How Depression Really Gets Going

Well, I did something stupid this morning, and I'm paying for it now.

I have an ex-wife who, after our divorce, got involved with a guy who attempted to put a cigarette out in her face.  Due to his being a hardcore stalker type, she ended up moving to the States to get fully away from anywhere he could attempt to find her (after numerous threats, etc..).  She got married again, mainly to stay down there I personally thought, but for a very long time she could not find a job.

Now, I don't know if the people who know me would consider me vindictive.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  You would be the better judge of that.  Either way, I took a bit of pleasure that since she abandoned me to my illness she had been doing fairly rotten herself.  So, for some reason I still can't seem to fathom, I was sitting here this morning wondering how her cousin was doing.  Her cousin was my 'one that got away' and in my searches I found her name with another last name tagged on.  I figure either she's married or there's another of her, and her name is common enough that it could go either way.  In order to determine which it was, I reinstated my soon to be deleted Facebook account (January 9th, 2011, unless for some reason people ask me to reinstate it) in order to look through my ex-wife's friends list because I knew she had been there and if she changed her name as a result of marriage I'm sure it would appear there.

Instead, I found that my ex-wife had a baby on December 5th., and it has sunk me into a really deep fit of depression.

For the last ten years, I have had this stupid heart condition which has basically restricted my ability to do a lot of stuff, and more recently confined me to my house like I am under house arrest.  Except for a couple of car rentals in the last year and a half (thanks to Andi and Scott) I haven't even been to the corner store since May 2009.  This has made me feel completely isolated from the world at large.  I can't visit friends (don't have any really, not anymore), family (really only my cousin and HER family count nowadays), or even get my mind off of things by seeing a movie or going for a drive.  I have to rely on other people for everything, down to grabbing a drink at the store.

Now, it isn't like it is ALL bad.  I have my only real friend living here in the house (that would be Scott, since people may have been wondering who I've been referencing), and when my father died in 2006 and we searched for a roommate to help with the mortgage we found Andi, who has since become my girlfriend/common-law wife and who plans to marry me before we leave Canada for the Dominican Republic.  The thing is though, I can't help but see the negative in all of this.

Scott is a VERY responsible guy, so responsible that even when quite sick he will still attend work as long as he isn't infectious to those around him.  Except for dire family emergencies, I have yet to see Scott take a voluntary day off of work in his life, and I'm not exaggerating.  In fact, last year I had to coerce him into the habit of taking his annual vacation time before he burned himself out completely; he has recognized the signs since, and doesn't have to be pushed anymore, but if he didn't get to that extreme his work ethic would keep him there year-round.  I can't help but feel that it is this same work ethic mentality that keeps him living in this house with me.  He is single-handedly paying the mortgage, something that was foisted on him as a result of my father dying as he was living with us when it happened, and I am a tremendous burden to him as a result.

Then, there is Andi.  I am her first relationship, and as everyone knows, you almost always fall hard for your first relationship.  I wasn't interested at first, but when she declared herself I started thinking along those lines myself.  In fact, when she declared herself, I was making in-roads with someone else, that's how oblivious I was.  The point is, I wasn't trying to seduce the young woman living with us.  In fact, I was just being myself as far as things went.  It is true that when she quit her job right after moving in to pay rent to us to help us cover the bills, I didn't throw her out, opting instead to let her look for work with a roof over her head.  That is just in my nature, and was not a ploy in any way.  In fact, she was so flaky when she first moved in, it was a complete turn off.  Now, however, I love her to pieces, but still I can see (in my mind anyway) the time coming when she has that realization that people in their first relationships do, that the person they are with really isn't the ideal, and that the happiness of finally being with someone has faded enough to show all the problems underneath.  I think it's only a matter of time, and fairly believe that if/when it happens, I can't rightfully stop her from leaving.  My arguments, in fact, would probably only be for the sake of letting her know how much I care for her, but I don't think I could bring myself to stop her as it truly is her first relationship, and that simply wouldn't be fair to her.  Besides, I'm used to being left behind.  My first girlfriend did it (kept me hanging on all Summer while she vacationed in Greece, all the while knowing BEFORE SHE LEFT that she was going to end it the minute she got back), my ex-wife did it (upon hearing from the doctors at the hospital that I might need a heart transplant when I was first diagnosed with my condition, immediately went out and found someone to have sex with - left me days before Christmas less than three months later), and a so-called friend of mine did it (last time she visited, before my father passed, she brought her new baby along for us to coo and ahh over - when neither of us expressed any interest in her or her child, mainly because we couldn't believe the guy she had the kid with and neither of us likes kids in the first place, she took off, never attended my father's wake, and then called me to tell me she didn't want anything more to do with me the following Spring).

This year, I'm looking down the barrel at my fortieth birthday, and this is how I see myself:  For 1/4 of my life, I've had a heart condition that I have been trying to survive through (my doctor is still shocked, as of a week ago, that I am even still alive - I wasn't expected to survive the night I was diagnosed, I was told a year later) and in that decade I have done nothing of worth.  In my life, total, I have failed at a marriage, failed at a business, had myself booted from a university twice (once for having the nerve to stand up to a professor, the second time due to economic woes cause by an unfair Ontario Student Assistance Program calculation which gave my ex-wife three times what they gave me for a year of university when she was living at home paying no bills and I was renting an apartment paying for everything), only worked for others in actual jobs for about a total of three years all told, and all I have to show for it is a heart condition and a huge pile of debt that I can't even pay off with help.  I've become a huge burden to the few people who have stayed by me, I hate and loath myself utterly from the ground up, and I do virtually nothing other than play video games, watch movies and television, and pet my cats.

Now, you have all the tools to see why finding out my ex-wife has a baby has kicked me down again.  My last ten years has provided me with debt, dependency, and guilt.  Hers has given her a new life, a new job, and a new family complete with what I failed to give her.  Oh, and no luck finding her cousin on her Facebook page - either they've had a falling out, or she has also removed herself from the site.  Which means, if you are following along correctly, I did this completely to myself for absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

There you have it, a glimpse into the real me.  Not that anyone other than people who actually know me are genuinely reading this blog.  I'm not stupid, page-hits do not translate into readers, and the reason my biggest day of page-hits was the 21st of December is because the words 'North' and 'South' and 'Korea' were all together in their usual places in that entry.  Google searches that lead people to a blog site that they see immediately isn't what they were looking for does not translate into a devoted readership.  So for those few of you actually taking the time to read all this crap, thanks for letting me vent.  I'll probably be all better in a day or two, and back to my usual normal-depressed self.

Hope some of you watched the video I posted earlier...I'm going to go and post the next BGJ blog now, so I can be done with this if I want to be for today.