My Wife

            Some of you might be getting the wrong idea. Yes, I am deep in depression, and I am trying to recover from a very nasty six years spent in an abusive relationship. I am moody and down, and emo and all those things that I imagine people say, theorize, judge, laugh, whatever. Its not all bad though. Not all of it. There is one bright and shining and amazing thing in my life, and only God knows why, but she hasn’t left me, and that is my wife. So, since my first posts were so down, I thought I would try to write something less depressing.  These, then, are the truths about my wife.

            My wife and I met, quite by accident around four years ago, in the autumn of 2006. At the time I was only recently separated, maybe four months out. I was trying a new outlook on life that suggested I didn’t need to be with someone and that, perhaps, it was okay to just date and fuck around. I was sleeping with about five women at the time (I know, right? Me, looking like I do, and I had fuck buddies. Can you imagine?) and in varying levels of relationships with them. I was confident, or at least, I didn’t care what happened or what was said about me which comes off as confidence and I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I was just trying to have some fun, and some sex. I like sex, you see.

            I worked at a cleaning company, and despite the fact that my boss was a hardcore republican, I liked the guy and I liked the job, more or less. I had just gotten back from a carpet cleaning, drained the van, and was going inside when a woman left. She was the most amazingly hot woman I had ever laid eyes on, and I’d seen some pretty hot chicks on the internet. I actually stared at her, blatantly, not realizing I was, until I walked into the door. My ginger assistant (he knew the joke, it was okay to call him a ginger) noted it, and from then on the whole of the company conspired to bring us together. The women that my wife worked with and that she went to clean residential houses with asked her a ton of questions about what she liked and what she didn’t and then filled her in about me, while the guys got all the info out of me they could to tell her. I didn’t notice a thing.

            Apparently, whatever they told her worked. One night, after she got off work, and while I was still there finishing up various daily chores she came to talk to me. She was clearly nervous. I don’t know why. I’ve never felt that I was that difficult to approach, but what do I know? We talked, I flirted, she tried to flirt, and we ended up giving numbers and emails. Hers sounded familiar, so I asked her if she was one of the profiles I’d favorited on Okcupid, a dating site I frequented at the time. It was indeed her, and she was mortally embarrassed to know that I’d seen the pictures she used. Well, I liked the profile but she was so young I’d assumed she wouldn’t have any interest in me. Since she did, we started talking online. Eventually, we had a date. We each remember it differently.

            She remembers being, in essence, Jessica Rabbit, seducing me with her whiles and charms. I remember her seeming cold, a bit aloof and uninterested, but a lot of fun anyway. It turns out, she’s a bad flirt. We finished the night “making cupcakes” and I went home, happy, and satisfied. She was, apparently, aglow. I had no idea. In fact, I wasn’t going to call her back, cause she seemed so uninterested in me (even though we “made cupcakes”). However, I was trying to be social again, and regain my life, and one of her interests was role playing, so, we got together to talk about her joining a group I was getting together. She was overjoyed and very interested. Whether she was actually interested in the role play, or just wanted to see me, I don’t know, but we got to talking and hanging out more and more.

            I don’t remember all of it clearly. It was a long time ago. More, I remember intensity, raw emotion. It didn’t take long. I don’t remember all of it, but I do remember that night in bed, the two of us lying next to each other in the dark, just holding each other, just being with each other. I had been in the worst relationship of my life, something that had nearly destroyed me, something that had taken so much from me I only wanted to use women as a warm squishy place for fun, ignore them the rest of the time, and then, there was her. And I held her so close. I never wanted to let her go. It wasn’t even a month. We hadn’t even known each other a full month, or maybe, maybe just at a month. I don’t remember. Not all of it. What I do remember, is that feeling. That warm, wonderful feeling. I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to stop it. Lying there, we said it for the first time.

            I love you.

            Profound words for me to utter. I stopped seeing the other girls after that. They were fun, but they weren’t her. She was all I wanted. But alas! She was going away to college! She was leaving in less than a month for Minnesota. We would be separated. So, we spent as much time together as possible, only growing closer. We spent more and more time together. I met her “friends”, some of whom are still her friends, some of whom aren’t. I tried to get her to meet mine, but she’s terribly shy and is still uncomfortable around some of them without me. When she was gone, I was miserable. I was more withdrawn than I am now, if you can believe it.

