How did you feel?
Overall I just felt frustrated. There really wasn’t anything I said that helped the situation. I just had to be there. When the therapist first said Enoch would need a year of treatment I thought that was way too long and an exaggeration. In the end it took more than that.
How did you cope?
I had hope.
Eventually I learnt to manage the situations as best as possible. So even if we had to rush to the hospital, I may take a few extra minutes at home to pack myself a few books or change into comfortable clothes. This made it easier for me to deal with the long stays in hospital. I learnt to watch for signs that a migraine was coming and take steps to avoid the triggers, and pack medicine and water all of the time. Also, I learnt what treatments I could offer her. When she was crying and wanted to die and couldn’t sleep it was useless for me to tell her that everything would be OK and that life was worth living. She just couldn’t see my point. Instead I learnt to distract her with fairy tales and stories I would make up.
Did you want to give up? Why did or didn’t you?
When Enoch and I were on totally different wavelengths and she was bringing me down and I felt resentful I wanted to give up. I think I kept just saying to myself ‘lets give it one more month and see how she is” and I managed to get through. I was confident that it was a temporary situation. I had known Enoch for 1.5 years prior to the depression and she was such an amazing person, I knew that with time she could get back to that point. I also felt like the depression would make her stronger and be a change agent in her life and so maybe was a necessary evil.
We lived together and had just moved countries together and were therefore in a committed relationship. So this helped too as I was committed to taking care of her no matter what. I think if it had been a less serious relationship I may not have been able to stick through it.
高靖峰
奢饰品及零售营业顾问
在中国居住12年
Timothy Coghlan
Retail Luxury Brand Consultant
12 years in China