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Not my family, not anyone. I'll pick fights with them because they are so irritating. Somehow it's better for them be mad at me and avoiding me than to have any sort of positive interaction. It is entirely IRRATIONAL but the failure, whatever is wrong in my head, is that I truly believe they really are being exceptionally irritating. It's sort of hard to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it. I also get paranoid about doctors and other mental health care professionals, and for a long time I'd refuse to go. Now I have a sort of social network I've built around myself to alert me when I'm drifting off. When my meds are right the dark times don't make any sense to me either.
Antidepressants work for me, they keep me out of the place where I can suck the life out of any personal interaction. The peculiar thing about me is that I am very good at pretending to be human. I can be in the blackest darkest place imaginable but maintain an adequate public appearance with people who don't interact with me much. On the surface I appear to be someone who is functional. I have powerful socially acceptable obsessions that keep me from hiding out in bed. In and out of college -- it took me nine years to graduate -- there were times when I was essentially a crazy homeless person, but that was not my outward appearance. I had a P.O. Box, I showered in the college gym and kept my clothes clean, and I was mild mannered, so people left me alone. Even when my behavior was bizarre enough that the police caught me out in some very odd situation, maybe jogging through an industrial park at two in the morning carrying something I found in the trash, they'd just tell me to go home. I was sort of an amusing diversion from the uglier stuff they had to deal with.
I've put my family through hell at times.
I hope your spouse's visit to the psychologist starts him down the path to better times. The right combination of medications and therapy can work miracles, but it's a very hit-and-miss process. Once I've got something that works, I myself know it, and everyone I live with knows it.
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