The Prozac Era

To make this seamless I am going to have to backtrack a little. As I mentioned at the end of the last post, We were struggling to understand our different roles as we cared for a toddler. My wife had always been one to go through periods where her trigger was short. But since the birth of the child she had become more easily agitated. This was not only true towards me, but towards people at work and towards her own family members. I was constantly listening to story after story of how either her co-worker or her mother and sister were “getting on her nerves”. Her best friend at work became her enemy for at least 2 weeks. Another co-worker was always a topic of night time discussion because she, “always comes in hung over and is mean to everybody.” (Isn’t there some irony in that.)

This aggression often manifest itself at home in the form of slammed doors and cupboards, angry grunts and sighs, and flying off the handle for the simplest things such as missing garbage day. This person that used to get up at 4 am in order to work out before work was now staying up till midnight every night and sleeping through her alarm. It would still go off at the same time, but the only person it woke was me. I would have to go from a gentle nudge to finally nearly pushing her out of bed every morning. At the end more and more nights, I would suffer about an hour or two of this childish behavior, and then things would return to normal. Once we sat down and ate, talked, and/ or played with the baby, she lost her angst. A back rub at the end of the night was always accepted.

However, this got to be such a regular occurrence that I demanded counseling. There were two incidents that led to that decision. The first was when she wrestled the baby from my arms one night at her mom’s house. (My wife came home in one of her moods to begin with.) When the baby started crying during dinner, I took her to a back room to calm her. My wife didn’t like this, so she came storming in and “yanked” her from me. The second incident came after my wife unloaded a child with a poo filled diaper in the door requesting that I changed her while she stood outside and smoked. I was in the middle of cleaning the kitchen, took one wiff, and said, “now way” kind of jokingly, but committed to my answer. As my wife passed by, she hauled off and slugged me with a malice in her eyes. I was devastated as this had never happened. The first time counseling was interrupted by a long trip out of town. The second time it was interrupted by life getting better and busier.

A third conversation where I pointed out how this kind of treatment might misinform the baby of how a relationship should work turned out to be the most fatal. My wife agreed and said she didn’t mean to be” mean” but she was “to the ones loved”. She said she would seek separate counseling for this more personal problem. While this decision seemed to be the healthiest most adult response, it paved way for the most devastating event to ever happen in my life. That is saying a lot for me.

I don’t know when she started it, but by early December there was a notable improvement in my wife’s attitude. By January I was more the antagonist of the marriage. I was still struggling to say how I felt at the time I felt it. (if you can believe that. It is easier for me to write things.) We were instructed to say to each other, “that makes me feel…” by our counselor. I thought that just sounded phony.

However, in January something very odd in deed happened. My wife had been very close to her godmother as a child. Her godmother was a regular at all of the family functions. She loved me. I often did computer work for her. When “aunt Char” died rather suddenly, her family was devastated. My wife’s sister flew in from out of town for the funeral. Her whole family was emotional and sobbing around her. My wife said, “I can’t cry. I want to cry, I know I should cry, but I can’t.” We shrugged it off as a temporary side affect of the Prozac. If I knew then what I know now.

February entered one of the greatest months of our relationship. Definitely one of the best of recent years. “The edge” came off my wife and she was able to say, “so what” about all the little things that bothered her. We started finding more time for just us. This included a ski trip for the anniversary. The effects of Prozac on my wife’s libido was point of discussion. At first I was alright with it, but by the end of the month, that was frustrating.

The first week in March libido was not a problem. We had discussed and made a few attempts over those first couple of weeks at having another baby. Before mid month was in the books, my wife had found out her sister was pregnant and she had asked to have the remaining test. My wife had started sending me provocative text messages from work. (Text messaging had consumed her life over the course of these couple of months. She was never one to be into such technology.) Previously when the baby stayed at her mom’s house, my wife would stay with her. But during this period she started coming home so we could have the night alone. Many times she would stop at the bar on the way home first. Her alcohol consumption at home was increasing even on nights when we had the kid. I didn’t mind, it made me look better I thought.

