Thoughts by Richard Bleil
One of the issues with depression is that there is often no rhyme or reason. One day you’re on top of the world, and the next you’re in the deepest depths of despair. Today I’m down. I’m very down.
There is no reason for it, which makes it all the more infuriating. Things have been going quite well for me. As my regular readers may know I’ve recently started a new supplemental income job with Pampered Chef, and while my own launch party was disappointing, I just had a highly successful party to raise funds for a non-profit. It was astounding; the sales put me very near my three-month target in the third week. In addition, because of my cat, I’ve just had a new furnace and central air conditioner installed. It’s astounding, guaranteeing “surgery room quality” air. Well, we’ll see, but it is very cool, and it was installed a day ahead of schedule. Yesterday I received a call, and the shed I ordered early spring should be set up in a few days. Finally.
So, life is good, right? And yet, here I am, highly depressed. And why? Well, who knows.
It might be because the party that is currently underway has zero, I mean no guests outside of the host and myself. It’s very disappointing. Or maybe it’s because, as I’m writing this, Father’s Day is neigh upon us, a great reminder how I’ve failed at the most important part of life, finding a partner and having children.
This is also a challenging time of year for me, historically. My father died about a year ago, my mother about nine, both more or less in this time of year. Twelve years ago, I was marrying, and ten years ago the marriage was dissolving. Nine years ago, I was officially divorced.
I guess summers have always been challenging for me. I rarely had friends, and usually spent summer days alone in a house where my mother thought that I needed chores to keep my mind occupied. We never had air conditioning, so the house was unbearably hot, and I suffered from terrible allergies exacerbated whenever dad mowed the lawn. I tended to spend my summers lonely, depressed, and physically miserable.
According to the forecasts, tonight begins thunderstorms, breaking out every few hours and pretty much all day until tomorrow night. I love thunderstorms, maybe it will help.
The thing about depression is that it is so very difficult to motivate to get those things done that need to be done. I have lights downstairs that need to be installed, a job that should take maybe an hour if I’m very slow and yet, the job remains undone. Even writing this blog is very late, and I’ve fallen a day behind.
The very problem is how lonely I feel. It was a few years ago, again about this time of year, that my last girlfriend began finding reasons to be too busy for me. I was only seeing her on weekends, and yet she was busy on exactly those days. It was no surprise to me when she told me she didn’t want to see me anymore. That was fine. She left much to be desired as far as girlfriends go, and I’m sure I wasn’t much of a boyfriend to her, but it’s been several years since I’ve known the touch of a woman or felt her lips on mine.
This past week, I happened on the complete “Game of Thrones” Blu-ray disc set. My last girlfriend, before deciding she didn’t want to be with me (but did steal my credit card and tried running up debts after we were through), and I used to watch Game of Thrones. We broke up just before the final season. As such, I’ve seen all but the end of the series. For a couple of days, I’ve been binge-watching the entire series since I had forgotten much of it. Maybe this is triggering my depression as well, or is my depression triggering my desire to bury myself in the series? I think that, maybe, at least for me, it’s easy to spend too much time watching movies and television when I’m depressed because it’s just an easy and mindless way to waste away the hours.
Maybe this week I’ll take a gun out to the range. I am looking forward to the shed and moving some things out to it that have been taking up too much space in my house. And I have a few more Pampered Chef parties that I need to set up. All in all, I need to find a way to get out of this root, and get back to doing…something. Anything.
Bleil's Banter 