            We continued to talk, on the phone, chatting online when we could, but then, it happened. A huge accident. Ice and snow and driving had rendered her car totaled. She had nowhere to go. She had her license revoked and couldn’t drive because of the accident, and college was out of the picture. She had no way to get to and from class or a job which she needed badly. At the time, I was doing well enough, and so, with great joy, I asked her to stay with me.

            The rest, as they say, is history. Oh, we had some bumpy times (her family HATED me, particularly her dad) and I proposed to her about two months after we met, but we didn’t get married until three years later, but we’re still together.

            That’s something I’ll never understand.

            My wife is amazing. She is brilliant, a talented fledgling nurse, incredibly beautiful, sexual, exciting, funny and just all around incredible.

            Of course, I may be biased.

            And don’t get me wrong. She’s not perfect. Who is, after all? She’s lazy. She almost never helps around the house. I have to beg and plead with her to just do one chore. She’s a girl, so she loves things that are cute and fluffy. She’s unorganized. She has a memory like a sieve and can never remember anything I show her, even shows that I’ve watched with her. She’s messy. She’s picky (except, it seems, in men).

            Then again, I’m me, and she puts up with me.

            The point is, she could do a lot better than me. She doesn’t need me. She could go off on her own and be fine. She could find somebody who wasn’t broken, someone who wasn’t so far in debt that its rapidly approaching the national debt. Someone smart and handsome and wealthy and more suited to her.

            But she stays with me.

            Can you believe that?

            I know everything about her. I know her ins and outs. I know when she’s hungry, and generally what she wants to eat. I know when she’s horny. I know when she’s happy. I know when she’s sad. I know the woman better than she knows herself, and can even bring home treats without being asked when I just know that she needs them. But I don’t understand her. I will never be able to see what she sees in me. I will never understand why someone so incredible picked me. I will never  understand why she stays, especially now when it would be so much easier to just leave.

            But I thank God that she stays.

            I don’t know what I’d do without her.

            I love you hon.

Me

            First off, I’m surprised. People appear to be reading this crap. I don’t know why. Of course, that could be one of my short comings, or one of my blind spots. Doesn’t matter. For those reading, Hello! Welcome to the opposite of happy. I’m not sure why you’re reading this or what you hope to gain, because this is just me doing… well, I don’t know what. I don’t know why I’m still writing it other than, I just feel this weird need to write it. So, here we go with tonight’s random thoughts.

            Me. I know, a boring subject to say the least, but the problem is, I don’t know who that is anymore. I’ve been trying to figure it out more and more, and I seem to fall further and further behind whenever I do. I don’t know who I am anymore. I mean, I used to know. I used to know who I was, what I was passionate about, where I was going. It made sense at some point. Now, though, I’m not sure. I still like doing a lot of the same things I used to do, and I still seem to want to pursue some of those things, but I think I’m just becoming a cynical old bastard. Bit by bit the world is helping to tear me down further while I’m trying to get out of the hole I’m already in.

            Writing. As you can see, or maybe you can’t, its sort of a passion of mine. I’ve honestly been trying to write a novel since the time I was about fifteen. Its all I’ve ever wanted to do. Oh, sure, there have been other things, like drawing, but I love to write and I’m a better writer than artist any day of the week. Writing, talking, words, I love them, I am good with them, and so I do things like this. I’m sure any grammar teacher is in tears reading this, but I’m not going for grammar, so I apologize to those I am hurting with what must be exceedingly poor grammar. Have I said grammar enough?

            Anyway, I still write, but the flame has sort of died down on that. Part of it is because I don’t think I’m good enough. I’m my biggest enemy here. I hate anything I write. It’s never good enough. I’ve read a number of books (pause for my friends to mock my reading as they have read great quantities more than me) and my stories never seem right. They never seem as good as the books I love so very much. So, that’s the first problem. I hate my own writing because I hate myself, and that rather hinders my ability.

            Another reason is because I don’t think it will get published. This is going to be weird, because, as much as I hate my writing, I know that my story, characters, and ideas are solid. They are interesting. They are something people will want to read. Whether or not I’m capable of creating the books properly remains to be seen, but if, through some miracle I do finish a book (and, for reasons I don’t understand, I am still trying on more than one front), who would publish it? Maybe I’m wrong. Probably I’m wrong. My stuff is crap. Let’s say it’s not crap, for the sake of argument, and instead say that someone DOES agree to publish me. Then I won’t give up my rights. I do not want some publishing company to tell some studio executive that they can take my characters and ideas and make some crap movie or TV show (for examples I give you The Last Airbender, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Transformers 2 and 3, and the Dresden Files). Whatever my personal feelings for my writing, these are my creations. These are MY dreams, no one else’s, and I do not want to see them destroyed or warped so badly as to be something not even close to my idea. I have to keep my rights, or I won’t even let someone publish my stuff.

