How much longer will I have to put up with that.

[Pilule]

Hello all,

Here is another depressed individual with his boring story.

I started to feel depressed when I started college at 16, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and I felt out of place.

I am now 53 and I feel that my life is ruined. I have a very hard time getting out of bed and going to work and I make very little money. I live with my mother, never left home, it was to frightening for me. Never had a real girlfriend, no kids, obviously, because I think life is not worth living so I’m not going to give it to somebody else, it would be cruel.

I have a great family, great friends, great nephews and nieces, I have a great health. People would give everything they have to be in my shoes yet I can’t stand the thought of facing yet another day of this hell.

My father was depressed too; he kept saying he wished he was dead, just like me. Lucky for him, his wish was granted at 69.

Two years ago, I had planned to end it all. I had my papers in order, placed them so they where easy to find. I brought back everything I had borrowed and I told my most trusted friends that I was depressed and under the care of a psychiatrist, because nobody knew about my situation, so they wouldn’t be surprised when they heard the news. I had chosen a location and had everything ready but I chickened out. The next day, I chickened out again. I ended up back to my psychiatrist, he upped my meds and the urgency of ending it all was lifted a bit. Somehow my mother felt something was different and she begged me not do anything stupid. I figured it would be pretty selfish on my part to ruin the last years of my mother life.

I still think it’s something I should have done a long time ago. My life was a total waste and if it was not for having known my nieces and nephews, it wouldn’t have been worth living at all. I don’t think I had one good day since I was 16.

Once my mother passes away, I will probably be on the street, homeless. That will probably be the little nudge I need to finally do it.

If things don’t get better, the question is not if I’m going to do it, it’s when.

[nenkohai]

Hi Pilule

I wish I had good words for you, bro. I say that because I know anything I might say to try to help will probably sound trite. I know that anything I have to say IS easy for me to say.

And Depression really has a very wide range of feelings and symptoms. So, I know I may not "get" where you are.

All that preamble said, I'm going to tell you the one thing that started a healing process for me. That thing is - realizing that happiness is not a birth right. It isn't (nor can it be) gifted to you by someone or something.

And as I have worked for more happiness in my life, I have found that the first order of business is to grant myself mercy regarding all past events that have caused me and others pain or embarrassment. This really is about giving yourself compassion. And this isn't about being self-indulgent! Not in the least!! We NEVER grant OURSELVES the same level of compassion as we do other people. Why do we do that? OTHER people are worthy of our compassion. Why not ourselves?

Still, I know, I probably don't "get" where you are. And I have no illusions that I've just unlocked some great mystery for you. And really, what I've said, truly is more about me than you (I get that much!). But, it HAS worked for me. And continues to work. Life ain't perfect, for sure. But, its helped a lot.

Maybe something to just think about...

[Frame]

Hi Pilule;

I hope you wiil continue to write here. I would like to know more about you and what your going through. Reading and posting here has been important to me.

[Pilule]

I think I did some work on myself but maybe not enough. I used to hate myself, I used to punch myself in the face to the point where I had bruises. I stopped blaming others for my situation. I stopped asking myself, why me. I don't hate myself anymore, I think I'm a good person and that I deserve better.
I try to look happy and I get along with most people. Some people even think I'm funny.
My two best friends, that I have known for over 30 years, couldn't believe it when I told them, 2 years ago, that I was depressed and that I was seeing a shrink for close to 20 years.
Ever since I started college I hated my life. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that my life would change. I tried a few things, to try to get my motor running. At 25 I went back to night school for 7 years, I worked like a dog and had very good results. At 47 I went back again for 5 years again with good results. I was involved in boat competition for 25 years.
I try to keep busy as much as my condition will let me but at the end of the day, it brings nothing. I get no satisfaction, no pleasure nothing. And to top that, because of my financial situation, it will only get worse. It's a downward spiral, the more depressed I feel, the less I'm able to work, the less I'm able to work, the more depressed I feel to the point where, at 53 I don't see things getting better anymore. This is what makes it even harder to want to keep going. Dying is not my first choice but it looks like the only one.

[Frame]

OMG WoW; Pilule you nailed it. Your like, my twin or something. Except for the boat competition, and two years age difference we might have grown up in the same head.

The six years it would have taken to get masters turned into 10 years. Even with two engineering degrees and an associates in chemistry I'm deep in debt, the state wants to take away by business license (actually, they have but for some strange reason they let me stay open. I guess they'll never get any back taxes by shutting me down.) and I'm about to lose my house.

