Yes, that ugly monster that is depression has managed to sneak up on me again the past week or so. But, I’ll get to that later. First, a recap of our Easter visit to my parents.
We haven’t seen my parents since early January when we did Christmas, Take 2. Still, I had some sense of reluctance to travel up there. I’m really not sure what that was all about. I think it had something to do with the lack of things to do at their place. We left around 1 PM on Friday and it was a lovely, sunny, warm day. Temperatures were around the 50s, I believe, and the weather seemed to be similar when we reached my parents’, even though they are several hours north of us. Imagine my surprise when I woke up Saturday morning to several inches of snow on the ground! My dad and I ran a bunch of errands on Saturday, including getting groceries and a bunch of other things, topped off by a visit to Long John Silver’s to get take-out lunches for me and Terry. I LOVE Long John Silver’s and we don’t have one anywhere near us, so my dad was clever enough to squeeze in a meal.
We had to be back by 1 PM because my mother’s new treadmill was being delivered. Terry and I managed to polish off our delicious lunch before the guy arrived. Yummy! Both of my step-sisters were due to arrive at 5 PM for our one-day-early Easter dinner and my youngest step-sister just celebrated a birthday, so I baked a cake for her. White cake with strawberry icing, at her request. Funny how she only ate half of her slice…
Friday night and Sunday morning, my dad and I played some table tennis. Some of my longest-term readers may recall that I bought him a portable table tennis set a couple of Christmases ago, so we dragged it out and had some bonding time. Despite being somewhat bored at points during the day on Saturday and during the evenings/nights, I was sad to leave and even shed a few tears in the car on our way home.
And thus began my latest little slide into depression. I had somewhat planned to take Monday as a vacation day and I ended up having to because I was totally unable (or unwilling) to get out of bed to go to work. At first, I was going to go in for the latter half of the day, then I still didn’t manage to get out of bed in time to do that, so I gave up. First thing Tuesday morning, I woke up with a BAD bladder infection. I mean, pink in my urine, pain when I went, feeling like I had to go all of the time, bad. I meant to work from home, but ended up sleeping a good portion of the day away. Needless to say, after two days spent slacking, I had absolutely no desire to get up and go to work yesterday. But I knew I had to (the desire to keep one’s job can be a great motivator), so I dragged myself out of bed and managed to get into work, albeit a bit late. I was feeling teary and weepy all day, to the point that, when a coworker stopped by my desk and asked how I was doing, it was all I could do to not break into full-blown tears. By the time I reached Dr. Steve’s in the early evening, I felt a bit wrung out and went through a lot of tissues during the session.
So, it turns out that one of my main issues is that I’m lonely. Don’t get me wrong, Terry is a wonderful companion and my best friend, but he’s a male and I need some interaction with females. Or at least someone with similar interests outside of work. And, let’s face it, men aren’t exactly into crafts. In fact, most of my male friends are from work and all they tend to talk about is work, computers, gaming and cars. Not really anything that I can and/or care to relate to. And both of my friends, Mary and Tricia, live 45 minutes away from my house. *sigh*
I’m not really sure what I’m going to do to find more friends closer to home, since I don’t have kids and thus don’t have that automatic bond with women. The thought of it all just brings tears to my eyes as I type this. It’s a very frustrating situation. And it’s hard to find time to go out and do anything when you work all day and have chores around the house to work on all weekend. Keep in mind, we still have a basement to finish.
I talked to Dr. Steve about possibly joining the local YMCA, since it’s right down the road from my house (literally a mile away), but when am I going to find time to do anything there? ARGH! Terry and I talked on the way home about the possibility of me working four 10-hour days a week and thus being able to take one day a week off. Then maybe I can visit with Mary or Tricia or find some sort of class at the YMCA to take. I don’t know, as the thought of working 10-hour days is a bit daunting at the moment.
The problem is, we’re not very sociable people when we’re at home and I’m an introvert, so I’m kind-of doomed when it comes to building new relationships outside of work. And there aren’t many females at work to hang out with and we’re all fairly reserved when it comes to our private lives. If only some of my stitching buddies lived closer. It doesn’t help that not only are some of you spread out across multiple states, but multiple countries, as well! Any ideas, anyone? I’m so tired of being lonely.
