Let me be frank with you...

... In my life I have been very blessed. My life has been relatively easy, even when I thought it was hard. My first marriage ended after only seven years under less than pleasant circumstances. When I reflect back on that time I view it more as a lesson in life than an abject failure. I took away lessons on good behavior and bad, as well as actually gaining a sense of self that I did not have going in to the marriage. I learned that I could express my feelings and do it in a positive manner. I learned that it was okay to speak up if I was under fire and that it was okay to stand up for myself. These were skills I did not have going into the marriage and they were learned via the hard way. I truly believe that I grew into being an adult in mind well after becoming an adult in body and it was the experiences of my first marriage that I gathered these skills. Do I regret my first marriage, no. Do I wish it had turned out differently, no. If it had turned out differently, I would not be where I am today.

Now, based upon my previous blog, today is not a good time in my life. Doesn't quite jive, does it? It does if you could see how my brain works. It's not that the failure of my marriage was not a bad experience, it's that I am able to see past the fog of time and see that all in all, I grew up and came away a better person for the experience. At the time it was happening, I was feeling the lowest one could ever feel. The passage of time has allowed me see past the hurt feelings and know that I am a better person for having had the experience.

What I am experiencing now is a completely different animal. Back then it was two people fighting against immaturity and self imposed problems. Today it is a situation where one person has taken a trust that was freely given and abused it without any consideration for consequences. Since I am as yet unsure of the relationship between my sins and my depression, it is unclear to me why I have done the things that I have done. The mental turmoil it has created has definitely fed my depression and even deepened it's hold on my mind. But knowing what I do know hasn't helped me to see figure out the why's. I have effectively taken a wonderful life and marriage and created a world to justify my feelings of self hatred. It's as if I decided that if I don't have a logical reason to be depressed, I'll create one. This was not a conscious decision, mind you, just a possible explanation for the whole mess I find myself. 

One of the most prevalent issue with my depression is that I believe myself to be if not Evil, then a very bad person at least. I will go into better detail about this issue later but for now lets just say that while my thinking mind screams that I am not a bad person, my self conscious mind is convinced that I am and to think differently is to hide from the truth.The way that I keep this thought line from completely taking over and paralyzing me permanently is the realization that if I were truly Evil, why would I care? I have found in my studies in this area that the truly bad people don't even believe the atrocities that they engage in are bad or possibly evil. I only need to point to Adolf Hitler as the perfect example of this thinking. In his mind, he had done everything he did for the good of his people and country. The perfect illusion of "I'm alright, the worlds all wrong" mentality.

More to come later...