Where’s the Relating?

Today has been a day full of conversation about relationships. I’m no expert at it, but then again, who really is?  Sure, there are people who claim to be, but they always end up being full of it, because you’ll find out they’re divorced, have no real friends, or have a lot of estranged family.  Anyway, the only reason I bring it up is because it’s got me thinking about relationships in general, and how they can go so wrong, so easily.

The thing I always notice first when talking to anybody about relationships, either in general or about theirs specifically, is how often communication seems to be a problem.  I know from personal experience that it’s all too easy to not say something because at the time, it feels better to either ignore whatever the issue is, or not say anything because you’re afraid of hurting the other person’s feelings.  This almost always comes back to bite you in the ass.  Not to say that you want to have a conversation every time something bothers you, because that would mean you don’t do anything but talk about the problems, but to never bring it up at all is basically the death rattle of any relationship.

The hardest part about talking about problems relating to your relationship with someone else is that most times, it puts the other person on the defensive.  If they didn’t think anything was wrong, they might wonder where the discussion is coming from.  No one wants to hear criticism about how they do things.  Most people want to believe that the things they’re doing are right, and assume that how they think is the way everyone around them thinks.  That might be too broad a generalization, but I’ve seen all too often how people will generally not question anything about their life if they don’t hear any complaints, even if the reason there are no complaints is because people don’t want to hurt your feelings. 

Personally, I feel that telling the truth, no matter how difficult, is the only way to approach issues in any relationship.  I’ve held true to that sentiment for the majority of my life.  I have had some truly difficult conversations because I felt they needed to be addressed, and despite the lengthy arguments they may have caused, the hurt that was felt, or the anger that may have arisen from it, ultimately, it was the right thing to do.  I’m always worried that if something is left to fester for too long, when it eventually comes out, it will only hurt that much worse than if you just faced it right off the bat. 

That being said, it’s hard to figure out when is the right time to approach a difficult subject.  A lot of times, there’s always something going on that just makes it hard to say what has to be said.  Then whatever it may be is put off to the side, and eventually forgotten until it gets retriggered, and then you realize you didn’t say anything the last time, so while it may annoy you even more as time goes on, you feel as though you can’t say something because you missed your chance.  Then it builds and festers, and becomes a much larger problem than it had to be, all because a few necessary words weren’t said.

I think there are only a handful of things that can happen that should derail a conversation.  One, if one of you just gave birth, give it a little bit of time. Two, if someone just died, back off.  Three, if you’re in the middle of a good vacation, wait until after, but if there’s time before the vacation, get it out of the way.  Finally, if one of you gets fired, take a breather and get past that first.  That’s really about it.  All too often, people let the little things, like they’re tired, or they had a bad day at work, or any number of minor inconveniences stop them from discussing things like adults.  These things will always be there, and they shouldn’t stop you from talking if it needs to be said.

Ultimately, I think if it’s something that you yourself would want to hear, then you should have the courage to talk to the other person about it, because they deserve that same respect.  Being afraid that you’re going to hurt their feelings, or ruin their day, or any number of things that you want to avoid just says that you don’t trust them to handle it like an adult.  If that’s how you really feel, then you might want to question the nature of your relationship.  A strong relationship is always built on trust, good communication, and the willingness to work through the difficulties together.  Without that, you’re better of single.  At least that way, the only problems you’re dealing with are your own.

Brain Drain

I have started and stopped more blog posts in the last few weeks than I care to admit.  I feel as though I can't get the words out of my head in any coherent form anymore, which is why there have been next to no blog posts for months now.  It's getting to the point where I wonder if I can even engage in intelligent thought anymore.  Some of it is due to lack of mental stimulation from taking care of my daughter all day.  The majority of it is due to my extreme level of apathy about my general state of being because I have been in a very unhappy phase of my life.  Existential issues notwithstanding, these past several months have been the most difficult of my life.  Whenever I stop whatever it is I'm currently doing, and have a moment to think, it tends to go negative very quickly, and my mood sinks.  I keep myself distracted with a lot of things, but nothing that engages me in any intelligent way. I know I should try, but any number of excuses pop up, and I'm left just sitting there, clicking away mindlessly on things that offer me some brief amusement, but nothing in the way of mental stimulation.

Having gone home recently to NYC, I spent a couple of weeks around my old stamping grounds.  Seeing friends, eating some of my favorite foods, being around my family again, it felt like I was being rejuvenated.  Sadly, upon returning to Japan, much of that faded, and rather quickly.  I was able to gain some perspective on things while home that I'm hoping will help me for the remainder of my stay here, but I find myself far too easily falling back into old routines.  I'm fighting it tooth and nail, something I wasn't doing before I had returned home for a little while, but it is creeping up on me. 

While there, a few of my friends spoke to me privately, confronting me with concerns they had about my well-being.  For the most part, they told me things that I had already thought of myself, but it really hit home coming from my friends.  I try my best to be an open book, so I shouldn't have been surprised they knew the general malaise I was feeling, but it still meant a lot to me that they were actually concerned.  I usually have this feeling that no one really cares, even though time and again I'm proven wrong.  Obviously, that's just my lousy self-esteem coming through again. 

Back to my original point though.  While I have had thoughts about things that I would have liked to write about, I routinely hit a wall in the midst of writing where I feel as though I can't say what I want to say properly.  This never used to be an issue, as I basically just let whatever verbal diarrhea I had at the moment spill forth on the page in front of me, and posted it.  Later, when I would go back to read it, it would make an odd sense, sometimes to the point where I had a hard time believing I actually wrote it.  Now however, I'll get about a paragraph or two in, read back over what I wrote, and realize that I had either lost the thread of what I wanted to write about, or I was going in a direction I had no intention of going.  I try to adjust, but always feel as though it's a lost cause, and I just delete everything and call it a night.  Hell, I'm about to do that now, but I'm making myself write SOMETHING, so that I I can hopefully get a feel for this again. 

