I'm feeling so close to breaking down from this depression. In one moment I feel like it's caused by one thing, like financial difficulties, and in another moment I simply feel overwhelmed with my own powerlessness. Funny thing is, I feel a certain amount of self-empowerment for certain things. I'm more affected by my lack of power in large, global issues - wanting stupid people to either learn to think or shut the fuck up; people who are oppressed.
I get really depressed when I think about my kids. Mostly it's because I think I'm ruining them and I think I should never have had them, because I'm such a rotten mom. And I feel bad if I say 'I should never have had them' because that sounds so cruel. But then, I often think my parents should never have gotten married - that they both took the wrong path ... Of course if they hadn't I wouldn't be here, but then I wouldn't know it if I weren't here, so what's the difference? In the same way, if I had never had my children I wouldn't have ever known them and thus wouldn't know they were missing.
But they are here, and much of the time I just don't know how to deal with them. Sometimes I know what I SHOULD do and then don't follow through on it. For example, I suspect I could turn certain things around if we all three would just stop consuming sugar ... then I buy them sodas. I'm such a weak suck.
I'm also frustrated over issues with health care providers. The story of getting a colonoscopy is enormously vexing, and I'm hoping against hope that everything goes well Monday and I won't have to deal with these people ever again. And I put in a call to Urgent Care yesterday and haven't heard back from them - about 24 hours now. So, anyway, I just called back and got confirmation that I can just walk in Monday morning and get all my orders taken care of. That's a relief, anyway.
The psychiatrist suggested I read a book, The Dance of Anger. Got it from the library and have started skimming it. So far it's not really telling me anything new, but perhaps these are some things I have not really thought about lately. For some reason I'm not feeling quite as hopeless as I did when I started writing this. Two small things I did were to clean a container I had put on the porch and straighten the paper bags that were thrown into a corner. Perhaps by taking similar small steps it can help a little.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Feeling melancholy
I am fighting the old depression more and more, but each day it stays. It has come to mind lately that I am having a hard time remembering the passage of time. Days simply pass into weeks, and months, and then the year is gone. I think sometimes, why am I not like my old self? But I don't clearly see the old self that I should yearn to be. Time seems shrifted in a cloud.
I berate myself for being a bad mother. There was a time, I think, when I thought I would know all the missteps, would know where my own upbringing had done me wrong, but it has not served me well. I find little happiness with my children, feeling too much that I have done them no good service. I try to instruct and am frustrated when it does not stick. I am too impatient for the tedium of repetition. And I have no energy for it. I sometimes feel I should never have had them ... not forsaking them their current existence but crediting that I was no hero in having brought them forth.
My house is a horrible wreck. Everywhere I turn I see piles of stuff, some of it sentimental, some utilitarian, some unnecessary for want of being plucked and tossed. I cannot roust myself to conquer it, mostly for the size of it all. My children suffer from this example of laziness, not only from me but from their father, who, though he is no slacker in his work, spends most of his homebound hours at his laptop, most often tinkering together an undertaking that has so little chance of coming to fruition. We, all of us, suffer from our curtaining off from the world. We have so few friends, locally, and make little effort to find any. I have made my efforts, from time to time, but for many years have been disappointed at my forays to this end. It is not from a lack of want but always seems to be a matter of doors being closed against me ... much like wandering around at a party, where everyone else knows each other and are perfectly content to continue within their own set circles, not interested in letting in a new face. I also realize that much of this may come from my own facade, but I do not know how to change that.
My overarching enemy is my own body. This I tend to trace back to the existence of my children. Though I was certainly overweight before I had them, after the first I had to struggle enormously to get back down to within 10-15 pounds of my previous weight. After the second, it became even harder, and since then I don't believe I've been closer to that aforementioned weight than 40-50 pounds. So now I find myself finally suffering many of the maladies that being so fat brings, and doubly troubling is that I pass my own thoughtless, stupid behavior to my offspring.
I hate to think about how foolish I've been, on so many fronts. Part of me wants to just give up.
I berate myself for being a bad mother. There was a time, I think, when I thought I would know all the missteps, would know where my own upbringing had done me wrong, but it has not served me well. I find little happiness with my children, feeling too much that I have done them no good service. I try to instruct and am frustrated when it does not stick. I am too impatient for the tedium of repetition. And I have no energy for it. I sometimes feel I should never have had them ... not forsaking them their current existence but crediting that I was no hero in having brought them forth.
My house is a horrible wreck. Everywhere I turn I see piles of stuff, some of it sentimental, some utilitarian, some unnecessary for want of being plucked and tossed. I cannot roust myself to conquer it, mostly for the size of it all. My children suffer from this example of laziness, not only from me but from their father, who, though he is no slacker in his work, spends most of his homebound hours at his laptop, most often tinkering together an undertaking that has so little chance of coming to fruition. We, all of us, suffer from our curtaining off from the world. We have so few friends, locally, and make little effort to find any. I have made my efforts, from time to time, but for many years have been disappointed at my forays to this end. It is not from a lack of want but always seems to be a matter of doors being closed against me ... much like wandering around at a party, where everyone else knows each other and are perfectly content to continue within their own set circles, not interested in letting in a new face. I also realize that much of this may come from my own facade, but I do not know how to change that.
My overarching enemy is my own body. This I tend to trace back to the existence of my children. Though I was certainly overweight before I had them, after the first I had to struggle enormously to get back down to within 10-15 pounds of my previous weight. After the second, it became even harder, and since then I don't believe I've been closer to that aforementioned weight than 40-50 pounds. So now I find myself finally suffering many of the maladies that being so fat brings, and doubly troubling is that I pass my own thoughtless, stupid behavior to my offspring.
I hate to think about how foolish I've been, on so many fronts. Part of me wants to just give up.
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