I've been staying away from here lately…just looking in a couple of times. Today's a big day of sorts.  I've talked with both "kids."  They've been my main source of good over these years.  If not for them, I don't think I would have made it.  Odd.  I can recall when they were little having the parental thought that if something happened to them I would fall apart.  And it's been that what's befallen me and its affect on them has been a huge piece of what gets me down.

Just yesterday, I looked at the daughter's flickr page and what she'd written beneath a picture of one of our dogs, the only one left now.  In it, my Lindsay mentioned the tought time, the family, the divorce, the loss of the money that should have put her into college and how all these same circumstances that have led to my years of depression have also brought on her first bout it depression in her own young-adult life.

These are the things that wreck my emotions.

Going from a secure professional with over 20 years as a high school teacher, adviser, and coach to my present poverty, living with my elderly parents, baffled and defeated by all that has happened, feeling responsible for all of it, yet also recognizing how others played a part, …  and I get stuck in recalling all of it, dreaming of a miracle recovery, but falling short when it comes to believing that it can really come true.

The bright spot is Nate, who's got a good job and he's able to stay mostly positive.  And I know it was the time we spent together that helped for the basis for what's going well for him.

I'm not doing well at all.

Not comfortable with a med that worked in the past, with no therapeutic interaction available…it just sucks.

And I can't keep away from thinking I should know better, and do better.  I should be able to change how I see this.  I've got a lot of experience with a depressive episode passing, and getting to a long stretch of being mostly free of it.

One of the keys for me as I've looked back is when there are or have been relatively important tasks that I know I should do, but I end up for some reason avoiding them.  Then it builds into a huge burden.  In the past, being on a school year schedule with semesters and years coming to an end, getting a fresh start seemed to help.  And now, it seems there is simply too much to do, too many things undone so that I can never catch up, and things are broken with no money to fix them and I just get overwhelmed.

So I try to relax away from it all.  But that doesn't do anything except allow a periodic escape.

Nate, in his need a little over two years ago came to my rescue, giving me a purpose that made sense.  Most of my ability came back and I was lively, interested, competent.

Then things started to come back and bite me …from the marriage and the divorce and the ex who's stuck in her alcoholism and he anger and her own need to overcome the pain and dissappointment.

I just don't know if I'll be able to overcome it this time around.  I've been so completely defeated it seems.

I still look for meaning.  I still hope for understanding….for what I imagine to be an enlightenment…but the light has dimmed.

I'd like to feel the kind of happiness I've enjoyed in the past.  I had a lot of it.  Maybe too much.

So anyway…I love my children and they're my main source of hope.