From the Shores of the Abyss: A Wife's View

My name is Kathleen Laning. I am Nicholas' wife. I was there for the last two years of his depression. Here is my first post:

Looking at someone you love, struggle with anything is difficult. But watching their soul and heart disintegrate day after day from depression breaks your heart in a deeper way. You feel helpless for them, yourself, you ache, you feel tired, you feel alone. So much can be twisted in your own head while your loved one weeps on your chest: their tears turn into a river and you feel your heart swept into the Abyssic Ocean with them. You taste their bitter sense of dread, like the salt in the thick, black waves. Hopelessness beats at you, tempts you... just an easy slip under that swirling, black water: release, rest. You fight back, gasping for air, holding your loved one as they are under the water, something unknown pulling them deeper. In your head you try to form a lifeboat out of ideas and solutions, but they aren't really there. They try to form, but fall apart, and no lifeboat appears on the stormy waters. The disillusioned remnants of your own strength prove a lie, covering the water, black and useless like spilled oil. The waters of pain are too deep, the waves too big, for you to conquer on your own and pull your love's body up, finally up out of the infinite depths. Then light streaks through the clouds and you feel a shard of hope. You can't express it fully to your loved one who is yet trapped beneath the waves of pain, but you hold on to them with renewed vigor, by the strength that's been opened up for you to use... like God sent a helicopter, shining a spotlight onto you, dropping down a life preserver for you. But why not two floats for both of us? One is enough and He gives it, lovingly. You hold on to His preserver, or rather it holds onto you, in my mind it is Christ, there in the waves, experiencing the pain, knowing what it is like, graciously sustaining you. You receive further strength, to hold fast to your love under the tumult of waves and give them the truth that in their mind feels only a lie, "It will be okay, He has us. It will end. He cares for you." You hold onto your loved one. You endure with the strength you needed and never had on your own. The strength they need to tap into to survive. Time seems to drag and though you can't see it, you hear the helicopter again. It's circling back. Although it may not be in full sight through the dark clouds, you hear it. It's coming. Your rescue.