I found my way onto this support group site when I was feeling stretched thin, worn down and looking for support. Growing up I always thought being married meant I would be supported emotionally by my wife, but like many other things, I learned this wasn’t to be. I suppose most of us on this site are looking for something. Help is the broad term, but specifically it might be advice, information, or some sort of emotional strength that comes from learning we are not the only ones experiencing what we do.

I tried counseling a while back, but didn’t find it helpful. I’ve thought of trying it again, and wondered, “What am I hoping to get from a counselor; help, information, advice?”  Erica Jong is quoted as saying “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't. I realize that I already know most of what I need to know. I wish the answers where different. It isn’t advice I’m looking for. What I want is to be witnessed.

The following is a quote from the 2004 version of the movie Shall We Dance?

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'."

This may be the biggest thing I miss being married to a depressed spouse. While I am a witness to her life, she is not able to witness mine. I know it isn’t because she doesn’t love me. I know it isn’t because she doesn’t want to. I know it is because she just can’t. Depression clouds the view, narrows the vision, and creates shadows so that most of what she sees is her own life with others moving through her gaze.

I wrote this piece three years ago and find it as applicable today as it was then.

Private islands

The sun shines through a window and illuminates the fabric of the love seat where she sits. Surrounded by pillows, and gadgets and yarn and pattern books, she looks comfortable and almost content, almost. This is her corner of the world she lives in, contained inside a house swimming with bodies, and voices, and expectations and needs. She sits on her island, in the sun, with invisible do not disturb and no trespassing signs keeping the world a bay.

 She sits nestled on her side of the bed, surrounded by pillows and gadgets and yarn and pattern books. A fan hums nearby, blowing air in no particular direction and for no other reason than to hum along. The bed is big, inviting, but the door to the room reinforces that this is a private island and drifting souls should stay only long enough to catch their breath, complete their business and then set off again into the house of swimming bodies and voices and needs and expectation. Her bed is an island retreat for one, not a vacation destination.

And so I thank you for taking the time to read this post. Whether you reply or not, I have allowed myself to share inner thoughts and thus created space to be witnessed. No on line support group can be the witness of a life an individual needs, but I’m finding that I must/can adapt, and change my expectations, and in doing so I find help in unexpected ways.