So, I disappeared off the radar, again - this time for good reason.  All of my spare time has been dedicated to contending with family issues at home.  The end result: My wife and I are entering into a trial separation, as of today.  Before anyone overreacts to this, I need to make this clear - it was a mutual decision.  We have taken this step BECAUSE we love each other and want to save our marriage.

Seems counter-intuitive, right?

It really isn't and I'm going to explain why so that maybe the lessons we've learned from all of this will help other couples in distress for the same reasons.  I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to write about this, but I felt I needed to articulate in writing our thought process - that and blogging always helps me process through my emotions, so...Here we go.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I've been struggling with PTSD and depression for years now.  Back on November 8th, 2010, my amazing and wonderful daughter, Caley, was born.  When I held her for the first time, I was overwhelmed with the profundity of my love for her.  It was at that moment that I had the insidious and destructive thought:  "If anything ever happened to her..."

My PTSD headed very quickly into a downward spiral and the depression followed, gleefully riding the coattails of my PTSD on the way down.  I withdrew completely from my wife and from my daughter over the course of the next year, leaving my wife to contend with caring for two kids on her own:  Our beautiful newborn, and me.

I hit rock bottom in early 2012 when my wife confronted me with my withdrawal and gave me the ultimatum:  Get help or we are leaving.  This sounds really blunt but my wife had tried every other way of getting my attention and nothing had worked.  I was so deeply in the throes of my own despair that I needed the emotional slap in the face to be able to see through the fog of my depression.  When I did, I was horrified.  I had emotionally abandoned my family.  The guilt I felt was crushing - so crushing that I seriously considered committing suicide so that I wouldn't be able to hurt them anymore.  That's how insidious depression can be.  I couldn't see the forest for the trees and almost deprived my daughter of a father and my wife of a husband - Not because I wanted to selfishly end it all, but because I couldn't see any way of preventing my family from getting hurt again.

To this day, I still don't know what, exactly, pulled me back from the ledge but I'm grateful that I found a way.  Just thinking about how close I came still horrifies me and always will.  Over the course of the next few days, I started to gain a bit of clarity and was able to make a compact with myself - that I would never, EVER, let things get this bad ever again.  I knew that the road ahead of me was going to be long and painful, but I needed desperately to be the Father and Husband I know I can be when the PTSD and the depression haven't taken me hostage.

Over the course of the next two and a half years, I have put in the work.  I've gone to therapy, learned how to effectively cope with my PTSD and depression, learned how to watch for warning signs that I may be headed in the wrong direction and also learned that I needed to remove as much unnecessary stress from my life as I possible could.

The end result: 

• I left a highly stressful retail job that paid shit money for an unexpected opportunity to actually work in my degree field.  My new boss puts family first and supports his employees doing the same.  He facilitates work/life balance.  For the first time since returning home, work didn't drain my batteries.  I came home with enough energy to be actively involved with my wife and daughter.
  
• I recognized that, while the meds I was on when I first got home from Iraq may have been necessary to keep me stable short term, the VA's strict admonition not to go off the meds no longer held any credibility to me (they hadn't changed my cocktail in years - even though my emotional state had changed drastically over those intervening years).  I went off the meds at the beginning of 2014 and it was a revelation.  I could think clearly.  I could feel the depths of my emotions, good or bad, and processing them didn't send me into a tailspin.  I felt truly liberated from the shackles that my medication had become.
• I wholeheartedly wanted to be affectionate and intimate with my wife again.  I didn't feel like I was going to hurt her.  I was moving past the guilt and was finally able to put my guilt over what I had unintentionally done to my wife and daughter into proper perspective.  I found myself eager to be there for every little thing that my daughter did.  I felt a need to catch up for lost time and to make sure that I never let it happen again.

Up until a few months ago, I thought that the whole concept of Post Traumatic Growth was a load of crap.  I found myself, all of a sudden, full of drive and energy and motivation to live life and live up to the ideals I had always striven for.  I finally felt I was WORTH fighting for.

What happened next completely blindsided both my wife and I.  It sucks and it hurts, but I think you will see clearly how we got to this point.

Over the course of the past few months, I noticed that my wife was getting angrier and angrier with me over the smallest of transgressions.  I started talking to her about it and expressed a desire to get help and get therapy, for both of us, if necessary.  Nothing ever came of it and I thought, after some very serious heart to hearts, that we were moving past the anger and emotional distance (things have deteriorated so far for my wife that she's completely emotionally closed off and unable to show affection or appreciation - we've been living like roommates for the better part of the past year).

Over the course of the past few weeks, things had gotten progressively worse between us and it seemed like the hurt feelings and emotional distance were gaining momentum, regardless of how I tried to reconcile with my wife.  The end result:  I told my wife that I couldn't live like this anymore - that I felt like I was walking on eggshells because the was angry all of the time and was either unable or unwilling to be intimate or reciprocate my affection.

