I’ve been off lately. I’m not sure how
to describe it, I’m not even sure how long lately is. Last summer I was in a
pretty bad place, my emotions were all over the place and I couldn’t get it
under control, I figured I may need meds or something to help me through it but
I went the therapy route first cause I’m wary of drugs in general. I figure the
stress of the past two years had finally gotten to me and I was overloading,
therapy helped, I’m no longer a victim of my emotions, so yay for therapy, I
guess.
And yet, I’m still off for some reason. I’m walking through my life in a kind of haze
right now, I’m doing all the things I need to do, or rather most of the things
I need to do. We’re taking steps forward as a family, we may be buying a house
soon, the husband is well, everything is peachy. But I’m so unhappy. I don’t
understand it. I look at my life and think I have everything I wanted, it’s not
perfect, but it’s good. I look at my husband and I remember how much I loved
him and still I’m so unhappy. I love my children so much, so much, that I’m not
sure I want them to grow up with me, not like this. I don’t know where I am anymore, I don’t know how to fix
it.
I try to fix it, I try and I try and I
try, but I’m like a fly banging on the window over and over again, unable to
get out. It makes no sense. I alternate between being determined, almost
pig-headed, about making it better, and hopeless that it will ever get better.
I keep thinking it’ll be better once
this or that happens, like it’ll be better once we buy the house, or it would
be better if I could move back to Houston, or I would be better off divorced or
whatever other fix it scheme I come up with at any given time, but rationally I
know that the problem isn’t the place or the people, the problem is me.
I just don’t know how to fix me. I can
change the world around me, I’m strong enough, determined enough and
calculating enough to do that, but I don’t know how to change myself. I don’t
even know what the problem is. Maybe if I could figure that out I could fix it,
but I don’t know how. And yet I have to figure it out, the idea that
unhappiness is just part and parcel of the human condition terrifies me.
Baseless, uncontrollable unhappiness. How does one live like that? And what on
earth am I teaching my children? Because I can act cheerful all I want, I can
play with them and laugh with them but the undercurrent of sadness is always
there and I don’t want them to grow up thinking that it’s normal. I hate
writing these posts, it’s like I’m admitting to defeat but invariably I feel
better after, like it’s not such a terrible secret if I can share it here.
And yet, even as I write these words
I’m thinking, what have I to be so unhappy about? I have my family, I have my
health, I have love, I have stability, so what on earth is the matter with me?
And that, my friends, is the million dollar question.
