AN IMPOSSIBLE WIFE

The true story of a woman’s struggle with mental illness and her husband’s attempts to keep their family together.

Mitch Wasden was immediately charmed when he first met Sonja Nemelka in 1991 but lacked the confidence to ask her out initially; he was a sophomore at Utah Valley Community College and she was in the same year at Brigham Young University. Six months later, though, he transferred to BYU and their romance began, and it quickly turned serious. However, after they married and had their first child in 1994, Sonja’s affect changed from vivacious and optimistic to chronically listless and prone to inexplicable crying. Other aspects of her behavior became increasingly erratic; she secretly accumulated enormous credit card debt, cleaned the house with irrational intensity, rarely bathed, and began hiding and hoarding food. She also began speaking of suicide with alarming frequency. Eventually, Mitch had little choice but to have her involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which her father also had. Like her dad, she later attempted suicide. Siddoway, Mitch and Sonja’s daughter, sensitively and unflinchingly chronicles their fraught relationship, effectively showing how it pushed Mitch to his emotional limits and compelled him to choose separation. As he explained to Sonja: “For years you have leaned on me….I’ve just been trying to survive and keep our family from coming apart. But now that’s happened.” However, the book also tells of how Sonja’s mental health began to improve as the result of dialectical behavior therapy; as it does, it offers an emotional account of how Mitch and Sonja’s marriage remained a true love story—one in which they encountered and overcame extraordinary challenges. Throughout the work, Siddoway’s writing is journalistically precise and confessionally candid in its revelations. As a result, this book is not only an impressively nuanced depiction of mental illness, but also a moving account of an inextinguishable love.

An affecting work about maintaining devotion amid life’s difficulties.