Background Information

I never see my husband anymore. He just started a job where he works second and third shifts during the week. Sometimes I spend nights on my own while he is on the job and sometimes when I do see him at home he is either sleeping or doing other things he needs to do. I feel like a single mom again and it has been very difficult for me.

Prior to his job, he has not worked a "regular job" for the past five years. He is an artist and we agreed that he would start a business doing what he loved. He is highly talented and it just made sense. I worked a "regular job" and was the breadwinner for the family while he worked on his business. He worked really, REALLY hard for five years and I feel very badly that he was not able to make it a success. He deserves so much more than he received during this time and it just makes me sad.

Last year my depression got worse and worse. It just wouldn't go away and then it became debilitating. I couldn't function anymore and I ended up in an outpatient program at a hospital. Being in this hospital helped me a lot and I feel saved my life due to the therapy and treatments I received while there. They taught a lot of skills to help me deal with depression and I am grateful.

The unfortunate side of this story is that I was in the hospital for six weeks and during that time I had to take FMLA from work. FMLA is a federal law that allows you to take a specific amount of time off from work if you or a family member is sick and is not able to work. Basically, it protects your job. When I went into the hospital, I thought everything would be fine because I always have paid into my short-term disability and AD&D insurance at work. Well, I wasn't fine. I saw an Oprah show a while back where she said that most Americans are a paycheck or two away from bankruptcy. She hit the nail on the head because being in the hospital cost me a lot financially. My short-term disability insurance didn't kick in until the 21st BUSINESS DAY of being in the hospital and it WAS NOT RETROACTIVE!

Isn't that crazy?

Here I am the breadwinner and I missed so much time from work prior to being in the hospital because I was sick in bed and couldn't get up and then six more weeks while in the hospital trying to get the will to live again. That was last summer and I am still reeling financially from the income loss. Hence my husband working. Hence me never seeing him. Hence his sleepless nights and my sadness.

Now that he isn't home a lot of things that he was able to do previously he can't do now and I feel a lot of responsibility on me to get things done. I hope that this is just a transition stage for us both and it gets better.

Now that I have given some background, let me get to the point of this posting.

The point is that I never see my husband anymore and today when I got home from work and finally saw him before he vamoosed to work, he was in a horrible mood and said, "I hate my life" while trying to change light bulbs. I said to him, "Well, I hope that really you just hate your schedule and not your life". He said, "I don't really know and I don't want to talk about it".

Great...fabulous.

Did I mention he is from Morocco? He hasn't been home in seven years and is catching a flight home on Halloween. He'll be gone for a month. I wonder if he'll come back. I feel that he must ask himself the same question.

I hope that while he is gone he will be able to slow down for a while and just contemplate his life. I hope that during this contemplation he will realize how hard I have tried to make a good life with him. I hope that he will realize his life isn't so bad. I hope that he will find compassion in his heart for me because he has already said several times, "I feel no compassion for you and your depression...I don't understand it and I can't support you during it."

Once again...great...fabulous.

I hope that he appreciates me more and I hope that he will just calm down a bit.

It will be good for the both of us if he does.