Why am i so depressed?

Debate Room
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That the $64,000 dollar question, why am I so depressed? Why am I so unhappy? Are these 2 things even the same? I can’t remember the last time I was happy for more than a few minutes, let alone hours or a single day.
I have a roof over my head, food in the house, a new kitty cat, and a wife that loves me despite being a grouchy old fossil. We’re having a really hard time just getting by month to month financially. We’ve never had a lot of money, and with me being on permanent disability, it’s been getting harder every year. But with the price of everything going up, we’re starting to fall farther behind every month. Becky works her butt off supporting us, but her industry has slowed down, which means no over-time or monthly bonuses any more.
As my wife has told me on more than one occasion, all of my needs are met, and there are a lot of people in the world that are in a much worse situation than we are.
I know she’s right, but all I can see is what’s in front of me, and I don’t see us being any better off in the future, nothings ever going to be cheaper.
You’d think that with the Halloween season approaching I’d be in a better state of mind, but I’m not. I can no longer “haunt” our place for Samhain, mainly because the area that we live in has zero kids, which means no trick’o treaters. The last time we tried to hand out candy, we got 3 kids. Last year I did a small “haunt” at our son’s house for the first time, and it was a hit. Their friends and neighbors have been asking if it’s going to be happening again this year.
They live 50 miles north of us, right on the US/Canada border, which makes it difficult to get all of my “stuff” up there, set it up, tear it down, and put it back in storage, which our son happens to pay for, thankfully.
They asked me to do it again this year, and I said I would. Our granddaughters are old enough to remember the “haunt” that I put on every year when we had our home, so they get a kick out of it.
It’s not the same as doing your own place, but it’s what I’ve got.
Sorry, I’m rambling, I’ve gotten better at it as I’ve gotten older.
I’m asking why I’m so unhappy, and I know what the biggest contributor is, and of course it’s PAIN. It seems to be harder to deal with mentally each year that goes by. I still can’t believe it’s been over 7 years since I had to retire. DAMN, that went fast.
I’m not sure what the future holds for me, or how much longer I’ll be around. This is a terrible thing to say, but I’m not even sure if my wife and kids would even miss me if something happened to me. My wife would have some money in the bank and no more grouchy, angry, atheist to deal with. They’d never make another trip to the cemetery after they plant me, my wife has said as much more than once, and I believe her.
I’m trying to wrap my head around the situation, but it might not have a happy ending.

P.S. Thank you for allowing me to vent occasionally on this forum, I don’t have anyone else to talk to except for my cat Abby.

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No wonder you’re depressed. Your family shits on you for being Atheist. The remark about not visiting your grave was pretty cold. My mom pretty much mentioned cremation for when I die since I’m not Christian & asked if I cared… er uh whatever the fuck she meant by that. But I told her I didn’t care and that my kids can decide. Dead is dead.

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You have never learned to live outside your mind. This seems obvious from your post. You don’t know what it means to be in the here and now. Right this moment. To stop and smell the roses. In the immoral words of Carlos Castenada, to ‘Stop The World.’ In the Buddhist tradition, ‘Live in the now.’ To follow the ‘Tao.’ To grasp the ‘Gestalt.’ Or, as GI Gurgiff would say, ‘To stop being a robot.’

It seems to me, that you are nearly finished being depressed. Perhaps you have finally hit bottom. Whatever the payoff was for you is no longer working. Perhaps it’s time to change. The problem is, you don’t know how. Your own thoughts prevent you from being here and now. From enjoying the taste of your favorite food. From feeling the comfort of your favorite chair. From seeing the majesty of the sky above. From realizing how amazingly special all this shit is and how short of a time you have to take it all in. Even the feeling of being depressed is an experience by which to be amazed. I wonder how strong the depression is. Can you hold a string up to the cat, genuinely play with the cat, and insist on being depressed? I’m genuinely curious about this depression thing. How many of your favorite things can you do and still insist on being depressed while you do them? Are you really doing them or are you in your head while you are doing them? There is a Buddhist expression; ‘When you chop wood, chop wood. When you carry water, carry water?’ Does it make any sense? I love this expression. It lets me set aside work when I go home so that I can enjoy whatever I am doing, here and now. Do you know how to not live in your head?

