I think I'm depressed...

I don't think it, I sort of already know I am. I have been for some time, how long exactly, I'm not sure about but I know it precedes me getting laid off in December.

Thinking about it a little, it actually started around the time my children were being molested by a teenager boy that was staying in our home, during the summer of 07, but I didn't know what was happening then. And I didn't find out about it until September 07, when CPS visited my home to tell me that the teenage boy was allegedly "touching the children inappropriately". It was more to it than that, seeing as how it merited a visit to a hospital in order to determine that my girls had been molested, another situation I was unaware of that had occurred during a very timely visit to their father's home in Sacramento. Although my daughters never ever confirmed this with me (and have actually denied this), shortly thereafter, my son came forward and admitted to being abused by the teenager as well. Next thing you know, I no longer have legal or physical custody of my girls, and I only get to see them every other weekend for 2 hours, with supervised visitation.

Yep, that's definitely when my depression began. And I haven't been able to shake it. I suppose if I had been able to, I couldn't rightly call it depression. And as it typically does, it affected everything. Everything. Couldn't sleep, couldn't concentrate, couldn't remember, couldn't stop crying at times, didn't want to do anything anymore, cared about nothing. But I did what I had to do, and faked, phonied, and pretended my way all the way through with my employers and co-workers till December 09, but the plaster had been cracking well before then. I could honestly say that while I was working, I was at least 3/4 functional, and I don't know how I made it through that awful stressful job all the way to December 09. But after I was laid off, the show was over, it was curtains. I cut myself off from everyone I knew except family. I could finally be real with myself and everyone around me and sleep as long as I wanted. That release was like a Pandora's Box and I held nothing back. Every emotion I felt, I expressed, especially anger. Everything started to rattle me, but I figured it was just me letting loose some repressed anger from the last 3 years at that awful job. But I'm still angry.

Still depressed and quite angry, I managed to scrounge up some enthusiasm at the prospect of being able to start a home internet business since I never had time to before, but right away, I knew this wouldn't be a cake walk. I just couldn't seem to gain much ground. I mean, for one thing, the sheer amount of information out there in online marketing is ridiculous. It's so overwhelming, at one point, I thought I might have ADD (and it's still a possibility) just trying to get through all the information and learn a new trade. But everyday that passed, the struggle deepened. Lately, I've just been dragging my feet, some days just logging on to my computer and just staring at it before I get up and walk away from it for the rest of the day. I knew this was self defeating, but I just couldn't seem to do anything else, which made me feel even worse. I haven't succumbed to defeat, but I'm at a standstill. And just thinking about how much more I have to learn, to do, to pay - it's exhausting to even think about.

How do you learn a new trade, let alone start a business, when you feel worthless, hopeless, powerless, lonely, and so fighting angry with yourself that everything you do seems pointless? How long before I start seriously thinking about suicide? That was the question I finally asked myself this morning after I decided I didn't want to let another month go by feeling this way. I'd figured I was depressed and had been for a long time, so I spent some time researching anything I could find on depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders, and lucked up on a couple of sites that earned my trust immediately, one of which pointed me in the direction of FREE help, because there's nothing like being broke and mentally disturbed y'all. It's not exactly free, but I'm assured that the center will have mercy on my wallet. The other site was http://www.freedomfromfear.org. I read through some of the forum posts, and finally, for the first time in a long time, felt some relief.

In case anyone is wondering, I am the last to seek help. My son began therapy for a year immediately following his revelation, and according to their father, my girls have also undergone counseling of some sort, but I don't really believe that.

Lonely Heartbreaker

I am a horrible person. And I feel bad about that. Not terribly so, but enough to be aware of how bad it makes me feel to be a bad person. To be a bitch.

I’ve never killed anyone or wanted to, although I am reminded of the times I’ve thought about someone being dead, but I’ve never actually had a death wish directed at anyone that I can recall in my life. Ok, I’m lying and I won’t go further than that. But I digress.

I’m in conflict with myself which is nothing unusual typically, but this time, I’m having a hard time reconciling what I’ve done. I’ve just broken someone’s heart. Again. Worse still, the guy was a virgin, love-wise, and I just broke his cherry. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t want to do it. I knew it would happen the second I decided to call him for the first time, and all I can say or feel at this point is I wished I hadn’t have called him. I should not have called. Bad BAD Tesha. I knew it wouldn’t work out with him the first time he spoke to me, his speech was very telling. Country and country-simple, with EVERY sentence starting with “But but uh…” and my favorite, “and den uh…”, most times both phrases being thrown together and stuttered repeatedly before the subject was uttered. I remember balling up my fists, holding my head down and silently praying, “Lord give me the strength and the patience.” But I realized then as I do now, like I had in other relationships, that it was not meant for me to suffer a fool in a relationship; I just don’t have it in me. Oddly enough though, I have a fondness for teaching. I think I’d be very good at it. But I digress.

Trying to keep things real and be objective, I was keenly aware of the effect that my honesty about my true feelings was having on the poor guy, but I kept heaping it on unable to stop myself, and all the while, somewhere in my subconscious, I “feel” like I’m being stabbed. Is that what he’s going thru right now, I asked myself? But I already knew the answer.

