I'm Ben. I'm 34 years old, married with two kids, and have a variety of problems. I'm diabetic, which sucks enough as it is (and apparently only gets worse as I get older), and also ADHD, which is annoying but manageable. But the worst of it is that I have major depressive disorder.
It's this last one that I fight every day. The other two sometimes makes it worse, but they don't hinder my day-to-day life a fraction as much as the depression.
It's debilitating. To fight it requires expending energy that I usually use just to get through the day. It's also self-feeding. My particular demon finds a way to grow from a small bother into the full-fledged monster that mauls my self esteem and leaves me bedridden.
I wish it made sense. I wish I could point to something and blame my current mental state on it. It makes me feel less deserving and pathetic for being in the condition I end up in far too often. It also makes it ten times more difficult to describe to friends and family. "I'm tired." "Why? You got enough sleep last night!" "I just am". For the longest time, the conversations went like that, and so almost nobody knew about my problems.
Then "All The Evil" happened. My depression had spiraled to a point where I could barely work. I was becoming sick of having to explain all my problems. Especially when there was no explanation. If you're sick enough to be unable to move from bed, you must have a fever, chills, vomiting, nausea, something, right? How to you explain that your thoughts are spinning in your head in a whirlpool of self-hate and you have no positive thoughts to grasp onto?
Everything I did seemed to be wrong, everything I tried seemed to blow up in my face. My marriage fell apart, which just increased self-blame to an all-time high. My self-confidence was at an all-time low. The only things that prevented me from committing suicide were my children. The weekends I had them were great, but without them, I was lost. I eventually lost my job due to downsizing which almost destroyed me. At my lowest, my wife tried to pull me out of it. After a few months of counseling, we're pretty good.
But I still struggle. In eight months, I have only had two interviews and no jobs. My finances are in dire straits. I have no insurance, and am only able to take around half my meds, and that's only with help from my Mom. I don't like what I am right now. I don't like that I can't support anybody, including myself. But I'm fighting hard every day. It's exhausting, to the point that even with a full night's sleep, I'm drowsy by noon. And this struggle is mental, meaning that nobody else can really see what's going on. And almost nobody understands.
I'm trying something new. I'm blogging. I suck at journalizing, and I always feel self-conscious about my issues. There are many people with worse issues. Worse personal scars. Worse diseases. People more deserving. But I'm fighting through. I'm going to try to live my life to the best of my ability. I have no idea how, bit I'm fighting for a future.
