So, I’ll be living alone again in about three weeks. Since I have been hard to be around, M___ has largely kept busy out of the house. It’s kind of easing me into being single again. I know I have caused her a great deal of hurt, so time has been good for me for self-reflection.
Like anybody, I suppose, I mostly like myself. However, I know I have my work cut out for me in coming weeks and months.
Two therapists have express a good deal of concern as I have been going through the separation process that my depressive symptoms may significantly worsen. My regular therapist wants me to see my doctor and possibly look at an antidepressant. I’d really rather not. I’d really rather not go on an SSRI and find I have no sex drive right as I will be looking to explore my options with it.
My other therapist expressed a similar concern. I thought about it and over the past three decades I have had 2 or 3 major depressive episodes over the course of each of those decades. Maybe dozen serious episodes, the worst being the second (2001) and again in 2010.
I don’t feel like I’m going into a depressive episode. I don’t think I will. I have way too many balls in the air right now, am at two critical a point in my career to let myself fall apart over the ending of a relationship.
Relationships end, people hurt each other, it doesn’t have to send me into a spiral the way the first couple relationships that went sour did. That’s not to say it isn’t hard, but I’m a lot different as a person than I used to be. I have work to do, but I’m holding it together, more so today than some previous days.
Hopefully, no one is seeing this as directed at them or whiny kvetching, I’ve always sort of used writing for this purpose to get ideas out of my head and know what I really think about them. It’s processing.
