Depression...scary, dark, and lonely...

This post is going to be a little more in depth than my normal ones.

I hit a brick wall in Nov 2017 to where I entered into an experience I have never felt before.
It was a slow downward spiral into what I now know as depression.
I was scared.  I was tormented by my own thoughts.  I was totally alone, even though I had many people around me.  I felt like I was drowning.  I felt like there was no way out of it.
Thank God, I had friends and family around me to help me identify that I actually needed help.

I have always been faced with challenges in my life.  Growing up in a dysfunctional family, struggling with my sexuality and even feeling like I never belonged nor fit in, anywhere.
I have been able to face these struggles head on and over come every one of them, alone.
Having said that, I have had  to face trials in life make me stronger, more adaptive, so that I have been able to relate to friends that need help or empathize with people and their struggles.
I am a humble person.  I have been very blessed, but in November, I was head to head with the darkest demon I had ever had to face, depression.

While depression seems to be a term that is thrown around a lot, I had never been able to relate to anyone that suffers from it.  I have had plenty of friends who were "depressed" but unless you have experienced it yourself, you really don't understand how scary of a place it is.   I always dismissed the  term when people told me they were depressed.  To me, it was a foreign concept.  In my head, I was thinking, you're sad, suck it up and get over it.  We all have things to go through, don't be weak.  I now understand the chemical imbalance in your brain and how it can lead you to dark places that you never thought you would be in.

After i reached a breaking point and my friends forced me, I started seeing a therapist in Nov and I was placed on an anti-depressant and a anti anxiety pill.
I was so in love with this guy that nothing made sense anymore.    There wasn't a second of the day, awake nor asleep, that wasn't consumed by thoughts of him.  I have never felt so in love and so abandoned at the same time.  I loved him deeply and whole-heartedly, and sadly, I think I always will...from a distance.

I couldn't sleep.  I wouldn't eat.  I wouldn't even leave my house.  My facial features were drawn and i just had a look of despair.  I felt like my soul had been ripped out and my desire to fight to stay afloat was gone.  Like I said, I had lots of friends and family around me at all times for weeks, but I never felt so alone.  There were days I would cry all day long and all night, literally.  Have you ever cried for 24 hours non-stop? It begins to physically hurt after a while.

I started seeing my therapist a couple times a week, and I began to shine some light on the darkness.
I will say, this was and still is, the most difficult climb I have ever set out on.  It was torturous.  In a way, I wasn't motivated to get well.  I just didn't care.  I didn't want to go on.

Now for me, someone who loves life, every part of life, the good and the bad, I was ready to just give up and this shocked my friends and family.  It scared them.

I was in such a lull that being awake was a challenge, but being asleep was no better.
My mind was consumed with thoughts of him all day, every minute of every day.
It was haunting.  It was annoying.  I was frustrated.  I was mad.  I couldn't grasp why I couldn't control my thoughts.  My very own mind...was my enemy.
If you have never cried for 30+ days straight, I hope you never do because it hurts, mentally and physically.

Once the medication started kicking in, I started to feel better, during the waking hours.  My nights, were still an issue.  I would dream about him.  I would wake up crying my eyes out every time I would fall asleep.   Then I started not wanting to sleep.  Lack of sleep will make you delirious.
I was consumed all day with thoughts that made me sad and depressed and now I am feeling the same thing during my sleeping hours.  I felt trapped.  I felt like there was no way to escape this pain.  24 hours a day...thoughts raging, feeling helpless...and the point I realized I really needed help was I was sitting at my house and I got so desperate that I felt the only way to end all the thoughts and dreams and pain, was to end my life.
Im a smart man and I do believe in God.  I knew this was wrong.  I was scared.  I was more scared than I had ever been in my life.  I reached out to my family and friends at 6am that morning and asked for help.  I knew now, this was not something I would be able to do on my own.  I wouldn't win this battle.

See, luckily through the therapist I was able to learn techniques to help keep me grounded in the present, meaning not allowing my mind to drift away to thinking about my ex, the reason I was so down and out.  I was able to make progress mentally.  I was able to separate myself from thinking about him.
I tried some hypnotherapy to try and help me put those memories away and leave them there.  For a time, it help.  I asked me my therapist just to erase those memories.  I didn't want them anymore.  I didn't want the pain...I would rather have a blank timeline than a painful one.
Alas, he refused that.  Said that would/could create split personality disorder or some other mental crisis.  So I ended up just learning to find ways to deal with it.