I know this blog isn't exactly a widely circulated site, and I doubt anyone is actually getting much of anything from this, but the ability to write anything coherently used to be a real point of pride for me.  I liked looking back at something I had been able to say with some level of intelligence, and say "Wow... that wasn't half-bad."  It was a small victory for myself, and I'd like to be able to get back to that, but it just feels so far away right now, like everything else for me.  Maybe a small step like this will help get me started in the right direction again.  That, or it's just another emo post, and I should go back to livejournal and whine on there.

Not Wise, Maybe Just Lucky

When I began this blog, I named it “Questionable Wisdom” as a bit of conceit, because I had been told numerous times “You’re wise for your age.”  There was this idea in my head that I had something intelligent to say, and what I had to say might have a chance at helping others.  However, I still put it as questionable, mainly because I wasn’t so conceited as to believe I was actually wise, so I added a bit of self-deprecation in order to smooth off the ego a bit.

As I’ve continued writing here (albeit intermittently) it’s become less about any sort of observations that I’ve made about the world, and more about personal insight.  The majority of it seems to be griping, but there have been layers of trying to dive deeper into my own psyche to understand all of the issues in my head.  Much of it deals with the depression I’ve been fighting with over the course of my life.  I look back at my life, and some of my old photos, and I don’t think I could ever categorize myself as a happy go lucky person.  The phrase I’ve heard more than any other is “Are you okay?”  I’ve always had sort of a dour look on my face when I’m not really focusing on anything, and that has led to a fair share of people worrying that something might be wrong.  I always just used to automatically shrug it off, because I felt more or less fine, but lately, something has been festering in me that makes me wonder if something isn’t wrong.

I’ve been thinking about it (more agonizing over it really) as to what the problem might be.  I look at my life, and I’m actually pretty fortunate.  I seem to have a lot going for me.  I have an amazing wife and daughter, great family and friends, I’ve never had a particularly hard life outside of whatever hardships I create for myself, and in general, I’m surrounded by good people.  However, it all seems to come down to this feeling that I have that I don’t really deserve any of it.  I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve the life I live, except maybe stumble into some lucky circumstances.  There are people who are better than me by leaps and bounds who aren’t as fortunate, and I always think they deserve it more than I do.

Much of this is likely tied to my self-esteem issues.  I don’t think highly of myself in the least, and it’s always been that way.  I tend to set up high expectations for myself, and continually fail to meet any of them, so there’s always some major disappointment for myself.  This has led me to set lower standards for myself, but somehow, I still manage to completely miss the goal, and therefore continue to feel more and more useless.  Mind you, these are more overarching goals, not little day to day things, although admittedly, I’ve been failing at those too lately, which is probably due to my depression.  I just don’t feel like doing anything aside from sitting there and wallowing in my own self-pity. 

The only thing that seems to keep me going, at least lately, is my sense of duty.  I have to make sure my daughter is healthy.  I absolutely cannot allow my own flaws and faults trickle down and affect my daughter negatively.  She is a helpless, defenseless little thing, and I would be doing a great disservice to her by not doing everything I could, even if I don’t think that I can, in order to make sure she has her best chance at a happy life.  I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her under my watch.  I already feel like I failed myself long ago, I can’t afford to fail her as well.

However, this all drains me on a regular basis.  Having to pull myself out of bed every day, and prepare meals, and clean up after her, and try to keep her entertained during the day requires a lot of effort and energy, neither of which I have in abundance.  By the end of the day, when my wife comes home, I just want to curl up into a ball, and be left alone.  However, there are still things to be done, and I have to help because it’s only fair, since my wife is the one who works and provides us with the capacity to live.  So most nights, I end up staying up late, way later than I should, just so I have some time to myself, and just sort of sit and be miserable for a while.  Somehow, it’s therapeutic, even if it doesn’t sound like it. 

I’ve been more consistently angry at myself lately because I don’t think I’m being the type of father that my daughter really needs right now.  She deserves someone who’s happy, and enjoys life so that he can show her how, but she’s got me, this depressive, damn near immobile father who acts like he’s moving heaven and earth to get her some lunch.  I feel like I should enjoy watching my daughter, and there are times I do, especially when I can get her to laugh, but most times, it just feels like so much work, more work than I’m willing to do.  But, I still do it, because I know how important it is, and whatever effort I can muster is better than nothing at all.  Maybe not by much, but at least it’s something, right?

Back to my point earlier though about not feeling like I deserve the life I have.  It mainly comes from the idea that I don’t think I’m doing anything special to deserve all of these good people in my life.  Hell, even here, in Japan, where I barely know anyone, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet these people who are absolutely amazing with children, who I can go to for advise, and who are willing to help and have gone out of their way to do so.  What are the odds of finding these type of people right when my wife gets pregnant, and I feel like I’m at a total loss?  I’m just lucky my wife has been able to befriend them, and they’re nice enough people to put up with me. 

However, I digress again.  I feel like I’m doing what is necessary, nothing special, or above and beyond the norm.  I’m doing the things that should be expected out of anyone in my position, because these things are necessary.  I’ve always been surprised by how people react when they find out I do some particular thing that I don’t think deserves any praise because it’s something I’m supposed to do.  Like watching my daughter, since my wife works.  Well, who else is supposed to watch my child?  I don’t work, so the least I could do is take care of my daughter.  What’s so special about that?  Some people seem so amazed and flabbergasted by it, and I just stand there scratching my head, wondering why the surprise. 

