The Holidays...a really bad time for me...especially this year.

Dec 13, 2012

I get very depressed this time of year.  It's not related to the DS, but due to the fact that I have few friends, therefore very little social contact. This is the first year I've been without both parents over the holidays.  My Dad passed the day before Father's Day in 1990.  My Mom passed this year in April, just four days shy of her 93rd birthday.  I usually spent this time of the year, as well as other holidays making  celebrations for her, but this year, obviously, that has all changed.

Where I live, there is very little in the way of activities that interest me.  Unfortunately, even living close to Notre Dame, I live in a cultural  and intellectual wasteland.  I spent my prime adult years living in Chicago, so I'm used to having a plethora of cultural activities at my disposal.  It also doesn't help that I'm still on disability for lupus and fibromyalgia.  Not enough, if any, disposable income to do the things I like, for instance, trips out of town to do things that we don't have where I live.  The nearest major cities are Chicago and Indianapolis, both two hour trips by car, approximately the same distance from me as my surgeon's office. Those visits, of which I have 3 left of a five-year follow, have become the highlights of my existence.  I have few friends who share the same interests as I do, and generally, the people who still live here haven't been exposed to anything else. I know that sounds a bit snobbish, but  It's basically a blue-collar/minimum wage/ work/school/church/married,/family with children-type of town.  I'm single, no kids, college educated,  widely traveled, and the majority of my peers live elsewhere.  It's tough trying to meet and engage in conversation with people without having to stop every five minutes to explain what it is I'm talking about.  Living near a major university doesn't guarantee that you will not live among a town full of not-so-bright people.

I have been seriously considering moving away from here.  I stayed only because my mother  my two uncles, her brothers, became ill, and I was their caregiver. I was on my way to another job in a different city when my family illnesses, including my own, sidetracked me.  I also took responsibility for two of her brothers. so for the past 15 years, I've been in caregiving mode, and except for the time taken to get my DS, and attend to my other medical issues, I've had no time for doing me. Eldercare has destroyed my life.  I did it because it was the right thing to do, and no one else in my family would. I own the fact that I made the choice, but had no idea it would cost me my life.  I am, in essence, a zombie.

My career choices, in an effort to get off disability are very limited, and I've gone back to school to acquire training for a different profession, which would not be as physically and mentally  taxing as what I spent my life doing. ( I used to be a radio news reporter and editor in a major city) I'm on hiatus from school now, preparing for a year of surgery to remove excess skin left from my massive weight loss. I am limited in what I can physically do in terms of work, and there are no professional opportunities for me here, or seemingly anywhere else. I have been actively looking for over five years now.  I've been out of the job market so long, no one wants me.  I'm middle-aged. Yes, there are laws against age discrimination, but employers have other ways of documenting denial so they can hide their real reason for rejection of an applicant who is too old/wrong race/disabled, etc.

Do I sound  a little bitter?  You betcha.  After undergoing the physical metamorphosis that was supposed to change everything for me, I got zilch.   People always told me that the only thing standing in my way was my excess weight.  Well, that's no longer an issue., yet the doors are still slamming in my face.

I keep trying to figure out what it is that I did to merit the kind of hellish existence I have now. 

I'm pretty much at the end of my rope, and most nights, when I close my eyes to go to sleep (when I can sleep), I wish deep down in my heart that I never wake up again.

I once had the kind of life many people would kill for.

Now, my life, if you want to call it that, is just pitiful, and totally unrecognizable. 

Don't  tell me I need a therapist, I already have one, and I have anti-depressants.   My pain is so deep, there is nothing that can touch it. 

Breathing, eating and sleeping is *not*  living.

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