Another navel-gazing bit of self-analysis that may or may not ever be published.
I need help.
I can’t really think of any way my life has benefited from the events of the past year. It’s been, without question, the most miserable, soul-sucking, spirit-crushing time I’ve ever been through. I’m pissed off and resentful and sad and sometimes just plain shell-shocked. It’s affecting the way I interact (or don’t interact) with other people. It’s starting to affect my everyday life and keep me from doing what I want and need to do. Since I don’t seem to be able to fix it myself, I’m arriving at the decision that I may need some help.
Depression and resentment have been the big themes of my life for a year now. I’m depressed because pretty much no part of my life looks the way I expected it to back in 2010 when (for the first time in my life, in many ways) I dared to envision a future for myself–one that involved a new job that I loved (another first) and being together with a partner that I loved even more. If maybe not a sense of adventure, I definitely had a sense of contentment, as if the life I’d been hoping for and working for and planning for was about to start happening.
Then it all went to hell. I still had the job, but the life together was over. And to this day, I still don’t quite understand why. That’s how dense I am. All I have left is a lot of memories of how things were and reminders of how things no longer are. The memories make me avoid things I used to love–little things like the fair, Baskin Robbins, Star Trek, etc. The reminders are more sinister: a mortgage I can’t afford to pay on a house I can’t sell and don’t want to own anymore, the loneliness and anxiety I feel when I wake up at 4AM and can’t get back to sleep…
Just when I thought I was seeing some daylight (and maybe I was fooling myself) came all the stuff with my mom, which not only made me more depressed, but also emphasized how empty my life was and how little chance it seemed I was going to have to do anything about it now that I’d accepted a second full-time job managing every aspect of my parents’ lives–which was a bit ironic considering how poorly I’d managed my own. This pretty much sucked out whatever remaining joy I was finding in life at this point, replacing it with dread, panic, and almost constant stress.
And this was when the depression and general “wounded” tone began to add that dimension of resentment. This resentment was basically built around my feeling that almost every aspect of my life had been adversely affected (turned upside down, really) due to other people’s issues–based on things I essentially had no control over and no say in. Of course Mark didn’t start out with the goal of making my life miserable and he in fact has done all he could to make things easier, both financially and emotionally. My parents obviously didn’t lose the ability to handle their own affairs just to spite me. That the timing was so bad was just an unfortunate coincidence. But I resented it all just the same. And even though I know that when you have relationships, you share problems, I felt that most of my problems were not of my own making.
Frankly, I think I have some justification for both emotions given the constant assault of the past year or so. But that doesn’t mean it’s a healthy way to live. In fact, it probably borders on lethal. It’s caused a tremendous strain on my relationship with my parents and has made it very challenging for Mark and me to keep a fragile friendship alive. I want my parents to take care of their own stuff and leave me the hell alone. And every time Mark starts talking about his plans for the future, I want to scream and say, “I could have some exciting plans for the future too, but I don’t have the luxury of just walking away and sating ‘I don’t like my life anymore.’ You get to go have fun and do what you want while I get to pick up the pieces of what we were supposedly building together.”
The problem is that I’m having a hard time seeing any happiness in my future. That’s a dangerous place to be, and one that I’m not sure I can (or should) get out of alone.
When you are depressed, you don’t feel like doing things. When you don’t do things, it makes you depressed.
Bad weekend. The breakup is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Worse than the cancer. Aside from the sadness and the broken dreams and the realization that the rest of my life isn’t going to play out as I’d expected, there’s an incredible hit to the self-esteem and self-confidence. When you’ve essentially been dumped after ten years, no matter how amicably, there’s no amount of reassurance that can make you stop asking yourself “what the fuck is wrong me that made him need so badly to get rid of me?”
Add to that the fact that the second worst thing that’s ever happened to me has begun to transpire just as I’m dealing with thing number one and you have my current really bad state of mind. The “Mom with dementia” thing. This will eventually have a bigger and longer term impact than thing number one.
I could have dealt with either of these things individually. I could have coped. But both at once is just too fucking much. I feel hopeless, and I find that I don’t have anything to look forward to but misery for the next few years. And I’ll be experiencing it all alone.
Shrink? Anti-depressants don’t seem appropriate.
Help keep me focused and keep after me to keep on living my life. I used the cancer and the year of unemployment in Charlotte as a catalyst to chnage my life. I hope I can do it again.