I hate everyone but I hate myself first. I used to be a resource in creativity. Now I can't seem to think myself out of a paper bag, and the work that I have, the work that could help get me out of this mess, it's like trying to do it with my hands and feet cast in concrete.

So I guess I'm not offering any solutions right now, just empathy. We'll all be dead sooner than any of us think. In a way; I just want to stick around to see just how bad this movie gets. You ever feel like the the robot in Science Fiction Theater; except they make you interact with the characters on the screen?

[Pilule]

Frame,

What degree in engineering did you get?
How where you able to start a business, where you depressed at that time?
What kind of business are you in?
When and why did your depression start?

I'm from Quebec, the school system is a little different here, than yours. We do 6 years of primary school, 5 years of high school and then we have two choices, you can go to college for 2 years and then go to university for about 3 or 4 years depending what course you take. To get an engineering degree it's 4 years and it's one of the hardest course after medical school. The other choice is go to college for 3 years and get a technical diploma.

I first choose to go for 2 years and go to university, that when things started to go bad for me. I managed to finish at 18 but didn't go to university. At 25 I decided to give it a try, I lasted 5 weeks. That was my second big dark moment. I couldn't see myself with just a useless college diploma. That's when I decide to get my technical diploma going to night school, while I worked during the day for an alarm company. That's what took me 7 years. The first 7 semesters I had 3 courses a week from 6:00 to 10:30 and the rest of the week, I studied. I got my diploma in industrial electronics. None of the guys that started with me finished.

At 37 I lost my job. I got an idea do build an alarm system for refrigerators for grocery stores. I had the whole thing built in 6 months, working on it part time, only to realize that some guy had built a similar system and was way ahead of mine. Than was my third big meltdown.

Then I had this other idea, I was going to install systems, in building to save energy. I went back to night school for 5 years, but I took only one course a week. When I started to look for equipment to do what I wanted to do, nobody wanted to sell to me. I found a generic supplier but I got to thinking that once I install such equipment, I couldn't go anywhere ever because if the equipment broke in the middle of the winter or the summer, I have to get it fixed quick. That was my fourth meltdown.

Now I ran out of ideas. That was the only thing that kept me going in life, hoping to build a business of some sort. I didn't want to have a wife or kids, I didn't want to travel or have a summer house.

Unless I get another idea that would motivate me enough to get me out of this hole I keep digging myself into I can't see a happy ending.

I'm exactly like my father, he dreamed to start a business but it never happened. He hated the kind of routine jobs, he like things out of the ordinary. He once work for a company that make composite concrete and he loved it but the product failed the company closed and my father lost his job. That is pretty much what happened all his life.

I seem to be walking right in his footsteps.

There is one thing that I learned from all this from when I used to hate myself. I used to hate myself for bad decision I made but I hated myself because of these decision only when I realized that the decision was wrong, it could be 2 weeks or 2 years after making the decision. But when I made a decision, it was based on what I knew at that time so it's obvious that I wouldn't make a bad decision on purpose. Today I don't regret any of the decisions I made and because of that I stopped hating myself.

I hope you can find a way out of your paper bag, and show the finger to people around you that seem to have it all together. That would me my revenge over that debilitating disease.

[Pilule]

Nenkohai,

I pretty much kept my problems to myself, beside my two of my best friends and my mother, nobody knows about my situation. My other friends and my sisters don't know about it.

I don't think I hurt anybody, on the contrary, I think I helped out more people than the help I got from them. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I had a friend that was badly depressed. I knew he was depressed but he didn't know that I was as depressed as he was, anyway according to his mother, every time I went to see him, he felt better, imagine... His mother called my his psychologist.

So to show mercy on myself and others, I'm not sure I understand. Maybe on myself but on others???

You where able to fight your may out of depression without medication?

[nenkohai]

Philule,

Depression is a daily concern for me. Battle, maybe.

I've been using meds (of course under a psychologist's care) for about 18 years or so.

For me, depression is managed, rather than beaten. I'm fine-tuning that management. With good success. But, I've gone through hell to find these management techniques.

There came a time... a desperate time, when I told myself (yelled at myself, maybe) that I have to make my severe depression stop. I HAD to get it under control. I gave myself no option. I worked and found a set of strategies that worked for me: a practice of meditation, mindfulness, therapy, and compassion/mercy (for myself... and for everything, really).

But it is a constant practice. It requires work. No "once and done." But the work is paying off. Happiness requires work. :)

[Frame]

Pilule: I've decided to break my response into two bits.

