This is My Curse

This entry comes with a music video and everything. Ooooooooo. Aaaaaaaaaaah. Impressive, huh? Ok, maybe not, but there is a purpose behind it. Beyond it being right up my alley and a beautiful song, the lyrics and the visual story touch my heart. 

Watch it. Love it. Read on.

There is Love

We are all made up of our experiences, for better or worse. While my journey through depression began in high school, I would say that my current 'era' of depression began in 2006 and it has yet to truly remiss. I married young. At the age of 20. That was in 2003. That marriage came with hope and all my dreams of a great life. 2006 was when it all fell apart. My mind was elsewhere and I ended up in the hospital. (Which was one of the most pathetic experiences I've had...but that's for another time.) I threw myself into my career. I rather enjoyed working myself to death, because I didn't have much else going on. 60-70 hour weeks were normal. Up before the sun and home after it set. But I had money, friends, and weekends. It was years later when I realized how much that work was my self medication.

After a long heart-to-heart with a dear friend (that also happened to be a therapist), I decided to try medication again. My previous experiences were spotty at best and mostly horrible. I was lucky enough to find a good psychiatrist that worked well with me. We worked together for years trying to keep on top of my body's habit of becoming immune to medications. There were good times where we tried to ween me off, just to be reminded that my condition is likely permanent. It was the light at the end of the tunnel that simply turned out to be a train bearing down on me.

Skip forward a couple of years to when I began dating Lexi, my then future and now current wife. I was wearing down from the work. I had been advancing and was finding myself in a role that I did not enjoy. Lexi and I got married and I quit my job, with the chance to take a vacation....being a stay at home dad. Now, I really thought that being home was going to be a walk in the park. Of course as any stay-at-home parent will tell you, it is just as difficult, if not more, than a full-time job. This was a rookie mistake, and the laugher I emote concerning my thought of it as a vacation could be heard around the world. What a lie.

I never realized to what degree I got my self-worth from my job. And as I related earlier, I still did not recognize that I had just cold-turkeyed my most beneficial medication, work.

Burning to Find You

Like I said, being at home is WORK! But it wasn't the kind that I wanted or that fulfilled me. I was stuck in my own prison. I had designed it, built it, locked myself in it, and throw the key far away. Realistically, the next few years can be described as the ups and downs of daily life. Kids, family, house, and personal anguish. I attempted suicide in 2014 and ended up in the hospital again. While not entirely germane to this post, it shows where I was at. I was searching for something. I don't even think I knew it at the time.

Will You Wait for Me

This beautiful music video is set in the magnificent, golden rolling-hills of Southern California. The place I lived most of my life. They are beautiful and they touch my heart. The blonde woman is not dissimilar to my first wife. But let me make this clear, she represents what I am searching for. I am not searching for her, but the personification of the past and what I hoped to do with my life... if things had gone 'according to plan.' I am more profoundly in love and happy with Alexis than I ever was before. 

So she represents 'my ideal' past and the way to a perfect future. I am, of course, the searching man, and the books and library is a strong representation of my wife. She is a voracious reader and a magnificent resource to help me with my struggles and search for truth and help.

Will You be There

After all this time, I still feel like I have to go back. To save the past. To save a broken marriage, even though it is obviously inferior to my current one. To live the life that would make me a worthy person.  To be something better. And in the end, I feel that journey will kill me. Perhaps in death or delusion I will feel that I am in the arms of a pleasant fiction and all will be well. But I think not. 

....This is My Curse

This post has taken a while to compose because of the emotional nature of the subject. It's still difficult to think about some of this and try to wade through it without becoming depressed or chasing the rabbit too far. I truly love this song, but after listening to it a couple of times I cannot hold back the tears. It touches.

Epilogue

It would be unfair to end on a bittered note. I have gained so much over the years. It has cost me. Yes. But I have become cognizant of so many things. The blessings that I have of supportive friends and family. I truly could not be more blessed by that. Not that I freely share my feelings to them on a regular basis, but I do not hear the typical cliches that people pass off to those dealing with mental illness. 

I took things for granted, and somehow was blessed with more. However, this comes with a fight. I have to see it for what it is. Somehow I must understand that the past can lend us tools and even knowledge to use, but it is gone. Where can I go from here? Being able to cast off the need to go back and change is something that I will struggle with for a long time, if not the rest of my life. 

I cannot imagine that I am alone. But that doesn't make it any easier.