And don’t give me the , “Well, not everyone does what they’re supposed to do,” spiel, because I don’t want to be compared to people who are bad at being decent people.  That doesn’t make me feel better about myself, it just makes me angry that those type of people exist.  I just don’t think I’m really exceptional in any way, and that the people in my life and the life I lead belong to someone else, someone who’s more deserving. 

I think I’ve beaten that horse to death by now.  You get the idea.  Anyway, that’s the general feeling that has been plaguing me for some time now.  I’m not sure if it’s a situation where I don’t actually deserve my life which is causing me turmoil, or whether it’s just a quirk in my personality that doesn’t allow me to see or care about what I have done to deserve it, or some other alternative that just makes me more depressed thinking about it. 

At any rate, I think this is one of the main reasons that keep me from feeling any sort of lasting happiness.  It’s obviously something I have to work on, and I’m trying, but there are days I just feel defeated by myself, and I’d rather just give up.  Like I said, I couldn’t, because my daughter needs me, and if I’m honest with myself, I’m far too much of a coward to just give up.  The hard part will be trying to not let these feelings filter down to my daughter, lest I poison her with my depression.  I would never want her to go through what I have, because it’s been a hard thing to deal with, and a sweet child like her really shouldn’t have to deal with such things. 

I of course plan to keep trying to improve myself in some ways so that I feel less trapped by these feelings, but no guarantee that anything I try will help.  In the meantime, I can and will continue to do what I must for the life that I’m leading right now.  I just hope it’s good enough, or at least that I’m lucky enough that it will go well…

Analysis 2: The Trauma

To continue along the path of self-analysis that I started with on the last blog, I’ve decided to take a look at one of the most defining moments of my life.  Originally, this blog was supposed to be about all the things that have caused me some sort of trauma, negative things that still stick out in my mind.  The only problem with that is while there are a lot of little ones, they are so little and so insignificant, I feel it would do a disservice to mention them in the same breath as the one moment in my life that I replay over and over again.  I’ve gone over this situation with therapists and friends before, but I don’t remember every just laying it out there like this, so I figured if I put it down, it might have some positive effect, or it may do nothing, but at least there’s something happening here.

The incident happened toward the end of 6th grade.  After so many years, I don’t even remember the exact date anymore, I just remember it being some time in May of 1993.  I was still 11 years old.  I’ve tried several times to just forget it, but over time, I’ve found it healthier to just confront it.  It wasn’t a particularly memorable day.  The weather wasn’t extra nice or bad, the day leading up to what happened wasn’t interesting in any way.  The things that I remember most are seeing my grandmother the morning of, and walking down the block and seeing the apartment I lived in during that time in full view… as a burnt out wreck.  There were fire trucks everywhere, police cars, soot covered people, and that smell of burnt everything in the air. 

Up until that point, I had been spending some time at a friends house, because it was a half day (if I remember correctly), and I didn’t head home until much later in the day because I was playing video games.  I attempted several times to call home, but kept getting a busy signal.  This was a time before call waiting was more or less included for free, so I thought that the phone might’ve been off the hook, as that had happened a few times before.  I thought nothing of it, so I wasn’t really too worried.  When I got home, and saw for myself what had happened, I honestly had no idea what to do.  I looked around for someone I knew, and that ended up being the father of one of my friends who happened to work at the hospital near where I lived.  He was standing outside, just sort of gaping at the building, and when I went up to him, I remember asking something along the lines of, “What happened?  Oh crap, did anyone get my games out?”

Yeah… that’s what occurred to me to ask at that moment, whether or not anyone had saved my video games.  My friend’s father just looked at me for a moment, and brought me over to my parents who were a little further down the block.  My dad was covered in soot, wearing shorts, and suddenly the day just seemed colder.  My mom pulled me aside and asked where I had been all this time, and when I told her, she actually seemed glad.  She had said she knew it was a half day, and thought I might have been home at the time the fire had started.  That’s the only time when it occurred to me, “Wait… no one was home right?  Where’s grandma?”  That’s when they told me that she had been caught in the fire, and that my dad had helped pull her out of the apartment through the window, the same window that not too long before had child safety bars put in, which would have made her escape that much more difficult. 

I was sent to stay with my friend while everyone figured out what the next step was.  I would later find out she was in the hospital with third degree burns over 80% of her body.  My parents told me they were hopeful at first, because the burns weren’t around her chest or too much on her head, so they thought maybe she could pull out of it.  They kept telling me that things would be alright.  I attempted to see her at the hospital once, but when I got to the front desk, they told me that I wasn’t allowed in because I was so young, and they were worried it might frighten me, and that I might cause a disturbance.  When I was told that, I was both a little upset and a little relieved.  From what my parents had told me, they said that I might not recognize her because of the burns, and the treatments she had been through.  So I sat in the car, waiting for about half an hour or so while my parents visited my grandmother. 

About 3 weeks or so after the fire, someone called my friend’s parents, and told them that my grandmother had died.  I remember I was eating a popsicle at the time, and I just sort of froze with it in my mouth.  I walked to the bedroom, sat down on the bed behind my friend as he was playing Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo, and just said “My grandma’s dead…”  He looked at me for a second, a little sad, and then his mom came in the room and started talking to me about attending the funeral.  That’s basically when I lost it, saying how much I didn’t want to go.  I started thrashing around on the bed, crying, wailing, screaming at the top of my lungs that I didn’t want to go, that they couldn’t make me.  I was told it was my responsibility to go because I was her grandson through my father’s line, and it’s important because of Chinese tradition.  I wanted no part of it, I didn’t care, I just didn’t want to be there.

Eventually, my friend’s parents calmed me down, and I accepted that I had to be there.  The funeral was surreal in some ways.  I don’t remember much of it, because I more or less kept my head down, but what I remember most about it was the wailing of her friends.  It was such a tragic death, because she had only came to the US to visit us from Vietnam for a little while, and no one ever thought something like this was possible.  It scared me, and it saddened me, because of how terrible everyone sounded.  I could hear the heartbreak in their voices. 