Part I:

It's beginning to dawn on me that I've been depressed all my life. As a matter of fact, it's the depression that drove me to hock my house buy my own business. I've succeeded over and over again at learning new things very well only to loose interest and fail. My degrees are in Chemistry; AAS, Ceramic Engineering; BS, and Solid State Science; MS.

I remember the first time I decided there was something seriously emotionally wrong with me. I was doing work on the side (I always do work on the side) landscaping an estate in stonework (dry point walls and walkways). The money was good. I had hired the help I needed. The client was wonderful. It was perfect; I drove up one day and couldn't escape the feeling I wanted to be buried under all that stone. I had a purpose; I was paying for my daughters private schooling; yes she deserved it, it was the right thing. There was nothing wrong with this picture. Yet I could not escape the overwhelming desire to check out. Even the weather was great.

This was 2 years before I bought the business. (Holy shit, I just realized this was less than a year after my Mom had a stroke and lost the use of right side of her body. (Full disclosure.)) The willingness to jump off into a new career may have been tied to my Mom's crisis, but not the depression; I've been jumping off all my life. I still remember having a fight with my wife (of a few months) getting drunk and riding off in a lighting storm driving our Chrysler Cordova (400CI). At one point in the dark and the rain on a slick and narrow road I got lost (already confused). At one point I drove past a light and when I realized it was a State Police barracks I lost control of the car; fish tailed and did a 270 in the middle of the road. Then I drove very slow for a while. But it made me feel alive. I slept under a bridge in the rain the next morninig. There was no crash THAT time.

[Just a disclaimer: even though a lot of my life's story reads like a total downward spiral and , yes, I'm in a pretty dark pit right now and, yes I'm feeling huge pressures I never thought I'd feel; I also realize if I had to do it over I'm not sure I'd change much. I've done the best I can. We can't all be Winston Churchill but it is our God Given Right to fail over and over and over again.]

When I finished my masters I got a job as a development engineer. I had already been working in materials fabrication and composites. It was a small company, (I should never jumped off) the work was awesome. I learned so much. Admin. was cut throat. I was hired on a wave and fired on a wave. Then I was loose in a city with a brand new wife and a brand new daughter and no job. (And I'm grateful for them all, but God it sucked.)

But I digress. That's the kind of engineer I am. Right now I do high end art conservation and framing. People with deep pockets (and some shallow pockets) come from hundreds of miles away to have aesthetic protection designed around valuable items . Just, not enough of them; because I've lost interest. And thus the crux. I first get excited to conquer a subject, I get really good, then get bored, then start to hate what I'm doing, then I get depressed ( or rather perhaps the volcano rears it's head in a receding sea).

So where does that leave me? When and why; well I found a post somewhere in this site that kind of sums it up. But I think I can add a little some thing to the why. I've been studying semiotics lately; well actually the foundations of visual perception but semiotics are deep in there. Semiotics are the study of signs. Signs are everywhere but there are classes of signs. Not to go too deeply into the theory, there is a hierarchy and evolution of meaning of human signs. But not all signs are human made and not all human made signs have any meaning. There are a lot of signs out there that have no meaning at all. And I struggle with a deficiency of ability to organize signs with meaning and signs without meaning. It would simpler to say I'm easily distracted. But the truth is I'm always looking for meaning, wasting a lot of time looking where there is none.

And without further ado:

[Frame]

Part II:

For what it's worth, from a non-professional but highly technical person, 52 years old who:
A) Has been struggling with something all his life.
B) Has been diagnosed with a bunch of things at various times and fully expects (if I live long enough) to be diagnosed with a bunch more.
C) Three degrees in engineering but has had every menial job under the sun.

I believe that most depression is caused by an underlying frustration with what we expect from life. I'm positive by now that I have some kind of learning difference (call it miss-wiring of the brain if you like). It was never diagnosed and it was never tolerated in a family of over-achievers. Growing up, no one gave me an inch, as I followed my next older sister as she taught herself to read before kindergarten, skipped two grades, graduated summa cum laude, and went on to get he PhD and MD.

What I'm saying, is I was bright but I didn't, learn that way or any normal way. And I suffered all my life. And I developed compensations and no one has ever ventured to say I wasn't bright. But I was always marginalized for not following the rules. And years of that treatment has left deep frustrations about where and what I am in life as compared to A) what everyone else in my family has achieved and B) what people tell me I could have done.

