When I feel like this....

I've been down, but now I seem to be at my lowest... Suicide is always the last thing on my mind, I always say "I want to see how it ends" - but just now, as far as I am concerned it can go to hell... they can all survive without me, they will have to not have me holding up the sky for them.   Of course I'm not suicidal, just incredibly angry that life is being such an utter bugger, that my ideas of life's "ups and downs" seem to have erred on the side of the positive or over-optimistic - and the rollercoaster seems to be racing for the bottom.

There hasn't been a sudden shock, like divorce or bereavement - sad though it was to lose Ed - and in some ways our financial problems have temporarily slightly eased up - so why now?  The mysteries of depression.  I started crying in the Belgian Bar at lunch time - I don't know why.  It wasn't the latest blow - that some one wanted us to reduce our invoice by £1,000 - I felt calm enough about that.  It's only money after all.  I went and got a short notice appointment with the GP.  He said he wouldn't prescribe anything, wanted to do a thyroid test on me (why?) and to get me some counselling - I cried in his consulting room, he passed me the tissues.  He was very nice, he's a good doctor that one.

It's a bit like the depression I had last month over the advertising - almost exactly the same dates of the month too - residual hormones? I tried to talk to Mark about it, how I felt he never noticed me, or anything about me. He said it was because I had pushed him away so much in the last few years.   I said I thought things were getting better - he started to talk about himself and how he felt.  I said he would never know how I felt if he always talked about himself.  He asked me if James was always sympathetic.  I honestly can't remember - but I never had these real deep sort of depressions when I was with him.  Afterwards, yes - and the beginnings of feeling low - but nothing like this.  Is this the same depression as the 2010 one? Or a separate one?  I suppose it derives from the same circumstances - money, relationship problems, feeling unloved, by M and the boys to a great extent.  And the lack of success with the book is peculiarly awful.  I know rationally that it still has a chance of finding an agent, that it may well find one imminently - but there is just this awful fear that all this work and time and energy will have been wasted - no, not wasted, the conventional wisdom tells us "nothing is wasted" especially if one is involved in some sort of creative activity - but it doesn't stop me from feeling like screaming and shouting and curling into a ball and crying and completely freaking out.

What he says is unfair - we are together a great deal - in the kitchen, at meal times, in the evenings, we went out for a drink today - we have been in the car driving places together.  We spend considerably more time together than most couples because we both work from home. I "push him away" because I'm trying to work, I could just as rationally accuse him of trying to sabotage my work.  He doesn't notice because he doesn't notice, or he doesn't comment because he wants to avoid trouble.  So we return to the eternal (well, long-standing) question: is that it then?  Is this my quota of happiness for this life? Will things ever get better?  Would I be better off emotionally out of this relationship - either with someone else or alone... The trouble is he misjudges thing badly - he accused me of having been "influenced by" A's depression.  I was really cross - she's bi-polar, heavily medicated and almost supine.  I've got "exogenous" depression - and I'm getting up and getting on with things despite it - just crying when I begin to feel too horribly sorry for myself.  But I found it really hurtful that he felt I was somehow not authentically, individually depressed, but apparently following some weird girlie fashion for it.

I think this is the first time I've recognised how angry I feel when I'm depressed: maybe I'm making progress.

Vituperations

In the last few days I have written a few things about my mother in law to friends.  I am going to keep one or two of the more pithy comments here.  The rather interesting thing is that until the row, my writing and everything was getting rather depressed, I didn't have the urge to write.  Now, being liberated from the yoke of having to be nice to someone I don't particularly like, I have a nice, surging wave of annoyance to push myself onwards, and I am allowing my frustrations in various areas to open up and get dealt with.   Perhaps I should be grateful to S - perhaps this is the sort of liberating/turning point event that is forced on you.  Is it the only one, or will there be more?  I suppose I have already had a revelation about relationships etc. in May, perhaps this is something to do with Full Moons...

 I like to think I don't harbour grudges, but this is not a grudge - this is a final liberation of spirit... I've been pussyfooting around the beastly woman for too long...After going on at me about my various character defects (only 2 actually) she then said "I never start rows" - it must be lovely to be too stupid to have any real degree of self-criticism!.  

* Had a brief chat at Weightwatchers today with lovely vicar's wife who is the clerk there... she said her mother in law thoroughly hated her too - so she tried to kill her with kindness and thinks after 22 years it may be beginning to work....personally, I feel Stella hasn't even noticed, and/or thinks I'm a mug... so I think "if they will not receive you, or listen to your words.... brush the dust off your feet..."  Matthew 10.14.  Can't say I haven't tried. 

* WTF is her problem.  I know she's officially brain dead so perhaps that's the problem... Mark has offered to beef up her "obituary" for the Ham and High because it was a pathetic, inadequate (almost damning with faint praise) sort of text... and that narked her too.  I don't think she wants Ed to have any postumous love or credit at all.   Apparently the death announcement for the Telegraph will cost £300 - so much more important than having wine at lunch isn't it!!! 

* I think the thing I've always disliked about S is her dismissive attitude to other people  - especially her own family, not wanting to include people - always wanting to control numbers at events in case people get together and start comparing notes I suspect!  She is truly pathetic now - as elderly bullies often are... but I think we are all too guilt-tripped by this to ever confront her.  M said she was genuinely shocked when he told her how tactless and rude she'd been to me in the past.  He thinks she doesn't do it deliberately, that it's all just tactlessnes and stupidity - I think it's quite deliberate and strategic - then she plays the poor defenceless old woman card.  

* I may be made of stern stuff - or rather, have become more resilient as time goes on - but it hasn't stopped me from rather pathetically expecting better of Stella... What I saw today - despite all the "yes, buts" about her situation, has changed that.  It was a tipping point, I will do everything I can, but as little as possible... if you see what I mean.  I don't feel I need to forgive her, I think her behaviour is just her behaviour - I mean, I'm not sulking or anything, I will be speaking to her, I will presumably be receiving her here with the rest of the family on Sept 21st... so life will go on on the surface, it's just that I don't think I will be ever expecting or hoping better of her again.