After the funeral was over, I continued to live apart from my family for some time.  Until the end of 6th grade, which was about another month or so, I stayed with my friend in the Bronx.  During this time, my family was staying in a hotel (which coincided with my staying at my friend’s), then they eventually got put into a temporary shelter while they found a new place to live. At that point, the shelter where they put us in was somewhere in the South Bronx, and it was in a sketchy neighborhood (to put it politely) so my parents decided to send me down to my uncle’s, and my brother to a different aunt’s place.  I ended up moving in with my uncle down in Brooklyn, where I stayed with him, his wife, and their three kids.  I was the oldest out of all of them, by about 8 years, but I think I ended up just being a burden to them.  I remember feeling just so awkward down there, like I was only there because no one else would take me.  I think they tried their best, but they already had three kids, and I just ended up being another mouth to feed and another kid to watch, so I’m not sure how enthused they were about that.

Eventually, when school started up, I was moved back with my brother.  I was starting a nearby junior high, so it made sense for me to commute from there instead of Brooklyn.  Eventually, during that year, after moving out of my aunt’s to a temporary room across the street from the school, we finally got our new apartment on the upper west side.  This was before all of the current renovations, so it was still a bit sketchy, but nowhere near as bad as the place in the Bronx, and since it was on its way up, it turned out to be a great place to live. 

Now, those were the circumstances surrounding the fire and the death of my grandmother.  I think it took quite some time for all of the shock to settle in and really affect my brain.  Over time, I started blaming myself for her death.  Not too long before the fire, my grandmother had asked me whether or not I thought she should stay.  She had been there for a month or two, and was thinking about staying to help my parents watch us.  My mom had helped her settle in a bit, and got her some seamstress work, so she was contributing to the household, and seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time with her grandsons.  I liked her, so I told her yeah, it’d be nice if she stayed longer.  Because of that innocent statement, for the longest time, I felt as though I had contributed greatly to my grandmother’s death.  I felt that if I had instead said no, she would have left and never been caught in the fire, and she would never have had to die.  Looking at it from an adult’s point of view now, it seems ludicrous to think that I could have possibly thought it was my fault, but at that time, I could only think about what could have been.  I tried to push past it, tried to ignore that thought wiggling around in the back of my head, but I always felt some great guilt for it. 

As I got older, I went through some other things, which would eventually get me into therapy.  I may tell that story sometime, but for now, it was in therapy where a couple of realizations came to light.  You may have already realized what it might have been from reading an earlier passage.  During much of the time after the fire, I had very little contact with my actual family.  My therapist helped me to realize that for the longest time, I had felt abandoned by them, and that helped to explain the strange relationship that had come to form with my family for all the years after that.  I was really distant from them, and especially from my extended family for quite some time up to that point.  I never wanted to participate in anything, and I was routinely the only one who wasn’t at family gatherings.  Up until that point, it had never occurred to me why those things had happened the way they did.  Why was I apart from the rest of the family all that time?

Eventually, after some confrontations with family, and some explanations, I found out that it would have been harder on me at the time if I had stayed with them.  They were dealing with all of the post-fire paperwork and various bureaucratic things, and would not have had much time to watch after me.  There were some other things involved to, but since then, I’ve made my peace with everyone involved.  However, despite having dealt with the trauma, it left some indelible marks on my being.

Primarily, I am now deathly paranoid when I can’t reach someone immediately.  I always worry the worst has happened, and that I wasn’t there to somehow prevent it or to help.  Secondly, I hold the people who are important to me much closer than I think is normal, because I’m always afraid of losing them.  Third, I try my best to tell people how I really feel about them, because I never got the chance to tell my grandma how much I loved her, and to this day, I still regret not having that opportunity.  I want to make sure I never take anyone for granted and not let them know. 

There are some other things that are possibly related.  I’m pretty risk adverse, which while it may not be directly related, since her death wasn’t caused by some stupid risk, is still a matter of preventing something bad from happening if I can.  I’m also very blunt, which goes hand in hand with that whole “Don’t take people for granted thing” because I don’t want to miss the opportunity to say something that I feel needs to be said. 

To this day, that moment still defines much of who I am.  I feel as I’m more focused on what’s important because of it, but I still wish it had never happened.  I often wonder what my grandmother would have thought of me had she the chance to see me grow up.  I just hope she would be proud, and I hope she knows that even after all these years, I still miss her.

Analysis 1: All the Girls I’ve Loved Before

The recent entries about depression have gotten me to thinking about various aspects of my life and how they might be playing a part in this malaise.  Normally, this is all very introspective, but I’ve been finding that writing has been very cathartic, so I figured I’d think out loud on paper on the interwebs… as it were.  This set of blogs will be me going over parts of my life that have had an impact on the kind of person I am, which might help me to understand why I’ve been in such a funk lately.  This particular entry will be about the women who I have fallen in love with over the course of my life, and what I learned from each of them. 

I’ve only ever been in love four times in my life.  There have been a lot of crushes, a lot of interests, but only four women have been burned into my memory because of my feelings for them.  Not all of them loved me back, or even knew how I felt, but they all had a profound effect on the kind of person I’ve become, and there are aspects of my character that can be directly traced back to these women.  I don’t know if four is considered a lot or a little, or if that’s about average, but that’s the number that I have, and they all pop into my head from time to time, sometimes fondly, sometimes not.  I’m going to keep names out of here because I’d rather not embarrass anybody, but people who know me know who they are.

