I am miserable with my life. It doesn't count as suicide if you just ask God to hurry up and smite you, right?
To reassure anyone who thinks this theatrics, I am currently technically homeless, and living with a family member who needs help. This house has been seriously compared to Hoarders by worried family. I live out of a suitcase because my personal belongings, including my bed and perishable food items (which were mistakenly delivered with the rest), are divided between several people's storage units. I hope someone finds the food before spring, though I'm sure that by now it's been cold enough for the water bottles to explode and warm enough for the milk to sour. There are four cats in the house, three of which use the litter box, four in the garage who don't have a litter box, but get let outside sometimes, and two in the back room who neither have a litter box nor go outside. One must enter and exit through the garage, which, no offense to those up above, stinks to high heaven.
My friends live online because those I graduated college with have moved on. I have an amazing phone, a few really amazing friends, and severe, sometimes debilitating depression, as of about fifteen years ago. I used to tell myself that the worst that could happen would be ending up homeless and alone, but I've pushed my "worst" standards to far more horrible things. I am not currently being eaten alive by maggots while impaled in a hole full of spikes and having hail pound into my open eyes. Please, please, God, please, don't use my sense of sarcasm against me and make that happen.
Irony (or not, if you know all the technicalities of the word) is that just over a year ago I was set to graduate college, then move to the Golden State of California, where my daughter would attend a private school for hardly anything, thanks to one of those amazing friends, and I would be nearer the kind of job opportunities I'd dreamed of. My ex questioned me, gave me the verbal go-ahead, and took our flight information so that goodbyes could be said, we got the kid a cell phone for easy contact, got a Facebook so they could chat easily, etc etc.
Sunday before graduation, a week and two days before the flight, yours truly was delivered of a restraining order and a motion to take any and all custody away from me. After a week of locating a lawyer (since if you don't have one, at least here, the case defaults to the other person), during which I didn't sleep and unknowingly contracted pneumonia, I completed no final exams and was given a pity D to graduate in a class I'd been acing. Damned final exams. I don't really remember graduation. Had a high fever that day, and was super-proud that no one could tell how dizzy I was.
Anyway, after bouncing from place to place, I failed out of an attempt at grad school (admittedly a subject I ended up hating) and here we are. The child is tired of moving and living with other people, and despite the emotional abuse she suffers when with her other parent, I wonder if I'm doing any better.
"You should get on disability."
It's really disheartening to be told this, especially following a short speech about not being capable of handling a real job and needing to be realistic. It is disheartening both from one's (ex)friend, and from one's father. There is no explaining to some people that working for minimum wage 5 hours per day, 4 days per week isn't much motivation for someone who feels worthless. There is no explaining that 8 hours a day 5 days a week at a job one loves, being needed there instead of expendable, might just possibly maybe somehow ease the feeling of being useless, and that being paid enough to live on one's own might instill a sense of greatly needed pride, thereby propelling one out of one's dismal hole of hopelessness. And unfortunately, when pressured so much to get a job I've already not been hired at for years, it is difficult to contemplate looking for that big fish. It only makes the whole "not capable of handling a real job" thing all that more real, and the big fish looks like a dried-out goldfish the cat left behind the couch. It was shiny once, but all that's left now is a lost dream.
And yes, this is probably all ridiculous and blown out of proportion, but no matter how I try to correct myself, I can't get out of the mindset that "If you were capable of getting an A, but got a B, you might as well have failed."
I have now been struggling with depression for half my life. It doesn't get better for long at a time. The littlest setback is heartbreaking, and losing a dream that was in my grasp broke me. I've never been as close to hurting myself as I was a year ago, and though I don't intend to—in fact, I intend not to—it can always be worse, and that's what I'm afraid of. If I can hardly cope the way I am, how will I manage another ten years of this? Another twenty?
My depression is being treated, but there's no cure. I've apparently trained my mind to push aside my worries, and so anything that worries or distresses me is forgotten. I don't remember to do laundry when I have the time, nor to job search. If it does pop in, I'm busy, or I'm in a bad mood, or I'm too sleepy to do anything (or so I tell myself), and if I can't fill out an application properly, and better than anyone else, then it was not only a waste of my time, but a waste of the hiring manager's time. I feel like a waste of time.
I haven't blogged in forever because I had no internet access aside from my smartphone, which a friend thought I deserved, no matter that I don't (but it's mine! *clutches and hisses*). I don't even know where I'm going with this. Sudden memory loss in the middle of a sentence isn't odd when attempting to discuss worrisome or depressing topics, either.
Okay, I dragged you all down now, and gave you a taste of a long-term, severe depressive's thought process. I wish I could think of another cheese factory story right now, but since I can't, here:
No comments:
Post a Comment