Its been a rough climb.  It still is and there are still days I think about him, but in the end, I know he is not someone I can ever be around.  I was hurt so badly and so selfishly by the one person that I thought would actually be there for me the rest of my life.  Someone who gave me a promise and I believed him, which for me, is a difficult thing to do given my childhood.

Like Ive said many times, I am blessed and fortunate for my friends and family.  If you ever feel like you need help, you should reach out for it.  It could be the hand that saves your life.

Depression is a thing that haunts you.  Its not easy to leave it behind.  Even at the happy moments, I can feel it creeping in.  Sometimes I wonder if the feeling will ever leave me completely.
As I analyze life, maybe I'm still depressed, but i refuse to let it win.  I feel like I am faking the act of happiness at times.  But I am hoping this will eventually rewrite the bad chapters with new ones.

Word of caution... be careful when you hold someone's heart in your hand.  You may not realize the hold you have on it before you break it.  A broken heart is the most difficult thing in life to heal.

Learning to be mindful, staying grounded in the present, is a practice that takes a lot of practice.  Its a challenge, especially for someone with ADHD.

Keep your chin up and keep moving...i know I am trying to !

Sadness and depression have become constants in my life.  They are always lurking in the background waiting for that moment they can seize the day.  But I am a warrior.  I will fight.

My heart still hurts with thoughts of missing him, thoughts of what he is doing and thoughts of why I wasn't good enough.  However , when I feel myself drifting to the dark side, I try to grab hold of some of my techniques and pull myself back to ground.
I really hope one day that I feel this emotion again, even at the risk of losing everything I have gained.... right now, Im still scared.

A lot can change in 1 year....

One year ago this week, I was about to set out on, what i thought, was a dream experience.
You see, growing up in a very very dysfunctional, non-operational family, poor, in the hills of TN, I didn't have a real family life, so to speak.
I bounced around from home to home, relative to relative, and friends families.
I was always searching for that Norman Rockwell family portrait, to be able to experience what it was that I saw in movies or tv shows about a family that was one unit.
I never really had that until my adult life.  I was able to find that sense of belonging and experience.

So the guy I was seeing at the time, had this amazing, perfect family.  And when i say perfect, I mean, look up the definition of family and it should have been a portrait of them.
The mom was amazing, Cooked amazing food, took care of the kids, made them breakfast, pretty much the most perfect mom anyone could ever ask for.  She was involved in their schools, games, after school activities and even their friendships.  She was like their best friend.  She was the glue in the family spine that held it together.  The kids were all so perfect.  They all were attractive.  They were all educated and spoiled, but not spoiled to a point where you would know they were "spoiled".  They were blessed to have a family like this.  Spoiled in a sense that it was so perfect that it would make everyone else jealous.  They were just drowned with love and adoration from the family and the parents really loved them so much.

I had seen families that were real families before but never anything like this!  It was amazing.  I felt like I was living in a  dream.
So we were approached to spend a month with them in NJ.  Of course, I was exploding at the seams.  I wanted to go immediately.  I wanted to experience this.  I wanted to feel the love and adoration of the family.  After all, they loved him so much, maybe I could get just a small piece of that, even if it were for just one month.

So off we went.  Since we both could work from home, we packed up the dogs, our clothes for a month and started out on a month long journey. The road trip was, mehhh, but I couldn't wait to get there.  One of the funniest parts of the trip was him just wanting me to pass out and sleep so I wasn't talking to him all the way.  I do like to talk a lot....

We arrived in NJ to a warm welcome from his mom and sisters.   I tell you, I had the best summer of my life.  Just living up in NJ for a month, getting to experience this amazing family life, getting to know all of his family members and to me, drawing us closer together.  I adored this man.  Just sleeping beside him in bed made my energy feel like a complete circle.  I think that is hard to explain.
Its like, people give off a certain ora or energy.  I know I am a white light of energy.  But I always felt like there was a missing piece to my circle, maybe even damaged from all the injuries of my childhood.  But when I was beside him, i felt like that incompleteness, finally made a complete circle.  I was better.  I was shinning brighter.  I did more good in the world.  Even something as small as a scent that he gave off made my heart flutter.