The first woman I ever fell in love with was my high school biology teacher.  Like I said, just because I was in love with them doesn’t mean they ever returned it or knew about it. However, she was the first woman I ever had strong feelings for.  Some may call it a schoolboy crush, and that’s fine to have that opinion, but I know how I felt.  As silly as it is to say, she was the first woman who ever made me really know that I liked women.  Not saying my sexuality was ever in doubt, but I was what some would call a late bloomer, and up until that point, I hadn’t really found any girls really all that attractive.  I thought there were some cute ones, and some pretty ones, but I would look at them like I would a pretty piece of art.  Nice to look at, but ultimately, just an appreciation of beauty, not something I was attracted to. 

With this teacher though, she showed me qualities in a woman that I found myself drawn towards.  It helped that I found her excessively attractive, and not only because I was in an all boys school and therefore surrounded by nothing but other guys.  However, that wasn’t what drew me too her.  She has this boundless energy, and this endless optimism.  She always had this smile on her face, which made her just light up, and I never missed an opportunity to see her and hope to catch that smile.  The thing that stuck out in my mind about her was that she was the first woman that I ever knew to utter the words, “I love you,” to me, although mind you it wasn’t in a romantic context.  Her words exactly were, “I love you, but you are the most pessimistic person I know.”  It was a throwaway sort of line, and now that I think back on it, she probably said some variation of that to a lot of other students, but at that moment, it was shocking to hear those words said to me, in any context.  It never occurred to me that I could be loved, as strange as that sounds, and it was just really heart warming to hear it. 

For some time after that, even after I graduated, I would stop by the school just to say hi and see her.  I eventually lost touch when she left the school, and I held her on a pedestal for quite some time afterwards.  I’ve learned some things since then that has brought my image of her back down to earth, but I still think of her fondly, and wish her the best.  I wish I had been able to keep in contact with her, because she really was one of the few bright spots in my otherwise gloomy high school experience, and I always wanted to thank her for that, but alas, life has deigned to remove her from my life fully.  (That was a lot more florid than I wanted to say it, but for some reason it fits… so I’ll leave it.)

Not too long after I graduated from high school, I met the second woman I would ever fall in love with.  With her, it was the first time any woman had ever shown any interest in me.  I don’t mean to say she was attracted to me, I just mean she actively sought me out to do things with.  Oddly, it wasn’t in college that I met her.  Instead, I had met her at a restaurant I frequented, and it was pure happenstance that we ever got to know each other.  I had spoken to her briefly in previous visits, but there was one time where, for reasons I don’t recall, we decided we would hang out.  It was completely random, because up until that point, I don’t think I had spoken more than a handful of words to her, but it just sort of happened, and I went with it.

What struck me the first time I spent time with her was how open and friendly she was.  It just seemed like the most natural thing in the world for us to be hanging out, even though I was honestly nervous as all hell that first time.  I had never spent any serious alone time with a girl before that, so it was a new experience for me.  I felt awkward through much of the night, but as it progressed, I was able to loosen up and just enjoy the night.  Another first for me, on the way back to the train station, we held hands.  I’m surprised my hands didn’t sweat so much it would’ve grossed her out.  Prior to that, the only time I had held a girl’s hand was when I was in grade school, and we needed to hold hands for the buddy system.  Like I said, late bloomer. 

We would go on to spend a lot more time together after that, when we found that we seemed to get along really well.  She had a lot of the same qualities as my bio teacher, in the sense she had a lot of energy and seemed really optimistic.  The biggest difference though, since I had the opportunity to get to know her, was how human she was.  While I held my teacher up on this pedestal, this person had very real life troubles, and issues that weighed on her.  Hanging out with her, I got to learn how people had to cope with things when it seemed like the world was against them.  From her, I learned how sheltered my life really was, and due to that, I tried my best to make her happy.  I would go out of my way to do things for her to make her smile.  She also gave really great hugs, so that was a reward I couldn’t pass up. 

After spending all this time with her, I couldn’t help but develop feelings for her. There were moments during the times we spent together where I felt as if maybe more could happen, but I was never able to act on any of them due to fear of rejection.  This led to some mixed feelings on my part, because I wasn’t sure if it was just me reading things wrong, or if my lack of action was sending mixed signals.  Whatever it may have been, things started to get a little awkward.  It didn’t help as I was still very immature when it came to these feelings, and I was unable to deal with them properly, and ended up feeling possessive.  Despite having no claim to her, I ended up getting jealous over things that were none of my business or outright ridiculous, and it would end up fracturing our relationship.  Initially, she was very understanding, and wanted to remain friends.  However, I couldn’t get over myself, and I did one of the few things in my life that I regret.  I wish I had handled it better, but I drove a wedge into that friendship that it would never recover from.  We remained friends in name only after that, but it always felt awkward whenever I was around her, and the conversation never flowed as freely as it used to.  It’s been a long time since all of that happened, and we’ve since buried the hatchet, so to speak, but it will never be what it was in terms of our interactions with each other, and I do miss it.  I do hope she ultimately finds happiness, and if she ever needs me, I would love to be there, but it’s not likely to ever happen.

For a while after that, I didn’t really meet any girls that I had any interest in.  I began to fall more into the stereotypical role of hardcore geek.  I surrounded myself with geek culture; comic books, video games, anime, manga, the internet (which was still the realm of the geek at the time), and I was isolating myself from the world at large.  I was nearing the end of my college career when I would get a job with a company based on Wall Street, and there I met this girl who would, in a roundabout way, introduce me to the next girl I would fall in love with. 

