Depression: The completely irrational anger comes out

See, and I know it's completely irrational. I get it. But still.

I lived with the man for more than 10 years. There were times in those 10 years when he got down, and I mean really, really down, down to the point where I was nervous who or what I'd find when I got home. Down to the point where I got tired of his down and just wanted my happy man back. These times, for him, beings as how he's a very black and white concrete thinker, were down times for a reason. He was out of work. When we moved to Rapid he did not find work for months. And it was a scary time. But I did my best to understand and I paid for stuff and I tried my best to both cheer him up and lift him out. I stayed with him and loved him and helped him as best I could. And then, later, similar situations both when we moved here and after the hospital gig--both times he was out of work for a while and it brought him down. Understandably. And I stood by him, give me an A for effort, and for understanding and being supportive. And not telling him to just snap out of it or demanding that he talk about it. But also for being there when he did need to talk, and for helping with resume work and on-line job applications and trying to work through the unemployment process and the weird child support paperwork that came due at that same time. I was awesome, man, best woman a guy could want to have around!

During those 10 years I'm not saying I was up and happy every damn day but I only had three serious or long term depressions during those times--first, when my grandma died. I cried and cried in the night, was down and feared for the future. He was pretty supportive but couldn't understand the "why" of it. He wanted a simple reason and I had none to offer. I didn't realize until later how deeply her death affected me. Even now, thinking back, it might be a bit too simplistic to claim that it was all about my grandma's death. I was overwhelmed with the cost of living in Rapid and could feel us sinking down, financially, at the same time that I was dealing with the emotions surrounding her death. But overall, I'd rate him a C for how he dealt with my depression, with me, during that time.

The second time it affected both of us and I think we were both pretty good to each other as we each struggled to come to terms with the Nephew death after the big drawn out drama that had been the Nephews' Mom's Deployment. I'll just give us a both a B for this one and call it good.

But then about a year and a half ago, maybe longer, I fell into a horrible depression. I could feel it; I wondered aloud if I should seek meds for it. When I spoke to him about it his answer was always , "What are you depressed about?" I could not answer for life is not so clear cut, not so black and white for me. I thought things through. I contemplated him, me, us. I contemplated where we were and how things were between us. I was feeling like I didn't matter to him anymore, he didn't seem to care if I was there or not. When I talked, he rarely listened and I felt as though every single thing I said I had to repeat because after anything and everything I said, his reply would be, "What?" He was no longer interested in any kind of physical contact, although we still slept in the same bed. We never touched except by accident, by reflex while sleeping. I examined it all and it brought me farther down. I tried to talk about it and was met with replies of, "That's what happens when you get old," and "I do too listen." And then he got an ipod.

It was bad enough before, when all he did all evening, every evening was watch tv, but when he started to listen to the ipod while he watched tv, essentially totally shutting me out of his life completely? I could tell there was a reason, finally, for my depression. And there was a point where, if he'd tried just helping me through my depression, talking to me and working things out, I think it could have been saved. But instead, as I fell down deeper into my depressive spiral, he just shut me out more and more, refusing to even try to understand how things were with me. We went from this happy couple to one who never spoke to each other, touched each other, looked at each other or did anything together within the course of like 2 years.

And here's the irrational part: I'm so happy, now, for how things worked out. I know, now, that I really did want out and I'm glad I got out while I'm just 44. But I'm still irrationally angry at him, now, for not "getting" it, for not trying to help pull me out of my despair and working with me. I feel like, as I look back, I could have killed myself and he'd have just gone, whew, wonder what her problem was? And just moved on. I exaggerate. But I'm mad and irrational. Why couldn't he see how depressed I was? I pretty much lost all my energy and totally shut down, couldn't do much but sleep and cry. He'd lived with me a long time. I could have tried reaching out more, but I did try to the best of my ability. He laughed at me, misunderstood (deliberately obtuse?), and dismissed me. And I'm mad because I could easily have done likewise when he was down but I didn't do that. And I'm mad because I got so, so tired of anything and everything always having to be initiated by me.

Ah well, it's over now. And now I see that perhaps he just does not have the depth to see how far down I was and since there was no external cause that he could identify, well, "I guess," he thought, "it'd just be easier to ignore her." And after all I did for him. Bastard.

Finding the proper avenue for release

I have a lot of anger right now; some for the ex, some not. And a lot of it is frivolous stuff, so silly as to be ineligible for consideration in the legitimate field of acceptable things to bitch about. Some not so much.

