@%#%*$(&^(@^(@_^#_&#($^&^

Trying to figure things out after having such a life altering moment of clarity is proving to be quite exhausting. I know where I've been and now understand how I got there. I'm trying to figure out where I want to be and how to get there. And at this point, I have absolutely no idea.

Depression sucks

By that I mean actual, real, clinical depression. When your brain just isn't wired right. Everyone has bad days, days when they feel down, sad, tired. But those people can usually change that. Dealing with depression is entirely different. My brain just doesn't work like other peoples.

On the plus side, at this point in life, those bad days are not nearly as frequent as they once were. I now am able to recognize them for what they are and know that it will eventually go away. Even the bad days aren't as bad as they use to be. But they still suck. The feeling of blah, of no energy, of not wanting to do anything and not caring that I don't want to do anything. I hate feeling like that. And it is so uncontrollable. So overpowering.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that I have spent the most part of my life feeling like that every day. Thinking that is was just the way things where going to be for me. No light at the end of the tunnel, no hope for the future. No feeling of anything positive. Thankfully that has change. I now see the light, and it is bright. But I suppose every once in a while I need a bad day to remind me of what I have accomplished and how far I've come, how much I've changed. I just wish they would go away completely.

Sadly, I don't think that will ever happen. What ever it is that goes on in my brain, whatever wires are crossed, or shorted out, or missing all together can never be fully repaired. They can be bypassed for a while. But every once in a while, that connection gets reestablished and things go hinky for a bit. It sucks.

An awakening

That's what it feels like. Like I've woken from a 3 decade coma. I can almost pinpoint the exact moment it happened. It was like everything was sucked rapidly into a vacuum and then.........BOOM. I'm glad I was sitting when it happened or I may well have found myself on the floor.

It's like I've been reading my life from a book written in a language I don't understand and someone finally gave me a translated copy. U finally understand so many things. I see so much clearer now. About the past, about the present and even, to some extent, the future.

For the first time in, well, I think ever, I am waking up in the morning and not thinking, crap, I woke up. Instead I'm thinking, today will be a good day. I've thought for a while that I was getting better, I suddenly realize all I was doing was maintaining. Now I'm getting better.

Is it the end or is it the Beginning?

I did something tonight that needed done. I had to do it. I essentially ended a relationship of over 5 years. I thought, at first, that I was giving up. Now I see it as finally accepting the truth. Some things just can't be fixed. Especially if pieces are missing. My life has felt like a thousand piece puzzle with half the edge pieces missing. No matter how hard I've tried to get it together I just couldn't. You can only work on half a puzzle for so long before it starts to drive you a bit bonkers. If you don't have the pieces, can't make the pieces and cant buy half a puzzle, what do you do?

I'm scared. I'm relieved. I've no idea what the future holds. What I do know is I could not keep living the way I have been. Not if I want to live. I have changed so much in the last two years. I have embraced my issues, I have challenged myself to work them out. I feel like I am a completely different person than I was 5 years ago. Stronger, braver and working on being happier.

I finally accepted that I can not make her happy nor she me. We are two very different people. Opposites may attract to a point, but oil and water don't mix. We get along. We share a wonderful child. But our relationship, it just isn't ever going to work, not the way we both need it to. It feels very odd, to be at this point. Even more odd to feel the way I do about it. I guess that is a good sign it was the right decision. I actually feel better. I feel hope, for me, for her, for our daughter. I want her to be happy, I'm just not the person who can do that for her. I want to be happy.

A swirling mass of chaos

My mind, my thoughts, they're swirling like a great boiling cauldron in the middle of a deep storm tossed sea. So many different things swirling past. Some moving quickly, past in a blink and gone. Others seem to pass in front of me over and over again. I'm trying to calm the storm, or at least weather the storm. Until is calms, somewhat. Or I manage to build a bigger ship to sail the seas. A ship that stays off the rocks and makes way in the wind, with full sails instead of dragging anchor.

The thoughts that are floating past me are about the past, the future, the choices I've made in my life and those I still need to make. Thoughts about how I ended up where I am and how I move forward. I have the right to be happy. The only one keeping me miserable is me. I finally realized that last night. I have convinced myself over the years that I didn't deserve anything, that I was not worthy. Always an excuse. Why I didn't get the job or the promotion, why I have no friends. Reality shines a very harsh light when cast upon ones self.

It's odd how all the therapy, the self reflection, the antidepressants, they helped me simply survive. Until suddenly, like fuel to flame, a simple conversation with a friend lights me up from the inside. I finally, after many many years, I feel things again, I care about things again, I feel alive again.

waking from a long dream

That's what I feel like. As if I'm waking from a long slumber. Coming out of the fog, back into the light. I've been so numb for so many years that didn't even realize it anymore. Suddenly, a voice from the past wakes me up and brings so many things into focus. Suddenly I'm wondering, what took so long. What is it I've been doing for the last almost 10 years? Hiding.

