UPDATE: I forgot a very important point. (new #3) 

This has been one of the hardest things to that I have every attempted to write. I wasn't at a place where I could write this before the last couple of weeks. I actually took today off of work to give me the space to do so.

Lesson #1) We need to demolish this silly separation between mental and physical health. They are one and the same. All physical ailments have mental components, all mental issues impact the whole body. The distinction cause shame, guilt and incomplete treatment. 

Watching my father-in-laws cancer treatment, I am amazed at how often they leave out sensitivity to the emotional and mental components of his illness. Watching my wife's treatment all these years, I am dumbfounded at how no one is connecting her allergies, hormonal problems, weight, eating/exercising habits etc with her emotional state.

I don't have a fix, but I constantly wish we could get a "root cause analysis" session with all of her legions of specialists together in a room for a 4-hour period just comparing notes. 

Lesson #2:) While we are at it, we need to demolish the walls between Therapists-vs-psychiatrists. Talk/behavior modification-vs-drug treatments. It seems that you either get one side or the other. I have heard numerous proponets of both sides bash the other over the years. STOP IT!

My wife clearly had a medical issue that responded to drug treatment. Therapy attempts before the drugs were figured out were worthless. She was so unstable that without the drugs she wouldn't be able to even get through any other treatment. 

The problem is drugs didn't do it all. I mentioned incidents in the previous 2 posts that really turned her off to therapy that made seeking this type of help harder. The problem is, she was stuck in an un-healthy situation and no drug was going to get her out of it. She needed therapy desperately and she wouldn't go for many  years. None of her doctors hounded her to do this. They would just tweak the drugs. Failure for both sides. COOPERATION PEOPLE!

Maybe some people can "power through" it without drugs (but I doubt it, if they are as severe as she has been), but my wife was not one of them. I also highly resent comments like "they are weak if they need drugs." My wife is anything but weak. She made it through hell.

Lesson #3) Universal Health Care NOW DAMNIT! I make over 100K. I was able to get there realitively quickly after college. For the past 8 years I have had a job with outstanding health coverage. I just finally finished paying off our medical debt from our early 20s. This year she has had over 50k in non-elective surgeries that were fortunately completely covered by our insurance. 

Not everyone can do that, and I only did it at the expense of having 0 retirement savings by age 37. Anyone (yes, republicans, I mean you) that thinks that private, employer funded health care is a reasonable answer just hasn't had a family member get seriously ill yet.

I know public health systems have their own problems (rationing), but no one should teeter on the edge of bankruptcy or go homeless due to medical bills. I find it hard to believe that those impacted due to rationing of health care are nearly as impacted or as many as those in America that don't have it at all and desperately need it.

I find it tragic that the people that chant against publically funded health care are the same people who blame the homeless for being homeless. It is well established that a huge percentage of the homeless have mental health issues. See the previous 2 points. If we can only just barely do it with my income and health coverage, who can?

Lesson #4)  Depression/bi-polar and other "mental" illnesses directly attack the personhood of both the one who is ill and of all those around them. I have a hard time finding the right words here.

We DON'T talk about someone BEING cancer, or being leukemia. We DO talk about someone being crazy, or depressed or insane, or bi-polar. This is not accidental.

When you have a severe mental illness over a long period, your brain changes, your personality changes, your memories change, you change.  I feel like I watched the slow death of the woman I fell in love with. The person I am now married to is a very different person.

Lesson #5) Don't seek to assign blame. It sounds strange, but I made it through all of those suicide episodes in our marriage because I came to view her condition as one that in a high percentage of cases was fatal. Suicide was another potential impact of her illness. I was able to avoid the whole "if she loved me she wouldn't kill her self" trap. I KNEW she loved me. I knew that wasn't what this was all about. I also knew that if she did die, that it wouldn't have been either of ours fault.

You don't seek fault/blame when someone dies of another disease.

Lesson #6) Good communication really is the essence of a good relationship. We have been married through 15 very difficult years. We made it, in large part due to our communication skills. We didn't take her illness out on each other. She didn't demolish my self worth in an attempt to build her own (as so many severe depressives seem to). 

Lesson #7) Being a caretaker sucks.  I have hard that caretakers of chronically ill people die before the people that they take care of. I believe this. 

I don't think  I am naturally someone who needs to take care of others, but I became a good care taker because I loved my wife and she needed help. I could do nothing less.

This illness took my wife from me even though she is still here. I became a wage-earner, housecleaner, hugger, instead of a spouse. I came to hear "I love you" to mean "I need you."  I know that she loved me as much as she was able to for the last 15 years. but her illness forced her to focus on herself. Marriages need 2 people.

No one who has ever been a long-term caretaker will be surprised to hear that my needs became a distant second place to hers. Both from her perspective and from mine. This is how I got to be 340 pounds, pre-diabetic and exhausted all of the time. My friend saved my life last August.

Lesson #8) Love and commitment are essential.  We made it these years because we love each other. I love her just as much today as I did the day we married. I have given so much of myself and of my dreams on the altar of keeping her alive and healthy. I don't regret any of that.

I am completely for Gay marriage in part because of this. I know how having the marriage commitment gave me the strength to stay with her. To keep going when I thought I couldn't go on any more. I would have just walked away several times in the past without that legal commitment.  I believe in love, but I also believe that legal commitments can help you get through when love fails. I can't stand a system that says that I can have that bond, and yet a gay/lesbian couple can't.

Lesson#9) all of that... medicines, therapy, communication, not blaming, love and commitment are not enough. The person with the illness can't stop struggling against it.

Again, I don't really know how to say this.

My depression I talked about in the past post was caused by me weighing my long-term happiness and health against hers. I couldn't find a solution that had us both as happy and healthy as we could be. At the same time I had these tastes of what a full life could be, and I needed more. But I didn't want to sacrifice my wife to achieve it. I needed to be able to look myself in the mirror. 

The Move-to-California plan was our attempt to find a middle ground--get her better treatment, while putting me in an environment where I could thrive. I ultimately came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to work: it would have taken more effort to pull of than my wife would put into it. 

I don't think she believes that she can ever live a better life than she has now. Her life now  is spent leaning on me and on her family for support. She does very little of anything to support herself--despite my desperate pleading and her comparatively good health.

I believe to the depths of my soul, that she will only get better when she has to strive and struggle again to take care of herself. She can't seem to do that when I am around. I am completely run down from so many years of focusing on her. 

I had 2 more visits with my Therapist. He helped me come up with a new plan that will allow my wife to learn to care for herself. She will have the money to finish her college degree. She will need to get a job on her own in roughly three years. She will have the financial support to get through the next 3-5 years.

On her own. I have nothing more to give.

I moved out at the beginning of May and got a room in a house in Seattle. I am happier, healthier and more stress free than I have ever been in my adult life.

I am divorcing the woman I love and I weep over it.