I Couldn't Care Less: The Undiscovered Country
Created | Updated Dec 21, 2014
The Undiscovered Country
'Do you know what it's like to dread getting a text?' That particular question goes back about two and a half years to when I was regularly attending a support group for carers of people with mental health problems. I met various people over that time who dealt with a variety of challenges. One man, who I've mentioned here before, had to cope with three dramatic suicide attempts. I've known several people supporting current or recovering alcoholics. It's a form of caring that is often invisible because mental health issues aren't easy to talk about. So in this entry, under cover of the fact that I've made up a lot of stuff about who they are, I'd like to shine a tiny light on what these people are living with.
The text message dread came from Nancy. Nancy works. Nancy's husband who has trauma induced depression, has not worked for some time. At his best he could go for days getting nothing done. She would come home to find that he had watched TV all day and the washing up was festering in the sink. At his worst he was talking openly about suicide. Whatever he was feeling, he would text her, sometimes all day. When he was very low she could easily receive sixty or seventy messages berating her for imagined slights, complaining about the world in general and threatening to jump out of a window. All this time she was at work, trying to decide whether the threats were serious and whether she should go home. It's pretty difficult to do your job with any degree of focus while you're being bombarded with the outpourings of a deeply scarred mind.
It sort of worries me how many people I have known who had fairly major problems with alcohol. Two of them are now dead, but the business of keeping the rest of them alive has been a deeply emotionally draining process for the people trying to care for them. It seems to be genuinely true that addicts can be extremely clever and accomplished at hiding their drink and their drinking. Derrek, whose wife also made three suicide attempts, used to search the house when she was out. If she left the room he'd taste her drinks to see if there was any alcohol in them. If he had time he would pour away and replace them. He told the group that he'd once tried to confront her about an empty bottle, he'd found, but that she'd denied all knowledge and become angry and belligerent. Trust between the two of them became really fractured because of her deceit and his illicit attempts to uncover it. He was horribly aware that his wife was on a path to self-destruction but there was nothing he could do to stop her. In the end, mercifully, she sought help himself and managed to get better.
One thing I'd like to point out is that the behaviour I have described is not the people but their illnesses. I think that sometimes carers are reluctant to discuss the challenge of caring for a person with mental health problems because they don't want to make you think badly of somebody they love. The person can often still be there most of the time, usually visible or apparent, but often overshadowed by the impact of their demons. For this reason the care that they need and get is not only immensely challenging but often unseen. If you only ever take one thing from these columns, I think that is what it should be.
