Thirty-Three

Today I am trying to fight the good fight, to battle against the depression and anxiety and loneliness, to wage my war against myself. My melancholy continues, but instead of allowing it to wash over me and drag me out to sea with every wave, I am hoping to dig my feet into the sand and hold steady. I have so much good going on in my life, at a time when many Americans are drowning in despair and uncertainty and poverty. I am trying to focus on all the positives, instead of dwelling on the negatives. I have so much, I must ignore what I feel- rightly or wrongly- that I don't have. Instead of complaining about not spending enough time with A, I should feel grateful that my husband- unlike many others- has a wonderful, well-paying, stable job he goes off to every day- a job that he not only likes, but enjoys. His job, those long hours when he is gone, allows us to have a worry-free existence. When he is not here, I should stop counting the hours I am alone and instead be genuinely happy that he is not here sitting around the house with me, either unemployed or disabled or ill. It has been days upon days without the sun shining on me, literally. We have been covered in thick clouds for it seems several weeks now here, no rain, just dark swirling humid clouds that cover the sky but bring no much-needed rain. Add that to the heavy dark wood blinds that keep our windows covered- and the AC bill down- and I have spent days on end in heavy gloom. I turn on every light and lamp in the house, even light candles, but the small circles of artificial light seem even more depressing and only seem to illuminate my sadness. And still the air outside is heavy, oppressive, muggy, almost like a living thing that holds me down with its damp weight. I know autumn is on its way, and with it, relief from the summer season that I have come to despise all my life. I look forward to cool breezes and bright blue skies, colorful fall leaves and apples and local festivals. Summer has long been my enemy, and this year has been the worst of them in all my 40+ years. I count the days until the seasons change, hoping that my mood with shift with the falling temperatures. Many people suffer their depression in the winter, when they stay huddled up inside, the sunshine of the shorter daylight hours eluding them. Summer has, for me, always been a time to withdraw from the world outside, where I stay as close to a fan or AC vent as possible, where I remain still so that I don't sweat, don't feel hot and sticky and gross. I've always hated summer, even though being a southerner, I have spent decades in the heat, the choking humidity that makes hair damp and clothes cling wetly and zaps energy from my body and my brain. Summer is not a friend to the chubby. But winter is my favorite time of the year, when my energy returns, and I throw back the curtains and go outside. I long for it this year, whether or not my situation has changed. Whether or not I'm employed again. Today I raised all the blinds on all the windows in the house, and even though there is no sun shining outside, it has still made this house feel less like my cage and more like my sanctuary. Last night and this morning, I have been sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch and instead of feeling so alone on this dead end street out in the middle of nowhere, I tried to find peace of mind and a calmness, taking in all the silence. I can sit for hours, and not see one other person walk by or a car drive down my street. I see no neighbors in their yards- the stay at home mommies on my block are deep inside their own caves. I see only the tall growth of brush in the empty lots across the street, swaying with whatever wind is blowing, and I am suddenly glad there is nothing but quiet woods across the street from me. I hear nothing but crows cawing, bugs chirping, frogs calling, squirrels rusting in trees and bushes, hear the chatter of chickadees. There are no traffic noises, no human voices, only the occasional hum of our AC unit kicking on. Instead of wallowing in the self-pity of isolation, I am embracing the lack of man-made clatter and taking in the sounds of nature. How lucky I am to not deal with the echo of gunshots, the screams of fighting neighbors, the shrills of police sirens or ambulances, the earth-thumping stereos of passing cars. I know they are out there, somewhere, but miles and miles away from me, deeply entrenched here in the solitude of the rolling green hills and thick forests and small family farms. Nine months now I have been without a job to go to, left alone here in this big, empty tomb of a house. Long enough to have carried a child and given birth. Instead I have been carrying around pain and loneliness, pregnant with anger and bewilderment at my new surroundings, feeling almost betrayed and abandoned, when all A did was take a new job to secure our future. But I don't want to give life to those feelings anymore. Feeling this way has been a burden for me, a burden that sometimes overwhelms me to the point that A has to pick me up and set me back on my own two feet. It is time, overdue, to cast off this ridiculous cloak of depression I have disguised myself with lately. A disguise that is so great, I can't even recognize myself on most days. Where is the old me? It is time for her to come out of the shadows and back into the light.

