No Joy in Mudville

It's true. I have hit the bottom of my depression and I am living a joyless life. I am so miserable right now that waking up and going to work takes every bit of my effort. I've just spent most of the weekend in bed in a dark room watching television and napping. For the first time in my life I truly understand not wanting to live. I am not living a happy life, a fulfilled life, a life worth living, and sometimes I wish I would just not wake up. There's a thin line between wanting to kill yourself and wanting not to wake up. I am walking that fine line.

My new job is not working out. I have been brought in and given a warning that there needs to be immediate improvement. Or what? I don't know. They would have terminated me earlier, but they found a problem in the system that they didn't do it soon enough and now must wait. So I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop. (It's too complicated to explain.) I have done everything I have been asked and quickly, but I think I am the rebound "boyfriend" from the previous person they really liked. I think I've been set up from the beginning and destined to fail. There is someone at the front desk who won't talk to me... oh, except to correct me. That's how she is showing me the ropes. I just started crying the other day when she told me one more thing that I screwed up. She has never said "hello" or asked me how I am since I started in November. I have done everything I can can to be friendly and helpful. When anyone needs me to check in students at the front desk, I am ready, willing, and able, but that doesn't seem to count. I took an 8-hr statistics calls the other Saturday and didn't understand a thing, but that doesn't count. I walk around at lunch in tears wondering what I have done wrong. I leave every day dejected and in tears. I have no friends there and am terribly lonely and frustrated.

It all goes back to 2003 when I was laid off from my job of 18 yrs at a major publishing company. If I had not lost my job as an editor, I would still be there, still be living in St. Louis, and probably still married. Amazing what you can put up with when one thing in your life is going ok. Or even 2. I had a great job I loved and great kids who filled up my life. When I lost my job, my kids were on the way out the door and my ex was not very supportive so my world fell apart. That's when I moved to be closer to my daughters. Ok, so I did it all wrong. I poured myself into my children's lives, and now that they are grown, I am nothing. I feel like nothing. But going back to 2003, I spent 3 yrs in St. Louis looking for work with this stupid English degree. I never did find something except temp work here or there, administrative assistant work that paid 1/2 what I was making. My life has not been complete since then. Oh, did I mention that I tried to find work back at the publishing company but was blackballed by one of the higher-ups who didn't like me for some unknown reason. It took my friends (which included my former boss) and me a year of interviews to find this out. To this day, I don't know what I did to piss her off since I never worked for her or with her.

So I packed my things up, left my husband, and moved 2 hrs away to be closer to my kids and find work in a college town. My first job was as a sexual health educator for Planned Parenthood. For 18 months, I had the best job in the world and was the happiest I have ever been. (It helped that I had met the love of my life at the same time.) I was no longer living with a man who took me for granted and never wanted to have sex with me. But that job soon evaporated with the budget crunch, and I was back on the job market. I soon found a job as an admin asst at the university and enjoyed my work. That is, with the exception of working next to the most unprofessional, inappropriate, disrespectful man I have ever had to horror to meet. He came and went as he pleased while I answered his phone and took his messages. He, of course, is still working there while I got laid off due to budget cuts at the university. After 4 months of unemployment, I landed this next job which is not working out and making my life miserable.

This is not how I thought my life would turn out. I am trying to spend less time on facebook because, frankly, I can't stand reading how happy and successful all these "friends" are. Vacations, grandchildren, shopping sprees, happy happy people who have wonderful lives. I am barely hanging on. I am so fucking tired of saying "At least I have my health." I realize I am blessed to have 2 healthy children. I am tired of this lonely feeling in the pit of my stomach. I am tired of feeling worthless and useless. My sisters want to take me on a vacation, and I can't even think that far away. I can barely think about tomorrow because it's just one more day of misery, one more day of loneliness and worthlessness. I just wish I didn't wake up some morning. Then I wouldn't hurt so much.