Dragging through today. I am about as depressed today, the second week of July, as I usually am in October. Not a good thing. Trying to do things to make myself feel better - getting in shape, lifting weights. It just doesn’t seem to be working.
I don’t know what to do. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know who I need to be to survive. I'm not sure I like the person I need to be to survive and live the life I want. I've always thought I was a generous person. I've always had an empathetic sense of knowing people's needs of being able to sense and feel and create comfort for people. I've felt good, knowing I can be a shoulder to cry on, to alleviate people's emotional distress. But sometimes I sense that a person's needs will eat me alive. That they want more than I can give and still remain a whole, healthy person. I remember in high school trying to help a girl like that and only succeeding in drawing myself down with her. Since then I've recognized the people who would suck me dry and avoided them. They aren't so much emotional vampires as they are sinkholes, quicksand sucking in and never giving back. Now I'm living with a sinkhole and I fell myself drowning but I don't know how to save myself. Just being in the same room with her, just living in the same house is using all my emotional energy and I have nothing left for the people I actually care about, and certainly nothing left for myself. And it is horrifying to me because it isn't anything she does, isn't anything she says. She is perfectly placid, unlike how the father-in-law was. She doesn't actively do things to depress me - it is something about her energy or lack of that draws off my own and I can't seem to fight it. I want to cry all day, I want to sleep until summer ends. I've changed everything I can about the house to try to make things tolerable and they just aren't, really.
But what other choice do I have, other than endure? I love my husband - as much of a pain in the ass as he can be. I really do - when we are alone, just talking or making love, those are wonderful times. I love my house. The woman is a widow, her husband just six months dead and she has emotional and mental problems - I just can't kick her out and still have self-respect. I never thought I'd wish the father-in-law alive - but I only had to endure two weeks of his shit once a year. Now it is an emotional sink-hole for twenty-five years. I don't know how to survive this.
Monday, July 09, 2007
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