by the time you read this...

Random blog entries from a person living with General Chronic Depressive Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder.

[miggety]

And yet it never stops....

[miggety]

What's supposed to make me "normal" on a daily basis...

[miggety]

ironically

So my day to day job is basically selling life insurance to people/families who don’t have any personal coverage other than what the benefits they receive at work.  Personally, I covered myself for $150,000 when I was 19 because at the time I didn’t know I was living with depression and anxiety, all I knew was that I was going to die soon and I didn’t want to be a financial burden to my family.

Here I am on a daily basis, asking families, couples, or single parents what would happen to their families if they were to suddenly die.  For many of them, it’s the first time someone has actually legitimately forced them to think of their death and it’s consequences, and for some, it gets both scary and emotional.

Yet I'm here with the mask I’ve been wearing for at least the past 16 years now covering any pain the depression or anxiety has caused.  I think about my death on a daily basis.  Now that I’m married and have a soon to be 2-year-old daughter, I think about how my death would affect them.  And though I’ve haven’t totally been free from dealing with my depression or anxiety during my marriage, my wife’s pregnancy, or my daughter’s life, it wasn’t until last Monday that I had legitimate suicidal thoughts since my daughter has been born.  I rounded up all of my life policies, calculated my total debt and monthly costs that apply only to me (i.e. monthly life premiums, monthly health insurance premiums, etc.).  I felt good knowing that I could potentially leave my family with enough money to pay for my final expenses, save about $125K for my daughter’s college, buy my family a house worth up to $250K so that they wouldn’t have a mortgage and live in a decent area, and also leave my wife with a little more than 11 years of income, assuming I was making $45k annually.

How scary is it that I could calmly get all this math straightened out and that I actually considered it?  Obviously, I didn’t go through with it or even attempted it, but I damn sure didn’t want to tell my psychiatrist.  I haven’t told anyone, and those papers are far shredded and thrown away.  Why haven’t I said anything to anyone, especially family?  Because my depression makes me feel like I’m already a burden to them and I don’t want to be a burden on them.