i guess this thread is as good a place to start as any, seeing as my latest trigger was my divorce...

my husband and i have been together for 13 years and we have 3 children. i've been through depressive cycles as far back as i can remember (for a number of reasons) and finally a few years back i attempted suicide by overdose. at the time i was jobless and my third child still very young and i wasn't able to manage the cycle - 'get over it'...

i tried asking for help. my husband believes suicide/depression is just selfish and shows how little i care for him. i still said i needed help to find help. finally i gave up and found help on my own. i refused medication however and it was only after my attempt that i asked for meds. i took them for about 3 months and they seemed to help. i just stopped going to the therapist.

i 'pulled myself together' after that. i grew stronger internally and about a year later found myself a great job. all through this, he was pleasant enough towards me as long as i didn't become emotional or even talk about feelings other than my adoration for him... otherwise i was pretty much ignored.

a few months after re-empowering myself, i found him watching porn while we were away visiting family. instead of spending time in the same room as me and family, he was watching porn. i had to make a decision. to get emotional or upset would drive him further away, but i couldn't keep quiet either.

without going into details, we ended up enjoying almost a year of far better communication and dare i say, happiness? we were closer than ever before and i really felt he didn't despise me anymore.

then there came the internet and with it came the girls, all sweet, all adoring and all willing to enter into sordid conversations with him. he was only too happy to oblige. when i found out, i was horrified. i had what i thought was a healing discussion where we agreed on boundaries. however, the long conversations on the internet deep into the early hours in the morning didn't stop. as far as i could tell, the subject matter remained clean. for a while.

i don't want to bore any readers with too much detail, so i'll try keep it short. there came a girl he spent many hours chatting to and two years ago i found a particular conversation that would have won 5 stars on any porn site. i couldn't take it any longer. i left.

four months later, no longer cloaked in anger, i was miserable. i missed him and still loved him. he allowed me back. i've spent the past two years trying to not only manage my own 'condition' but trying to fix our relationship. he simply doesn't have the time nor the energy to either discuss anything of substance with me (mostly because i get emotional and hurt) or to discuss with a counselor. and all the while he comes off as the hero, the man who has this crazy wife to deal with, the ever-suffering great dad...

a few months ago i realised i was hitting my head against the proverbial brick wall. i know somewhere deep inside he's hurting too, but he's just not letting me in because i've hurt him far too many times (my tongue does tend to drip acid at times). divorce become the catch-phrase, but the only way he would go through with a divorce is if i did it myself. he doesn't have the time to fret about such things and honestly, i think he'd like to retain the 'hero/martyr' image. whatever his reasons...

once again, i have found myself jobless and disempowered but on an emotional level, i've managed to keep my 'crashes' to a minimum, usually recovering within 24 hours and a lot of sleep.

this weekend, i drew up divorce papers myself, having failed to find legal assistance. we even managed to discuss basic terms peaceably yesterday. i know it's the only way i can move forward - the stagnant pool was becoming too smelly... he gets the house and the kids, of course.

today i crashed. for the first time in many years, i want to die. i've started cutting again. i slept all afternoon and am still exhausted. eating is too much effort at the moment.

and that's where i am...