Insufferable.

I’ve chosen this adjective to describe how my body and mind felt on the worst of nights, and to describe what I was like to the people around me.

This is the third post I am writing about depression, but it feels like I am endlessly writing about it because right now, I am living one of those states where my heart thwaps over 100,000 times a day, and that heartbeat says to me, “hi again, hi again, hi again, hi again, hi again,” and that AGAIN that it’s saying, it’s a reminder each second of the day that I am still here, still dealing with the harm that my depression caused. Unintentional harm, but devastating nonetheless. I thought that as long as I moved myself forward every day, that was enough. I didn’t think about needing to apologize for all the times I wasn’t me, because I hated that person, too.

Last month, I shared in a my first blog post of the year that about a year after having my first baby, I was careening towards depression and derailed my relationship in the process. My relationship might not recover, and that real-time heartbreak is something that isn’t tangible enough for me right now to even begin to put into words; Christina has been my puzzle piece, complementary to every one of my elements over the last eleven years. I couldn’t imagine another person who could strike a balance with me so well; she is an engineer, yet driven by her heart. I am an actor and an artist, guided by my brain. I am not going to share the most private, raw parts of our life that we are going through, but I do want to say that being with her for all of these years has made my life immeasurably beautiful. In between my moments of indifference, of apathy, thinking about her and thinking about who I was with her in the years leading up to my sadness would fill me with warmth, however brief. I have been sharing photos of our life recently to remind myself that we have had an amazing friendship and my heart was struck by something about us every day, despite what momentarily feels like a wash of depression over it all.

On January 1 of 2009, she returned from San Antonio and stopped by Flying Star (where I worked) to drop off a bag of fireworks she got for me while she was visiting her family. On January 6, she was in a car, gone, on the way to San Francisco, and I wrote the lyrics: “How dare you leave me all these fireworks when you know damn well you’re my match?”

If I had admitted that I needed help when she first asked me if I was okay, she would have held my hand through this whole trip. She would have been there with me the whole fucking time. I would have recovered faster. She would have known that there was nothing wrong with her; there was nothing she needed to do differently; she was amazing, and I was just really sad and anxious. Instead, I gaslit her and told her what she was experiencing with me were things that were always part of me that she never noticed. I gaslit myself and told myself that the worst of my thoughts were at one, two, three in the morning, and nothing good happens at three in the morning, ergo, I was fine.

By the end of 2015 I was writing about wanting to kill myself so my wife could take our baby to San Antonio and they could be happy together. Every time I drove out to Santa Fe for an audition, I thought about pressing all my weight into the gas pedal and suddenly veering to the right, hopefully to explode and catch fire and stop existing, my body unrecognizable, hopefully burnt, hopefully not too bad for my family to deal with because maybe if we were all lucky, I would have been melted or charred and the wreckage would have been jarring, but they wouldn’t have really had to see me in it. Just some body that happened to be mine. On the drive up to an audition, I had a horrific thought about some debacle in which Christina didn’t get Iris, that Iris somehow wound up with one of my family members instead of her other mom; the moment I had enough clarity to see that as a possibility was the moment I stopped thinking about killing myself. I drove back from Santa Fe and I thought, “Instead of this, I should fall in love with my life again.”

Christina was sitting on the chair near our fireplace, telling me about her day at work, and I was struck by how pretty she was. I laughed at something she said. She said, “Oh, am I funny to you again?” I finally told her that I thought that being alone with Iris was making me depressed, and she asked me what we could do, how we could get me out of the house. That week, we found a small retail space to rent and within a couple of weeks, we were planning how to build shelving. She was there with me, night after night building and getting ready to open. The moment I shared with her the smallest part of me she was there to help. The worst of it was over. For me.

The worst of it for her is hitting now, years after feeling eroded. Years after not recognizing me, telling me she didn’t recognize me, and me insisting she was wrong. I can only empathize with her.

Last night, I finally talked with two of my younger sisters about the depression that I had experienced and what is going on with me and Christina. They have been unable to see how a relationship like the one between my wife and I could possibly end; they have said things like, “You guys are so good together, I love coming over here”, “Your family is so amazing though,” and “You guys are the reason I thought that I could be okay.” I talked to them about how trauma that I experienced as an adult was way different than experiencing child as a kid. I told them that I made Christina feel terrible when I felt terrible. I told them about my isolation and wanting to reach out to a person who had already shown us he was a terrible person. I told them I wasn’t honest with Christina about my depression. They threw down some “remember whens” that made it really clear that I wasn’t hiding from anyone.

• “Remember when you stopped showering and you stopped using deodorant and I stopped hugging you and you were like, “This is okay, I just smell like a person” and I was like, “No, Tabby, this is not okay you smell terrible.”

• “Remember that time I said I was hungry and you told me to go ask a stranger for money because you wouldn’t buy me food because you said you didn’t need to eat, so I shouldn’t need to eat?”

• “Remember when we had to ask Christina for everything because you would say no to literally anything we ever asked for?”

• “I didn’t want to come over because you were such an asshole sometimes. You were like, really an asshole.”

It's been years, but feelings aren’t linear. Feelings are all right there, in our heads, just waiting to be accessed, waiting to be triggered like no time has passed.

I am writing today to encourage you to be honest with the ones you love. Not being honest just makes you an asshole. It makes you

insufferable.