It's my Birthday and I'll cry if I want to...

Well, today is not actually my birthday, that won't happen until Thursday, when I will turn 29 years young.

My whole life I have struggled with bouts of depression that seem to come out of nowhere. Literally, I will wake up feeling bad, without reason, and stay feeling that way all day long. Sometimes I can shake it by the evening, but too often I have to rely on "medicines" of an un-prescribed nature.

This year is especially hard, because I am nearing the scary 30 years old, I'm stuck in a dead-end job that I don't really like, and I am alone. I have been really fortunate over the years I guess, to have usually had someone loving in my life, who has helped counter-balance this tendency. But this year I have not been so lucky, partly out of my own desire to work through some of this stuff before I get involved with anyone else.

I wonder often if that is just a lie that I tell myself. The idea of working stuff through, seems to suggest that there is a particular event or feeling that motivates my unhappiness. In reality, most of the time I feel this way, it simply defies logic, and doesn't seem to be based on any one thing. How can I possibly work through something I can't identify?

I also don't want to be "looking for love" because I have already had such extraordinary opportunities in the past to have exactly this, and more often than not, my actions and feelings guided these relationships into defeat. Now I second guess myself. I think that I am good-hearted person inside, but too often my depression or anxiety makes me a callous fool.

A few posts ago I wrote about someone just like this, that made a tremendous impact on my life, in the short time that we were together. She was the kind of woman that was not only intelligent and lovable, but someone I truly admired. Despite these feelings though, I made a lot of poor choices and mistakes, which gradually and painfully drove us apart. It's hard for me to take all the blame for this, but I feel like it is the most honest intrepretation.

For some reason the people that have been gravitating to me lately, are full of worse problems than me. I have one friend who is a brain damaged gambler, another who is a crank-addicted single mom, and three others, who while not as bad off as the former, don't have more than about 30 minutes a week to spend time with me.

I know that it is my responsibility to make new friends, especially ones with good values that are closer to my own, but too often I come home from work feeling tired and trapped. I go out to the bars occasionally to meet some people, and I usually find that I can start up conversations quite easily with people, but ultimately this rarely leads to any lasting friendships. Many of these individuals too, are struggling with the same issues, or worse, than I am.

I also know that no one can "rescue" me from this precipice. I can't expect anyone else to come up with the big fix that is going to lead me out of these woods. But I feel like I can't control these cycles that leave me feeling depressed or sad 5 out of every 7 days of the week. I am terrified that I will never find love or happiness under these circumstances. How could I expect anyone else to love me, when I look at myself so unhappily and critically.

Rationally I know there is nothing seriously wrong with me. I am decent looking, still fairly young, employed, and living in a beautiful area. But I have lost hope. I have lost the feeling of empowerment or impulsiveness that makes me excited for the future. I have lost a sense of my goals and my future, and in some ways have condemned my future to be the same sad replay of the last 10 years of my life.

Without a doubt, the best chance I had at happiness and love came last year when I was still with "PM". Unfortunately I couldn't see the signs of my own self-destruction, before it was too late. I cried a lot when she called, because it not only demonstrated her compassion and friendship (which was sorely needed) but reminded me that I had given up something very precious to me, and replaced it with emptiness and doubt.

I used to think that what was important was that she knew how I felt, or that my parents did, or my friends. Somehow, I thought, by telling people about my torment, I could expunge it from my being. Later I began to feel like I needed to do this work on my own. Now, I just don't know what to do. I am completely bewildered at the prospect.

A lot of things I expect PM or my parents to accept about me, were things I couldn't accept about myself. In that way, I put an undue and overburdensome stress on relationships that ultimately would prove pivotal to my growth. I think they know that I am sorry (or at least I hope they do), and that I am working on being a better person inside and out.

Right now I feel like I just need plain old help. I just don't feel like I can do it alone anymore.

-->Rascilon<--