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To start with: life has been kind to me in my 20s. After a turbulent time as a teenager, running on low self-esteem, with parents in way to divorce, depressive moods, etc. The tides turned when I met my now-wife when I was 22, and before turning 23, I was father of a healthy boy – by accident, but we never saw it as a special problem. My wife and I worked hard to finish our studies, making our master degree both before our son turned 1. We were, my wife made her obligatory trial year as a teacher, I got a job as redactor of a scientific journal and continued towards PhD. After her trial year, my wife had no option for getting a job right away, being there for our 1st son, and we thought it was a good time for a second child. We were dirt poor but happy. My wife was lucky, accepted a replacement job for some months when our second born was half a year old, I put my thesis on “low flame”, continuing my job as redactor but spending more time with my children. Even more luck, my wife could continue at that school, getting a halftime job first, and even a full time job this fall (which is great, there are long waiting lists for teachers, and it’s a good school near to our home). I managed to finish my thesis this summer, right before we married this August, making my last tests (rigorosum) in October.
Life is wonderful, isn’t it? No, not so for me. I have since caught a major depression and see a large black hole opening in front of me. Not having had sleeping problems in the past 15 years, I slept 2 hours today, having had a number of nightmares in the past weeks, almost all easy to read psychologically: it’s all about my self-confidence again, fears to fail, fears to make the same mistakes I once already had made, fears I'm too much like my mother and that history repeats.
Of course, there are some reasons: I have to hand over my work as a redactor this coming spring, almost all my career options involve going to the US, Mexico, or at least Spain or Germany, if I want to continue. I don’t feel like it though because I couldn’t take my family with me, and since some of my fears are becoming increasingly alienated from my wife, this is a big NO at the moment. Stupid enough, I don’t have the guts to cut through all my (mostly unpaid) obligations of writing papers, preparing congress contributions, etc.
I still live in my hometown (or: I live there again), but now all my old buddies are gone, none of my university colleagues became a real confident, so I feel reduced to my family.
My wife OTOH, currently lives the opposite. She was never really outgoing, we shared so much of our time and thoughts over the past years, and now she has her colleagues from school. Not that she would go out much with them, but it’s an important dimension of her life I am absolutely not part of. I don’t blame her, God beware, it’s the most natural thing, but it is a synchronic development that runs so much in opposition of my own situation that –it seems- I can’t really get to terms with it. Additionally, she really doesn’t understand my depression (she doesn’t know depressions), it’s all well for her. She is happy with her situation, I’m unhappy. I want her to be happy but at the same time have a difficulty of seeing her happiness while I sink to the bottom. Of course, it would be much much worse if she were unhappy too. So what do I actually want from her?
So I fear I make the mistake of being too clinging, too much inducing guilt or demanding empathy in a quantity she can’t give. I see this as a complete slippery slope and downward spiral, where every incident, every disharmony leads to an attempt to reconcile, leading to the next crisis (since the core problem doesn’t go away), every time increasing my own guilty feelings of putting our relation at stake.
So there I am, a recently married fresh PhD with a great wife (whose only fault is being at terms with herself, maybe not being the right character to break my vicious circle) and two gorgeous kids that at the moment are the main reasons I don’t jump.
My self is a sorry, dirty rag.
Merry christmas Wernazuma.
Life is wonderful, isn’t it? No, not so for me. I have since caught a major depression and see a large black hole opening in front of me. Not having had sleeping problems in the past 15 years, I slept 2 hours today, having had a number of nightmares in the past weeks, almost all easy to read psychologically: it’s all about my self-confidence again, fears to fail, fears to make the same mistakes I once already had made, fears I'm too much like my mother and that history repeats.
Of course, there are some reasons: I have to hand over my work as a redactor this coming spring, almost all my career options involve going to the US, Mexico, or at least Spain or Germany, if I want to continue. I don’t feel like it though because I couldn’t take my family with me, and since some of my fears are becoming increasingly alienated from my wife, this is a big NO at the moment. Stupid enough, I don’t have the guts to cut through all my (mostly unpaid) obligations of writing papers, preparing congress contributions, etc.
I still live in my hometown (or: I live there again), but now all my old buddies are gone, none of my university colleagues became a real confident, so I feel reduced to my family.
My wife OTOH, currently lives the opposite. She was never really outgoing, we shared so much of our time and thoughts over the past years, and now she has her colleagues from school. Not that she would go out much with them, but it’s an important dimension of her life I am absolutely not part of. I don’t blame her, God beware, it’s the most natural thing, but it is a synchronic development that runs so much in opposition of my own situation that –it seems- I can’t really get to terms with it. Additionally, she really doesn’t understand my depression (she doesn’t know depressions), it’s all well for her. She is happy with her situation, I’m unhappy. I want her to be happy but at the same time have a difficulty of seeing her happiness while I sink to the bottom. Of course, it would be much much worse if she were unhappy too. So what do I actually want from her?
So I fear I make the mistake of being too clinging, too much inducing guilt or demanding empathy in a quantity she can’t give. I see this as a complete slippery slope and downward spiral, where every incident, every disharmony leads to an attempt to reconcile, leading to the next crisis (since the core problem doesn’t go away), every time increasing my own guilty feelings of putting our relation at stake.
So there I am, a recently married fresh PhD with a great wife (whose only fault is being at terms with herself, maybe not being the right character to break my vicious circle) and two gorgeous kids that at the moment are the main reasons I don’t jump.
My self is a sorry, dirty rag.
Merry christmas Wernazuma.
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