Day Twelve

These last couple of days have felt like a huge backslide.  It seems as though I've got a lot of hard work ahead of me if I'm ever to find peace.  I have lived with this anger and sense of isolation for so long that I don't really remember what came before it.  I suppose there was no before.  I grew up in a dysfunctional home and it only got worse as I grew older.  I often think of my father with great sympathy.  He was a very simple, humble man, not very sophisticated, and he had to deal with my mother's anger and disappointment every day they were together.  I know he didn't know how to handle it because I saw him shut down little by little over a long span of years.  I know he must've thought about leaving her, but he was from a generation that didn't do that.  They were married for fifty years and I don't think he ever knew peace of happiness.  Even when he was dying my mother really couldn't be there for him emotionally.  And I was so far away from them that there was almost nothing I could do to help him.  That knowledge adds to the burden I already feel.
I think I'm going to have to get some help if I'm ever going to climb out of this hole I'm in.  I've treated my depression with drugs for almost thirty years, but I've never been able to get to the root of the feelings and find a genuine way to cope with them every day.  I have to believe there's a way to get above these painful, negative feelings before I die.  I want to know what it's like to get up in the morning and feel good, feel really alive.