Could it simply be, you have never learned how to enjoy being? Just sitting and breathing. How fucking amazing that is. Do you even realize all you are missing? There is a whole world out there. A world of sights, smells, sounds, textures, and tastes. Amazing things to explore. You strike me as being unable to see the trees for the forest. Your global conclusions are interfering with your specific pleasures.

Tell you what you do. You get yourself a chair and plant it in the front yard. You go out and sit in the chair and don’t move until you start laughing.

If a man, sitting on a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe and among all the amazing things going on there or happening on this planet, while bitching about how depressed he is, does not strike you as something to laugh about, your real problem is that you have no sense of humor.

EDIT
This just struck me as interesting. Your love of the screaming, crash-bang-rumbling, stuff you call music. WOW. It puts you here and now. What choice do you have? Those fucking low tones bouncing off your bones, vibrating your skull, filling your mind with vibration, and blowing out every fucking problem you could possibly imagine. That IS the here and now. And now, all you have to do is just do the same thing with other shit. You totally immersing yourself in other shit. Nothing exists but you, the cat, and the string. Nothing exists but you and the stars and the sky. Nothing exists but you and your breath. You fill your mind with the moment, just like you do when you are at a concert. You walk outside and you see the world for the first time. Without words. Words are the only tools we use to approximate what it is we see and experience. To be here and now, there is no room for words or thoughts. By the time you think of the word, it is already in the past. You can not think and be in the present at the same time. Thinking is way too slow. I know you are in the present when you go to your concerts. I have heard you talk about them. You know how to be present. Now fill yourself with other things. Grock life and the world around you. YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO THIS.

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Well. Would you trade depression for bi-polar. I would! I did! And you know what? I fucking found a way to by-pass the polar part!!! So now I’m fucking manic all the time!!! Never ending white lights!!! Phew!!! It gets really easy to float away sometimes.

Seriously though. You haven’t seemed to learn A SINGLE thing about your heart in the 60 + years you’ve been on earth listening to “death metal”.

One very simple piece of advice that might help you. Let go of your addiction to sights. Ie. learn how to relax your vision. It cascades to thyroid health and mania. A little mania to get you out of your funk is good for you. You’ve been dwelling on the dark side for too long by the sounds of it.

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Ratty, Ratty, Ratty… There you go again… I don’t doubt that you have some experience that you are trying to put into words; however, ‘Mania’ or being in a ‘manic’ state, is not always positive. Anger may not be a symptom that everyone with bipolar experiences, however, it is not uncommon. The manic part of the manic-depression can just as easily be angry outbursts of uncontrolled rage as it can feelings of euphoria. Mania, does in fact, tend to trigger aggressive emotions, rage, and anger* .

Thank you for sharing.

Found a quick article for you:

Just do a search for Bipolar Anger.

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Oh, I know. I know good “mania” and pure “madness”. It’s a fine line one must walk if one wants to remain happily in the bliss of the never ending bright light.

But yes. This “anger” deserves mentioning. If the mania is not delicately looked after and maintained on a daily basis it very easily sends one into fits of rage.

I try not to be that psycho. My personal mania is a brightness that even common people seem to see in my aura.

I recommend it and of course it comes with the downsides, but then depression is entirely a downside.

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Thanks for the article. I’ll give you some insiders trading on the mania of bipolar.

As I suggested to our down and out friend macabre, tension in the eyes - specifically conscious tension should be let go of to open the white brick in the heart. Then energy becomes boundless and a palpable joy is felt. This can spread throughout the body.

The problem is the madness which comes with it. You’re so damn light you pull a Jesus H. Christ and damn everyone to hell and throw a fit of rage in the temple. Poster child for bipolar rage Jesus is.

Cure. Eye sensitivity. It’s the eyes which both evoke the brightness in the heart which is the joy of mania and it is the over sensitivity to light which pushes one over the edge.

Knowing how and when to bring out the darkness in you is key, also.

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FACE PALM

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Lol :joy: whaaaaaaaaaaaa? did I make a stupid?

Seriously macabre. Spirituality without the religion. Happiness without the worship. Worst case scenario, they throw you on some lithium if you start to go batty. :bat: :rat: :snake:

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Bi-polar is a horrible disorder. You don’t feel better until you have those manic episodes and get that shit out. I was friends with a woman who would have really bad episodes resulting in her abusing her boyfriends. She felt better after she burned out. But regretted everything she said and did after it was over. She had a crush on me. No, I didn’t want to be the next guy she victimized when she’s having an episode. I kind of felt like she was intermittent explosive disorder because she described her blow ups.

