Depression – again

I’m feeling depressed again.   Or maybe it should be – still.  It comes and goes.  Often coming more than going.  I usually wake up depressed.

I know that depression is technically a physio-chemical thing happening with the chemicals in your brain and how much of them your body produces and how well the receptors work and stuff like that.

I know that depression can be genetic, running in families.  I don’t know that either of my parents or any of my grandparents suffered from depression.

I also know that depression can be caused by a traumatic childhood experience.  That is my claim to how come I suffer from depression.

However, I think that living with a passive aggressive man greatly aggravates my depression.  On the rare occasions over the many years we have been together, when I actually felt like we were getting along well, I wasn’t depressed.  But those times are so few and so far between.  Mostly I have just felt empty – and then depressed – in my marriage.  I’m sure my co-dependence hasn’t helped this.

But, co-dependent or not, people need love.  Period.  People need love.  Babies will literally die if they are only given food, but not emotional and physical nurturing.  Adults somehow learn how to cope without that nurturing, but I believe that we also die in a way.

So often I feel more dead than alive.  I feel like I am just going through the motions of life:  sleeping, eating, shopping, working, laundry.  But I’m not alive;  I’m not living.  I’m walking around doing things, but it’s more like I am waiting for the sun to break through the clouds so I can dance.

But will that ever happen?  Will the clouds ever go away?  Do I have to walk away from the clouds?  And would leaving the marriage help the depression to get better?   I’m not usually depressed at work.  Sometime I am in a way, but I often think it’s more a hold-over from home that follows me to work.  I cry almost every day coming home from work.

My daughters are wonderful.  They gave me precious Mother’s Day gifts.  We had a house guest this week-end and I enjoy having house-guests.  This one was a young man who came for my daughter’s graduation on Friday from her two-year community college.  (I am SO proud of her, by the way!)   Even my husband gave me a nice gift:  a shelf that he built for me.  I told him I wanted it awhile back (maybe a couple of years ago?) and he finally made it for me.  So that was nice.   Now I have to get to sand it and paint it.  But at least I now have it.

But, despite the tolerable week-end, I’m sitting here, depressed.

If I leave, will I feel better?   Or will I find something else to be depressed about?  Like, not earning much money.   Or still not having a special someone in my life.  Or…..

On the blog, “P A Don’t Stand for Palo Alto,”  there is an article titled, Depression – A Side Effect of Passive Aggressive Relationships.  In the article, the author write:  “Lately I have really been missing the loving interaction that usually takes place between a man and a woman who supposedly love each other.”

That’s it.  That is exactly how I feel.