One Day At A Time Please

      Depression rules your life, it takes over and doesn't like to give up control. But there are definitely some days that are better than others. These brief moments of happiness are pretty sporadic, which makes them that much more enjoyable. They can be brought on by practically anything.     I know many of these moments for me are related to my wife and my dog. There are times that I find myself just staring at my wife and admiring her natural beauty and smiling at how lucky I really am to have her. When she notices me doing it, she gets even cuter, sometimes she tries to hide, sometimes she tries to tell me that she's not as beautiful as I say she is, but these things make me smile even more.     My dog is a heathen most of the time, but he is the cutest dog in the world. He just sits there staring at me with those big brown eyes and his tongue hanging out of his mouth like the derp that he is and I can't help but smile at how cute he is. The exc...

    One of the things that I struggle with a lot is impulsiveness. I don't think about things before I do them sometimes and this causes major problems for me after the fact. I buy things when I shouldn't which causes me a shortage in my bank account when it comes time to pay bills.     This leads to a whole other slew of problems. Late fees, stress, family problems, and a few others that I can't think of right now. It's easy for it to get out of hand very quickly. I have dealt with this problem for most of my life. As of late, I've been better at controlling it most of the time. I've had a few mishaps here and there, but nowhere near what I used to deal with.     I feel that this is an area of major growth in my life, but there's still plenty of room for me to improve. This is something that will only get better if I actively work on making it better. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ...

      Delving into another manifestation of depression, we find fear. This emotion is interesting, as it can be the driving force behind other emotions, such as anger. I know this is true for me, even to the point that I will immediately become defensive and hostile when someone I love is asking me something simple. It doesn't need to happen, but it is an automatic response from me.      Fear makes people do strange things. One such example of this in my life is that I have yet to tell anyone from my personal life that I am struggling with depression, out of the fear of their judgment and rejection.  I know, I know, "that's not what will actually happen." While this is true, I'm not very good at rejection (see my post from Jan 4), and the fear that comes with telling them that I'm experiencing depression is overwhelming.     Fear has it's place, it's there to keep us safe or from doing something dangerous. But when fear gets out of hand, it b...

    Anger is something I've dealt with my entire life. For a brief moment, It was a controlling factor in my life. Every time I turned around, I was getting angry about something, to the point that my own friends didn't want to be around me. I had to do something about it, but I didn't know what.     I didn't have any help changing this, but, thankfully, I learned how to keep it in check. It would be a LONG time before I realized that this anger wasn't just anger, it was a manifestation of my depression. This, along with a few other emotions that I'll discuss in later posts, is something that I've come to learn about through experience.     This isn't a perfect process though. I still have moments where my anger wins and I lose my temper, which leads to an argument, which then feeds right back into my depression. These are the times that I need to look back on to see how I could've handled them differently. This is part of the learning process f...

    This is a tough one for me. I don't handle loss well at all. I'm usually a complete train wreck when someone I'm close to dies. I think of all the opportunities I missed and all the memories that we won't get to make.     I lost my father-in-law to pancreatic cancer recently and it was one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with. Cancer has stolen so many people from me it's insane. My sister, my grandmother, my aunt, and now my father-in-law. It's become to the point that when I hear the word 'cancer' I instantly lose control of my thoughts.     My FIL was particularly difficult as we had a vacation planned with him for this year, and the thought that we won't get to enjoy it with him hasn't left my mind since he passed. The fun that we would have had with him is something that I was really looking forward to. As far as I know, the trip is still going to happen, but I'm not sure how much I'll be able to enjoy it without him th...

    Rejection is something that I have a LOT of experience with and it's something that everyone deals with in their lives. Some people are better at handling it than others. I am definitely in the percentage that does not handle it well. I've been directly rejected by family, 'friends,' crushes, girlfriends, employers, and even total strangers.      The first rejection I remember experiencing was in 7th grade. I had a HUGE crush on one of the girls in my class. I had finally worked up the courage to ask her out on a date, only to have her laugh at me with her friends. I was devastated. I couldn't be around any of them without hearing their laughter for a very long time. And it took me even longer to try asking someone out again.     I was involved in my first relationship when I was in ninth grade. The kicker is, I wasn't the one that acted first. There was a girl in one of my extracurriculars who came to me one day and admitted that she liked me. Tur...

    One of my least favorite things to do is be in a room full of people, even if they're all people I know. Crowded rooms just aren't my thing. I'm an introvert, so I would be over it quickly if I enjoyed it at all. But I don't enjoy it. I can be in a room with 50 people that I know and I will still feel completely alone. Nobody makes the effort to try to talk to me, but neither do I.     I'm a wallflower, but I don't want to be. That voice that lives inside, the one that screams so loud everything else gets drowned out, tells me that nobody wants to talk to me so I just stay where I'm at and remain silent. It also tells me that, even though someone is engaging me in conversation, they really don't want to and they're looking for a way out of it as quickly as possible. The difficulty that I have hearing the positive voices in my head is immeasurable.     Constantly fighting with my own brain to let me be happy is exhausting, and it's a fight tha...

     We're all guilty of it. We see a friend or acquaintance (or sometimes even a family member), whether planned or not, and they ask how we're doing. Most of us, without even thinking about it, reply with, "I'm fine" or "I'm good" and return the greeting. How often is that actually the case though? I know for me, it's almost never. I'm rarely having what would be considered an 'average' good day. A good day for me is one where I don't feel like I'm a burden and a failure.     Those days are few and far between. Logically, I know I'm not the only person who feels this, but when I'm at a low, that's what it feels like to me. But I'll talk more about that later. Right now, I want to talk about feelings. No, not the mushy gushy feelings that you're probably imagining, the deep, real, raw feelings that stay hidden until we say they can come out.     The picture I chose for this post is a pretty accurate repres...

      My silence is deafening. This war that's been going on in my mind for years now has remained my sole burden to carry. Why? Because to share it with those around me is to add to their burdens. The guilt that comes with that would be unbearable.     So I choose to keep it inside. Until now. Today, day 1, I reached a breaking point. Today, I almost went through with the single most selfish action anyone could ever commit...It's hard to actually even type the words...Today...I almost ended my life. I had the prescription bottle opened and something to wash it all down with. I even wrote my note.     I'm not telling you this because I want your attention or your pity. I'm writing this because I know I'm not the only one who has ever felt this way. I'm writing this for the person sitting there feeling the same way I felt (and still feel) today. I'm glad I didn't do it, even though I felt like every ounce of my being wanted me to.     But I st...