Then came the last week in March. My wife came home one night and there was no response. Just a coldness that had come over her. When she left we were joking and happy. I had no idea why the frigid shoulder. Something had changed that night. Over the next week something was wrong. I hadn’t spent 12 years being my wife’s closest friend and supporter not to know that. Over that week she grew distant and secretive. She is a horrible liar. At the end of that week I did something that in the entire time I have been with her, I felt the need to do. I invaded her privacy by checking her phone log.

I will end this here. There is a big change from that moment on. I am not going into the detail I have in the past, so I have to figure out what should be included to help anybody who has come here searching for answers.

The Relationship

The night we met was truly an act of either fate or coincidence depending on your spiritual leanings. My friend and I had planned out our latest attempt at self destruction. We were going to split a fifth of Jim Beam and drive 40 min. to go skiing at a midnight ski trip. However, a monkey wrench had been thrown into our plan. I had forgotten that it was my sisters birthday. Her two best friends had moved away and had kids in recent years. I had become the person that she usually went out with. She was never much of a party animal to begin with. So the plan was amended. We would go to this party I had been invited to, my sister would check out as she always did around 11, and with our bellies full of free keg beer, we would head off to try to wreck ourselves on the ski hill. WE didn’t know anybody at this party anyway, it was some chick from school that I barely knew that had invited me.

The plan was going flawlessly until my buddy decided to combine the smoking of the “sweat leaf” with his cheap American swill. Since neither of us actually were smitten by that activity normally it had ill effects. He had to go outside and “get some fresh air”. For whatever reason, I had caught the attention of this chick that was listening to me spew on about the meaning of love, life, and self destruction. That person I later called my wife.

As it turns out, she too was on a path of self destruction. Like I said in the “Her” post, there are things I won’t get into here and now. I will just say that drugs, alcohol, and risky behavior was a common occurrences in her life. She was constantly getting her parents attention, although not in any positive light.

By all rights, this relationship should have been explosive and short lived from the beginning. I was on the rebound and she was only looking to shock her parents. However, something strange happened instead. For some reason, it seems we had found what we were looking for. I spent the first few weeks talking about exacty what I thought had went wrong with the past relationship and what I was looking for in the furture. (I know not exactly the way to whoo a new perspective mate.) A month or so in, she presented me with this seeminly cheap silver ring saying that she wished i hadn't had to go through that, and that a friend had given it to her and she wanted me to have it. She then said, " I would never up and walk out on you." Over the course of the next few years the self destructive behavior had diminished. The drinking and dangerous behaviors subsided for both of us. My wife distanced herself from her friends that had traveled with her on that path. I even distanced myself from my friends and we made some new ones with more healthier intentions. We also found a lot of solace in being each others friend. It got to be a rarity that you saw one of us out with out the other.

The progression from meeting, to moving in together, to buying a house, to marriage, to having our child was very slow and deliberate. Trials and tribulations especially those of the financial nature were experienced throughout the relationship. Both of us had residual issues that reoccurred throughout the entirety. For her it was a constant battle to maintain her self confidence and feeling of being loved. This often would manifest itself in the form of obsessive behavior to control the things she could. In a way it was a very healthy attitude for me. She made me a cleaner, more health conscious (less of a bachlor) personality that would not have been adapted without such input. Even if sometimes I was reluctant to such change.

There was only one other constraint I had placed on the relationship outside of the normal. She had a predisposition to cocaine. She had just started to dabble when we met. I had told her at the beginning, “ I am in this relationship with the idea that one day you will become my wife and maybe the mother of my child. I don’t want a coke head in either of those roles.” Twice during the relationship she broke that constraint and both time begged for my forgiveness the next day. With that kind of honesty, how could I not. She would on many occasions when intoxicated tell me that she loved how she felt on the drug and only restrained because she loved me more.

The reluctance to change was asserted in my own unhealthy behavior of clamming up. My wife hadn’t taken the vow to avoid the same emotional environment we grew up in as I had. My answer when I felt slighted or hurt was too return to that child who would hide under the mattress to keep from hearing his parents argue. So I would just get cold and silent for days until she would draw it out of me. Even then the greater issue of feeling unloved was not the issue discussed. But then again, making up was often just the ticked to squash that feeling.

