Tag Archives: divorce
Some thoughts on depression
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There are times when I look deep within myself and I ask “Why do you even care?” Tonight is one of those times. I’m depressed. This seems to be happening to me often lately. My ex used to accuse me of being bipolar, so while I was sitting here tonight feeling mopey I decided to look the condition up. Here is what WebMD had to say.
Bipolar disorder results in pathological mood swings from mania to depression, with a tendency to recur and remit spontaneously. Either the manic or the depressive episodes can predominate and produce few mood swings, or the patterns of mood swings may be cyclic. In bipolar disorder (manic), the manic phase is the current or most recent phase of the illness. The manic phase is characterized by elation, hyperactivity, over-involvement in activities, inflated self-esteem, a tendency to be easily distracted, and little need for sleep. The manic episodes may last from several days to months. In the depressive phase there is inertia, loss of self-esteem, withdrawal, sadness, and a risk of suicide. In either phase, there is frequently a dependence on alcohol or other substances of abuse. The disorder appears between the ages of 15 and 25 and affects men and women equally. The cause is unknown, but hereditary and psychological factors may play a role. The incidence is higher in relatives of people with bipolar disorders.
Sadly, I am not so sure she is wrong. I seem to have been in a high point for the last few months. Boundless energy. Undying optimism. The knowledge that everything was going well and going to continue to get better. In the last week or so I’ve watched all of that come crashing down around me. Not in any real sense, but mentally. I feel defeated. I feel hopeless. I feel like I’m wasting my time even attempting to better my life.
What’s worse is that this is all making me want to drink. Badly. I haven’t touched alcohol in almost a year, but not because of any sort of drinking problem. Because of a skin condition that I have that is irritated by alcohol. I’ve always avoided serious drinking on a regular basis, though, because my father was an alcoholic. So in times like this when I start really CRAVING a drink I get worried that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree on that one.
Christ, sometimes I feel like such a fucking mess. What’s worse is that I feel bad telling anyone about it. I feel like I am dumping my problems on them, or that I am going to be perceived as only saying something to get attention or sympathy. I should probably see a psychiatrist, but right now I really can’t afford it. I just had that confirmed today.
Oh, yeah. Another bright note to my day. I got my divorce paperwork in the mail today. There I held in my hands a stack of papers nullifying the last five years of my life. “Sign on the dotted line, son, and I’ll make all your problems go away.” I hate the fact that I’m getting divorced. I FUCKING HATE IT. No matter how many times I tell myself that the marriage was a sham. No matter how much better off I am without her. I still hate it. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
I was a good husband. I’ll never stop believing that. I did everything I could, and for nothing. In the end, I was replaced by someone who was more exciting than me.
Well kids, I’m off to Never-Never Land to try and find my Happy Thoughts, because right now I can’t fly, and I can’t fight, and I certainly can’t crow.
A feeble attempt at justification…
I’m almost 100% certain at this point that absolutely nobody is reading my rant pages. I know my site isn’t getting any traffic. This has a lot to do with the fact that I registered on several major search engines months ago and I’m still not showing up. Makes you wonder who you have to kill to get listed on a search engine these days.
Note how this doesn’t stop me from writing something here anyway. Call is a small bit of mental masturbation, if you will. Maybe I like to see my “oh so deep” rants up on the web, even if it is just for me.
I want to talk about freedom here for a minute. I’m not talking about political freedom, or religious freedom, or freedom of the press (all of which are very important and dear to me). I’m talking about personal freedom. I’m talking about the ability to be the person you want to be without having to compromise your ideals. I’m talking about the ability to do what you want, when you want to, and not have someone tell you that you shouldn’t be doing it.
I’m talking about the kind of freedom that a teenager encounters when first moving out of their parents home.
I’m talking about the kind of freedom you remember when your wife leaves you.
Now, I know there are a lot of people who would read this and say “MY wife doesn’t do that to me. MY wife let’s me be my own person.” You know what? That’s great for you. MY wife didn’t. My wife constantly put herself and her desires and her tastes in front of mine and, being the person that I am, I let her do it. I spent five years being walked on. Five years of not being able to listen to music as loud as I want when I’m at home. Five years of being told that some of the movies that I like are “ugly.” Five years of not being able to express my political beliefs without it becoming an attack on her and having it start a big fight. Five years of my friends not inviting me to do things because “we knew she wouldn’t LET you go.”
Five years of my life.
I’m thinking about this now because there is a woman in Ft. Lauderdale who loves me. A woman who wants nothing more than to take care of me. A woman who has already expressed a desire to live with me for the rest of my days and who would want nothing more than to be Mrs. Michael McGreevy.
And a woman who I have almost nothing in common with.
I knew we didn’t have a lot in common before going into things, and in retrospect I should have spent more time dwelling on that before we got together. I thought my feelings were going to overcome our differences, though. I was wrong.
I realized this was going to be a problem after meeting her and, unfortunately, being intimate with her. This of course makes it look like all I was after was sex, which is entirely not the case. It wasn’t the sex that made me start thinking of things. It was the time we spent together when we weren’t having sex. It was the conversations, the observations, the subtle things that I wouldn’t have noticed before I was married.
I’m not going to go into detail about what I saw here. It really doesn’t matter, and it will probably come off as me trying to justify why I feel the way that I do. Suffice it to say that we come from some radically different backgrounds.
I feel like I’m not making much sense here. I hope that maybe she reads this one day, and that she understands. That’s probably more than I can expect, but it’s what I hope for.
Maybe one day I won’t feel like a complete asshole.
Won’t be any time soon, though.