How long must I sing this song?

My life has been like a globe in motion around the sun – interspersed with bright days and dark nights. The darkness often arrives unexpectedly – some winters are mild, other winters seem to last forever. It’s been happening for as long as I remember – way back into my teens for sure, maybe even before that.

It’s only recently that I have accepted that I have chronic depression. It’s not something that is one off. It has come to me frequently in the past and it will continue into my future.

But here’s the thing. I am determined to defeat it.

I understand that it is part of my life. I understand that I don’t have much control over it. I understand that it can be overwhelming. But I don’t think it likes a sustained fight.

I will seek out the positives. I will question the negatives. I will set myself actions, no matter how minor. I will keep myself focused on the recovery that will come. I will climb, and conquer, Mount Misery. If necessary, I will take medication, but not yet.

Aux armes, citoyens..

The Return of the Black Dog

I don’t understand depression.

I’m feeling down. Very down. All I want to do is to go to bed and stay there.

There are plenty of reasons why I should feel this way. My finances are in a bad state. I am concerned about my job. I’m worried about my health. I worry for my children. I have neglected to do things that could prove costly later on. The future scares me.

But there are also things going on that should counteract this to some extent. My girlfriend has been fantastic. My mother has been very supportive. My ex is giving me plenty of space. I have interesting holidays coming up.  My kids are the joy of my life. It’s not all bad.

And yet, all I want to do is to crawl into bed and stay there.

Depression is an odd emotion, if emotion is even the right word. It’s a feeling of utter futility, lack of energy, hopelessness and lethargy. In my case it seems more physiological the psychological. It’s like a storm or tempest that blows up from regions unknown, unloads its moribund cargo, and moves on when it decides it’s ready. It has its own will. It’s an illness that no amount of prayer, supplication or analysis will control. It’s a tide. A weather front. A tempest.

I wish I could understand it better. I wish it could lift.  I really wish it would lift.

It’s been a few months..

My relationship is going really well. We are both besotted with each other and she has brought out the very best in me. We both share very similar interests. Along with the physical and mental closeness, she makes me laugh. I make her laugh a lot too. She’s a beautiful human being. I’m still amazed that she could find me to be so attractive.

I have introduced her to some of my friends, but not my kids as yet. I’m not yet sure how I’m going to get over that hurdle! There was a big family occasion in my wife’s house today. I was there on my own, the dad to my kids. My wife and her family know that I am in a relationship, but it didn’t cause any issues today. It got me thinking though how things would go in the future when my girlfriend would be coming along with me to such meet-ups. Awkward initially I suppose. Such things are not meant to be easy. It’s an issue for another day.

Right now, we enjoy every minute of our time together no matter how brief and infrequent that time is. In her I have found the woman of my dreams.

Feelings of anger

A few days ago I had a big row with my wife. She told me she was sick of seeing me around the house and that she had grown to dislike me enormously. She doesn’t want me coming over to see the kids after work anymore and she wants to move ahead with a separation as quickly as possible. As far as she is concerned, I am history.

I feel really angry inside. I feel wronged. I feel that there are so many ways I could be nasty to her, that all she has to say is the wrong thing at the wrong time and I will say something back to her that I will regret for a long time to come.

I realize that I badly need to control my emotions over the days and weeks to come. I recognize that it is such times as these in the course of a separation that will dictate whether the split will be amicable or infused with copious dollops of fury, bitterness and hatred.

I must try to see this from her viewpoint and to patch things up as much as possible, but it’s not going to be easy.

No, it is not going to be easy.

Bumps in the road

Oh dear. It’s not easy, is it?

My girlfriend is beautiful, intelligent, exotic and sexy. She has a quirky sense of humour and is deeply, madly in love with me. But, she has a tendency towards pessimism. She is very intense and she suffers from mood swings that are often very hard for me to take. Sometimes she obsesses about the problems in our relationship, and she worries whether our relationship can possibly last. This causes a lot of tension. It’s something that is getting more frequent. Each time it’s worse.

Her biggest problem is that when she comes down to see me, I seem to spend a lot of time in the family home with my kids. As a result, I don’t have much time for her. Recently she accused me of looking at her as her “night woman”. She doesn’t seem to understand that I have so many commitments and that I need to maximise my time with them. They don’t see that much of me during the week, so I value my time with them at weekends.

I want to be with my girlfriend as much as possible, but it’s damn hard to please everyone. I’m beginning to feel that despite how she feels about me, and how I feel about her, that I’m not the right person for her. My situation only seems to cause her incredible grief and annoyance. She has never had kids, so she doesn’t really understand the sacrifices I need to make (most of them willing sacrifices) for my children.

I hope I know what I am doing

I know that I have already gone past the point of no return. I will be moving out shortly, and with the move, things will change. This time I am no longer the injured party, the jilted lover. This time it is me making the decision to go. This time I am the bad guy.

It’s an awful lot to give up. The security of a home. Friends who can only relate to myself and my wife when we are a couple. Financial stability. Emotional stability. Holidays together. Shared moments of joy and pain.  My childrens’ happiness.