While that was going on internally, to the outside world we had become the quintessential exemplary couple that were obviously deep in love. It was long before we actually tied that knot (quite realistically. My only tattoo to date is of the love knot that was on our match book. She has it on the back of her neck.) that the calls from family and close friends to get married came to bear. We were the couple that people liked to be around. This lasted right up to the last time we went out together. My neighbor almost every time we went out would say, “If you guys move, we have to move into the same neighborhood. You guys are so fun to hang out with and a good fit as a couple friends.” You could just tell the we were the real deal.

Even internally these moments of discourse were few and far between. We shared an apartment with only a single bed. So we slept on the floor on a papasan matress. Even when we had more roomier sleeping quarters, we couldn’t sleep next to each other without at least a toe touching, no matter how hot. “I love you” flowed like wedding wine even when we were arguing. Back rubs from me to her in my sleep were regular occurrences. Things that would have been points of friction between other couples were just worked out with little discussion. Intamacy was not a problem.

One important issue was a non-issue. She drew much comfort in hanging out with her family. I love her family. Sure, I could identify and pick apart the issues that run through her immediate family, but it would be making mountains as well. I am not saying that these aren’t important, but maybe better left for the book. I spent many, many great nights around bonfires with her family members.
Her mother has been a pinnacle in my life. She redefines and sets a new bar for the meaning of good wife, mother, and grandmother. She was in the room as my munchkin came into this world. Her father is about as hard working and decent of a man as you could ask for. He has poured blood sweat and probably even tears into keeping the family financially afloat and in a decent neighborhood. Her brother-in-law had become closer to me then my own brother through the duration. I owe that dude so much for taking care of me during hard times I could never repay him. Her sister always made me feel respected by asking my opinion on various dilemmas. I desperately miss hanging with the little monsters that are her sister’s kids. Her sister in Florida always treated me with more kindness then I deserved or expected. After the older sister, and second to get married, tied the knot, they hadn’t thrown the garter at the wedding. The next night we were sitting in the garage, drinking a few beers. All of the sudden, my brother-in-law whips out the marital symbol and launches it from his finger tips straight into my lap. As heart wrenching as the current situation is, the loss of this connection is a twist of that knife. Especially since I don’t have my own mother to turn to, every time I see her mother, I want to hug her and ask her to tell me everything is going to be alright.

This last year, with the strains of raising our first toddler, we struggled with our existing issues. My wife’s anxiety and obsessive actions increased. This of course led to me clamming up more often. However, when I did finally express myself, having munchkin there also made me step up and demand that she not undermine me in front of her. “I don’t want her to grow up thinking this is how a relationship should be.” I was on a role and also requested my wife step outside herself, got to school, leave the job she despised, take up some hobbies that my daughter could find admirable.

This brings us to the Prozac era. I would like to leave this for another post.

Her

You know, at this time I decided an in depth explanation of my wife is not healthy. (That line and the draft of this post was before I saw this mornings blog activity.) I am nearly certain that she is reading these entries and it is quite possible that people around her are reading them as well. Like I have said before, this is not about hurting my wife. It is about me finding the truth. The truth as of now is that I am aware of the issues that caused my wife to be who she was when I met her, who she became as our relationship blossomed, and why she has returned to that person she once was again. It is also to put out there the reality of how some people react when taking these SSRI anti-depressants. The issues between us during the entire duration of this relationship were minor when compared to almost all other relationships. Already I have encountered 8 people who thanked me for showing them that they are not alone. These mole hills became mountains with the aid of Prozac.

Alls I will say is that she came from a good family, with good ethics. Her parents did what they had learned that their roles were from the environment they had been raised. The problem is that the U.S. is not the same environment as Chili or Croatia . Opportunities and disastrous choices are way more prevalent here in this country. For somebody as bright and sensitive as my wife, she needed a much more aware parental team to navigate these choices then many kids. Without this guidance and attention she needed, she grew to hate herself, feel unloved, and acted out in an attempt to get their attention. Many incidents of being locked out of the house, doors kicked in, and sibling rivalry replaced what should have been healthier forms of attention.

