Tag: #Depression

  • Sick Again (Unedited)

    And I’m not talking about the Led Zeppelin song.

    No, I’m talking about the fact that I got sick over the weekend. I had written on Friday morning that I had a nostril that was clogged up, but I wasn’t feeling sick. Then around 6pm that night, oh lord, did I start feeling sick. I was running a low fever and I just crawled into bed, and didn’t come out.

    The one good thing about being sick this time around was that I got caught up on a bunch of tv shows that I had been putting off. The downside is pretty obvious; I felt like shit cuz I was sick.

    Starting Sunday, I began to feel better. I was able to watch Tottenham and the Cowboys win their respective games that day, so I was in a pretty good mood.

    But today was a working day, and I had to do my fatherly and husband duties, and it was pretty rough. I feel better than I did on Sunday, which means I am improving, but as of this moment, I just really want to go back to bed.

    But no. I am on the couch writing while the kid is doing her homework. I need to walk the dog soon, and then I need to make dinner. Nope, I gotta keep going and around 9:30pm is when I will have a chance to sit and relax and quickly fall asleep on the couch.

    I am a bit surprised that I got sick. I had a cold not too long ago, which meant that I hit my one cold a year quota. The kid hadn’t been sick, nor the wife, so I am a bit perplexed on how I was infected. See, I had a bit of time in bed on Saturday to think about how this could be the cold that kills, and I wanted to know how I acquired it; though they say you never hear the one with your name on it.

  • Dredging

    So, I have been avoiding talking about a situation, and it has to do with my daughter. She is having an eye surgery today. Very minor, adjusting the muscles in her right eye to help alignment, and to improve vision. This is, in fact, the second time she has had an operation on her eyes. Back in September 2020, both eyes were adjusted, and we thought that would be the end of it. But there was a 5% chance that we’d be back.

    I didn’t write about this before because I didn’t want to over share about my daughter’s life. But, I share so many other things about her, and not that it gives me license to share everything that happens to her… I’m proud of my kid, and this is an operation that is common and nothing to be ashamed of. She was afraid when the first surgery came around, and she sure as hell wasn’t happy about having to have a second operation, but she faced her fears, and moved forward.

    I, on the other hand, have been not at my best. I haven’t been sleeping, or eating right, and I also have been a little short tempered as well. This second surgery has been our radar since September, and I admit that I have been avoiding thinking about it. I’m not a piece of shit dad, as I read all the pre-surgery information, schedule all the appointments, and checkups, and got the kid her Covid test, and all of that stuff. I was there for the kid whenever she wanted to talk about it, and I tried my best to listen to what she was saying and not just dismiss her concerns.

    I was trying to be brave for everybody, and not think or dwell on what I was feeling. I understand that there are moments when being a parent you have to put the kid’s wellbeing before your own. And now that we are on the other side of her surgery (She just got out of the OR and is in recovery with her mother,) all of my emotions are coming up.

    The first is that I couldn’t be there. Thanks to Covid, only one parent is allowed in the hospital, so, again, I had to sit out. This left me at home, with my computer, thinking about all of this. Too much time to sit around and think, and though I know the chance of complications from the operation are minimal, not being there still makes me feel helpless, and useless.

    And hospitals, and feeling helpless and useless just dregs up the old feeling of my mother slowly dying in a hospital. These two situations have nothing in common other than a hospital, but it’s there. When hospitals are mentioned, it pops right up. And it’s not the memories of my mother dying that show up, it’s the emotions which feel draped over me like an ugly sweater.

    With that feeling of helplessness all around me, I started reliving all the mistakes that I have made over the past five years. Like, really litigating and flagellating myself. Really punishing myself for not living up who I should be for my wife and kid. Reliving mistakes I made in my career, and moments when I should have stood up for myself, or told that guy off, or just walked away. Then I really started punishing myself for not being smart enough, or talented enough, or wasting all the opportunities that I have had in this life.

    And all of this is because my kid is having a minor eye surgery?

    I might be a little depressed.

    Being upset that your child has to have an operation; that’s understandable.

    Thinking that I am the worst human on the planet because my kid is having an operation? Something seems out of whack.

    And I have been avoiding talking about this. I was trying to be brave for the wife and kid, but if any stress comes my way, and my reaction is to do the minimum and hate myself, then I am not handling it in a healthy way. And in the end, I’m not being a good father or husband.

    The good news is that the wife texted me and the kid is awake and eating ice cream. They should be home in a bit, and I promised to make chicken noodle soup.

    I got a lot of work to do.

  • Still Dealing with the Emotions

    Today is the third anniversary of my mother’s death. It felt a little different this year. See, when I cross into October, I start to feel this change in me. I start to feel solemn and, well, just sad about everything. A blanket of sadness falls over me. I’m not upset, or angry, maybe melancholy is a better way to describe it.

    Now, I say it felt different this year because I don’t feel the weight of it on everything today. The past two years, I didn’t want to do anything, just be left alone. This year, I can function without being dragged down. I can think of my mother without feeling like I’m going to fall apart, and I can even think about the silly things she would say and do. That is different from last year. I think this day will always have a despondent feeling to it, and that’s okay.

    What I did think about today was how I knew she was going to die even though no one would say that she was dying. She was in the hospital and each day she was getting worse. Dad kept telling me that it wasn’t time to come home, that she could still improve. We all knew it wasn’t true, and I didn’t know what I should be doing.

    So, one day when I left work, and the office was in lower Manhattan, around Wall Street, I just started walking up Broadway listening to music. I walked through the Financial District, through the Civic Center, SOHO, The Village, to Union Square, to the Flatiron District, to Koreatown, the Garment District and stopped at Times Square. About two hours and three and a half miles. It was getting dark when I took the subway home.

    That was a helpless moment; walking and not wanting to get anyplace.

  • My Mother’s Birthday

    Today would have been my mother’s 74th birthday. This is the third of her birthdays that has arrived without her presence. The first was the worse, and last year wasn’t much better. And this year is 2020, so it’s just as awful as it could be.

    My mother’s death is wrapped around me, not tightly, but it is all over me. It is a blanket of sadness. There are moments when I get choked up, and I still cry occasionally about her death, button the whole, I can speak about it open, and honestly. I speak most often with my daughter about it. This was her first experience of death, and she does miss her grandmother. Talking does help, and talking about memories I have of my mother to my daughter, does make thing easier.

    But it is a sadness. A feeling that I could be happier, but that I just won’t ever be that happy again. I find joy and happiness with my family, and friends, and then at the end of the night, as I drift off, or hope to drift off to sleep, there is that little honest moment that I am reminded that I can’t talk to her.

    I also know that her death has put me in a depression, one that is with me, and will be with me for some time to come. I know it because the things that I used to enjoy before her death, just don’t bring me that joy anymore. I know the signs of depression. I have dealt with it many times before, and I have always come out on the other side, and better for it. I know that this will happen again, because I want to be in a good place again, and I also have great people in my life that I can lean on.

    Still, I do miss my mom.