It was the strangest chance meeting.  I became friends with the girl from my job, because we found we had similar interests in random things, and also that we were in the same school.  Because of this, she invited me to take a swim class with her, which is not something I would ever have done before, mainly because I can’t swim and am generally terrified of drowning.  However, at the time, I was on a self-improvement kick, and my friend kept bugging me, so I decided that getting over that fear would be a good thing, so I agreed to join.  I go to the first class, and wouldn’t you know it, the friend I signed up with didn’t show up.  In fact, there was only one other person there, and it was this short little girl.  Since I had descended so far into my geek habits, I was less than amicable towards her, since I was kind of pissed that I was alone at this thing that I had only signed up for because my friend had coerced me to go.  What little conversation with her was curt at best, and I resolved to not come the next time if my friend wasn’t showing up.

So I confirmed with my friend for the following week, and showed up early for the class because I had nothing better to do.  As I sat there, this cute girl walks in, and looks at me as if she knew me.  I had no idea where I knew her from, until she spoke to me and I realized it was the same girl who was at the swim class the last time.  When I had first met her, she had on goggles and a swim cap, and here she was without the goggles, and her hair out, and I had no idea she was as cute as she was.  We chatted for a few minutes, and then got going to get changed.  After the class was over (and I chastised my friend for not showing up the previous class) I asked the girl from earlier if she wanted to have lunch together.  I don’t know what possessed me to do that, but she surprised me by saying yes, and we went to BBQs.

As we sat there chatting, I once again felt that comfortable feeling, as if I had known her for a long time.  During that chat, we found the oddest coincidence that we actually lived just four blocks apart from each other, and had been for several years.   Mind you, we met at the school’s gym where the pool was, which was on the complete other side of the city, so it was a strange moment to find out we were basically next door neighbors.  After this revelation, I suddenly found myself running into her all the time, and we soon became fast friends.

We started spending so much time together, that once again, I began to develop feelings for her.  This time, I tried to remain more level-headed, but apparently I was still too immature, and once again, made a fool of myself.  This time however, when she said we should remain friends, I was able to back off and just concentrate on the friendship, and we maintained a very solid relationship.  She stuck by her word to try to stay friends, and we were as close as two friends could be.  We spent nearly every day together, doing everything from biking, watching TV, skiing, rollerblading, going out to dinner, cooking at each other’s places, to just chilling and talking with a beer.  Over time though, some things changed, and we became intimate.  Despite that, she never acknowledged any feelings for me, and it caused me to be rather confused as to the nature of our relationship.  She never acknowledged me as a boyfriend, but I never stopped admitting my feelings for her, so we were at a sort of weird impasse.  The reasoning behind her failure to acknowledge any feelings for me were kind of strange, as she would tell me she wasn’t attracted to me, but her actions spoke otherwise.  She also tended to knitpick a lot about my personality traits and how I looked and dressed, and would constantly try to make improvements.  Me, being the in love fool I was, followed her “advice” and made some pretty drastic changes to myself. 

This all finally came to a head after a few years when I finally gathered the courage to tell her that I needed to hear some sort of acknowledgement of our relationship.  I straight-forwardly told her that if she didn’t, I couldn’t remain in this type of strange holding pattern, with this unrequited love forever.  She told me that she couldn’t force herself to feel that way about me, and I had basically closed the book on that chapter of my life.  This coincided with a trip of hers with her family, so I felt the need to tell her these things before she left because it just felt like the right time to get it off my chest.

Wouldn’t you know it, during the time that she was away, my future wife would walk into my life.  Well, more like message her way into my life, as we met on Myspace because she sent me a random message.  Normally, I would think it was spam, but I decided to look at her profile, and found that it was an actual person, not some weird robo-messager who was attempting to convince me to join a sex website.  I was still doubtful at first, because when I saw her profile because, I couldn’t believe how hot she was, but I took a chance, and we began a conversation online, where I made some awful puns, and she actually laughed at them, which told me I was dealing with a very different kind of girl.  We decided to meet shortly after those initial messages, and found that we hit it off incredible well, despite spending the first two hours in each other’s presence without speaking so much as 2 sentences to each other (we were at Barnes & Nobles reading manga together).

And thus began the most difficult year of my life.  When the other girl came back from her trip, she found out that I had met a new girl, and despite her previous protestations, the green-eyed monster reared its ugly head.  Suddenly, all of the feelings that I had expressed to her had become a big lie, and I had been deceiving her all that time when I had been telling her I loved her.  Mind you, this was literally 3 days after I had met my future wife, and I hadn’t even gotten to know her all that well and wasn’t even sure if it was going to go anywhere, before the first girl decided to rip my head off. 

During the course of the next year or so, I attempted to stay friends with the girl who didn’t love me, because she had stayed true to her word before, when I had made a fool of myself.  Needless to say, it was hard on my new relationship, but somehow, she stuck by me.  She was so patient as I would engage in these drawn out conversations with my “friend” that lasted until well into the wee hours of the morning.  My future wife would literally be waiting in my bed at home while I was down the block, at my friend’s house, arguing with her about all of these things she was accusing me of, primarily some form of betrayal.  I would come home, exhausted, weary, sad, and angry, and my future wife was just waiting in bed, welcoming me back with open arms, a warm hug, and a loving kiss.  Never in my life had I experienced that, someone who just seemed to care about me so much that they were willing to put up with that much ridiculousness.

Eventually, I broke off all ties with this friend of mine.  I look back at that time of my life as a learning period.  While she was harsh on me about my appearance and general demeanor, it did force me to make some changes that I was unwilling or hesitant to make, and I did improve a lot because of it.  If it had not been for her, I wouldn’t have been ready for the relationship that I was to have with my future wife, because oddly enough, I gained a lot of confidence from dealing with a girl like her.  It made me aware that I was able to make someone happy, even if they had a hard time expressing it.  It showed me the amount of fortitude I had to deal with a difficult situation.  It taught me how to communicate to the best of my abilities, so that I was clear with my feelings.  While it didn’t end well, I was able to gain a lot from it, so while I don’t have the best feelings toward her, I am grateful for her influence in my life, if for no other reason than what became of it.