I'm hoping to become a better person and let go of all the anger. And be one of those people who, when you meet them, you come away somewhat annoyed and somewhat jealous. I want people, after having run into me at the grocery store, to walk away thinking, "Damn her for being so smug and so frickin' happy. I wish I was happy. Grr..." And, yeah, sure, I see the hypocrisy of me wishing that my own happiness would be so great as to piss off other, less happy people.

So what then? How do I deal with this anger? How to process it, shove it aside, bury, it regurgitate it, purge it so that it no longer consumes me? Better still how to get so I just don't think of it, of him or all the things about the last 10 years that just piss me off, so that I can move on and just be me? I used to like me. But.

You know how annoying it is to just suddenly find your own mouth telling a story, unbidden by the logical, normal part of your brain, to some random person about some stupid idiocy of your ex's, that never needed any telling, but you are so consumed with your own situation that a person saying something as innocuous as, "What nice weather we're having," is likely to set you off over what an dumbass your ex was for the way he couldn't get the outdoor part of the indoor/outdoor thermometer to read correctly because he couldn't understand the simple instruction: Do not place sensor in direct sunlight. Anyone who's been through a major breakup can probably relate. I'm just saying that my anger is starting to annoy me. Even as I'm relating a Stupid Ex anecdote, I am shrinking with embarrassment inside, saying, "Dude, you need to stop doing this. The world does not revolved around the end of your relationship."

Some might say, "But what about your Internet friends?" Well, it's the same for them as it is for the people I talk to in real life. There's really only so much boorassing about the ex that people can take before they all just kinda go, Oh, yeah, the one about the indoor/outdoor thermometer? Heard it. Twice. Yawn. Let it go already.

But, I thought, what if I got a blog? I could bitch and bitch and let it all out to my heart's content. I could even yak about the frivolous stuff, the stuff I can't even tell KW about because it's too stupid to admit that I actually think that way. And people could come and read my blog, if they knew about it, and they could read it and go, "Wow. This chick has issues." And snicker about how much less their lives suck, how silly it is for me to feel anger over such mundane crap, what, exactly, they would do in my situation and how glad they are to not be me. And decide on their own if they want to keep reading it or not, unlike my poor work and my poor Internet friends.

This blog, in theory, concentrates my Stupid Ex anecdotes and provides an outlet for my anger that I can plan for. Instead of launching into some long stupid story that no one wants to hear about how the install of the garage door went, and how that compared to the last time we tried installing a garage door, and how angry each made me and how each put bricks in the wall, I could instead (this is my hope!) channel that story into a Stupid Ex Anecdote compartment in my brain and edit it and embellish it to the point where it was entertaining enough to type out here. I suspect that this might leave me, both on my board and in real life conversations, a bit disconnected while I get used to the leap I have to force my brain to make... I'll be all, "Wow, a bat in your garage and it just flew out when you opened the door and chased it with a broom? Really? That reminds me of my own garage....." and I'll get this stupid shocked look and momentarily space out and inside my brain it'll be like this: "... STOP!!! Don't tell this poor woman you work with about how your dumbass ex can't read enough to install the garage door!!This would go much better at your Letting go of anger blog... you could tell of how the door still doesn't work, he couldn't get it in right, the motor size was all wrong, it wasn't his fault, certainly, heh, and how it was his fault that the door got damaged when the wind storm caught the piece that was loose after he drove his snowmobile into it and fixed it with duct tape, and then segue into the garage door in Rapid and how you had to stand there and read the book line by line out loud so that he could install it right....man, that was a fun day even if I laugh at him for it now... god damn him why did he stop loving me and I him? Surely it's all his fault. grr..." ...and then I'll grimace a tiny bit and pop back into the now and say something like, "bats are kinda cute but they can carry rabies!! Best to get that fucker out of there!!

See? Makes me look like I'm on drugs at first, but the option of having an outlet to think it through for, sparing my friends the continual boorassing will be well worth it.

Now, who wants to hear about the heater coil under the tile floor in the sewing room? How about whatever happened to that snowmobile anyway? or perhaps you'd rather hear about family drama and how great a dad he was after we spent hundreds of dollars on a lawyer and won?

Here is my caveat, and I will say in this once and I'll not back away: You're only getting my point of view. That's all you'll get here and I'm the hero of all my stories. As it should be. grr.