Sixteen

Saying something out loud does not necessarily make it so. When A comes home from work and asks me if I had a good day, and I say yes, who is it really hurting that I've lied to him? Me? A? Would it be more hurtful to A if I told him the truth? That I sat around the house all day with a miserable empty brain, wondering what I should be doing, wondering why I did not go back to bed the minute he left for work that morning, with not enough energy or desire to even turn on the TV? Does he really need to know that I sat for hours, sulking in unprovoked and unsubstantiated anger, at my past, at life, at fate, at the happiness gods who forgot about me long ago? Yesterday found me spinning my wheels, as always, and accomplishing nothing. Running household errands gets me out of my prison long enough to pick up A's dress shirts and pants from the dry cleaner because I am so useless I can't iron them properly, to pick up more food for the cats because I'm so self-centered I've let them almost run out of it, but then it's back to the dungeon. More hours of staring at the wall, trying to decide what to do because there is so much that needs to be done, but never doing anything because I can never decide where to begin. I started taking St. John's Wort a few days ago, because I've always read it's for "mild" depression, which I'm self-diagnosing for myself. Add that to the mix of pain medication and sleeping pills I take every day, and we'll see how or if it helps any. I don't want to be deliriously, bounce-off-the-walls happy, I just want to feel normal and balanced. I try to do all the things I read in the health magazines to combat mild depression- exercise, get enough sleep, get outside for sunshine, take vitamins, stroke the pets. Some days I think it's working, and I feel better, but some days I just want to mentally check out. A is out of town on business today, and he said he will be home later than usual. I feel almost relieved, as I did last night when he said he was going to hang out with his buddy after work for an hour or so, since we are leaving for vacation soon and they won't see each other again for a bit. Maybe he avoids coming home lately, I don't know, I hope not and yet I wouldn't blame him. He's always worked long days, 12 hours, but it seems since we moved here last year and he started his new position, he works even longer days. And I don't understand, because now he's an even bigger boss with more people under him. Why can't he delegate, and come home to me? Why do I whine about him not coming home early, yet say I feel relieved when he comes home late? It doesn't make any sense. I miss him during the day and want him home, but when he's not here I'm super okay with it, or do I just convince myself of that in order to fight against the loneliness? Vacation starts in a little over 48 hours, and I will be surrounded by A and family for five days and five nights. I am not sure I will survive, but on the outside everyone will just see me having a nice time, relaxing on the beach, engaging with relatives, shopping for clothes, going out to eat, hanging out at the BBQ's, going out on the boat. All the things a normal person would do on vacation, all the things that are expected out of me, but for much of that time there will be no great, true happiness behind the motions and the smiles and the laughs. But not one of them will know it, so what does it matter? Isn't it more important that the family thinks I'm happy, than for me to actually be happy? Only A will know it, recognize it, later on at night when we're finally alone in our own bedroom at the beach house, when I can sigh deeply and let down my guard and allow the smile to finally fade from my face. He will know it then, and ask me what's wrong, and I will answer nothing I'm just tired. It's sometimes difficult for me to go back and forth between my two blogs, because they are so different. My other blog, which I've been writing for some time now, presents me as the epitome of excitement and happiness and shows me as the joyful wife and homemaker, and blogger friend who posts lots of fun photos and has tons of cute widgets with bright colors all over my page, and I leave encouraging and humorous comments on all my blog friends' posts. Then I come over here and post what is really on my mind, and I've left this blog plain and unassuming for a reason. Complete anonymity and freedom. I am following a few blogs here, but I don't intend to ever leave comments, and I don't intend to respond if I ever get comments on this page. I'm not looking to engage in conversation with friends on this blog. I'm not even hoping to get comments, because I'm not wanting moral support or understanding. If you read me, that is okay, I wouldn't be writing it here instead of the pages of a spiral notebook journal if I didn't have expectations that someone might read it. But I am only here to work things out for myself, to put in writing what's in my head, so I can go back and look at it a few days or weeks later, and to maybe one day figure it all out, to have that light bulb go off suddenly over my aching head. I can't put a finger on when I started feeling this way, unhappy, loss of emotions, loss of interest. Was it when I married X, or when I started to gain monumental weight and felt gross about myself, or when I hurt my back and started down the dark road of chronic pain, or when I gave up my job and moved away with A to this hick town where I now spend my days all alone? I don't know. It may be that all of these things have slowly compounded throughout the years, to lead me to this point in my life. How does a wife tell a husband that she is so bad off in her head that on some days she doesn't even take a shower until an hour before he comes home for the evening? That she doesn't even care when he comes home, that he IS home? How do I tell A that the real reason I didn't clean the house is not because of my back pain, but because I just really don't care that the carpet is dirty? That the real reason I overspend is because I feel dead inside and that each time I'm hoping that the next new pair of earrings or the $300 purse will make me feel better about myself? That the hundreds of dollars worth of flowers I insisted on planting in the garden when we moved here are now a laborious chore to tend to that I have come to hate and don't care if they die? I started a gratitude journal some time back, I know it is hokey but I thought it could help me. Five things a day, that's all I made myself write. Number one on my list every day was that A came home to me. I used to write it thinking I meant that he wasn't killed in a car crash, or didn't have a heart attack at work, that he came home to me alive. Now I am starting to think I mean I am grateful he just came home to me at all, that he didn't finally say to hell with it, that he didn't give up on me quite yet, that he decided I was worth loving and living with. I am tinkering with the idea of trying to start another novel. I've written so many of them, but they were all back when I was in my 20's and still living at home. I got rejection letters from many publishers, but at least I tried to get them published. Maybe now, over 20 years later, my inner voice has changed and I can write something more meaningful than the fluffy historical romances I tried to write back then. It seems as though people are now more accepting of dark or sad, truthful stories about women, about life. Wish I could pen a best-selling spy thriller about a manly secret agent and get rich from it, but that's just not what I'm about. They say write what you know best. For me, it's the secret painful life of a housewife stuck out in the country alone. Don't know if anyone would want to read that. But maybe it would be therapeutic for me to write it all out in novel format, instead of daily posts on this blog, where my readership seems to be zero so far.

