Two weeks ago I was ignorant of my daughter's deep depression. Today I am wise to this, but the knowledge was so hard. Now there is a question mark over our marriage that I cannot resolve - even in my own mind I can't decide whether I WANT to be married or not. I have to be responsible for my own happiness - I can't take responsibility for any one elses. No matter how much I'd like to be able to make it better for them.
I feel lost. I'd like to just go home, clean the place up, cook dinner and 'make' everyone feel 'good'. But I can't. I hurt, and there is an emptiness in me that just seems to drain any energy I might have. I feel like I'm going lower and lower down. Each time I seem to reach a crisis point, I recover a bit, but I don't think it's enough. I think each crisis is leaving me lower still. A couple of nights ago I felt as though I was falling into a black oblivion, where each time I stopped falling (and so could maybe start climbing out) I found instead that I was impaled on a knife. More cuts, more wounds, and still further to fall. When I told my husband how I felt, he (charmingly) told me to pull myself together (oh - thankyou!) and went on to say that he isn't sure about the marriage in the long term (so, that was a knife too; thanks again). Three weeks ago he was telling me that he was depressed and that was why he was doing nothing - and so he started taking medication without me having to suggest it to him. Then when ... all this happened ... suddenly he says he doesn't need the drugs, he can cope with all this. What? He can't cope with cleaning up the lounge by himself, but he can cope with his daughter's overdose? I do not get that.
So what do I do? If I am to leave I have to get a new job - out there in the 'real world'. Am I capable of that? Am I staying because I'm afraid of screwing up another job? Or do I really love him enough to knuckle under and try again? Which one am I doing?
I would like to talk to someone - someone who knows ME first, and my family via me. So I think of my friends - but I have already leant heavily on one this year; and I have screwed up SO badly in the past with others, that I don't feel that I have the right to burden them; and let's be honest - some are just plain inappropriate. There is no-one left that I feel I can lean on like that - especially where the marriage is concerned.
I wish I had started writing a couple of weeks back. I feel better just for doing this, even though it is getting me nowhere. It gives me a chance to reflect on how I'm feeling, and to analyse it back and forth in a way that ranting to myself can't do. But it gives me no feedback. I could try one of the Sisters, but it is so far to go to see them that I think it would be quite difficult to organise. There is noone else. Is it time for me to see a Psychiatrist? I doubt it - I couldn't justify the expense.
WHAT DO I DO NOW? CAN I SURVIVE THE NEXT BIT? and if i cannot, what then
I can feel prayer calling to me - perhaps God, asking me to confide in her, but I don't even know if I have the strength for that. I have always been weak and soft, and now my lack of 'character' is betraying (or condemning) me to what seems to be an inevitable path full of pain. And I can't escape.
Tomorrow my daughter goes back to school; my husband and our programmer will be working at the home office. I think I need some space for all this to start to sort out; I just can't see where the space is to come from.
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