Picking Up The Pieces

Hello, I am trying something that someone recently suggested to help me with my new challenge and journey I have begun. What you may ask? An exciting new promotion, maybe a newborn baby or charged with finding a dangerous fugitive. Alas no. I could only wish it was something else then what I have started. I have begun a journey to pick up the pieces of my life and try to understand why I am where I am now.
We have all heard of people having a "midlife crisis" but when your young you think of it as a legend or myth or at very least something that could never happen to "you". But as inevitable as our graying hair and sagging skin and the extra weight we suddenly can't figure out we are sporting around our mid section and backside. It can happen to anyone. Especially when you think you are immune to such things.
Oh I'm sorry. Maybe I should enlighten you to what the heck I am rambling about and give you a little peek into my current situation I find myself and how I got there.
I am a forty some year old male with four wonderful children. How is that a problem you ask? It is not but It is one of the things I have not always done to the best of my ability or to the standard of what my children deserve...that is being being a father. My job use to take me away from them often and I always use to make the excuse I was providing for my family but when I was home I was "too tired" to play catch or shoot baskets or go to the park.
I also took my wife for granted, not sure when or how it started but slowly it got worse until one day I started to feel like we were strangers and our marriage was more like work than a partnership and shared respect and love of two people that decide they want to grow old together and share their lives with each other because it is the only thing that feels right.
I have many things I have done in my life I am not proud of or am down right embarrassed about. And like most people I may even have a couple deep secrets I have either never told anyone or a selected few. But getting separated from my wife and facing a second divorce, yes failed at that before, was not exactly something I thought would happen to me when I was a young man planning my life and dreaming about my future.
Another problem is I am at times well how do I say this, I can be a pain in the ass, stubborn and unable to ask anyone for help because a man can solve his problems by himself. Well use to be or not as bad now. To add to that I also thought people with mental problems were weak or just not strong enough to will themselves out of whatever was ailing them. Not sure where that thinking came from. Fairly sure not my parents or any of my heroes as a child. I think it is something as young men we just develop as we try not to show our weakness as it is not something that attracts girls or the admiration of our peers.
Well I was wrong once again, surely not the first time and doubt it is the last. Turns out I had been depressed for quite sometime and would think it was something else or just fatigue or because people didn't get me. Well it was getting a lot worse with my wife and me growing about and it eventually even was part of the reason I lost my job I had for seven years. So here I am in my forties facing divorce, without a home and without an income. Not exactly the presciption most doctors would hand out for severe depression but guess what? It maybe the very thing I needed before I woke up in my golden years wondering what it all meant and wondering if anyone I knew in all those years I zombied through were better for knowing me or the at least someone I could call friend.
This blog is a way for me to work through my issues and depression and maybe even help someone else that is in a similar place as it is time that I help this world instead of thinking it owes me something. Or maybe you got your crap together and in someway are entertained my self discovery, pain, unreadable writing and useless knowledge and advice. Until I need to share again. Thanks.