Rising From The Depths

     Rising out of the depths of depression was slow.  The nightmares had disappeared, but the depression and paranoia were still hanging around and would drag my husband back into the darkness.

     During the first five years after we moved to Savannah, he spent many hours a day sleeping - to bed at 7:30, up at 6 AM, and there was usually a half-hour to two-hour nap each afternoon. When he was up and about, it seemed as though he had to defend himself at every turn, and was quick with a sharp response if I had a question or suggestion about what he was doing.  After writing about the shootout, his snarly retorts lessened

The egg shells were still crackling under my feet.

     After a few months, he slept less in the afternoon, and he looked forward to going to play duplicate bridge on Mondays and Fridays.  As a couple, we have always played well together and still do. However, I was always concerned with how he would react to someone else at the table when there were infractions of the rules.  He would become very quiet or tell them very quickly and tersely what they should be doing, or not doing.  

     In the early part of our marriage, he was happy, helpful and kind. For the past thirty-five years, my husband was not the man I had married, but finally, I saw some improvement. 

Now all I had to do was hang in there.

     He continued to write, and the year after the memoir was published, the first novel was ready to go to the publisher. His smiles appeared more often and his afternoon naps were just a time for meditation and relaxation. 

    

     A year later another novel, Operation Piňata, was published. During that year, we both worked diligently to prepare it and have it available on Amazon.  This was not the easiest thing for us, especially him, as most of the work needed to be done on the computer. Regrettably, we feel we are aging because technology is changing faster than we can assimilate it.  We need to give our publishers, Outshirts Press, kudos for all the help they provided. They were always kind and patient with us.

     A few weeks, after the work was done, we had time to relax, and I finally realized my husband was no longer napping in the afternoon.  When I said something to him, he said, “Yeah, I guess I’m not, and I feel okay.”

     Every now and then, PTSD drops by and fires off a blast of paranoia and depression.  Because I have not noticed a panic attack in the past two years, I asked him about them.  He replied, "I still have them but I can control them."

He is doing a great job controlling his nemesis!

Finally -  The Culprit Is Unveiled

    I had urged him to write, and after we had finished the memoir, he was glued to the chair in front of his computer.   He was now zeroed in on writing which kept him interested in living.   During the six months that it took to get Foreign Service Family Style published, he was busy on a second book, a thriller novel.

     The story just seemed to flow out of the tips of his fingers, and now, he was lost in the book.  It seemed to me that this was just another way for him to hide, but in some ways, it was working.  As I edited what he had written, I recognized much of the action.  I had heard it before when he would entertain friends with his “War Stories,” as he called them.   The genre of this book could be classified as semiautobiographical if there was such a thing.  Many of the actions portrayed were things he had done, observed or had heard from other field agents.

     The odd thing was, he made no outline, nor did he have any idea of how the book would end because he just made up the story as he went along. To add to the oddity, he named his protagonist Joe Garner which had been his undercover name. It appeared to me that he was just reliving many of the things he had experienced.

                                       He was finally putting them on paper.  

     As the story developed, the locations of the action changed, and he began to search the web for information on different cities, states and countries.  He was beginning to live outside of himself, and during happy hour he talked about all the information he had found and how he was going to use it in the storyline.  I was relieved to see him so enthused about something instead of just sitting around or reading a book.

     Steady writing appeared to ease some of the tension, and I again began to delve into the reason for his depression. He was very hesitant to say anything but finally told me a bit about a shootout in Mexico. I did not push him to talk about it but did encourage him to get back to his computer and let his fingers tell the story.  It took him a month to put the story on paper.    

     I have read articles about people who have symptoms of PTSD and how life threading activities could leave lasting effects on them.  As I read his story, I now understood what may have caused his depression, panic attacks, and nightmares.   The best side of this exercise was his remark when he had finished.  

 

     “You know what.  I feel so much better.  I wish I had done this years ago.”

 

      We worked together to edit the story, and since he did not wish to share this story with the world, we printed a few copies to share with our children and a few trusted friends. Then he went on and completed the novel named Taurus, Taurus, Taurus.  It was published in 2016 and is available on Amazon.

       

Proactive Action Needed

     He stopped seeing the psychologist, and I needed to do something to help both of us.    It was time for me to be proactive.

    I urged him to write, and he responded. 

  “I have nothing I want to write about.”  

    I knew Gordon could write if he had the desire because he had written many reports during his twenty-five years in government service.   I suggested he could write about the places we had lived, and what we, as a family, had achieved and vacations we had taken.  Nothing stirred him to action.

    I finally made the decision to write about my life as the wife of a federal agent and how his job had changed the dynamics of family life.  When I finished my first article, I asked him to read it and was overjoyed when he showed an interest in what I had written and even made suggestions. 
  

 I finally saw a chink in his resistance.    

    To get help with my own writing, I joined a writers group at the Senior Citizen’s Center and hoped that Gordon would also become interested, as he was following me everywhere.  As I continued to write, we talked about how he had been selected for Foreign Service and what he and the family had experienced in Paraguay. 

     The lights came on! And what an idea!  It could be workable; it was confined to a short time-period, there was travel to a foreign land, and experiences with new people and many unusual cultures.  We would never run out of things to write about. 

      I made an outline of things that happened in Paraguay, actually two, - one on family life and one on his work as a DEA agent.  In the beginning, I was the only one writing, but I continued in hopes he would become interested in the project.  

   

     The writers group was not the easiest thing for me. What I wrote was critiqued and often torn apart.  At least that is how it seemed to me.  I would share all of this with Gordon, and we both worked on my rewrites.  I did not push him to go with me as I knew he would probably blow up at the criticism and storm out of the building.  After six months, he did start on his own outline, and he allowed me to read his work to the group, but it was another four months before he finally went with me and read his own story.

     Slowly he became comfortable with the group and quietly accepted criticism.  To my surprise, he became very good at critiquing the other writers and looked forward to the Tuesday afternoon meetings.

   Eventually, with the help of the group, the memoir, Foreign Service Family Style, was completed and published in 2014.  Life at home was a little better, but there was a long way to go.  

 We still had not discussed what had put him into this funk.

 

 www.rayneradventures.com                  Foreign Service Family Style