That is all I have to say about my wife right now. Even as I start the next post about the relationship, there will be things from the beginning that I will gloss over because they might be a bit more hurtful then helpful in this format. Those of us that know her, know much of the story because I have used friends as a sounding board to work through troubles as they came.

As before, know that I was aware of these issues and understood that my wife required even more external assurance, respect, and assertions of love then others. I saw to it that I did so.

Me

Me

Because so many people will try to say that the problems brought into the relationship were unaddressed and these problems were the reason for the result of divorce. I contend that past history and my understanding, awareness, and adjustments to these issues made me (in my wife’s words only a week before filing for the divorce.) “the greatest husband a woman could ask for”. You know for all my self resentment over my communications skills in the relationship, me and my wife talked a lot about our problems in ways that didn’t seem obvious. I also contend that my deeper then normal understanding of where my wife came from allowed this to be a unique fact. The only thing we ever did that would have broken this bond is seek mental health help from a community more interested in pushing pills then allowing us to release these demons. So in order to understand the events and my decisions I feel it necessary to introduce the characters in this story. So if you are able to accept that SSRI’s such as Prozac CAN be the sole reason for marital dissolvent, then the characters don’t matter and you can save yourself some reading. By that I mean that if the drug had never been introduced, all other problems would have been handled.

This post is about “me” in the shortest duration as possible. I was born to the house of what would be considered a “lower-middle class” family. My father was an ex-marine turned carpenter, turned factory assembly line worker. He owned his own business, worked hard, and was not home much in the summer time. He came from a large family with 5 half sisters. His own father had left when he was 2. My mother was a stay at home mom until I was about 10. Then she took a job at a department store where she worked until she got her realtors license. She was the oldest of three from a middle class family. My grandfather was a millwright, her mother was an accountant for a nuclear power producer. She was the problem child.

I am the middle child of 3 children. My brother is 4 years older then me, and there was a still born in between us. My sister is a little less then 2 years younger then me. When I came into this world, it was shortly after my mother and father had split for a few months after the stillborn death of “baby sister”. My mother took my brother to Florida and stayed until my father convinced her to come back. I can only assume that I was a makeup baby.

The house I grew up in a tumultuous environment. My father and mother rarely spent time at home together where they were not arguing. On a quite regular basis that would erupt into a shouting match. I really do not recall any physical altercations, but due to my adversity to violence, I might be blocking it out. At a very young age I would go and hide for hours in places where I couldn’t hear the arguing. As I got older and started considering relationships, I decided that I would never allow this kind of activity in my own relationship. The very first argument I had with my wife when we first met I said, “I don’t like your tone. I am going to hang up now and you can call me back when we can speak respectfully to each other.” She asked if that was “as mad as I get.”

Trying to write this it got too long, so here are the highlights. In first grade I was put on Ritalin, I hated it, and it made me feel trapped inside myself. In second grade my parents drug me to a therapist and then to black ink testing. They told my parents that I might be mildly retarded and recommended I be placed in LD (Leaning Disabled) classes. By fifth grade I was only doing that for a few classes.

In seventh grade I made my first life decision for the future. I decided I wanted to go fast in an air plane. I was told I needed to study math, my weakest subject. So I did vehemently. This supposed “retard” entered the ninth grade going straight to algebra. I had nailed math so well that a teacher pulled me aside and said, “It don’t care if you ace all of my tests, if you don’t turn in your homework, I will fail you.”

Then came the blowing news that my vision had failed. I found out as I was taking my test for my drivers license and failed the vision part. "Well you could still fly a helicopter they told me." Show me a helicopter that can do mach 2 and I’ll consider it. It was right about that time that I had a falling with my best friend. We had been close for about 5 years. He was hanging with so new friends that were on the road to trouble, and I wanted nothing to do with it. The friendship came to a screeching halt in the form of a legendary kung-fu match up in the school hallway. It was an incident that would take away one of the few distinctions that I felt I had. I had somehow made it from kindergarten to high school, 11.5 years at that time, without missing a day.