Twelve

I don't know if what I have is considered depression or not. Is there a definite line between depression, or being in a bad mood, or just feeling blue, or being lonely or unhappy, or "going through a spell"? Or are the borders blurred? I've never once considered suicide, have never even thought about it. I've never thought about hurting myself or anyone else, I don't fantasize about jumping off a bridge or driving my car into the oncoming lane. I don't sit around my house crying. I am definitely not trying to escape life, I am trying to feel better emotionally and find my place in the world. A is the only person who knows the depths of my unhappiness, and I'm not sure that even he knows just how deeply those feelings run. One thing I did used to love, was my job, and for the first time in my career I really DID love my job and I felt like I belonged and I felt like this was the place I was always meant to be, the place I had been searching for my entire working life. My job was nothing spectacular, my college degree was in computer programming (from back in the 1980's), and my job was a simple one, in a simple office, and I was only a data entry operator. I was there for nearly a decade, and I was THE person in the office to come to for an answer, for information, for assistance, for advice. I scored the highest every year on evaluations, and I got the biggest raises each year. I was excellent at my job, and took a great deal of pride in it, and in fact I was quite arrogant about it. The position was originally three people doing the work, then two, then just me because one by one I absorbed their work and they were let go. I was that good, that quick, that accurate. I knew everything about the system, I knew everyone in all the departments, and if I didn't know the answer I was not shy about going to whatever lengths I had to in order to get a response. But, that's gone now, and am I bitter? Has it led to this angry, overwhelming sense of nothingness I feel about myself now? I'm sure it has. But I can't be bitter, I have no right to feel so indignant, because I left my job willingly, to support A's promotion at his company, where he is now the director, and soon in line for vice president. He could have turned the promotion down, if I'd said no don't take it, I want to stay here at my job, in this town, in our home. But I said go for it, I'll give up my job, we'll sell this house, I'll go wherever you have to go. And so here I am, unemployed since last year, alone in a beautiful house, a kept princess if you will, a lady of leisure- while A goes off to his career every day, happy, fulfilled, a needed man with a mission, with goals, with projects, with co-workers. I have nothing of that anymore, and every day my sense of loss gets worse. I know there are millions of people in this country without a job, and most of them had their jobs taken away from them without warning, against their will. They teeter on the brink of poverty, of losing it all, of their family's destruction. I gave up a job that was secure, that fulfilled me, that gave me a purpose and friendships and praise from others, that gave me my own money to spend as I wished because A has always paid all the bills from his salary. I gave it up, and I don't have to worry about a financial crisis, or losing health insurance, or my house going into foreclosure. Sure, something drastic could happen, and A could lose his job suddenly, and he tells me all the time not to worry about it because if it happens, it happens, and it will be out of our control. But we won't fall, and we won't fail. I know this. Although I think of myself as sullen, antisocial, cynical, sad, lazy, judgmental, hateful, angry, conceited- for some reason none of that comes across to the outside world. Friends would say I am cheerful, sweet, funny, happy, helpful, loyal, smart, pretty, lucky, stylish, clever, industrious. People at work would always say to me- you are always smiling and laughing, you are always so chipper. Does that mean they don't really know me? Or is THAT the real me, and I just see myself differently with my fucked up perception? Am I a big fake, a phony- and if so, which is the real me, and which is the impostor? I can't even answer that. Even A, knowing that I feel unhappy, will tell me I'm loving and sexy and intelligent and thoughtful- when all I feel like is a dried up dog turd. My best friend of many years, the one who knows all my dirty laundry, thinks I'm the nicest and funniest and warmest, most caring, confident person she's ever met. She knew me back when I was married to X, and she's been with me all through my life with A. And she loves me and thinks I'm charming, witty, comforting, unerringly delightful, pleasant, and a gem to be around. Why does everyone I know, think of me this way? Am I that good of an actress? Do I have everyone fooled? Or am I fooling myself? Am I trying to convince myself I am miserable and depressed, to give myself license to be lazy, or selfish, or unproductive? I don't know, but it bugs me. I go through that with A, and I tell him thanks for being so nice to me, and he responds that he is not a nice person, when I know he is the most generous and kind man in the world. So, maybe we all have misconceptions about ourselves, maybe we are not as horrible as we think we are, maybe we are all a little too hard on ourselves. I don't know. I do know that I feel insignificant and lost without a job, even though financially I don't "have" to work. Emotionally I feel as though I must. Without a job, a career, I don't know how to define myself, my day, my life. And what do you do deary? Oh, nothing. All day, nothing. Every day, every week, every month, nothing. Is this black hole I've been in for so long now, because I don't have a job to go to every day, because I don't have a meaningful purpose in life? A would say my purpose in life is to be happy. That may be a goal, but that is not a purpose. I want a job, but we live in the middle of the countryside, and the nearest town is small and redneck and full of fast food places and gas stations and Wal-Mart, and even those places aren't hiring right now. As soon as we moved here, I put my resume in with staffing agency after staffing agency, hoping to find something in the much large metropolis thirty minutes up the road. I got smiles, and impressed nods of the head, and assurances that if the economy was better they could place me right now in a job, but right now they had nothing to offer me. Lots of people out there need jobs, to support families, to save their homes from going back to the bank, to keep their car from getting repossessed. I don't want to take a job away from someone like that, someone who HAS to have it, to survive, to avoid homelessness. But I want to start waking up in the morning, with more on my schedule than making A a pot of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal, and packing his lunch for him so he can drive off towards the big city and enjoy his purpose. Where is my purpose? I want one again.