            Those two aside, the biggest reason I don’t want to publish anything is because, I don’t think it will matter. I could write the greatest new fantasy since Harry Potter, somehow, and it won’t mean a God damned thing because Snooki, a stupid, talentless slut from New Jersey who has spent more time drunk thank the Kennedy family (a rare feat), has a NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING BOOK.

            As the meme says, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

           But that’s only a small part of me. I think. I guess? I don’t know. I used to like all these different things. Video games, friends, books, writing, drawing, movies. Now, I don’t know. Its like, nothing is the same. Movies are dumb. I can’t stand to watch TV for all the blasted commercials, and the shows I like are few and far between. Writing, I’ve griped about, drawing… I’m really a hack. I’m so out of practice I can barely draw my comics and that used to be easy. Maybe I should practice more, get back into it, but it just… it’s lost something. It’s not the same anymore.

            Everything’s that way.

            I’d go hang out with my friends, but they’re different too, and that’s good. They’ve got real lives, but… I just don’t feel like I belong there anymore. They’re all successful, in their own houses, getting on with their own lives. I’m still here, barely making ends meet, fat and stupid as ever. No one wants to role play anymore. I can’t blame them. We’ve grown up. What kind of grown ups do that? Right? But that’s kind of all I have, in some ways… my stories. I’ve focused on them for so long, worked on them so hard, that I don’t have any other skills. I always assumed I’d make it big as an author. I have solid stories. I know how to write. How hard could it be?

            So where does that leave me?

            I don’t know.

            Do I go back to school? Do I still like anything? Am I so far gone, so deep in depression that nothing brings me joy anymore? Am I Stan from South Park? Is everything just shit to me? Am I a cynical bastard?

            I don’t know.

            What I know is that everyday I feel just al little more lost. Everyday I feel a little more hopeless. I don’t see anything. I don’t see anything to look forward to. I don’t get excited. I see endless days of me trying desperately to hold on to a job and just hoping to make it pay check to pay check, to just keep the house running, until finally, one day, its all over. Just this endless tunnel of work, home, work home, work home. There are no bright spots. I no longer have any hope that I’ll get published. I don’t want to go back to school, cause that means leaving the house, and what would I do anyway? I’m 34. I don’t like the younger generation a great deal to begin with. I certainly don’t want to have to go to school with them.

            I have this big, empty hole, with memories of what I used to be, and I used to like myself, but now I can’t stand the person I see in the mirror and all I want, all I really want is to go to sleep. I just want to sleep. Its quiet there. The dreams are even nice sometimes. When I’m asleep, my brain stops. No worries. No fears. No hate. No rage. No emptiness.

            I just want to sleep, and never wake up.

            That’s what I know about me.

What You Don't, Or Might Not Know

I don't know who might be reading this. I just know that now its here for whoever to read, I guess. I'm not even sure why I'm doing it, or what this might be for. Consider it, I guess, my secret public journal or something. I guess getting out in a journal or diary isn't enough for me. Maybe I just need to make things more public, let other people know how I feel or what I feel. It's hard to say, honestly. Whatever the reason. I’m doing it, and I might continue doing it, if the need arises. This first post, more than anything, is to inform.

So, let’s set the scene. I’m sitting here, listening to a music playlist I’ve created that would make an emo tell me to lighten up; the most abysmal, depressing, and sad songs I have. They evoke in me scenes from books I’ve yet to write that are designed to make people weep openly and wonder what might be the matter with me that I should do something so horrific to such noble characters. There will probably be a lot of that in my writings, if they should ever see publication. I’m tired. Very tired. Exhausted in a way I don’t have words for. I haven’t done anything but sleep since I got off work last night and it’s not enough. It’s never enough. I’m wearing my sit around the house clothes, which consist of baggy, gigantic comfortable sweatpants and an old shirt that I probably shouldn’t wear, but I do cause its big and comfortable too, but covered in lingering bits of something that once made me violently ill (although, surely by now, its all been washed out, but who can say?).

