Depression, diagnosed at last

I was reading an article today on depression (and caregivers).
The signs of major depression include:
1. Depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities ( For me it was loss of pleasure in life)
2. Significant change in weight or change in appetite (I would go through cycles of eat/starve)
3. Trouble sleeping or excessive sleeping (I would go through cycles of each. I took naps every day during my 40's lying to Dow about what I was doing-like the alcoholic, denying the drinking.)
4. Feeling tired and lack of energy (all throughout my 40's and into my 50's. We moved to Chicago when I was 53.)
5. Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness (For the last 25 years until I said "No" to Dow after Jason's wounding. Somehow I was responsible for our relationship. If I was unhappy, it was my problem. (and it was except I didn't discover the reason))
6. Feelings of worthlessness and inappropriate guilt (for the length of my marriage to Dow)
7. Feelings of low self-esteem (Dow destroyed my self-esteem early in our marriage using humor to do so)
8. Sudden outbreaks of anger (expressed at Jason when he was young instead of Dow because Dow and I were codependent and I was emotionally blind to the reason for my anger.)
9. Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions (Dow made all social, emotional, and spiritual decisions for the family unit.)

Reviewing the symptoms, you only need 5 to be clinically depressed, I now realize that I was depressed from about the time Jason was 6 years old until I entered analysis and began studying to be a chaplain in the year 2000. Looking back I cannot believe how emotionally unhealthy the marriage relationship was. How could I function? I didn't. Emotionally I was frozen in fear. From the article, "Factors that increase the likelihood of becoming debilitated by depression:

1. tending to a love one with disruptive behavior (Dow's emotional behaviors toward me and Jason-all on an unconscious level)
2. Lacking available social and emotional support. (After Jason's birth we moved to VA where I knew no one and was all alone emotionally. Totally dependent on Dow who could give nothing emotionally I spiraled down into depression.)
   

Now I am always so at peace. I had always feared that "emotional emptiness will be filled with the negative" For me it is the opposite. Ending my destructive relationship I am filled with peace and freedom. As I dreamt at Walter Reed, I am walking out of Hell with the fires burning behind me. Now I can take pleasure at the golds of fall, the beautiful blue sky we have been blessed with in this Midwest region usually gray and overcast for months in winter.

I love to speak for peace (5 times in the month of November), telling the story of my personal emotional resurrection through the suffering of war.
I love that I experience inner and outer peace.
I spend the time outside of work alone.
It is time for my soul to heal.
I have no emotional needs unmet.
I am alone, emotionally safe, and hopeful for the first time in my life.
I feel held in the hands of God/Mystery that creates, sustains and receives.
I do not worry about the future, it is God's will.
I feel released and free from emotional and spiritual hell.
I take each day as it comes.
Knowing in life all continues to change.
Pray for the healing of Jason's and my relationship knowing that I have no control.
I feel like I have come through the combat zone, healing into wholeness at last.
It is a blessing for which I will be forever thankful.
I will truly celebrate Thanksgiving with a joyous heart this year for the first time in 31 years.
Celebrate life: how precious, how wonderful, how rich.
I want to share my desire and passion for peace.
We must envision peace and live it through all the choices we make.
Gandhi said, "Live the change you want to see."
Now I am living the change I have emotionally wanted since growing up in an emotionally and physically abusive home.

Each choice I make increases the peace within.
Blessings of peace to each who reads this.
The struggle for self is a long and arduous journey.
It is the only journey worth taking.

Well, It is November 8, 2007 and I Am Still Married.

If you remember from an earlier entry I mistakenly believed after I agreed to the settlement that paperwork would flow fast and furious and the judge would sign a divorce degree today.

NADA, my lawyer never communicated with me after the September "court check in" Today after court, he sent me an email saying, "I have not completed a draft of the settlement..." So, that leaves me "up the creek without a divorce."

Dow very much wants the divorce to be final. I am sure he is antsy to begin adding to his retirement accounts. Dow stopped all deposits 1/07 as I am sure he did not want to share 50% of new accruals with me. Dow, too, I am sure is very interested in doing consulting to add to his retirement/pay for my maintenance and does not want me to be aware of any income beside his LU paycheck.

Dow was very secretive about money in and money out. Dow never informed that he had put $200,000 of consulting money into retirement accounts. I also was manipulated feeling that we were just "getting by." Dow's life mantra is "I'm a poor Idaho boy just trying to get by" he says it constantly to all. (This money could have been used to help send Jason to graduate school which Dow adamantly refused to do. A generous and supportive attitude toward our only son Dow did not have! A symptom of the dysfunction and toxicity of our relationship as husband/wife and as parents.)

I could not fight Dow as I never held a full time position at Dow's request and had access to no money of my own. We had agreed at the beginning of our 2nd marriage to each other that I would support Dow's career. This gave Dow power over me and Jason leading to a tragic and destructive family dynamic. Dow made all decisions based on finances or his own unconscious feelings and motives or patterns learned from his parents especially his father.