This brings me of course, to the fourth and final love of my life, my wife.  As I said before, she showed an amazing amount of patience during that particularly difficult time.  She also showed me that someone could love me for who I am, not for who they want me to be.  She accepted me as I was, and actually encouraged some of my more geeky behavior.  It was a shock to me, to say the least, but here was this incredibly attractive woman who loved me, who wasn’t afraid to say it or show it, and who didn’t want me to be anything or anyone else than what I was.  My mind was blown.  Obviously, that story is ongoing, and it’s a happy one so far, despite my depression. 

From my wife, I learned that I could be who I am, and still find love.  I also learned that I was capable of taking care of someone, as she was having a bit of a hard time with her life at the time I met her.  She was a bit lost with her direction in life, and I did my best to foster her growth as she was groping around to find who she wanted to be.  That search is not done yet, but neither is mine, and we’re working together to find who we ultimately want to be as we get older.  We’ve had our trials and tribulations (to use a cliché) but we know that the best way to get past them is to work together, and communicate as much as we can.  Now that we have a daughter, we have found that we’re either not bad parents, or have been very lucky with our child.  Either way, we have a beautiful, sweet baby girl who brings up joy with her every waking moment. 

Maybe it got a little sappy at the end there, but looking back at how my life has been shaped by my relationships, and the difficulties I’ve faced, it’s made me more appreciative of what I have now.  I may not be magically cleared of my depression, but having a little bit of perspective on where my life has been and where it is now does make some things easier to bear.  Of course, the whole purpose of these entries is to gain some perspective, so I guess we’ll see what kind of progress can be made with the next post.

It Doesn’t Only Affect You

I wanted to expand a bit on something I spoke about in my last post.  Mainly that depression does not solely affect the person experiencing it.  It can have some seriously detrimental effects on a relationship, no matter how strong it may have been initially.  The worst part of the whole thing is that much of the problem stems from the fact that the person who is depressed is having a negative effect on the people around him, and if you are any sort of introspective and perceptive at all, you will notice these things which will only make you feel worse about yourself.  And the odd thing is, the more the other person loves you, the worse it will likely be.

Recently, I’ve been going through these difficulties myself.  My relationship with my wife has been rough lately, to put it kindly.  We’re frequently sniping at each other, biting each other’s head off, and all for inconsequential things.  Much of the problem stems from me, and I know this, which makes it suck that much worse.  Because of how I’ve been feeling, I tend to be a bit more aggressive and snippy about things.  Due to my general feelings of worthlessness, everything becomes incredibly important, even when it’s really not, and it leads to a fight.  Unfortunately, after a while, only so much of this can be taken by my wife, and after some time, she hit her breaking point.  Well, maybe not breaking, but she’s definitely fed up, and now she also has a much shorter fuse than she did. 

It’s a ridiculous situation to be in.  On one hand, you need this other person to be supportive, because you love them, and you would hope that they could understand what a difficult place you’re in.  On the other, because they are the person you interact with the most, they are the ones who have to endure your constant mood swings, and that can wear anyone’s patience thin.  This in turn causes the other person to start exhibiting similar symptoms to you because they’ve been pushed to that point, and you end up not wanting to be around each other.  Every comment is taken the wrong way, every action is analyzed to death, and they all have negative outcomes.  To pile on to that, whereas I used to have friends I could blow off steam with, there really isn’t much opportunity for that here.  It’s only been making me feel worse about myself, because I know I’m the catalyst for all of this, and I can’t figure out how to break the cycle.

Anyone who knows my wife and I know that we love each other deeply.  Despite all of the anger, hurtful words, and careless actions we have put towards each other in recent months, we do still really love each other.  The only problem is I can’t bring myself to try to talk these things through with her because it just ends up in a fight.  Either I get too touchy or she does, and there never seems to be a moment where we are capable of just stepping back and resetting ourselves so that we can talk like people who actually love each other, instead of what we are now.  There are moments where we can, but they always seem to be sad moments, where it just feels like we’re both tired, and don’t really want to keep going. 

For the most part, I know we’re just going through a rough patch now, and I know much of the blame can be put on me.  I’ve been resistant to any sort of real outside help because I have a very specific way of dealing with things, and right now, I don’t have access to any of those ways.  I have been slowly trying to make adjustments, but it’s a long process, and because of that, I’m afraid things may happen that may cause irreparable damage.  The stupid thing is that while I can calmly make these observations now, in the heat of the moment, and in my day to day dealings, it just doesn’t seem to be so clear.  I just hope that the changes that I need to make can happen at a pace that will give me time to fix some of the damage that has already been wrought, but I honestly don’t know. 

There is also the case that I may be seeing things as being much more bleak than they really are, but I would rather err on the side of caution.  Changes do have to be made, and they have to start with me.  I’ve always said that you can’t properly love someone else unless you love yourself, and unfortunately, I am far from loving myself right now.

More than Being Down

Depression is a tricky thing.  The term is thrown around somewhat loosely when describing feelings of just being sad, or when you’ve been in a sour mood for a while.  We’ve all heard at one time or another someone saying, “Don’t worry about me, I’m just depressed.”  To be honest, if someone were truly depressed, you should definitely be worried. In all actuality, someone who is really depressed would find it hard to say the words out loud.  That’s because one of the hardest things about being depressed is to talk about it.  The stupid part is that talking about it is really the only way to get yourself out of it.

The difficulty lies in the fact that most people don’t want to be seen as complainers.  They want to keep with the status quo, and many people out there would prefer to suffer in silence than be seen as a complainer.  It doesn’t help that a lot of times, the advice offered to people who are depressed tends to be, “Well, why don’t you go and do something about it?”  Or the more combative version, “Well, if you’re not going to do anything about it, then stop complaining.”  There’s a general belief that depression is something that can be shaken off if someone just has enough willpower and determination.  This mindset only serves to make coming out of depression even harder.

