Don't know how to feel

Well it seems like all I have been doing is working and laying in bed wanting to cry. Things with me and hubby have not been quite right lately. Not since his first love came into town. I thought finding her and helping him catch up with how she was doing would get the closure that he has needed all of these years and since he got his closure things have not been the same. Let me explain.

Before we found her, he would sleep in the bed with me, kiss me, spend time with me, and tell me that he loves me. Things were great. We have been married for 10 years and still seemed like we were when we first got married. Well, he saw her, got his closure and told her goodbye, and then it changed. Now, he is sleeping on the couch, when I kiss him goodbye or goodnight he won't kiss me back. He won't tell me that he loves me and he would rather take naps on the couch than spend any time with me. Nothing I seem to do these days is right or even good enough.

Part of me wants to leave. Part of me feels that I deserve better. The other part of me thinks that this is just something that he is going through and that it will eventually pass. But the thing is that I don't know how much more I can handle. I deserve better than what I am having to deal with but I have put too much time and devotion into this marriage to just walk away. What do I do?

A Little History

When I was in school, I was made fun of…a lot. I was not fat or stupid but just because my teeth were not straight and my family could not afford braces for me. I am still self conscience about it. I don’t smile much because I don’t want to show my teeth to anyone. Sometimes friends will catch me off guard and I will smile if I am somewhere dark or if I am at home where I am comfortable. I work a full time job in the office of a local steel mill in Southeast Tennessee and I am through a temp agency. Most of the jobs that you find these days are through temp agencies. It is a job and the paycheck clears so I can’t complain too much. I have been married for the last ten years and helping raise my two step kids that are now teenagers. I have two little girls that are five and seven and I don’t want them to see me depressed. I want them to see their mommy happy. I want them to see me not having to stress over every little thing to make sure that they are taken care of. My husband has been laid off for almost a year and all of the places that he applies tell him that he is over qualified so he has not found anything yet. That leaves me as the soul bread winner in the house. We are on food stamps and with my income, we get food stamps on all of us but because he has no income and all of the kids are biologically his and only two are biologically mine and I work more than 30 hours a week, I make too much money for me to get medical. He gets medical and so do the kids just not me. If I get sick or hurt we are just screwed. One more thing to stress me out. I get up some mornings in the best mood. Those are the days that I look forward to because things go like I need them to and I feel like I get things done. Then there are days where I have to force myself out of bed to go to work when all I want to do is lay there and cry. I have found myself many nights sitting here on the bed crying for no reason. I am also an affectionate person. My husband isn’t. I know that he loves me and I love him but I need to feel someone touching me, kissing me, holding me, and he doesn’t do that. We don’t even sleep in the same room. I sleep in the bed and he is on the couch. He tells me all the time that he loves me and that the reason that he is on the couch is because he doesn’t want to wake me up getting up ten times a night. I know that he gets up a lot but come on. I want to know what is really going on in his head. Like I said, this journal will be written in everyday to tell you what kind of day it has been. It will be filled with some good things and some bad things. There will be ramblings about things going on in my head in effort to not only help you understand me but to help me talk out some of the things that I deal with all the time. I know my mother told me that my grandmother suffered from the same things that I am suffering from but I don’t remember her ever being depressed or anxious. I do remember some things in my life that did trigger some stupid actions on my part. I was raised by my mother and grandparents but mom worked all of the time. My grandparents were the ones at home with me most of the time. Now all of them did everything that they could to show me that they loved me. When I was 17 years old my grandfather (I called him daddy) passed away after over a year of fighting cancer. Then a month later, a friend of the family that was like a sister to me was killed in a car accident and that threw me over the edge and I tried to kill myself. As I was growing up, my brother was getting into all kinds of trouble and the more that he messed up the more that my mother tightened the reigns on me. I was 18 years old and could not leave out with friends after dark. If I spent the night somewhere I had to be home by 7AM. I had no freedom. I dated but only when mom told me that it was okay. Fast forward about five years when I met my husband. I met him as a one night stand and moved to Florida one month later to be with him. We knew each other six months when we were married and he has been helping me deal with these issues that I have ever since. I love him for that but have to find a way to do this on my own. I don’t want my kids to see me like a basket case all of their lives. There are days that I just don’t want to function and my girls will just tell me that they love me and leave me alone. I have passed on opportunities at my past jobs to advance because I lacked the self-confidence to do it. I thought that it didn’t matter how hard I worked, if I didn’t have certain look that I would not get the job. I have experience and I have the drive but just not the confidence. How do you deal with that? We will see how I get past all of this. Please be patient and I hope that this journal will help you as much as I hope it will help me.

Introduction

This journal is to document the life of a wife, mother, and stepmother dealing with depression and anxiety. My name is Charity and I am 34 years old and have been dealing with depression and anxiety since I was a teenager. I don’t know what has made me this way and I am afraid to find out but I have decided to do this journal in the hopes that it will help someone else going through the same thing by showing them that they are not alone in this journey and not everything has to have medicine to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, there are people out there that really do need the meds that the doctors put them on so don’t think that I am telling you not to look into that option for help if your doctor tells you that you need it. I am just telling you that it is my choice not to be on meds and this is my way of coping.