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Yeah, hard to argue with this.
I agree about getting out of your own head. Although I have been exercising this for many years, there are times when I go out to the woods to photograph birds and I have to tell myself “get out of your fucking head and let this all in”. Often I say it out loud. I am frequently amused by the absurdity of being in the beautiful woods, but having a conversation with myself instead of truly experiencing the moment. In my case it’s more to fully appreciate my life and the experience rather than continue some inane internal dialog. Although I became aware of the “here and now” concept long ago, I still have to work at it sometimes. Introspection is not a single gaze into the “mirror”.
One more I would add to your excellent list is
“Carpe Diem”… “pluck the day trusting as little as possible in the next one.”
Indeed the incredible amount of things that had to happen to allow you to be here sort of demands a humility and sense of “gratitude”.
Good stuff here Cog. Thanks

Edit for brain

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It’s black metal, there’s a difference.

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Thank you for your words, I appreciate it. You’re right about trying to be “in the moment”, but all I can think about right now is our financial struggles and our long term future. Becky just turned 59 on Sunday, which means she has at least another 10 years before she can retire.

I liked your example of playing with my cat Abby, she’s still just a kitten, and when she’s not napping(she’s sleeping less than 5 feet from me) anything that moves is fair game. When we’re playing with her toys, I’m not depressed in that moment.
Whenever I’m at a concert, it feels fucking fantastic, I get to see, hear, and feel the music with a group of people that are all there for the same reason I am, to escape all the shit happening in the world at that moment. The last show I went to was in May, so it’s been a while. The 2 years of covid bullshit were really hard to take. Any show I get to attend now could be my last, and that’s why they mean so much to me(does that make sense?)

Maybe the reason I felt compelled to write this is because of what happened earlier this week. Becky’s employer has a private suite at an indoor arena in downtown Seattle, and the British metal legends Iron Maiden are playing a show there tonight. They have a pair of tickets to the show, food and drinks included, and would you believe my wife won them in a drawing? The one who hates heavy metal music of any kind. She called me on Monday with the news and wanted to know if I would like to go, as long as I could find another person to go with.
So I sent my son a message telling him about it and asking him if he could/would go with me. He said it sounded awesome and that he’d move some commitments so we could go. I was amped about it, this is a once in a lifetime chance to see Maiden from a private suite, I haven’t seen them since 1992, 30 fucking years. My wife even started looking into getting handicapped parking for us because of my feet, it was going to be fucking awesome.
I’ll bet you you know what happened, right? The next day, Tuesday, I get a message from my son saying he couldn’t go now because of prior plans that he wasn’t able to change(at his fucking church). He even suggested I ask my fellow metal head David if he’d like to go. David lives in northern Idaho, about a 6-7 hour drive away, plus he just got married earlier this month.
I relayed this to Becky on the phone, and all she had to say was that it wasn’t his fault and to not blame him. I haven’t been this angry in a very long time, my son has a track record of making plans to spend some time with me and then not showing up on numerous occasions. I don’t know why I thought he’d actually come to the show with me.
Since my wife won the tickets, and never had any intention to even offer to go with me, she gave them to her boss, who is a music fan and will take one of her son’s, who happens to be a musician.
Needless to say, I’ve been pissed off the entire time since this happened, I can’t fucking win for losing.

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They will be there no matter what you do. Every night you go to sleep and you go blank. Each morning you wake and your financial struggles are there to greet you. If you happen to take another break during the day at some point, guess what? They are not going to miss you. And, they are going to wait for you. The difference will be how healthy you feel while addressing them.

Sorry to hear you lost the tickets. Heck, If I lived within 6 hours of you I would have flown in for the experience. I had a hunch you were not seeing things quite as clearly as they actually were. It makes perfect sense to be upset about missing out on a cool concert. You found one of the triggers that can send you into a depressive eipisode. You also, admittedly, found some that can pull you out and you are just not using them. I suspect there are many more. Any man that can spend as much time as you have spent making tombstones for the back of his truck so he can drive around town, knows how to occupy his mind and his time.

