I’ve spent a couple of days trying to figure out how to write these posts now that I have the all clear to do so. Then I realized I had to start at the beginning.

This is my husband Erik (handsome, isn’t he? Just help me out & tell him to shave).

He was born here in the same small town we live in.  Just the next street over is where his parents lived when they brought him home.  He was adopted 3 days after he was born, and it became official some months later.

When he was first born he proved to have some issues with his eyes & their musculature and ended up having seven (if I remember correctly) surgeries on them before he turned 2.

Whether it was the surgeries or genetics, we can’t know – but shortly after the turmoil of constant surgeries there came some personality issues.

At 3 years old he was put on his first medication.  Since the age of 3 the sort of medication and the diagnosis has changed over time.  He’s been on Ritalin, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and he’s shunned them all at times for the self-medication of alcohol (at both inappropriate and appropriate ages).

To hear him describe it, he always felt separate.  Apart.

The outsider.

In school.

At home.

In his own head.

Some of it he blames on the sense of abandonment he still feels for being adopted.  Some of it on his own “stupid” biology.  He also heaps a lot of blame on himself.

For so many years he floundered.

Made many mistakes.

Lashed out in anger.

Pain.

Confusion.

Chaos.

And then, he broke.

As most people with mental disorders do.

He wound up in the stress center – checked in for a period of time.

Once he came out he had the clear cut diagnosis of severe depression.  He was put on several meds before settling on a mix of Effexor (which I have come to despise, but more on that later) and Wellbutrin.  Sent back out into the world “better.”

He thought his life would be good after that.

It was supposed to be better.

But mental disorders are never that easy – and never that cut and dry.

*~*~*

*More coming soon. It’s a long story and I shortened this part intentionally.  There’s much that happened before we met that I don’t fully know or understand…and things we still can’t talk about…and that don’t need to be said. I mostly wrote this for a little background before we get into meeting me & the life we’ve lived up to this point and where we are now – and where he is now.