5,3,1

So it's been nearly a year since I've posted here. It's also a day shy of my 5th wedding anniversary, a few months past my son's third birthday and a year since I started taking medication for depression.

Those are all milestones.

I will admit, it has not been an easy year. I wanted so badly for 2014 to be full of good things, and certainly we won't dismiss the goof things that have happened, a million tiny brilliant moments.

But the bad...how can you push aside events that rock the foundations of your life?

Something odd and ugly happened when i started to get better. It was like with the pressure of my problem relieving, my husbands rose to new and painful levels.His anger issues are not new, we've been addressing them for the almost ten years we've been a couple. But they've always been fleeting moments, intense but brief arguments. They got worse once we had our son,  because of the immense pressure on him to provide for his new family on a single income. He was scared, our economy wasn't stable, our friends were getting laid off left and right, and he had this tiny person depending on him and a wife who was falling apart at the seams. So while the outbursts were bad, they were still fairly rare. Then I started to get better, and things went rapidly down hill.

I don't want to get into specifics. I don't want to relive our dark moments, or demonize a man i love more than anything second to our son. The abuse was only ever verbal, no one was ever hurt physically but it WAS abuse. Emotional abuse is a real thing, and it's learned. There is no doubt his anger stems from a life time with a father who made sure he knew he would never be good enough, and treated the women is his life like things. I know why the anger exists and why it was aimed at me. I know how he hates himself every time it happens, usually within moments after it happens. But it happened. And that's not okay.

I had some very good friends help me through it, not just survive it but actively help me work to make it better. Never once did someone tell me to leave him, but never once did they let me think it was okay or healthy what was happening. I had a few friends too who dismissed it, saying that oh they do this every year for awhile, it'll stop soon, or they would get annoyed when I'd pull out of plans because I was scared of the aftermath at home. I even had people taking bets on whether or not our marriage would make it..

But we did, with counseling and antidepressants and a lot of very difficult conversations. We've come out stronger for it, healthier for it, and know that even as our legs are still wobbly from everything that's happened, we'll be okay. I am so very grateful for that.

I am still sad for no reason sometimes. I've learned to reach out then, and not hole up. I am still unkind to myself sometimes, I've learned to focus on something else and not feed that feeling. I am still paranoid about relationships sometimes, but I've learned instead of wondering to ask questions, trust that the people around me want to be there, and to let go when someone doesn't. I can do that because the medication turns those feelings down enough that i can think through them. It was never meant as a cure all, just volume control.

5 years of a love I have proven I am willing to fight for, three years of a tiny human being I am convinced is made out of distilled joy and stubbornness, and one year in the start of a journey to take care of myself.

Happy anniversary.