The most important thing, the thing that I am all the time, the thing that should be most prominently featured in this setting is that I am alone. I’m alone a lot. I have so much time to myself. Quiet, silent, peaceful times that are filled with nothing. My son is asleep, as he must for school, and even when he’s awake, we can connect only a bit. He’s a teenager, after all, and I feel as though I’m intruding on his life if I talk to him. I try, but I never know what to say. He’s so much smarter than I am, has so many brighter prospects. I’m just trying to not to screw him up too much. I hope I do okay, but, though I love him so, I can’t connect. We are similar, but very very different. My wife is, of course, at work. That is a necessity. One of us has to make money and since I’m incapable, she does. I would be a great deal worse without her. Who’s to say where I might be if she hadn’t come into my life? I don’t know how or why she stays with me. She’s better than me, just like my boy. Both of them would be better off with someone else in their lives, but they make do with me. I do what I can, but I know I don’t measure up.

So, alone, comfortable, and tired I sit. It’s one of those days that I know nothing will happen. I can’t sleep, but I’m so tired I want to do nothing else, and nothing will interest me so I dink around at the computer and watch TV till the time passes and sleep comes. That, in a nutshell is my life. I’d say that many of you might ask why I don’t go out and see friends, or have a social life, or play video games, or something of that sort, as many of you know me very well. I’d say many, but I don’t really expect anyone to read this. It’s why it’s so liberating. Who cares what I write here if no one will read it? Does it even matter? Maybe, maybe not, but I’m doing it anyway for reasons I don’t quite understand. To answer the question though, what happened to my social life, the answer is obvious.

I’m broken.

I used to be quite a social butterfly. Then a woman came along and into my life, and she introduced me to the dichotomies of life in a whirlwind relationship that absolutely crushed me. Passionate love, intense hate, and all the extremes and mediums therein. Love, life, longing, lies and more. I dealt with it. I did everything in my power to be a good man. I can see that pretty clearly now. I gave and gave and gave until I didn’t have anything left of myself to give, and I kept giving even after. I still don’t know why. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough to be on my own again. Maybe I thought I was wrong. Maybe a number of things. In the end I stayed and got worse and worse and worse. Now we get to the stuff you might not know.

I stopped sleeping. Almost entirely. 3 hours a week, maybe, sometimes less, sometimes more. That was my average. I stressed about the kids. I stressed about the money. I stressed about the house. I stressed about my wife. I stressed about my friends. I stressed about the car. All of it. All the time. My mind, normally a loud and obnoxious thing on its own became a claxon so loud, it drowned out all hope of normal thought or sleep. Still, I carried on, diligently; the British would have been proud how I stayed with that sinking ship, still at the helm and doing all in my power to steer her into harbor without crew, rudder, wheel, and with most of it underwater. Then it was over.

Just over.

I didn’t have anything. I was alone again. That made my head louder. I’d lost friends, ignored friends, given up friends, and I was tired. So very tired. My life settled into routine, which I tried to snap myself out of. I did, for a brief time, when I met my current wife, who has been the most amazing thing to ever happen to me. The brightest shining moment of my life. I’ll never understand why I got so lucky, or why she stays, but I do know she’s good for me. After a time, I settled into a routine with her, but things were getting worse. I wasn’t sleeping. I got extreme headaches that lasted for days. I was brutally irritable, snapping at the slightest thing. I was moody to the point of being Homer Simpson; bright and cheery in one moment, depressed and lethargic the next, and angry right after that. All over the place. But, I’m me, and I’m stupid, and I don’t much care for myself, so with my wife in need of things (a home, electricity, the basics) I marched to work, getting sicker and sicker, both physically and mentally as I marched gladly toward the grave in a very literal sense.

Then I broke, utterly and completely. It all just fell apart. My mind, stressed, overburdened, so strong and supportive and helpful to everyone but me, finally gave up, and my body wasn’t much better. I dissociated. My brain shut off, in a sense, though my body kept going without me. It got bad. I was tired, and I hate myself above all other things, and with all the stress and rage and hate I broke a lot. Time was lost everywhere. The slightest amount of stress about anything and I would start shaking and very soon after my mind switched off and when I woke up, all too often, I was covered with very nasty cuts, having, apparently, sliced myself open with whatever I had handy at the time (once with a plastic butter knife. For some reason, I’m proud of that scar. My wife hates that fact).

