h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This feels like a sort of coming-out for me. Not in THAT sense. For any who might be worried: this is not about sexuality

No, there is something completely else that has dominated my life in the last year or so, and only this spring did it actually surface. All this... this sense of going nowhere, of being stupid, of having no future but a future that is threatening. All this not being able to concentrate, not being able to do my work, of not being able to enjoy. To enjoy anything.

But even as I am writing this I realize that I am trying to formulate nice sentences, to be "artistic" - to be a writer of sorts, and it distracts me from what I meant to write. So here it is:

I suffer from depressions.

There, was easy as pie (3.14 or something).

In spring this year, I was hospitalized for about a month in a clinic for all sorts of psychological illnesses, with the official diagnosis of an acute episode of depression. The weeks leading up to this had been marked by a decline in almost everything. The climax, I felt, was when I was driving up to the place where I work(ed?), and not being able to go inside, but sitting in the car for what seemed like hours and then going to the Argentur für Arbeit (state employment agency), just to look at jobs that I could - or could not ever - get. And then pretending that, still, everything was fine, that this is normal. Not telling anyone. Thinking noone would notice.

Boy, it is not normal.

I was immediately ordered to come to my boss's office, and there I broke down. Almost literally. I was ready to just quit everything right there (not quit my life, but all that has to do with my employment). Looking back now, I actually have to be thankful to my boss that she told me right there to go to a doctor and get myself a sick certificate, rather than firing me on the spot.

Telling my wife about how bad it had become for me, and thus admitting how much I had been hiding from her, was even worse than facing my boss. I did a lot of crying at that time.

My doctor advised me to go to a hospital (i.e. a mental clinic), and I did. Went on medication, too.

Well, that was in May, this year. Now I am back home, feeling better, but still deeply insecure about my future. In my therapy sessions I am seeing how much there is in my life that I feel insecure about, things I want to change, things from my past that I now see led me to where I am at right now. The whole shebang of family, growing up, friendships (and the lack thereof), of feeling out of place, of trying to be what I thought others wanted me to be rather than ever thinking about what I really want to be.

So tonight I will go to a support-group meeting for the first time. My stay at the hospital taught me the value of seeing that I am not the only one who feels the way I do.

Well, anyway, now it is out in the open, and it feels good to publicly (kinda) come out this way.

Y.

Oh my.



You know, there is more of this about than you think. And what a great boss.

I'm useless at knowing what to say though apart from it's good that you have taken the first step.