This financioal thing is important, obviously. You probably do need to worry about it. You don’t need to worry about it 24/7. I strongly suggest that you set a time to worry about it. Give it a couple of hours if you think that it needs a couple of hours. Make yourself sit at the kitchen table with a pad of paper and worry about it. Write all your thoughts and ideas down. Everything. Then go live your life. If you have an intrusive thought during your day, remind yourself that it is not the time to worry about it now. You will worry about it at the right time. And tomorrow, when it is time to worry about it, you will sit down with your pad of paper and spend quality time addressing the issue with all the attention it deserves.

This makes good sense because you are not giving it your full attention as it interrupts your day. You are not giving it your full attention when you are tired, depressed, and not feeling 100%. This is a serious problem and you need to treat it seriously. Give it the attention it deserves. But you also have to give the rest of your life the attention it deserves. Your wife needs your attention free from the burden of your depressive state. Your cat needs your attention. Your hobbies need your attention. Your health needs your attention. You can not carry this thing around with you and interact effectivly with everything else in your life. You need to set a time to deal with it. Set a time to worry about it. Then set it aside, and worry about all the other very important shit in your life.

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You might like these guys. “ANCIIENTS”. You can listen to their sophomore album for free here “VOICE OF THE VOID”.

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Nice artwork, right?

Now I wouldn’t plug these guys if I wasn’t good acquaintances with the drummer and bassist. We met during my high rise window cleaning days.

Their junior album “HEART OF OAK” was compared to Opeth and Mastadon. They started getting popular (touring Europe with Sepulchre if I’m not mistaken). Lead guitar and vocals can fucking riff man. Covid put a lot of their ambitions on hold.

Here’s my deal. So we’ve all got darkness in us. Not all of us learn to let that darkness out and it starts to cake up and harden like concrete in our hearts.

The issue with depression isn’t a bottomless pit of night. It’s the inability to open up the heart to darkness and let that shit out.

So. No beating around the bush. Here’s the strait goods. You should put the music down for a bit and find a nice piece of nature where you can relax and LISTEN to the sounds around you. Tune in to the sounds, and relax the ear faculty.

Imagine there’s a chord linking your ear to your heart. Mentally pull on the chord a little. Tighten it up. The attention to sound will fall away and if you’re lucky you’ll notice the darkness start to vibrate in your heart like a plucked chord. Let it all out. Enjoy it. From the heart that darkness emerges from the body. Then the bones start cracking and popping and your ligaments start to loosen up a bit.

I know this sounds like bat shit crazy Hindu fuck-doo. But as a person who cares, you ought a at least try it. If it works I can tell you how to fill your body with light too.

If all of this is a crock of fucking non-sense, listen to the album and tell me what you think (at least I’ll have brightened your mood with a good dose of metal).

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Oh Fuck! You can imagine all the fucking Hindu, Transcendental, New Age, Ancient Wisdom, Buddhist, Csasternada, Chakra Magic, Astral Projection, Runes, Crystal Ball, Human Potential, Theosophical, Pyramid Power, Prayer, Hand laying, Crystal Magic, Mentalism, Holistic, Channeling, Astrological, Sufistic, Kabalistic, esoteric, aura reading, self-healing, yogic, drug-induced, mind-altering, meditative, acupuncture, aromatherapy, reiki, herbal medicine, Krishna consciousness, homeopathy, naturopathy, and anything else that touches your deeply held spiritual self and keeps gives you a good feel good story to avoid being a fucking human being. Now you are a human being with a magical story and that makes you special.
Give me a fucking break.

Hey Ratty! Cite any peer researched paper for anything at all you have said.

Imagine actually knowing what you are talking about for once. Just imagine.

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This sounds a lot like the grade A baloney my profession used to sell people through much of the 20th Century… ‘If Innate intelligence flows through the nerves unblocked by bone subluxations, the nerves and body parts will be in proper alignment and tone…’ etc.

Come on man; spend your inner energy chording with the modern day we’re living in, at least.

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Anyone who tells you they can manipulate your energy flow is waving a red flag.

Ask them what ‘Energy is.’ That should be an interesting discussion.

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I do. I know karma and the end of karma. I know dark karma. Light karma. And neither light nor dark karma (that karma which is the ending of all karma).

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Didn’t say a thing about energy. The only energy involved is the “get up and go” you’ll acquire from bringing light into your heart and mind. Zest, gumption, energy.