LJ Reprise – Life At This Moment

I was searching for an old post on my LiveJournal that I wanted to share with my cousin, and I started reading old posts. I read this old post and almost cried. I wrote a post called “I live, I die” on March 10th, 2004. This is an excerpt:

“I am feeling very lethargic. I think it’s the meds I am on. Ive had some pretty horrid thoughts lately. I wont follow through with it though. My father slowly killed himself and died when I was 11. I refuse to do the same to my kids, so I my life is a living hell. I don’t want to live, I don’t want to die. So I exist.”

That is exactly how I felt then. In August of 2000 I got divorced from my wife of 7 years and went into a very dark place. I stayed in that place pretty much for the next four or five years. The divorce was brutal on me. I had never felt such pain in my life. The only thing I can even closely compare it with was the death of my father.

When I wrote that paragraph above in my LJ, I hadn’t seen my children in two years. I had gotten so depressed I saw a therapist through work and they put me on Lexapro. WRONG THING TO DO FOR ME. We lived on the 29th floor of a high rise apartment and I started having fantasies about taking a nose dive off the balcony. I knew it was the meds. I stopped taking them, and those feelings stopped. But i still felt trapped in a life I hated, not wanting to live, but not wanting to die either.

I started writing my journal out of my own sense of fear, loneliness, and most of all, raw, emotionally crippling, gut clenching pain. I don’t think anyone wishes pain on themselves, but that pain did give birth to of my greatest gift, my writing. Nietzsche once said “You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” I truly believe that.

I look back on those entries and it feels like I’m reading entries from another person. My world is so different now. I feel totally different about my life, my outlook, and my hopes and dreams. I can be alone, and be ok. I’m happy to be alive. Being joyful rocks.