That's when she said those fateful words:  "I think I need some time apart to clear my head".  I felt the bottom fall out from under me and I clung desperately to the edge of my sanity.

Over the course of the past week and a half, I've climbed out and things have settled down.  Yes, my wife and I are separating but it's a mutual decision and I'm going to take the time to explain why this doesn't mean the end of our marriage.

It was only after I had finally accepted what needed to happen that I just gone through the five stages of grief for the state of our relationship.  It's analogous to the stages of grief that a person would go through when the doctor had told them that their loved one being kept alive by life support was going to be taken off of it according to wishes presented in their living will - the machines would be turned off and the person would either breathe on their own or they'd die.  For our marriage, things were very much the same.  My wife needed to get the space she needed (turning off the machines) so that she could process through the intensity of her emotions and figure out whether she was able to move past them and recommit to trusting me and loving me the way she knows I need (finding out whether our marriage will breathe on its own).  Here's how the five stages of grief play into this:

• Denial - I had been reading the writing on the wall for months, but refused to admit it.  I denied it all that way up to the day where my wife asked for a trial separation.
• Anger - My initial response was to feel incredibly betrayed.  She had stuck with me through everything when my proverbial shit hit the fan.  Now, when her shit's in the air on a clear trajectory for the fan, she cuts and runs?  What. The. FUCK!  What a coward!
• Pleading/Bargaining - After the anger had run its course, I tried desperately to keep our family under one roof and tried every rationale I could think of to convince her to stay and work it out as a whole family.  It didn't work.  I was trying to cling so tight to my love and wife that it made her dig in her heels.
• Depression - With my current state being that of a renewed sense of purpose, I watched and guarded against this at all costs.  I may have felt down about what was happening, but not in an unhealthy way.  I allowed myself to feel my true emotions but constantly checked to make sure I wasn't headed back down the rabbit hole I have fought for year to climb out of.
• Acceptance - I knew I had to find a way to reconcile with what was going to happen - my wife wouldn't budge.  I just couldn't understand why she wasn't willing to take any intermediate steps in the process.  So I turned to the internet and started looking for blogs on the subject and found one that opened my eyes to what was really going on: (For the Full Article Click HERE)

After reading that excerpt, things started to make a whole lot more sense.  Our lives were financially stable, our work was stable, and most importantly, I wasn't only stable, I was ME again - the guy with the inner fire and the sense of purpose.  It was finally safe for my wife to not be in survival mode anymore and when she let down the walls she had put up to survive, she was completely overwhelmed with how angry she was.  She fully recognizes that I never meant to hurt her, but the end result was the same:  She felt like she had been betrayed and abandoned by me for the better part of the past almost four years, since our daughter was born.  As anyone will tell you, the more deeply you love someone, the more deeply you hurt when you feel abandoned and betrayed by him.

Wow.  Just....wow....

All of a sudden, I understood completely why she needed separation.  The emotions she was feeling were so intense that any time she saw me, it triggered her emotions and none of them were particularly happy ones.  The only way she could possibly start to work through all of this is by removing the source of the pain: Me.  So, a few nights ago, I explained to my wife that I accepted her need for separation and why.  Believe it or not, it was a huge relief for both of us.  Up until that point, my wife  was concerned that I wouldn't be able to find a way to accept her need for space and that the marriage would end before we even had a chance to work on it - not because we wanted it to, but because of irreconcilable differences.

Over the past few days, we've spent a lot of time getting on the same page and laying out the groundwork for separation and what it means for us and for our daughter.  By loving my wife and supporting her in her need for space, we have already started down the right road.  It may sound weird, but working together to coordinate the separation has been the closest my wife and I have been in years - because we are working together to save our marriage and working together hasn't been in the cards for a while now.  In the next blog post, I will detail our Separation Contract, what it entails, and why.  I could continue on and make this all one massive blog post, but this seems like a logical place to split it up.  I know that there are readers out there that are probably in the same position we are in and can't seem to find a way forward.  I hope that the struggle that I've gone through, both with the PTSD and Depression and with coming to terms with my wife's need for separation can help those of you out there that find yourselves facing a similar scenario.

Thank you all for your constant support and continued readership.

It's been a long month and an even longer beginning of the year.  Granted, the changes that have come fast and furious over the past few months have been positive changes.  They were changes, nonetheless.  You know what that means, right?  Stress.  Lots and lots of stress.  I know I haven't written nearly as often as I had been in the past.  I won't try to make excuses.  There are so many things that I have wanted to write about and I just couldn't bring myself to sit down at the keyboard.  Too much of everything was too raw.  After I stopped taking the meds, it's like every day and every experience has been an open wound and it has taken me a bit of time to adjust.  Quite honestly, I'm still adjusting, but at least now I know what I write stems from a position of sound mind and reason - not one held hostage by the anger and the fear that have come close to overwhelming me.