Highlights from the weekend just past:
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Sucking face in a Japanese restuarant in Fresno while watching a bitchin’ band I like more every time.
- Having lesbians we’d never met buy us drinks at said restaurant/bar because we were such a “cute couple”.
- Realizing that the Wind-up Action Bender really worked and looked pretty damned cool (and being just a little peeved that it’s evidently on sale for half what I paid for it two months ago, so no link dammit).
- The “firestarter” technique. Don’t ask.
- Making it home from Fresno in a new personal record of two hours, twenty-six minutes AND being able to park, despite the rainbow-clad masses.
- Cold Comfort Farm.
- Mushy drunk talk.
- German sausage scramble on a hangover-free Sunday morning.
- Watching the most wonderful boy in the world hit the quarter century mark.
With Mark’s birthday out of the way, I guess it’s time to start pushing mine now. I’ll try to update the wish list shortly. And I think this year’s annual semi-public birthday gathering at Tad’s is on for Saturday 10 August at 8PM. But follow this space for further details…
I’m home. All in all, I think it was the best weekend I’ve ever spent in Fresno, but that’s all I’m saying tonight because the sleep deprivation side effects are kicking in. Pictures, commentary and all that sort of thing tomorrow. Perhaps…
You may resume your email now. And I’ll resume answering it at my own pace…
On Sunday morning, we spent a few hours trying to figure out what time it was, among other things. Then we had breakfast at a good Mexican place before driving around and taking even more pictures (many of which will be here at some unspecified point in the future).
Then it was time for me to make my obligatory stops by the cheap cigarette store, the cheap supermarket, and the cheap gas station, and to be on my way. I was home by 7:30 and only flipped off three people (all of them after I crossed I-680). I slept. It was good.
Funny, for my best Fresno visit ever, it doesn’t read very well. But I liked it anyway…
Despite lack of sleep, I wasn’t feeling too miserable for breakfast with Mark at the Chicken Pie Shop this morining, something I’d been trying to do since my first visit way back in 1993. And it was indeed everything I’d dreamed it would be. In shades of green.
We walked around the Tower District for a while and I dumped all my stuff and my car at Mark’s. Then we toured Fresno. I’ve toured Fresno many times before, but it was extra fun (a) being in the passenger seat and (b) actually being with someone who lived there and knew exactly where to take me. We covered most of the strips and walked around downtown for while. And we didn’t go to the ninth-floor bar at some hotel whose name I’ve forgotten, because it was closed.
I got a prescription filled, as I cursed both the fact that it was five bucks cheaper at the Walgreens in Fresno and the fact that it causes me certain annoying physiological issues. We were amused (horrified?) by the singing James Brown doll. Then we went back to apartment for a while, before heading back out to the pizza place.
Afterward, we watched the South Park movie (sort of), avoided the Hallowe’en block party down the street, and eventually went to sleep. I actually slept pretty well, if not for quite long enough.
I kept the room today for a home base and potential nap spot (thanks to a coupon from my mom) as I wandered about visiting thrift stores, taking pictures, and looking for ghosts of supermarkets past. There was no nap and there weren’t many pictures, but I was pleased with my day (and the cooler than average temperature) all the same.
It’s a little odd realizing that I’m in a city where the mayor is Bubba, by the way…
Tonight I met Mark at Club Fred. Even that was easy, as I stepped upto the bar to get a drink and he happened to be the guy in line ahead of me. We went to a low-key but pleasant enough Hallowe’en party for a while and then had a nice, big artery-clogging dinner at Denny’s before going back to Mark’s apartment so he could show me his iBook.
Eventually, I went back to the Motel 6, fantasizing that my second night in the same strange bed might result in more sleep than the first had. It didn’t.
There is no good time to drive out of the Bay Area on a weekday. This afternoon, well before rush hour, it took me as long to drive the 60 miles from SF to Tracy as it did to drive the 120 miles from Tracy to Fresno. Fortunately, this was (once I left Tracy) to be one of those trips where everything worked out the way it was supposed to, from arriving on the one night the history room at the library was open late to actually enjoying the company of the rather compelling stranger I was coming to meet…
And gas was $1.17/gallon. Did I mention that?
I gambled and won. The history room in the Fresno library just happens to be open late on Thusdays. The only downside was that the pre-1960 city directories are on microfilm. I hate microfilm. Microfilm is evil.
It was actually warmer in SF than in Fresno today. That’s a good sign…