Month: June 2017

Memories, Fear and Post-Divorce Depression

When my grandfather’s mental state diminished I remember seeing the pain my family felt as his advancing Alzheimer’s and dementia took away who he was. My greatest fears include the loss my sight, death in general, and death of self, particularly in the form of memory loss.

Following my divorce I had to come face to face with a side effect of depression that sometimes feels just as painful as the anhedonia. The seven years I spent with my ex-wife started to fade after the first six month I left what was our home. Little by little, consciously or subconsciously I started to push the memories down or forget them outright. It’s been over a year since that process started and now I find I can barely see her face.

http://www.healthline.com/health/depression/depression-and-memory-loss#overview1

Depression has an impact on memory and sometimes the unsettling randomized loss or gaps I experience scare me half to death. Feeling like seven years of your life are simply gone is painful. The suppression in my case is very specific, isolated to those things relating to my ex and the marriage. The residual emotional currents are still there, sometimes I feel them as I wake up, like waking from a walking nightmare or a dream I can’t visualize. It’s weird to think that for me, I want nothing more than those echos to be gone so that I have no connection to those seven years.

Depression takes a lot away from you, sometimes because you need to protect yourself, sometimes because part of you is running from something. Figuring out what I can still hold onto and what has to go has been one of the most difficult choices I’ve had to make.

Slow going Summers, General Check In

June hasn’t been going particularly smoothly for me. Had my share of set backs, fighting depressive episodes more and more. Number of contributing factors that I am at least aware of, divorce related legal/financial matters, trying to save up for my own place, birthday around the corner. The news and general state of the world sort of ‘doom and gloom’ constantly in the spotlight hasn’t helped ease my fears.

One of the most of difficult things for me has always been when the world seems to hold more questions than I can take on at a time. When my mind is stuck there in maximum rumination mode and loops on things I can’t figure out over and over again. When I can find no good course of action to take to solve the problems at hand in my life. You feel impotent, unable to move forward. So things don’t really change they just creep along and evolve.

I’ve tried to get myself back into a normal exercise routine, even if it’s just short hikes or walks. Weather however hasn’t been helpful rain and summer heat and humidity. Picked up a light weight Camelback pack to help me stay hydrated. I’ve always had an issue with that when I’m out and about.

Hoping to keep my head above water, more consistent diet, a bit of exercise but it’s getting harder and harder to find self-motivation. I can only hope that this summer goes quickly and I can find myself back at a point where I’m better able to balance things.

Anxiety and Dealing with the Summer

I’ll admit, while I may not suffer from seasonal affective disorder, with my dysthymia and anxiety I feel like I’m almost the inverse of the norm on SAD.  I actually dread summer more than winter or fall.

This summer in particular has been a little rough. Legal and financial matters to tie up relating to the divorce have weighed on me, the weather here is humid and muggy making my usual days just that much more uncomfortable. I’ve tried to focus on short-goal projects as of late. A new VMware lab to tinker with, study material, the occasional game now and then.

When most folks are enjoying the outdoors and celebrating, I recoil and look inward. Maybe it’s because my birthday falls in the middle of summer and this year in particular I have no desire to celebrating getting older. Slowly managing to drag myself outside more as needed, but rarely for ‘pleasure’. I take no joy in going out to see what’s out there. As a close friend described it, life is grey. Sometimes I feel like summer turns me into more of a vampire as I’d rather venture out at night or in the early hours of the morning both to avoid the summer crowds and to avoid the heat. I can barely look back upon my memories and imagine that I ever looked forward to the summers off.

Father’s Day and Introspection

Father’s day is coming up later in the month and given the events of the last two years, divorce, depression it’s made me a bit introspective. My own relationship with my father is non-existent and I realize a sizable chunk of that stems from my own childhood experiences with divorce.

Seeing my parents drift apart and eventually divorce was a painful experience in my pre-teens. Sometimes I wondered how much of it was my fault, I wondered how my father felt about the whole process. Having gone through it myself, I have an idea for the challenges he must have had. Mercifully my ex-wife and I didn’t have children. I doubt I’d be writing today if kids were a factor in my divorce. Looking back I realize just how often I questioned my own fitness at the prospect of becoming a parent. I honestly don’t know if that will ever really be the case for me or if maybe I’ll just serve as a cool uncle for the remainder of my days.

Never been one for holidays but this time around Father’s day has weird sting for me. Maybe I’m just over thinking something that may never be or dwelling on things I can’t change. The weight of it still sits with me but I try to focus on the things I can change for now and not the ones that have passed.