The fight quickly became incidental as the principal intended to suspend me for, "using karate in a fight in school". That day lead to me being committed. (Like I said this could be a very long story.) I spent a week there, 3 days tied down to a bed with leather restraints to keep me from leaving the hospital. They called me Houdini because I kept slipping the restraints and would usually be just getting to my leg restraints when they would catch me. They finally posted a hospital guard.

Coming out, my parents understood they made a great mistake putting me through the ordeal. They wanted to make it up to me. So I got my first guitar. That led to meeting the guy who would one day be the best man at my wedding. But for the time being, fighter pilot was out, and rock stardom was my destiny. Oh yeah, as it turns out, I can't play guitar. I had to learn to sing.

The summer after the school fight I was hit with more bad news. My mother had been diagnosed with Ovarian cancer and was given 6 months to live. She took 5 years, but every 6 months she would get so sick that we were certain she was gone this time. My father in al of his hate and paranoia would assure us that this was the real one.

In my final year, I had decide I wouldn't wait around to watch my mom die and do it while still fighting with my father as if nothing had changed. School is of no consequence to a rock superstar. So I loaded up the VW rabbit with two bags of Doritos, (cool ranch and I had always hated them, but that was what was available.) 2 bottles of red pop, and $32 and some change. I was headed to California. It was an ill-fated trip with me first getting stuck in a blizzard, then having a hard time finding a place to sell me diesel. Much later I would find out I had no alternator belt. Although now that would have been apparent to me since for some reason at the time I could only get the car started by push starting it. As a final straw, tired, very low gas, money and food, I pulled up to one of the big rig gas stations. As I pulled away I ripped a whole in the tire. I had no lug wrench, and everybody who came there had one way bigger then a VW rabbit needed. I finally got the spare on, and turned back home. I made it to Indiana ( I think I was in Okalahoma when I turned back, and I still have never made it to California.) and there family was close enough to come get me and run me back home. My father went to get the car later.

Shortly after my day of non-graduation, (I had to take government class of all things from a summer tutor) my father stepped into my room and said, "get out, you don't do anything around her." I wasn't even 18. So I went to the barn on some property we owned, and slept there for a few days. One day I was munching on some not very ripe fruit when my grandmother pulled up and said, "come live with me till you figure things out." So off I went to live with grandma, about 3 miles from my childhood home. It took me 5 years to "figure things out." She would also take me to get my first factory job. The first guy I met who was my boss said, “I don’t like you much. You won’t be her long.” It took him 2 years to get me laid off. Grandma’s house was a unique situation because my grandmother went to Florida for 5 months out of the year. She would leave and the band would move in. The week before she came home was always a "restoration period."

During that period I met my first long term G/F. She was a drummer. Looking back, that was pretty much her most desirable quality. Since to that point we couldn't keep a rhythm section to save out lives. We were friends, then became lovers in the course of a year. I took her to her prom, which was neat since I skipped my own. However, I hated her family, I really didn't find her all that bright, which is a trait that I had always found attractive in women. The big thing is that we worked on the band 3 nights a week even through death.

Yes my mom finally lost the fight. But first the guitarist's mom (also a good friend) had become sick with cancer and died. Donna died 9 days before my mom. We had a new bass player who had been to two practices and two funerals. He quit saying that his mom had a bad ticker. My mom died one night just after I had left her side to go watch a movie. She was bed ridden and living with me and grandma. There was no time to morn, we had to get back to writing and practice.

That pace and ability to subdue my mourning continued until after breaking up with my G/F of then 6 years. After I had broken up with her a half dozen times, she did it for real. I was floored. She not only did it, but was out of the band at my bidding. The loss of everything felt like I had lost my only set of car keys and was stuck in the woods. The last time I would see her with any hope or desire of reconciliation, I walked away from her trailer with a plethora of police there who wanted to take me into custody because she was afraid I would hurt myself. As I walked away, I realized that I never really wanted that anyway. I had stayed only because I didn't want the band to suffer another set back. I made a vow that I would not stay in a relationship again unless I actually like the other person family. If you don’t like where the person came from, how can you really enjoy them.