And all this for a beautiful woman who wants to make me a part of her life.

What if it all goes wrong? What if I fall out of love and one day I wake up beside a woman I no longer care for? What if she tires of me and my copious failings? What if the journey proves to much for us both? Is this perhaps just some 40 year old guy’s great flight of fancy before he surrenders himself to the depredations of middle age? 

How did it come to this? Was there really a chance that I could have set the clock back? Should I have? Were there more heart-felt questions that I could have asked myself before embarking down this thorny path? I seem to have just taken this course with relatively little thought as to the consequences that now await me. 

She is beautiful. She is intelligent. She lives every day for me. She sees in me what I cannot see myself. I am a light shining in her life. I have never known such love. I am doing this so that we can be together, sharing our thoughts and dreams. 

Maybe, some time in the future, I will look back on this time and laugh. Maybe I will cry and mourn my stupidity. One thing is sure though: I cannot turn back now.

Making the move

Sometime next week, I will move out of the family home for good. At least that’s the expectation. 

Since I told my wife about having a new girlfriend, things have been OK – I managed to stay in my home for an extra week and we still helped each other with the daily chores. Talk was civil and friendly for the most part. I started looking for a new apartment and in a fairly short period I found one. It’s nice. Down by the water. I’m happy with it. It’s expensive, and I’m not sure if I can really afford it on my salary.

One thing I did though. I told my eldest son. He’s nine. I told him I was moving out. He took it fine. Or so I thought. 

I went away on business for a week, returning yesterday. Since I’ve come back things don’t seem the same. My daughter started getting all weepy, accusing me of ignoring her and asking why I have to go away so much. My wife told me that my son had a few anger episodes. My talks with him seem to have affected him badly. 

Then tonight, I have a small argument with my wife, resulting in me walking out to the pub. She is waiting for me when I came back. She indicates that this whole situation is driving her crazy. I tell her that I understand, and I take the edge off her anger. Sometimes I think she is the best actor in the world. We have these civil conversations, but underneath her seemingly indifferent exterior there is a molten river of lava flowing. She says she has no feelings for me, but every action of hers in the last week or so seems to belie this point. 

This is a really difficult time. A critical moment.

I told my wife I was in love with another woman

After the difficult conversation on Friday, things settled back to normal for a few days. She now knew, but we just got on with things and we didn’t discuss it again. It was as if nothing had happened. I had something else to tell her, and I came out with it tonight. I had to tell her that I would not be around much during the coming weekend, that I would be with my girlfriend. 

She was shocked, expressing sadness and dismay that things were moving so fast.

She wants me to leave the house as soon as possible. She doesn’t want me to come back after the weekend. She wants me to  find a friend to stay over with instead.

I’m out of the country for a few days in the week after next. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to stay one more week before I have to move out for good.

The wheels are turning. I’m not really sure where they are going, or how well I will manage in the coming months. All I can hope for is that things will work out eventually. I hope I have made the right decision.

I told her

I spoke to my wife tonight, and I told her that I now had a girlfriend.

It was a tough conversation. Not so much shock and anger, but that things are now coming to an end. I am sad tonight. I will get some sleep and think about it further tomorrow.

A critical juncture

The last time I wrote, a beautiful woman had entered my life showing me such kindness and love that I was bowled off my feet. 

Our relationship has since developed. We have met up a few times, made love a few times and shared our thoughts on the future many, many times. It has been incredible, wonderful, sublime. Superlatives escape me. At times, it has also been frustrating. 

You see, I am still living at home, and I have yet to tell my wife about all this. Our love therefore is hidden. To all intents and purposes, I am having an affair. I may make excuses, I may say that there are mitigating circumstances, but the surreptitiousness of it all is no different, I would think, than any privately conducted affair anywhere in the world. In the end, two people know something and the other person doesn’t. 

My girlfriend does not want to be a mistress and I don’t want that either. I want to live with her and for all this to be out in the open so that both I, my girlfriend and my wife, can get on with our lives. It has been a huge issue for my girlfriend and I can’t blame her. 

It’s likely that I will come out with it in the next two weeks, or within the coming month at the latest. I am a bad liar, and the longer this goes on, the more lying I will need to do.  

I have to admit that I am scared. Scared of how it will change my relationship with my kids; what it will mean for me personally and what effect it might have on my wife, who is a good person without a nasty bone in her body. I am scared that the happiness I have gained over the past year will be frittered away as I move into a new reality in my life. 

On the other hand, my girlfriend wants nothing from me except my love, companionship and company. She is financially independent and relatively well off, and she is happy if all my money goes on my family. She is content to see me doing my very best to participate in the raising of my kids. She does not want to interfere in any way and seems happy with such things as company and love and sharing her ideas and emotions with me. She is an incredible woman who is deeply in love with me. I have never experienced such feelings in a long, long time, if ever. I love her deeply. We are alike in the way we look at the world. We both care deeply for each other. 

The next few weeks may be difficult, but they open a door to the future. Let’s see what happens.