Well these frustrations become internalized and very difficult to change BUT please note the root. It's about judgement and comparison. It's over and over again about my measuring my expectations and coming up short.

And so now I'm diagnosed with Bipolar Type II and Chronic Depression. PPPHHHTHT! Yea sure is has to do with chemistry; chemistry, and hormones, and feelings, and thoughts, and emotions....how people treat you, how you treat yourself...

I say it's about how hard it is to live today and about our judging ourselves too harshly. So why the diatribe? Well I've tried many treatments and I'm probably not done; whatever your working on at the moment, try to treat yourself gently (I'm not saying ignore responsibilities), judge less, compare less, keep your senses open and try to get to know your self better. Then, I think any treatment is more effective.

So I think I've answered all your questions Pilule. Just a couple comments:

Whatever failures your Father may have encountered, you could do a lot worse than walking in his footsteps. He's blazed a trail for you. You don't have to take it; but you might make him proud. And that's not such a bad thing. You two both seem to have a creative spark.

Second; it makes me feel so good to read your evolving philosophy about mistakes (or bad decisions as you say (although, admit it, you thought it was the right thing at the time.)). We make them; we have to; we were designed to; the universe was designed that way. It's OK; we can love ourselves anyway. As matter of fact, we should love that we make them. Without mistakes we do not learn.

And as you may have guessed, I like learning.

[nenkohai]

Wow, right on, Frame! Good words.

[Pilule]

Frame,

Well you succeeded in getting a few engineering degrees and a master’s degree, it’s no small feat. You should try and think more about what you achieved than what you failed.

Your not interested to start a business or work in the engineering field?

For sure if our dreams don't meet our expectation, that could lead to depression or worsen it.

A lot of my friends had menial jobs all their lives, a wife, two kids, a dog and their little house, and are very happy and I kept asking myself how can they not want to do better, how can they be content to stagnate like that. On the other hand I think that the fact that they expect so little from life is the secret to their happiness. Anyway, I don’t envy any of them. That’s not what I wanted from life. (My shrink is 72 and he has a 14 years old son and a younger daughter, talk about having balls).If you want more from life, there are risks, and if life throws you a curve you might end up in a hole and for people like us, it's called depression.

To make matter worse, for me, I live in a rich neighborhood; where every other car is a Mercedes or a BMW, monster houses, a few very rich people, a few mobsters too. Even cleaning ladies drive BMW. It’s frustrating but on the other hand I keep thinking, if they can do it, why can’t I, I’m sure some of them are not smarter than me. So far, it hasn’t worked out for me but still. Money would be a good antidepressant.

I have a friend that has a Bs in physics. He worked for 7 years and at around age 30 fell into a deep depression and try to commit suicide and was hospitalized for a while. He has been on welfare ever since, he is now 62. For as long as I have known him his dream was to have a patent for one of his invention, he doesn't care about the money. Most of his ideas make no sense and he fails every time but he always comes up with another idea that has no chance or success. He had one good idea and he teamed up with a university to build it. They gave him an office and access to their equipment. Once they understood his idea, they got the patent for themselves and pushed my friend away.

What I'm getting at here is that it's not because there was a lot of failures that it has to be like that. The problem with people that failed a lot is that whatever they get into, they give up quickly because "it's going to fail anyway". Sometimes if you give it the little extra push, even if we are down and discouraged, it might work. For successful people, it comes naturally, but for people like us it will always be more demanding.

I too get bored easily, so now I chose project that don’t have a tight deadline, this way, when I get bored, I put it aside and get back to it later. I know that, for me, I get “bored” because when I hit a snag, I don’t want to put in the effort to get around it, it’s laziness on my part.

I’m trying to walk out of my father’s footsteps but I seem to be drawn into them all the time. I suspected that my father was depressed too. He always came back from work in a terrible mood, we had to be quiet otherwise he would go into a rage. I never saw my father happy other than on the weekends when he would get drunk, at then he was happy until he sobered up. Most of the time, he kept wishing he was dead. I always wondered why he had kids, it seemed to be such a huge responsibility for him.

I think that a lot of shrink, when they are unsuccessful treating depression, they “find” something else. I have been on a few discussion forums and most people suffer from depression and are bipolar and have ADHD. Very few have depression only. My shrink is a bipolar specialist and I asked him if I couldn’t suffer from that also but he doesn’t think so. He asked me a few times, “what went wrong in your life that you’re so depressed” I keep telling, nothing, I was just wired wrong.

Are you seeing a psychiatrist?
What meds are you on?

