Depression, Drugs, Anger and More About the Boyfriend

Hmm, so where do I start now? Here’s where: Can anti-depressants actually make you more depressed? I don’t know if my new pills are working or if they’re driving me just a little bit closer to a bloody, self-inflicted and unforgivable act of self-termination. I don’t think I’m suicidal in the normal sense thought. I think my anger has gotten so large and uncontrollable that the only place I can direct it any more is at me. And I’m very good at hurting me. I may, in fact, have done my heart permanent damage by stubbornly refusing to take the medication that will prevent it from eventually just blowing up from the pressure of too much crap in my arteries.

I hate my medication. Every pill feels like a failure of will.

I do think the anti-depressants are making me calmer, but I don’t know if I would call this calm a good calm. It’s more like a I’m-tired-and-I-don’t-want-to-get-out-of-bed-today-or-any-day kind of calm. I have the urge to listen to sappy love songs that make me feel bad about my relationship, angry rap that makes me feel bad about society, and indie rock that just makes me feel bad. I wish I could just be an alcoholic or a drug addict, but I don’t have the stamina for that kind of life. I’m too busy trying to figure out a way to please everyone else to please myself. Besides someone has to drop the kid off at daycare.

On the other hand, I’ve decided to start meditating. Supposedly this will make me happier, because meditation occurs in the right brain or something. I don’t know, I don’t really believe it, but I’m going to try it anyway. Because it my duty to keep trying, and a lot of days that’s all I feel like I have left. I’m not even sure I want to be happy any more. Or if I would know who I was if I were. Or even if I would know who I was if I weren’t struggling somewhere in life. I guess I can take comfort in the fact that no matter how good it gets, the kid will always be there to help me be miserable on the parenting front.

And there’s the boyfriend. Who is apparently also clinically depressed and really determined not to do anything meaningful about it. Why does being in love so often turn into a form of psychological torture? It’s the cosmic joke, right? The real punishment for being turned out of Eden. That reference to bringing forth children in pain had nothing to do with the act of birth, it was really talking about all the bullshit you go through in the relationship, before and after the kid. Or regardless of the kid. And since some people chose not to have kids, somebody thought of romance novels, and love songs, and chick flicks so the rest of the relationship-burdened world could be tortured by the concept of happily ever after. It sucks.

And the worst part of it all is that I don’t really know what I want from the boyfriend. Do I just want really good sex? Do I want attention? Do I want achievement? What? Will anything make me happy? And damn him, he asked me why I don’t have any faith in him. And I didn’t even know that I didn’t until he asked that. So now I’m completely tortured by that question. Why DON’T I have any faith in him? And this question: If I don’t have any, why do I still want him in my life so much?

I know part of it. Of course I do. It has to do with the years that he told me over and over that he didn’t want me. With absence, with other women, with anger and rejection, he told me this over and over. And I knew in my heart that it was a lie. I knew this. I had faith that underneath it all I loved him enough to rekindle the feelings I knew were inside him somewhere. And so now he tells me that he loves me. And instead of feeling good about it, instead of feeling vindicated and content with the results of my determination never to give up on him, all I do is wonder if my desire overcame his resistance. I can’t believe in what’s between us because I had to work too hard to get it. I wonder if he’s not sincere. I don’t know how to convince myself that I was right.

Maybe I can’t believe that he can love me, when I’ve never really been able to love myself.