I walked in , told my counselor I was done, I had figured stuff out, and I would be fine. I left, and started drinking at levels that could only be considered inhuman. My buddy’s who had lost his mother at the same time was enthralled in a divorce from his high school sweetheart. So there we were again in the same boat. There was more then plenty of company on my loneliness.

I remember praying to god, who I still believed in at the time, "God I will give up this quest if you allow me to find somebody who loves me and I can make happy and try to have a real functional family."

You got to be careful what you ask god for. Sure enough I found it. One night I was invited to a party that I was intending to dismiss, and into my life came what would ultimate be the greatest gift and tragedy in my already tragic life. But that my friends will have to wait.

So yes, I have identified and recognize my faults.

Introduction

Well, according to my own lawyer, the orders put forth by the divorce judge to protect myself and my daughter is unenforceable. So are most of the orders in a divorce decree. My wife is allowed to drink while on dangerous psychotropic drugs, send unending text messages, and involve herself in other risky and irrational behaviors. Considering the fact that everything I write is true, documentable, and with the best interest of my wife in my heart, I don’t see how I can be held accountable. I would love to discuss the finer points of any of these posts with all involved. I am a writer. At the end of this process I hope to have a book. Without knowing how it ends I can’t tell you if it is going to be a tragedy or just a drama. However, one thing is for certain, it will not be a work of fiction. Sharing this story will hopefully generate more people to contact me with theirs.

This is not a typical divorce story. Unfortunately it is more common then the courts or the participants know. This is not a story of two people who grew apart and started trashing their marriage vows. There was no back story of a couple that were always trying to hurt each other. We were not the couple you hated to hang out with because we always ended up in a fight. This is not a story of abuse of any kind and one person fleeing from the unhealthy situation. This is not a story of family pressures pushing a couple apart. This is not a story where divorce was the best option at hand. In fact most people would love if the minor problems that plagued the relationship were their only ones.

Quite to the contrary, this is a story of a couple that when they experienced a rocky period after the birth of their child, they agreed they love each other so much that they should seek therapy. It is about a couple who had mild underlying issues for the entire 12 years they were together. This is a story about the cure causing many magnitudes times of more damage then the sickness. This is a story of about how the misdiagnosis and prescription of the SSRI Prozac is currently ruining an exemplary marriage, destroying the lives of the lovers, their child, and their families. It is not an account of how a man turned on his wife and schemed, deceived, and punished his wife for her irrational behavior. It is instead about a man who so loved his wife that he attempted to rise above the hate, resentment, and anger and found the answers to “what just happened?” It is also the story of how a man had to fight his wife, her doctors, his own doctor, and even his own lawyer to believe him that the psychosis is being caused by the drug, and try to save his family. At the same time he had to fight many of his own friends and family who agreed he was right about the his perception of the relationship, but recommended he just give up and move on. It is about being caught in limbo of mourning for a lost loved one and finding the strength continue to fight her ghost for the return. It is a story of incredible odds being stacked against the success of the marriage.

This is the chronicles of what has happened and what is happening as I take the hardest journey I ever have been confronted with. Considering my past, that is saying something. It is month 2 since the actual filing of the divorce. So much has happened it feels like month six. The first few post will be catching up with the things I hope I didn’t forget. I was asking my lawyer why this divorce could be pressed when none of the articles were accurate and I cold prove it. She said, “Incompatible” is a catch all so that children later in life don’t have to know the bitter details of the divorce. Talk about illogical. If a child goes to the extent of seeking out the court records for answers, then simply giving them the sugar coated version will be insufficient to quell their longing. I know. I would love to ask my own mother hundreds of questions. Unfortunately, that dysfunctional marriage ended in her death due to cancer. My daughter will know the truth. Even though I am still searching for exactly what that is right now.