It seems to be a reoccurring trait. Something seems to set off my weekend in the wrong place. It is usually when I get home. Most days it seems to be one issue, even though there are a number of other major ones that seem to creep in.

I will being all this by saying that I just had my first visit with a therapist just this past Thursday. All in all, everything went well. I knew there wasn't going to be any great epiphany as to curing, what she diagnosed, this depression that has been going on for the past three years and has slowly started to get worse, especially over the last six months. This visit itself was a result of my holiday weekend not really being a holiday. It was plagued with a lot of thoughts, thoughts that seemed make me feel like I am at the end of my rope. A rope that seems to be rather frayed to begin with, but I still keep holding on to it. A lifeline so that I don't fall, hurt myself or worse do something that I could not take back. Even though I am too chicken sh@t to do it.

As for seeing the therapist, it helped. I did get a lot of things off my chest to a stranger whom I am paying 125 bucks an hour to listen to me cry about how my life has gone wrong and I don't know what to do anymore. It helped, this is my thing and something that I wish to keep to myself and to those that have a bit more of an understanding of what it is like to live with this albatross hanging around your neck. Some have a larger bird and others have a smaller bird. I personally probably fall in the latter category, a smaller bird.

Today I was feeling good. It is always in the background, I carry it around with me. Some days are just better than others. This was, up-until an hour after I was done with work, a good day. It didn't seem to bother me so much and I could function with better normalcy than I had earlier in the week.

What changed?

Well, my mother has been bugging me about coming out and seeing fireworks tonight. The town that my family comes from, and I now live but five miles from, is having their homecoming weekend. I don't know if homecoming is something that is a mid-west thing. If so, it is really a gathering of towns people (past and present) to come together, drink massive amounts of beer, eat carnival food, and listen to kids wanting to be on every carnival ride. Generally a good time, and one that is held all weekend. I really didn't want to go to homecoming or see the fireworks. I was in a good mood and wanted to spend it with my wife instead of my family. Reconnecting a bit, school started for her and we haven't had much time together. Also, I really didn't want to be around my family. This is for the fact that my family has an opposition to my wife and I. Mostly for the fact that they can't quite understand us. Such is life and while it frustrates me that I (and my wife) am misunderstood, I have come to expect it.

As luck would have it; a great storm has rolled through canceling the first night of homecoming, thus canceling the fireworks. That was avoided. Then she proceeds to tell me that my cousin is having a bar-b-que at his new place for my grandfather. I hear this third hand, would be nice to get a text or call from said cousin. Ok, whatever. As the conversation goes forward my mother then tells me that my Uncle will be in town for the bar-b-que. I am having some issues with my uncle.

The short story is that I promised to fix a car for my cousin. Now; give me a hammer, nails, wood and tell me to build something, I'm all about it. Tell me to fix a car. I am going to look at it like archeologists look at Stonehenge. In complete wonder and disbelief. But I am superman, I'm a hero and I can do anything. Not so much, I drug the act of fixing the car until this past March. Not my proudest moment, but I finally asked for help and it was done.

But wait there is more.

Neither my wife and I can find the title. I know he was upset about the car not getting done in time, I accept that. We tore the house apart, put it together again, tore it apart, and then put it back together again to find it. All I can imagine is that it was accidentally thrown out in a mass purge. So plan two, off to the DMV we go. New title was applied for and was suppose to be here in two to four weeks. Ok, that he could deal with. Two to four weeks later: it found it's way to her parents house, being that her fathers name was on title with hers. Being good Samaritans that her parents are, they decided to send it off to my uncle.

Cool, right?

Nope, somehow the title didn't make it and was lost in the mail. Great, so off to the DMV we go again. This time her father went in, took care of it, and took his name off of it. This for the fact that it would be mailed directly to our house.

In this time we have been calling the DMV trying to find out what the hell is going on because this time the two to four weeks have passed and the title is no where to be found. After about two weeks of calling we finally get a hold of a person that knows what is going on. Come to find out the original title that made it's way to my wife's parents house was not valid because there was no paperwork showing that the car was paid off.

For Christ's sakes!!!!

Luckily that person said that here in Illinois there is a expedited service. For 30 extra bucks we can have the title in roughly a week. That was at the beginning of July. It is September now, and it still has not shown up. We have been calling every week to find out the status. It has been in processing. I am sick of the word processing. If I have to hear it on the phone one more time, there is going to be a person at the Illinois DMV without an ear.

What sent me into the huge funk and prompted me to get help was the fact that I received a text message from my Uncle asking what was up with the title. I know I might be reading too much into things, but the last phone conversation I had with him resulted in him (a guy who is normally laid back) yelling at me stating something along the lines that “You better do something about it and get it done.”

What the hell am I going to do when it is sitting in a stack of papers in Springfield, Illinois?

I haven't even responded to the text and now I might have to be guilted in to going to a bar-b-que so that he can freak out on me. Great. I don't know how to tell him that I called the DMV and from what the head of the that particular department stated, they are behind six to eight months and ours (plus our refund of 30 bucks) is in a stack that might be completed in two to four weeks.

Two to four weeks.

What he doesn't know is that this piece of paper has become a symbol of everything I have done wrong, everything I have f@cked up, every disappointment in my life, every failure, (ok, I think you are getting the point.)

I just don't know what to do. I can go on about how I have messed up my life and of all this has caused me break down and heighten what we call depression.

I guess that is life, right?

I am just tired and don't know what to do.