Hiding from life, from feeling, from thinking. It's damn near killed me. I quit enjoying life, hell, I quit living. I've simply been surviving, for most of my life. And what has that got me? Fat, nearly dead, depressed, on medication, in therapy and most of all, quite miserable. In the last 5 years I have gained over 200 pounds trying to fill a void in my life. Trying to enjoy something. Instead it's made me unhealthy and unable to do many of the things I want to do. It's made me even more miserable.

It's so easy to be numb, to not care, to just go with it. Easy to a point. Going with the flow is all well and good until the flow takes you over a waterfall. My waterfall makes niagra look like a leaky faucet. Being emotionally numb has kept me alive, except now it's killing me. Feeling nothing is not a way to live, it's a way to survive. It's a way to hide. It's a way to avoid. I felt something tonight I have not felt in a very long time. Hope. Something suddenly changed inside me. I suddenly feel so many different emotions that I have locked away for so many years. Emotions I haven't dealt with, haven't let out.

I'm very practiced at being negative. Very good at it. Very good at convincing myself I just don't care, or that there is no point or that it just doesn't matter. Tonight I realized that it does matter. If I am miserable and hate my life, how is that affecting my children? When I am so tired of my life, of my body, of everything around me that I regularly contemplate suicide, what is that doing to me, what is that doing to my daughter. While I may not be putting a gun to my head, I have been working on slowly killing myself for many years now. With the food, with the lack of exercise, with the lack of feeling about anything. I've been sitting here on my ass waiting for death to come knocking and not really caring if he did. Suddenly I care.

I have so many things to figure out, to think about, to do. I have to figure out just how to start, where to start. I feel some life altering decisions are coming soon and that scares the hell out of me. But I know, without a doubt, that I can not continue the way I have. I don't want to continue the way I have. I want to be happy. I want to want to live. I want to enjoy life again. It's scary to me, to feel these things after so long.

So now comes choices, decisions, actions. Should be fun.

Silly thoughts

I have been fascinated by religion most of my life. Funny thing for an atheist to be fascinated by I've always thought. The different religions of the world, the staggering number of them and how thoroughly the catholic church tainted so many of them. Religion existed long before Christianity. Jesus is a fairly new concept in the grand scheme of things.

They all stemmed from the same need, the same desire of humans to explain that which can not be explained. Or at least, 3000 years ago couldn't be explained. And also a fear of death. A desire for something to be after death. There has always been some version of heaven and hell, long before God and Jesus.

I see all the evil and hate in the world today, every day, and it makes it difficult to understand the faith people seem to have in some all powerful being. 80 children murdered in one day.

Do or die, a moment of personal clarity

Last week was a bad week for me. It was very dark. I fell down into that same old hole I frequently fall into. One filled with pain, depression, a feeling of hopelessness. It's a place I have been to many times in my life, to many times. A place I fall with little warning and must struggle to get out of. It gave me pause to think, a lot, about a lot of things.

I have often contemplated suicide over the years. Sometimes I've gotten very close to actually doing it. It's a feeling I do not like, one that I fear greatly every time it sneaks up on me. Usually right after I fall in that hole. So, in a moment of clarity, it occurred to me that it's time to fish or cut bait, shit or get off the pot, you pick the euphemism. Quite simple really, either go someplace and kill yourself and be done with it, or fix your issues. I suddenly decided that I do want to live. That I have things to live for. That I can be miserable the rest of my life, or I can do everything I possibly can to fix things.

So, the battle begins, again. But for real this time. And it is a battle. A battle with my body, my mind, my pain tolerance. Knee braces, nsaid gel, exercises, slow short walks and a huge change in what and how I eat. I am at war!

life or is it

I hate these feelings and mood swings I have. I know what causes them, but that sure doesn't make dealing with them any easier. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be "normal", to not deal with this every single day. The constant struggle to just get out of bed, the constant pain in both my body and my mind. So many negative feelings and emotions, they seem to just take over.

I am so tired. Tired of hurting. Tired of not feeling anything. Tired of not caring about things.

round and round we go

Sometimes it feels like the more progress I try and make, the less I accomplish. I feel like I'm going in circles, repeating the same stupid mistakes over and over again. You would think after so many years, I would know better.

I have a new mantra, internal saying, what ever you want to call it. When I go to make a decision, I ask my self, what would you usually do in this case? And then, I do the exact opposite.

One thing I have finally learned is that I have been on a slow downward spiral for many years. I've been floating through life from one catastrophe to another. It hasn't been life, it's been survival. It's been a coping mechanism I learned at a very young age. It helped me to make it through a very chaotic childhood.

I learned very young to never form attachments to things or people. Or places. I learned very early that making friends was futile since I would just be moving soon. I withdrew into myself a long long time ago, shut the door, lost the key.

Food has been my friend for a very long time. I am rapidly becoming more aware of the relationship I have with food. The reason I over eat. Self awareness is the first step.