The problem with that way of thinking is that if you are depressed, and you believe that all it should take is willpower, then the moment you find that you can’t just “shrug it off,” you find yourself getting driven deeper into the depression because you have “failed.”  The longer you stay depressed, the more you feel as if you aren’t trying hard enough, but no matter how hard you try, depression will not just be shaken off like raindrops off of an umbrella, which just leaves you with more feelings of despair.  It’s a self-defeating cycle to believe that you can beat depression through sheer willpower.  You may be able to distract yourself for a fair amount of time, but the depression will never just magically go away if it’s not honestly dealt with.

Of course, that’s if there is a logical and obvious reason for the depression.  If someone dies, or you suffer some form of great loss, then you have a simpler task of pinpointing a reason for the depression.  It doesn’t mean it will disappear instantaneously because you acknowledged the cause, but it does help to speed the process.  But what do you do if you just generally have feelings of sadness, malaise, being lost, or of being worthless?  What if you honestly don’t know what the cause of the depression is?  How do you approach it?  Where do you begin?

These are questions I ask myself on an almost daily basis.  For some time now, I’ve been feeling more and more lost, more directionless, in my life.  I’ve had numerous theories, and many attempts at getting myself out of my “funk” as I call it, but with little to no success.  I’ve been especially hit with it hard recently, ever since I’ve been living in Japan, but I’m beginning to think that this latest episode is just a continuation of what has been a lifelong struggle with depression.  For much of the time, I feel utterly worthless, and that my value as a person is pretty low at the moment.

For the most part, I’m a functional person.  I manage to take care of my daughter, since my wife is the one who works, and I don’t speak the language here, so it makes sense for me to be the stay at home dad.  I get the chores done around the house, although to be honest, it tends to be the bare minimum.  I manage to feed myself and my daughter, although I know I could be doing that a lot better.  I don’t have a particularly active social life, but when I get the chance, I participate when I can, and I think I can be pretty pleasant company. 

The problem lies in the fact that I do much of this mechanically.  I know which motions I have to go through in order to get things done.  I know how much I need to do in order to get by, so that I’m not living in squalor, or subjecting my daughter to those kinds of living conditions.  I know what to say in social situations to get a laugh, so that I’m not just a static presence in the room.  However, I honestly don’t know how much, if any, pleasure I derive from any of this.  Much of the time, I feel tired, sometimes too exhausted to participate.  However, I still force myself, because I know that if I don’t, I’ll just fall further into this negative state.  This is purely an intellectual choice, because I know if I don’t do something, anything, then I’ll likely just end up in bed all day, and my daughter can’t afford to have me be immobilized.

The thing is though, despite these symptoms being more prevalent in recent history, they aren’t anything new.  It may just be my state of mind currently, but I can’t remember the last time getting through the day wasn’t some form of a struggle.  Yes, there have been times where it was less so, but I can’t truly say with any clarity of mind that I haven’t had a day where I didn’t feel as if I had to fight my way to make it through the entire day. 

The worst thing about all of this is that, as I mentioned before, I have no idea where this stems from.  I’ve been to therapists, I’ve spoken to friends, I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, but I can’t seem to find an answer.  I’m not sure if it’s because something is missing from my life, there’s something in it that shouldn’t be, or some other option that isn’t within my realm of consciousness that is affecting me this way.  The easy way out of this would be to get some pills and call it a day, but I don’t think that’s realistically a solution.  It may serve as a bandage, but I doubt it will actually solve anything.  Not to say that I haven’t sought them out.  There was a point where it was a consideration, but the psychiatrist felt that it wasn’t necessary, and that therapy would be enough at the time, and really, as time has gone on, I’ve come to the conclusion that a drug-induced apathy would be less preferable to what I’m going through now,  I’ve heard too many horror stories of people who have felt nothing while on anti-depressants for me to even consider it anymore.

Not to say I haven’t experienced true, unbridled joy in my life.  There are moments in my life that I would never give away, never trade in.  Meeting my wife and eventually getting married, the birth of my daughter, and my friends are all points in my life that have a significant positive effect.  However, as much as I hate to say it, they have not taken away this persistent feeling that something is wrong with either me or my life. 

My latest struggle has to do with being the stay at home parent.  I feel inept and at times, downright detrimental to the health of my daughter.  I feel it would be better for my daughter if I wasn’t the stay at home parent sometimes, but as it stands right now, I’m who she’s stuck with, and I’ve got to make the best of the situation.  The hard part is that because of my general feelings of ineptitude and worthlessness, it leads to a massive inferiority complex which leads to a lot of short fuses, bad tempers, and cranky moments that is having some very negative effects on my relationship with my wife.  At times to the point where I feel as if they’d be better off without me.  Non-sensical, yes, but no one ever said depression made a lot of sense.

Like I said before, the hardest part about depression is talking about it.  Much of it has to do with not wanting to complain.  People look at my life, and they see a beautiful wife, an adorable daughter, me not having to work, and yet still having a nice place to live, and they would think that I have nothing to complain about.  Hell, that’s what I think to myself, but that only tends to feed into the self-loathing that comes with depression.  I think “I have all these amazing things, what do I have to be depressed about?” and I beat myself up because I don’t have an answer.  Well, this is my attempt at talking about it, even if it’s not the clearest thing.  I worry that I’ll never break out of this, even after all the different attempts I’ve already made, and it has made me hesitant to try anything else in fear of just failing some more.  But just talking about it helps, and while I don’t really have much opportunity to do that, being so far away from my closest friends, I can still at least put it out there.  Who knows… maybe this will be the start of something better.