Hi.
I am a long time member of the board, but I am too embarrassed to put this under my username. If people 'discover' who this is, please keep it to yourselves. Simon, my apologies, but please understand why I created the username. I really want to keep this anonymous, and this messageboard can be pretty damned valuable at times. I just don't think I could talk about this if people know who I was, which includes talking about this with someone in person. Thanks, simon.
I was a JW, but have been out for years. I have friends and family on the board, so I don't want them to know how I'm feeling. I'm known as the strong one, (mentally), and it's embarrassing to talk about this with them.
I really don't know what I'm dealing with right now. I'm calling it depression, but I don't know if it's that. I just can't seem to get out of bed anymore. I don't want to leave my house. I'm having trouble going to work, although I enjoy my job. I love my wife, and we have a great relationship, but I just don't feel anything anymore. I feel dead. I used to love nature, reading books, writing. I used to have a voracious appetite for knowledge, now I have trouble watching the simplest sitcom on TV. I haven't been to work in a couple of days. I'm almost afraid to get out of bed. I feel totally and completely exhausted. My body and mind seem empty, like the gas just ran out and I'm stranded on a road in a desert. I drink all of the time now, a symptom of what I've been feeling for a long time.
The drinking really does nothing except affect my own perceptions. In fact, I find that I am much more positive and industrious when I drink, which I believe is classic alcoholism. My wife likes it when I drink, because I am much more calm, and can find the gumption to get off the couch. I complain less, and for a while I escape the banter of the world (again, classic alcohlism). I am normally a pretty balanced person, and treat my wife and family with respect, no matter what kind of inebriated state I'm in. In fact, most of the time, they can't tell when I've been drinking. I just feel different in my mind. It seems like, at least for the time that I'm drunk, I feel normal again, like I did when I was a kid. I feel warm, the sun looks like it used to, the books I have seem readable again. I feel young. Still, I'd prefer not to drink, and find some alternative method to rid myself of what I'm feeling. I don't want my liver to turn into swiss cheese. (and yes, I did feel this way before I started drinking.)
I don't feel suicidal, because I've been there and I know what that's like. I also dealt with severe depression in my youth, and what I'm feeling right now feels nothing like that.
I'm over my JW issues, so I don't think that's the problem. I don't even think about it. My home life and extended family life is pretty good. No complaints there. The job is a pain at times, but it is good work and I am highly respected there. But, I just can't seem to do anything that pleases me anymore.
As for my relationships with other people, I can't say I have one negative relationship. Everyone in my life values me, and has come to lean on me. I work very hard to please them, to make sure that they are happy. I am dreadfully worried that my wife will find out about this, and it will make her sick with worry. You see, she is not entirely emotionally stable; she has many issues, and I am the one thing that roots her. If she feels she can't turn to me for help, then I don't know who she would turn to. She has attempted suicide in the past, which is a concern of mine. I never want her to feel that way again, and I will do whatever it takes to make sure of that. Telling her about my weakness will not help her. I would rather go around feeling destroyed for the rest of my life than upset her. I love that woman.
Still, one of the problems is that now that the JW fight is over, now that JWs play no role in my life, I feel dead. It's like the feeling described in All Quiet on the Western Front, after the main character comes home from battle. He feels alien, like the purposes he used to have were unimportant and dead, and the only thing material is the battle.
I am wondering if anyone on the board can give me some advice, thoughts, on taking drugs like Paxil, or how therapy works (if it works). I can and do go months without a drink, so don't suggest AA. It's just lately that I've had no enjoyment beyond the bottle. Besides, I am an athiest, and the garbage that AA spews out would just make me angry. I want to get to the root cause of my problems, not just deal with the symptoms.
I just feel like my body and soul are exhausted. All of my former inspiration is gone. I feel like a marionette with broken strings.
If anyone has anything to say, please do. And if the naysayers could stay off the thread, I'd appreciate it. Comments along the lines of "pull yourself together" are not necessary. I already tell that to myself 100 times a day. It doesn't work, although I didn't do an acutal study on the matter.
I've come to respect a whole lot of you on this board over the several years I've been here, and would value your advice.
Aspiration