Things have been difficult at home. The last time my husband tried to talk to me about anything deeper than the weather, my brain shut down. I fled to bed and was asleep at the earliest opportunity.

That, in turn, sent him into meltdown and he’s been in a bad place for the best part of a week. I’d be woken up in the wee hours to hear him screaming into his pillow.

When he is overwhelmed, he cannot sleep. When I am overwhelmed, I go comatose.

I decided that I needed to talk to somebody. So I reached out to my counsellor.

I think the last time I saw him was January, shortly before I started couples therapy. At the time of writing it is late July.

Seeing him felt like reconnecting with a dear old friend, and the hug he gave me felt real and warm.

We went into the therapy room and I began the brain dump of the last six months. Things got out of order and there was no logical narrative, but that was ok: it was what I needed.

After a while, I paused and breathed deeply. I felt relaxed. I was back in a space where I could say anything I needed to without unpleasant consequences. Relief!

I’d brought six months of emotionally dense junk to sort through. Key events included the end of couples counselling and the end(?) of our marriage (the hopes and fears seem almost interchangeable at times), the husband asked me to buy him out of the house, my trip to London, and how incredibly relaxed I felt there without the tension and failed hopes and expectations of homelife – Cicero accepted me exactly as he found me.

Richard (my counsellor) stopped me a couple of times to either ask questions or to make sure that I recognised things. Things such as how relentless my husband’s illness and the demands it places on us – me – are, that I prefer honesty but it is pragmatically impossible in our marriage, that we – I – am at emotional capacity and do not have the capability to handle much else (hence brain turning to glue at the slightest difficulty, making conversations with my husband and the joint therapy exceedingly difficult).

I observed that our relationship is making my husband much more ill than he would otherwise be. The evidence for that is that there have been way fewer instances of him going into his dark place since I told him about being non-binary and my need for surgery.

Of course, the other side is my almost perpetual migraines and that my brain gums up so easily now – and the realisation that I am finding it so difficult to do the things that I need to do for my own wellbeing, as highlighted by my recent high testosterone result: I am rarely going to the gym, I haven’t played the piano in weeks, I am not reading as much. All those things I need to do to balance my own mind and feelings and not being able to do them is making me ill.

I told him about the times recently that my husband has been seen by paramedics. That I have been unable to respond to the crisis in a way congruent with being a caring human being, and how shitty that makes me feel. Funny: I can feel shitty about not feeling.

Richard seemed to think that even if the crises are real, that my husband gets some validation of his feelings from the emergency services – maybe that is the payoff? I don’t doubt that these are genuine attempts on his own life, but perhaps I need to give credit that he knows that the validation from the emergency services helps pull his through – framing it like that feels better to me than assuming that he’s not genuinely suicidal and that he “gets off” on the attention – which is a human valid need. I feel relieved when they are there: for a while, somebody else is responsible.

It feels awful to think like that.

At this time, I feel that my marriage cannot continue until we both have recovered somewhat. We must learn to be friends before (and if) we can ever be lovers again.

I’m seeing Richard again in two weeks time – I’ll have to gauge how often I can afford to see him. There are no goals for this therapy, just a bit of support.

I know that I cannot do it on my own.