A few times, I’ve seen memes about how dads in general often suffer depression in silence, primarily on account of the fact that nobody cares about their feelings or emotions. Family, friends, the royal everyone, either people are too wrapped up in their own lives to concern themselves about the emotional/sanity state of some other men, or there’s some credence to the umbrella statement that nobody cares about the feelings of dads. And occasionally, there are times where I kind of feel this, and I’m just to broke ass poor to afford therapy, and I try to find it in exercise and writing.
Here’s a transcription of what I vomited to my phone because I was having a shitty morning and I felt like I wanted to write about it but didn’t want to chance it to forget the things I was thinking because I was in the car and I always think well in the car, which of course I do, because it’s a place and time in which I am completely incapable of jotting down my thoughts, because life really loves to fuck around with me when I’m generally unavailable:
It’s one of those mornings where nothing is going right. I am thankful for nothing. Forgot to eat breakfast because my kids got up early because they’re sick because every time we send them out of town they come back sick which sucks. Work sucks, family sucks. Technology doesn’t work. It’s frustrating. It’s raining, I’m not feeling very thankful, family in disarray. I don’t have time to catch up on anything. I have to clean my house but I live with slobs and kids. I can’t Black Friday shop. I can’t have time to watch wrestling or Pluribus or Peacemaker or Netflix. I never have any time for myself. I bend over backward for everybody, nothing is ever reciprocated. My mind is in a dark place. Everything is frustrating. Venting to nobody is cheaper than therapy, gym and writing is my therapy. Memes about dads who suffer in silence and nobody cares feels very poignant and true. (My) Dad is being weird about his possible future home, ungrateful and lecturing me about my flaws. BP is getting worse and not sure if it’s just medication or stress and it’s affecting shit like my vision and health
So yeah, a lot to have unpacked to my phone through diction, but at least I was able to more accurately get a lot of shit off my chest and be able to look at it and analyze the things that are eating at me, and it’s not lost on me the irony of complaining about not having any time to do certain things, and then prioritizing writing about complaining about not having any time when I could be doing something more leisurely and entertaining instead, but that’s just how eternally important writing is to me over just about anything else.
But yes, to the point of the subject of this post, I’m not feeling very thankful at the very moment. Things are very volatile, draining, and not good for my levels of stress, and I’m sure which are contributing to my escalating blood pressure issues, which is its own chicken and egg situation, where I don’t know if the increased stress is causing my BP to increase, or if the increase in my BP is what’s causing me to feel like I’m falling apart physically at times, with headaches and degrading vision.
I have to clean my house up for Thanksgiving, which seems like an extremely daunting task because everyone I live with is a slob and the house is perpetually bordering on needing to contact Discovery to reboot Hoarders: Buried Alive, or at least it seems to me, and of course there’s only one day to do it, although I could be starting it now but it’s just so daunting and I’m depressed that I can’t bring myself to do it without giving myself at least a little bit of time to brog and vent first.
At the very top of the list of stressors though is my dad being down in Georgia testing out a facility that he could very well potentially move into, which in one hand seems like the best end of life option, but on the other hand it means he’s close and accessible to me, and he’s already been weird and a pain in my ass in just the first few days of spending a ton of time with him. Honestly, I don’t think things were as daunting in my life until this shit started ramping up, and I feel like it’s a contributing factor; the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my BP elevating, and probably necessitating an alteration in medication.
Everything else, like work pissing me off, my kids being sick, me being exasperated with technology, etc, that’s all just background noise. It’s the bullshit that takes an annoyed mood and turns it into bad ones, ragey ones, and the over the top frustration which lead to limit break diction rants into my phone like the one up above.
All the same though, the timing of it all, while we’re on the cusp of Thanksgiving, has me feeling not very thankful for a whole lot right now, even though there very much is, I’m just not feeling it at this very specific moment in my life.