I really wasn't expecting it to be quite this intense, but it has.  My new job and my routine are what have brought me back around.  I just couldn't bring myself to focus on writing what I was feeling and experiencing when I wasn't even sure myself what my feelings meant.  Well, with the passing of this period of upheaval comes respite.  I now have the ability to make routines - routines that make time for myself, time for my family, time for coping and writing.  I'm learning to cope with my PTSD in a whole new way - a way that not only teaches me about myself but in a manner that will sustain me and give me the strength I need to help others.  So during my period of unintentional isolation and reflection, here's what has happened:

• I finally gave up smoking - even the smell of cigarette smoke turns my stomach now.  Every other time I tried to quit, I couldn't stand being around the smell because it made the cravings unbearable.  This time, it's different.  I can feel my body purging itself of all of the toxins that cigarettes put there.  After the physical withdrawal passed, I felt light, free.  I have used smoking as a crutch since I was still over in Iraq - no more.  I'm done running.
• I worked my last day in retail - and almost got run over in the parking lot.  My last day in my old job saw me working outside cleaning the parking lot and pushing carts.  It was a good day until the self-entitled punk yelled at me (the guy in the bright orange shirt) to watch where I was going.  News-flash, jackass:  you ran into me when you were busy talking on your phone and not paying attention to where you were pointing your car.  Never have I been so thankful to leave a job behind.  Retail is long, grueling hours for shit pay.  I wouldn't wish it on my enemies.
• I refocused my attention - I won't lie, the prospect of not getting 501(c)3 status until 2015 at the earliest almost pushed me to quit.  I had to step away from the non-profit for a bit out of frustration and disappointment.  I had to really evaluate whether it was something that I still wanted to pursue.  Not being able to effectively raise funds to support the non-profit made it impossible for me to pursue.  When you have to work full-time to support your family and you're doing non-profit work on the side, an inability to raise funds can seem like a death sentence.  What made it worse was the fact that the people I want to help (local veterans) have shown absolutely no interest in helping themselves.  The only veterans I know that congregate on a regular basis are the ones with well-pickled livers.  Our veterans don't seem to congregate to find support and solidarity.  We don't even show up for each other and we want the general public to treat us differently?  So, I've taken it upon myself to get out and lead by example.  I'll be out and about participating in activities for veterans.  I'll be focusing on creating that sense of community that we are missing terribly.
• Because of one racist asshole and one soldier that didn't get the help he needed and deserved, veterans have had more bad press in the past month than we'd gotten in years.  Like it's not hard enough for veterans.  Now the media is going to hyper-sensationalize this crap, thereby making it impossible for veterans to be viewed in a positive light.  Hey Media Outlets - you claim to be champions of social justice and you pull crap like that?  Where's the justice for veterans?  We didn't go to war so that we could return home to dwindling job prospects, a broken economy, and a general public that is scared of us.  But by all means, let's write an op-ed piece about the connection between military service and white supremacy and further drag our veterans' reputations through the refuse.  The rate they're going, the New York Times is going to find itself on the newsstand right next to the Star and the National Enquirer (where facts are an inconvenience).  I could say more, but I am reserving a very special place in my blog for the NYT and their idiot journalist.  Don't worry, it's coming soon.

Yeah, I think this blog post has been a long time coming.  I'm settling into a new lease on life and I am once again ready to share my struggles and my triumphs.  So keep your eyes peeled and your inboxes open, 'cuz I'm back and I'm not afraid to 'use my words'...

It all happened about a month ago.  February 28th, to be exact.  Mike Hawkins, Founder and CEO of Netizen Corporation reached out to me by direct message over Twitter.  I had met him a few years back at an event held by the local startup community.  He had a problem that he thought I could help him with.  It went like this:

Well, we met at a local diner a few days later and he explained to me what he was looking for.  He explained that even though I didn't have technical writing experience, he thought that my military background and my degree positioned me well for this kind of work.  He also said that it was obvious from my blog (yep, he reads this blog) that I have a very solid command of the English language.  He really wanted to give me the opportunity to try my hand at it.  He offered me part-time contract work at a very competitive hourly rate with the strong potential for it to turn into full-time work with benefits.

Talk about a no-brainer.  I took him up on his offer, incredibly grateful that someone, after seven years of holding a degree, saw my potential and was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.  I recently asked Mike via email if he minded me writing about all of this in my blog and he said he had no problem with it at all.

Today was a special day for me.  We submitted the first proposal that I effectively wrote.  That's no small thing, either.  These proposals are what garner contracts for the company.  If Mike wouldn't have gone out of his way to provide me this opportunity...Well, I'd still be working full-time in retail, not using my degree and losing confidence in myself with every passing day.

Thanks, Mike, for taking that chance.  You have my loyalty and dedication.  I look forward to working with you to make what happened to me a common occurrence for veterans everywhere.