going through some shit right now

Nick, I'm very sorry.

Horrible, wishing all the best

So sorry Nick.

Nick, my heart goes out to you and your family.

Damn, Nick. I'm so sorry for you and your family.

Sorry, man.

Appreciate all these posts. Been way more difficult than I ever imagined but the family is helping one another through it all.

i'm so sorry, nick. my heart goes to you and your family.

Truly awful to hear, Nick. Like others amongst all the bullshitting on various message boards over the last 15 years it's been obvious from even the smallest mentions how much she meant to you all.

Not now, but I hope soon, you'll appreciate that the past six years, as hard as they might have been, have been six years with memories, good times and good days. Half-a-dozen birthdays, Thanksgivings, Christmases, Super Bowls and how ever else you marked the passing of time.

She'll always be with you.

Sorry for your loss Nick

How've you been holding up, Nick?

zappo wrote:How've you been holding up, Nick?

I appreciate you asking! I’m still a mess. Maybe a functioning mess?

I only go to the bathroom stahl at work to cry or fight tears once a day now as opposed to 3 times a couple weeks ago. Still prone to drifting off during random points of the day and having a random memory that sometimes makes me smile and other times very sad.

Mostly though I feel empty and depressed. Part of my problem is that I don’t have a large network of friends or family that I am close with. So, losing someone important is absolutely devastating to me because it means the small circle I keep has gotten permanently smaller.

A portion of my time is spent worrying about my dad. He’s not handling this well but I do what I can. Invite him over for dinner, call throughout the week, watch football with him on Sunday.

The other day I started thinking how it will eventually get easier and I’ll not be this sad. Then, I started crying because I felt so guilty that at some point I won’t be this sad. Like I said I’m a mess.

If you weren't a mess, then I'd be worried. And, to be honest, it sounds like you're actually holding it together pretty well, all things considered; maybe not easily, but still pretty well. I'm glad to hear that you're still truckin' along, one day at a time.

This Spanish commercial with the senior citizens that are concerned about what’s gonna happen to their pets when they die Jesus Christ man that’s not what I need right now.

I can't even begin to imagine that, but it sounds like that's okay.

Also, what I've heard about Spaniards' regard for canine lives isn't good at all

^wording on that post could have been clearer but maybe that's for the best

5 more hours at work, feel nauseous, dying of headache/anxiety and not getting enough sleep, on call tonight.and tomorrow night, I do not want to go to these Christmas parties, someone just put me out for a week.

Good luck man. Sounds like some dank depths. I too am horribly sleep deprived, finishing off a wave of school applications that I procrastinated on and that are going to have to get finished somehow in the middle of flights across the Atlantic and to Tennessee of all the random ass places. Re-reading the thread of Pitchfork Rate Your Bathroom Experiences actually snapped me out of a funk so thanks for that bump

Going through that shit where I can't shit again. I can't figure out the cause of it, which is driving me crazy. When I was home for the holidays it wasn't ever a problem. I thought maybe it was the absence of American coffee so I even went out and bought a fucking coffee machine and everything but nothing doing. Now I am trying these organic supplementary enzymes from the pharmacy.

Extremely frustrating and it starts to create horrible indigestion problems that prevent me from running, working out, etc.

just fully accepting that i’ll always be just brutally depressed and it doesn’t matter

I am sorry to hear that, Dash. I don't think that's true, or I don't think that has to be true, but I understand absolutely how you can feel that way. I've felt that way very recently and it's a deep, dark place to be. All I'm certain about is that who you are - the essence of you - is enough to be happy in this life, even if the exact opposite feels like the truth.

i hope you’re right

I've been doing some work with the enneagram that has been really helpful for me. I'm reading Don Richard Riso's The Wisdom of the Enneagram and it's been shockingly revealing w/r/t the fears and desires that drive me. Things I felt about myself that were completely broken turn out to be features, not bugs. They've just been corrupted through misuse and inattentiveness. I'd give that a shot if you can handle reading yourself through a relatively spiritual lens. I also went and saw this recently. I bawled my eyes out and felt, for the first time in a long time, not completely alone in this world. There's an even thicker lens of spirituality to that one, but it resonated with me in a big way. But then again, I was brought up in the protestant tradition so...

Depression is awful. I'm in it right now too, but I'm waking up and recognizing that I haven't been myself in a very long time. Longer than I think you all have "known" me. Longer than my wife has known me, I think. That voice inside me telling me to give up is not me and it knows very little about me. I've found learning more about it to be a really effective way of getting it to shut the fuck up.

Michael K’s post is resonating with me this morning. This week I’m traveling for work for the first time in 4 months. I’ve found recently that social settings are unbearable and put a great deal of stress on me. Previously, this was never an issue and I enjoyed the “schmoozing” aspect of entertaining clients.

Last night I struggled through a 2 hour dinner and felt myself drifting off throughout. When I got back to my room I threw up and then went to sleep in my clothes.

Today I have a meeting followed by a lunch and I’m freaking out. The feeling that “this is not me” and the frustration of not being able to pull myself out of this is frustrating and I think compounding how depressed I might be. I’ve started keeping a journal this year for the first time in my life. Nothing major but I’ll write about 4-5 sentences/thoughts per day.

It might be weird but during meetings I actually have the journal out but keep it closed under another notebook or next to my laptop. Like some security blanket. Maybe that’s fucking weird I don’t know but it’s helped me the past couple months.