My Journey…

“How are you Robert?”

“I’m good, in fact I feel really good.”

Erica looked at me from across her office, “What do you attribute that to?”

“I’ve got my confidence back.” I said. “I believe in myself again"

This journey started with a kick in the ass from my doctor last March. Dr. F had said, “What’s happened to you?” We talked and she suggested that I get some help in understanding why I felt like I did, why I was always down in the dumps, defensive, angry and yes, mean.

The diagnosis, MDD:

Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as simply depression, is a mental disorder. Therapists have connected depression to the lack of both meaning in the present and a vision of the future.

For a year and a half, I was in a black hole; I couldn’t stop digging myself deeper and deeper. I wasn’t involved in anything but myself, I wasn’t interested in anything but my own BS. My life had collapsed and I didn’t even notice things falling apart, I didn’t care. Occasionally I snapped out of it for a few hours, a day sometimes for a few days,. Then I’d jump back my hole and retreat into myself again. It was a terrible place, but I felt safe there.

I was trying to write, I couldn’t finish anything. I wrote almost 25,000 words of a novel and stopped. It was pretty good, I let people I know and respect read parts of it, they liked it, they were helpful, I still stopped writing.

“Why did you stop Robert?” Erica said.

“I think I was afraid to finish it.”

“Why?”

“Because if I couldn’t get a publisher interested in it, I’d be humiliated, hurt…”

That summed up the way I was about everything in my life, I didn’t dare take a chance on anything anymore and I’d convinced myself that I didn’t need to, I quit on everything. I talked all the time and never said anything.

I was pushing people away. Most importantly I was pushing away my wife, I was remote, angry. It go to the point that Cakes had no idea who I was. I realize now, I didn’t know who I was anymore either.

I opened up to a fiend, give him a peek into what I was going through in my head.

“Jesus Bob, I remember when we were kids, I always felt that if we came across a jet airplane and you said “Let’s take it for a ride.” I knew you probably could fly the damn thing and I’d climb in and we’d go.”

The question was, where did that kid disappear to? I had to find him again. That kid was the key to getting out of the hole I’d dug for myself.

More on that and how I found him with a lot of help and understanding from my wife, a few close friends and a couple of dedicated professionals.