[Frame]

You put quite a bit into a post Pilule;

Part of what makes the world go round, in my opinion, peoples definition of success (remember Churchill's requires enthusiasm sandwiched between at least two failures).

I think that all to often people let success slip away because they tell themselves, "Ok, if I accomplish this I'll be a success." Then they do and instead of celebrating their achievement they say to themselves, "Wait that's not enough, If I do this next thing I'll be a success." And it never ends.

Edison successfully developed the light bulb because he set a goal and wouldn't give up (and he was also very good at manipulating people). He successfully became rich because he was carnivorous Asshole. Many people aren't willing to put that much effort into the latter. When we talk about wealth we are talking about power. Accumulating power requires a certain amount of selfish gluttony.

Take my word for it (or don't, do some research.), people who are nice AND rich aren't making the money; they are spending it. Someone in their family tree was a rapacious pirate. I'm getting off topic aren't I?

But YES money (ie. power, choices, vacations, daydreams) are excellent antidepressants. I believe that part of what we see in terms of rising tide of depression is: the increasing ability to talk about it, and the diminishing ability to actualize what we were sold as an expanding quality of life. In clearer terms I mean; everybody gets to talk about how some people are doing much better but most people are doing much worse. And I don't mean to impune the better offs. They have to look out for themselves like everybody. But the seas of wealth are receding.

OK; well...I bummed myself out. I'll keep working on your response but for now I need to listen to some twanging guitar and clever lyrics.

Oh; before I go I very much wanted to say that (and we can talk more about this later) in buddhist tradition, the antidote to resentment and grief is gratitude. I only say this because it occurred to me earlier how truly grateful I am that your here posting. I get so much out of reading your posts and even more out of responding. I would never have put any this stuff into clear thought structures if you hadn't asked.

Thankyou.

[Frame]

It's interesting, Pilule, that you felt your father was depressed. I am an only son, and I don't know what kind of future my father envisioned when he was young. He was the apple of his mothers eye. But he became a teacher and was a college professor most of his life; raised five kids; retired as dean of a liberal arts college. But I never remember him smiling. I do remember asking him to smile. He would do it for show when I asked; never natural, never by habit. He worried all his life. He's still worrying.

I guess, now, that sounds like a pretty solid clue. We're pretty close; I've kept in touch; told him about my life. He knows I'm depressed. He said just once, he knows what it's like; that it comes from his side of then family. The generation before us, they have no words for this. I believe depression is as old as history. It's a revelation to them.

By the way, I don't know what a professor makes in Quebec, but five kids was tough on a professors salary; respect yea, but money no. And we grew up in an affluent neighborhood to. The similarities are piling up.

[Pilule]

Frame

It always amazes me to see people going to college, getting married, having kids, hold on to a job and finding out that they suffer from depression. Ordinary people have no clue how much it takes to achieve this. I could never do it.

You’re right about successful people being selfish, I have noticed that with my bosses, they didn't care if I worked on a Saturday even though I had plans, as long as I put money in their pockets. It was the same when I was doing boat competition, a lot of the guys I worked with where putting their needs before others.

I have a friend who is the head of the software department of a large bank. He worked like a dog, on a project, he even slept in his office, it took him 18 months. Then he finished it. For a week he was telling me how happy he was about the results he got. Then nothing, he was on to the next project. I think this is the way most successful people think. Working 18 months for one week of glory.

I’m the oldest of 4 kids and I have three sisters. My father and I didn’t see eye to eye so I couldn't talk to him. I couldn’t talk to my sisters either because they would repeat every thing I said. I didn’t talk to my mother either because if I told her something, it would go on and on and on. So I felt pretty isolated. Today I feel that this didn’t help my condition
But I’m sure my father wanted the best for me. I’m also sure he wanted me to do better than him. I keep thinking of the contrast between my father and my grand father. My grand father was always happy, he raised 6 kids and was very proud of them. He kept saying that he wouldn’t change a minute of his life, that it brought him so much joy. All the contrary of my father. I never told my father that I suffered from depression, it would have killed him. He died at 69 and the first thing my mother said is “at least now he’s happy” I’ll never forget that.

Funny you mentioned that your father was a teacher, I’m just back from a soccer practice with my nephew and both his grand parents on his father’s side were university teachers. They lived comfortably, not rich but money was never a problem. They had a nice house, they traveled to Europe in the summer, sent their 4 children to university, although here going to university is very cheap compared to the U.S.

You never told me if you were seeing a shrink or was on any meds, but you don’t have to answer that.