I’ve felt that feeling on the surface many times before myself. Being in love with someone that doesn’t love you back. But it’s worse than that. It’s being in love with someone who pretends to love you back. Because when they can’t pretend anymore, you feel betrayed, disbelief, estranged, and just fucking hurt! That feeling. And that’s my crime. I fully admit to it. But I didn’t pretend for the sake of getting something from him, something besides love and mutual respect. God knows he had absolutely nothing else to offer me, which I ended up resenting. But I figured, if this is a good match, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and show this person how I want to be loved and hope for the best. And for 2 weeks, I spoiled him, which is my natural inclination and the very thing that seems to get me in these emotional binds. Took him places, gave him money, took him out, watched his kid, cooked for him, helped him out a lot, and didn’t ask for a thing in return outside of appreciation. But while in the process, I lost my respect for him. He was needy, he didn’t have any interests and was very uninteresting, I couldn’t count one stimulating conversation we’d had outside of me teaching him how to use the internet, and his uneducated speech annoyed me to tears. And after two weeks, I knew everything that I needed to know and I’d had enough. I knew that the relationship would be one sided. One person would be doing all the giving, loving, thinking, planning, and doing, while the other would be on the receiving end, totally at ease with all the attention as if it was deserved, and perfectly satisfied with not having to reciprocate. I’d been in relationships like that before and was strongly opposed to being in another, and it wasn’t long before I began acting very bitchy towards him. I was never outright mean or inconsiderate, and I continued to show care and concern, but I couldn’t get past the feeling of having another child to take care of, and that feeling peppered my attitude towards him. I just couldn’t stop myself from reacting to him negatively and with condescension, and he didn’t help much. I didn’t want to keep kidding myself or him. I was being a bitch and he accepted it like it was ok, like it was normal. What kind of woman would I become if I continue to bond myself with men like this, who were still very much like children? Eventually though, I realized that our feelings towards each other should be mutual, either good or bad and certainly not both, and if I’m not feeling what he’s feeling, I won’t force it or wait for it to happen. From experience, things always worked out for the worst if I forced what didn’t fit.

We were just incompatible. It was your typical tall-fat-woman/short-skinny-man pairing, except we were incompatible mentally. It’s interesting that I used that analogy. At first I didn’t bother to note any similarities between myself and the proverbial tall fat woman, but thinking about it a little more, it’s actually very appropriate. And the short skinny man is the jilted and beleaguered lover who’s heart I just ripped open this morning.

It’s not like the poor bastard didn’t see it coming. And I don’t understand how he managed to overlook the evidence and ignore previous discussions pointing towards this eventuality. But I had to remind myself that not everyone processes information the same way or at the same speed. In his case, he’d never been in love before, and obviously, he’d never met anyone like me. He was working purely on the assumption, in spite of all the evidence and discussion pointing to our incompatibility and my obvious dissatisfaction with it, that I would let those things escape my attention and that I would continue the relationship in spite of them. He was hoping for the best and tragically put all of his faith in that. I could understand that. I’ve been there myself a few times.

He wanted to be tall and fat too. He said he would change, but I couldn’t trust that. Whatever changes he could adopt that would’ve made him a more suitable match or attractive would’ve been short-lived and would only have been good for kindling resentment and disaster. You can only fake who you are for so long. For 4 years of my life, I forsook my identity and hid my true interests from someone just to be the person he wanted me to be, so he could love me the way I wanted to be loved, the way I loved him. I’ll always regret having done that for the rest of my life. The disturbances in my life and my children’s lives that that kind of commitment caused will never be forgotten or repeated. For no one. I’d used the same approach with my ex-husband and consequently, I have the same regrets.

Point is, I knew this route all too well. I knew better than to let it continue. I knew myself better than that. He would not be able to grow taller or heftier to my satisfaction, and out of desperation, I would eventually cheat on him, and/or he would come to resent me in no time. So many times, I wanted to tell him that he’s a fool to have fallen in love with me. And I finally did say as much a little while ago to him. In our last conversation, he told me I didn’t have to worry about him calling me anymore. And I told him, “I’m not worried about a thing, and if you call me after today, then you are a fool.” It’s not lost on me what those words probably did to him, and consequently, he hung up in my face. I tried not to take it personally. Throughout the conversation, I was hoping to educate him, to make him understand how a person who’s loved should expect to be treated, and I chastised my own actions towards him to get across some very crucial points about what being loved is about. But I know personally, that that last statement would have still sent shockwaves through me if it were me those words were being spoken to. Even though I tried to be caring and considerate in the end, I really can’t blame him for cutting me off midsentence. He’d felt the way I had felt when the truth about my beau’s true feelings were finally revealed – betrayed, estranged, deeply hurt, despair. He was crying. I guess I was disappointed more or less at him hanging up on me because he didn’t let me explain that I would eventually cheat on him. But I’m sure that would have only upset him more. Maybe I’m twisted, but I like to think that somewhere down the line, he’ll thank me, regardless of how difficult and upsetting it was for him to hear a lot of the stuff I said to him in that last conversation. I hope that in his next love-go-round he’ll be ahead of the curve; he’ll take from this experience and be armed with some love knowledge, experience and wisdom, do’s and don’ts, and another perspective, things he didn’t have before he met me. I hope he goes back to school and gets his GED, or at the very least, take a speech class. I’m sure he’ll be a good man for somebody someday. I hope for him what I hope for myself; true love.

He admitted to me a few times that he was afraid of me. Afraid of what I would say to him whenever he asked me a question. But that he’d gotten over it. I asked him again, “You’re not afraid of me anymore?” And he says, “but but uh…I ain’t scared uh you, you don’t scare me no more. And den uh…Why should I be scared uh you?” With some pity, I responded, “Maybe you should be.” Of course he didn’t understand that I meant emotionally and went on to convince me that he had no reason to be physically afraid of me.

I won’t go into any further exploration about the situation. It’s one that I am intimately familiar with several times over and one I hope to never encounter again. In the past year or two, I’ve become quite vigilant in making sure I didn’t repeat certain unforgettable mistakes with other men that have crossed my path. It’s saved me from much humiliation and despair. I do believe it’s had a rather rotten effect on my disposition though, and it’s part of the reason why I’m alone I’m sure. Alone and lonely. But being coupled and lonely is even more tragic, I think, and I’d rather be alone.

I did the right thing. I know I did.