All of that happened nearly three years ago. I do not feel any better today. In fact, from everything I can see and feel, I am much much worse. But none of you really know that. See, my best defense is that I can hide. I can go out and I can laugh and be who you think I am and who I think I am, but I’m not. I’m faking it, and, from what I see and hear, doing a fine job. So here’s what you really don’t know.

Leaving the house is a major undertaking for me. Even if I’m just running to a fast food drive up, or going for gas or groceries, it’s a huge process. I can’t just leave. I have to know ahead of time I’m going to have to leave, and then I have to start fighting out all the reasons not to go. Once I’ve convinced myself that there is nothing but to leave, I have to find ways to relax and things to focus on that aren’t leaving the house. Leaving the house is terrifying. I’m afraid to be anywhere else, and I don’t know why. I hate it. I hate that when I’m over laughing with friends, I’m just concerned with getting back home. That’s what you don’t know. I’ll sit over there and laugh and seem like me and be like I’m supposed to be, but I’m so terrified that I can hardly think. All I’m doing is fighting the shakes and the stress and the terror and that little voice that says “They hate you. Why do you bother? They don’t need you. They don’t want you.” Of course, if for some reason they invite me out and I can’t go I feel so guilty, so terribly guilty that it can actually make me blackout. In fact, that happened quite recently. On some level, I’m aware that they are my friends and they understand I’m not well right now or that I can’t go or something, but in my head…

But that’s not the worst of it. The worst is that its getting worse. I have a job now, and I love my job, cause its fun and easy, and I get to enjoy movies and meet new people and I’m very weird and I have this NEED to make people happy no matter what, so I’ve become very good at my job very quickly. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep it. I don’t know how many more times I’ll be able to leave my house.

So, for as long as I can I’ll keep doing it. I have to. I hate myself less when I’m doing something like that. A job. Living like a real person. And I have to hate myself less, cause that’s making things bad too. All I see when I look in the mirror is a failure, a loser, and a fat bastard that I don’t want anything to do with. And then there’s this little voice in my head, that started one night when a friend posted something to me on Facebook. It really stuck with me. I was being chastised for my opinions (a fun little pastime for many people as my opinions are wrong and theirs are perfect) and one of them said, in response to my saying that I wanted to die “Then just cut deeper.” That voice swells a great deal on these nights. These nights when I’m alone and I can’t sleep and I can’t work on anything that voice whispers and whispers, getting louder and louder, until I have to move and occupy my brain with something taxing, like writing or drawing, or a difficult game until it goes away.

Just cut deeper.

Thanks for that.

But there’s more still, you don’t know. For example, you don’t know about the moods. I’m very moody. Grotesquely so. My moods are getting worse as well. Happy is rare. Angry, or irritable is the norm. Sad/depressed is quite common. I can deal with that. I can realize when I’m angry, sad, depressed, manic, what have you. What I can’t deal with is the problem I’m having tonight. Tonight I’m none of those things.

Tonight, I feel nothing.

Not a damned thing.

I can’t get excited. I can’t get angry. I can’t get happy. I can’t get horny (which is a major thing for those of you who know me). And this “mood” will go on for days. I’ll fake my smiles and my laughter. I’ll fake living like a normal person and put on my Bill face, but its not real. There’s nothing behind it. Just… empty. And when I come out if it, I’m usually extra attentive to my wife, because even that, the most important thing in my life can’t make me feel anything. I can’t feel love, or affection, or anything when I get like this, and when I’m not, it scares the hell out of me. My wife is the most important thing in my life, and I cannot imagine what I would be like if I lost her somehow, and yet, there are days when all I can think when I see her is “person”. That’s what my mind does in those moods. There’s no emotion, there’s no tie to anything, they just are what they are. “Person. Cat. Dog. Car. Computer. etc”.

And that is getting worse too. The stretches of nothing are getting longer, and, sometimes, more comfortable. I at least don’t stress when I can’t feel anything.

So, there you go. I don’t know how many of you knew that, or didn’t. I don’t know how many of you care, or don’t and, currently, I have the luxury of not caring one way or the other myself. If you read this, great. Feel free to comment, post, whatever. Just like you might care or might not care what I've written, I might or might not care at some point that you've responded. And, who knows? There might eventually be more to come. There's a lot of things that I keep bottled up. Maybe I'll do a post on my Lightseeker. She probably wouldn't like that. Or she might. Who knows? 

Later days.