One

I have another blog, full of fun colors and happy stories. I want this one to remain anonymous. No photos, no names, nothing to give away my identity to friends and family and other bloggers. So I can write what I want without any worries that my relatives will think I've gone psycho or delusional on them. A blog where I can talk about the things that maybe I don't want the husband or the parents or the best friend to know about. A blog where my thoughts are just for me, a diary of what's in my head, what's wrong with me, and I don't care if I get followers or readers or comments. I get a lot of that on my other blog, which is cool, and I enjoy it and love the chitchat and the sunshine and the flowers and the hearts. But I have a dark side to me, that no one knows about. I'm miserable, unhappy, sad, feel like crap every hour of my life. No, I don't need professional help, don't need to talk to someone in an office. I get along with life fine, and smile at everyone, and take care of my husband's needs, read good books, see the family, take vacations, pet the cats, work in the garden, shop for clothes, make great dinners, get plenty of sleep, drink lots of water. All that good stuff that life is supposed to be about. But there are days I wonder why I bother. I wonder if, I never got out of bed, would anyone but the husband even care? And at some point, I wonder if even he would care? After all these years, I think he is used to it by now. I call them my blue moods, or I tell him I'm in a funk, and I just apologize when I take his head off for the smallest slight. I know better, but the meanness just comes out of me anyhow. So this is my blog, where I can say all that black, unforgiving, angry junk that I wouldn't dare say to any friend, or even a stranger on the street. Where I can say anything I want and not have to worry about embarrassing myself or my husband, and where I won't worry about coming off as screwed up or conceited or lazy or whatever else you can throw at me. I'm not concerned about comments, I don't know any of you and you don't know who I am. So we're even. If you read me, fine, I don't really care. I am not doing this to gain followers or rack up hits. I've got all that on my other blog. Consider this my online journal, my life and times, my way to get it all out of me and onto this blog. It eats me up sometimes, I've got to let it go. Warning- I'm unemployed and love to write and have lots of time on my hands- I will probably post more than once a day.