Anyway - it was the best summer of my life.  It was like I was reading a book, yet I was in it.  I was experiencing it.  The family was amazing.  Being in NJ was amazing.  Growing our bond was amazing.

The basis of this thought on the blog is a lot can change in a year.  While I am very thankful that I got to experience that, I no longer have any of that in my life.  And looking back, this week was the week that we were preparing to leave for the trip.  All I have now is the memory.
I am hoping that as each year passes, the memory becomes more fond and less painful.  Remembering the past is sometimes, oftentimes, painful for a hopeless romantic.  I hope, in my life, I am able to experience this type of family love again.

In closing, cherish those family memories.  Cherish the love that you share, for when its gone, it will leave a sting in your heart.
I just wish that family knew exactly what they meant to me.

hopeless romantics always finish last

Sometimes its the most painful part of my life...being a hopeless romantic.
Yes, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I dream of having a Hollywood love story, which I did.
It just seemed to turn into a horror film.
Sometimes a hard reminder of the past is a jagged knife into the soul.
I want to remove this so its not a reminder every day, but I can't :-(

Living in a world that is painful is a very difficult challenge.
I need to stop trying to be romantic...its over rated.
For you I was only a chapter, for me, you were the entire book.

Shame on me for believing that you were my forever, my person.

Death....a sad occurrance

This weeks tale will be that of a young boy who grew up on a Hill in Tennessee.  This hill was covered by Aunts.  As you can tell by my wittiness, this boy grew up living on a hilltop surrounded by his family, which were his dad's sisters, The AUNTS.
Growing up in TN as a hyper child (pre-adderol) his family had their hands full with this hyped up little blond hair, blue eyed devil.  He was always getting in to things.  If there was a box, he would open it.  If there was a radio laying around, he would take it apart.
The child was passed around from Aunt to Aunt to instill their values in him and share the amount of energy he possessed.  His parents worked allot and were not around very much. 
As time passes, each Aunt had their methods for handling his A.D.D.  One Aunt would make him write, over and over and over, until his hand-writing would be perfect.  She also was a firm believer in making him smell the paint in the corner.  Another Aunt would let him listen to music on record players and dance.  She would also tell him ghost stories that would last for what seemed like forever.  The another was the "cool Aunt' with the "cool car and cool house".  This is the house we went to EVERY Halloween.  Nice houses = Great treats
The other Aunt would come up with more creative methods to harness the energy. 
This Aunt was Tempie.  She would teach him things that she would learn from the Encyclopedia (yes, the books, not the Internet) To this young boy, this Aunt was the smartest person in the world.  He looked at her with amazement and would think...one day, I hope to grow up to be like her...smart.
Her methods, while exhausting, would tire the boy out and he would fall asleep.  To name a few of these time consuming activities....He was told, if you sprinkle salt on a birds tail, it wouldn't be able to fly and then he would be able to catch it.  He would spend hours chasing birds around with no success.  Another situation involved catching lightening bugs and cutting their tails off.  If he collected enough, he would be able to sell them to someone and make money. (this to a kid who grew up in rural TN was very appealing).  In the summer, He was told to catch June Bugs and tie a string on their legs to walk them like a pet...all were just a well planned scheme to keep this little one occupied and out of trouble.

This boy would get in trouble with his parents and he would run to her house, which was next door, to be protected.  He was never let down....never turned over to the parents for the beating I'm sure he deserved.
Sadly, this Aunt passed away recently.  She left behind many people who she touched.  She was loved by many. 
Its difficult to say good-bye to someone who taught you to tie your shoes, someone who taught you your multiplication tables, how to write to a thousand in Roman Numerals, someone who fed you and made sure you had good moral values instilled in you that would last you a life time.  Values and the desire to succeed in life.

This boy was me...and my Aunt will be missed.  I know, a part of her lives on in each of us...especially me

I love all of my Aunts and its sad to watch one of them pass away. 
I am a living, breathing part of each of you...Aunt Mary, Aunt Marie and Aunt Shelby.  I love you all!
Aunt Tempie Roten, you will be missed...
Thank you for the memories, the love and for taking part of making me who I am!

So from the little blond hair, blue eyed devil, I stand here, bare foot, on top of a hill, june bug tied on a string in one hand and salt for a birds tail in another,  waving farewell to you....until we meet again.


                                                          PHOTO OF THE WEEK

This is My Life, and Im stickin to it!