The weekend was filled with getting the house in some semblance of order. We moved in a couple months ago now, and there are always little things here and there to do. We also had Rich’s family visiting for the day, and being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted everything to look “just so.” R has many talents, but keeping a clean house is not one of them. He’s home all day with our son, writing for a couple sports websites, and the pace is grueling. Even if he were a neatnik, there would be no time for it. So, it all falls on me to do. I was so wrapped up in being busy most of the weekend, so when there was time to reflect I literally fell apart.
R finished writing and went to lie down, as he had been up late the night before with our night owl son (who inherited his night owl tendencies from his father). I began thinking about life these days, and how hard everything has been. The depression grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me under once again. R and I have been in a bad spot over the last couple of months. It’s been building ever since he took this particular writing job. One would think that writing at home would be a piece of cake, but this one isn’t. He works 10.5 hour days and cranks out one article after another all day long. During this writing, he is also caring for our son. By the time he’s finished, he is completely wiped out. I work in Seattle five days a week, and my drive time alone is three hours per day, not to mention the fact that I have four kids and am in my last trimester of pregnancy with my last child. So I too am wiped out at the end of the day. We haven’t been connecting with each other, and resentment (on my part) has been building. I feel huge and unattractive in this pregnancy, and because we don’t feel truly connected right now, the intimacy has fallen by the wayside. I was always confident in his attraction to me, but not anymore, and it hurts me deeply. He says that he doesn’t initiate intimacy with me like he used to because I don’t initiate it with him. Yet I don’t initiate because I don’t feel he’s attracted to me any longer. Which came first-the chicken or the egg?
He also has this aspect of his personality that makes him secretive. It’s not out of any maliciousness-he just has his own world. I do too, so I understand it. But, his is more dangerous. He does not share things that I would think most couples would share. Details of his life are irrelevant to him, so he feels no need to share them with me. He also does not feel a desire to tell me of his comings and goings, so even if it is benign, it seems dangerous to me when I find out about it. There always seems to be something I discover he was doing that I did not know he was doing, which in turn leads me to wonder what else he has done/is doing that I’m unaware of…. We have trust issues to begin with, and these things just compound those problems. One of the sports blogs for which he writes has his crank out articles on any subject having to do with sports-any sport. From time to time, he also is asked to write about the attractiveness of certain female athletes. I’ve told him how bothered I am by is; it just feels disrespectful to me. I would never publicly expound on the “hotness” of some random guy out of respect for R, so for him to do this feels like a betrayal to me-even though he was asked by his employer to do it. Am I being ridiculous? The cycle goes like this: He will write an article about a hot athlete, at some point I’ll discover it, then I will let him know how much it hurt my feelings. He’ll explain that it was for his job and agree that it is shallow, but state that that is what people like to read. We will eventually move past it until I discover yet again that he has written another article. It’s never-ending and it never stops feeling hurtful to me, right or wrong. I guess it boils down to this-the thought of him looking at another woman that way makes me ill. For the four years we have been together, he’s all I’ve seen. I’ve been so consumed with love for and attraction to him that other men are seldom noticed by me. The fact that he is noticing other women, compounded by the fact that I’m big and pregnant and he and I aren’t intimate nearly as often as we used to be, saddens and hurts me deeply.
My work life is not fulfilling me, and that is not helping my depression. My days (with the commute time thrown in) are long and I am completely exhausted most of the time. As I’ve mentioned before, I work for a non-profit. We do amazing work putting people with disabilities to work, building their skills, and helping them realize their potential. My specific job within this company is demanding, though. People are in and out of my office all day long needing things from me. People even seem to get offended if they stopped by my office and I wasn’t here for them! God forbid I should ever take a break or go on lunch. I’m the Safety person in a manufacturing facility, so I handle first aid needs as well as OSHA regulations, L&I claims, etc. Some days, I just want to shut my door and be left alone to do my paperwork and have some quiet. Yet I am forced to interact with people from every department off and on all day long, and right now, it is really wearing on me. I don’t want to chit chat, not do I want to put on my fake smile and act like everything is “just fine” when it is in fact not fine at all. I am as low as I have ever been, it’s not getting better, and I can’t take depression medications for it (because of the possible risk to my baby).
I feel as if all that I am doing in this blog is complaining, and no one (including myself) likes a complainer. I’ve read countless books on being positive and creating one’s own world with positive thinking. I believe those things, too. I know on some level I am creating all this. Yet, I also know that chemically things are “off” with me at this moment in time, and I need medication to help level me. My depression is affecting every aspect of my life. I see my kids being their wonderful selves, and I will still laugh with them and show them lots of affection, but those are moments in time. The joy doesn’t last long, and god….I wish it would. Just to feel that lightness of being again. They deserve all of my joy and laughter, not my sorrow. I felt horrible last night for crying in front of my two-year old. He would come up to me and be his usual hilarious self, and I would stop crying and hug him and talk to him, but then he would go to the other end of the room to play and I would break down again. Happiness, true lasting happiness, feels so far away now. I don’t know how to get it back, and I don’t know how to get back to feeling connected to the love of my life. We are about to have another child, and this should be the happiest of times. I see him and I feel all the love I have always felt, but it’s as if I don’t know how to move the walls out of the way so I can get to him and tell him I still (and always will) love him. We’ve reached an impasse that is beyond anything we’ve encountered before, and getting back to where we were feels impossible now. That thought breaks my heart.
Conversations I Have with Myself 
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