them, you just have to go through. And if you can’t do it alone, don’t, find someone that won’t tell you what to do or how to do it, but will hold space.

What does it look like to support someone with a mental illness, someone who faces that black dog of depression and anxiety daily? It means never being quite sure what each day will bring. Maybe it will be a good day, maybe there was a trigger that shut the person you love down so they are quiet and withdrawn, or maybe into a very dark place they don’t know how to get out of and eventually might not want to get out of.