My Glass Half Full

I had a pretty tough weekend. We had family come to stay on what happened to be a pretty low swing for me. My chest had been tight for a few days and I’d been pretty quick to anger too. Quite on edge now that I think about it. I probably wasn’t very enjoyable to be around. Which is something that tends to get me down too. The fact that my wife and kids have to deal with me until I’ve righted the ship, so to speak. It’s one of those things that I wonder if they notice or pick up on. But when I’m anxious and/or depressed it’s another thing to beat myself up over.

Anyway, everyone arrived on Friday morning and I hadn’t taken the day off but was working from home. I could hear the kids all raucous and excited to see each other. My Friday mornings are generally pretty much back to back meetings all the way to lunch. So I closed the door and tried not to think about the weekend ahead. But I knew this was going to be hard work for me in the state I was in.

My glass was half empty on everything. I usually love playing with and entertaining my daughters and nieces. But I was so low and tired that I couldn’t muster the energy. My sister in law said a few years ago, “you should be a children’s entertainer”. Friends and family say things like “you’re so good with kids”. I love to be that guy, the clown who jokes with them and does magic tricks for them. When I’m feeling like myself.

When I’m not, those comments feel like unfair pressure. Like I’m supposed to perform, and I resent it. I resent the fact that I can’t just be a dad who sits on the couch and watches TV while the kids play. I feel the expectation of the kids too. They want me to be that guy and when I am they smile and laugh and it’s a drug. But this weekend, I didn’t have it in me. Like I said before, it’s another thing I use to beat myself up over.

I’m not being fun, I’m being short with them. I’m trying not to engage as much as possible. I don’t have the energy to start and I hope that if I give signals that I’m not going to be the fun guy, they’ll leave me alone. But they don’t get it. So I start doing tasks to show them that I’m busy. I volunteer to man the pizza oven, so I can stand outside alone.

I’m drinking a beer while I stand by the pizza oven. I know the last thing I need to be doing is drinking, but the thing I don’t need even more right now is questions. I don’t want to alert my wife to the fact that I’m feeling this way. Her sister has just arrived and I don’t want to ruin the weekend. (I’m going to write a whole other story on feeling like a burden). So, to keep up appearances I drink a beer and pretend like I’m deeply interested in the inner workings of the pizza oven.

I make it through the evening. My wife notices I’m grumpy. So much for keeping up appearances. I wake the next morning with my chest a little bit tighter and my desire to be by myself even higher. We get up to a house full of children and thankfully they are more interested in playing with each other. I do my best over the rest of the weekend to get some time to myself. But it’s pretty hard and I don’t want to shirk parenting. I throw myself into any food preparation. I always love cooking, but I find a lot of comfort in it when I’m anxious and depressed especially. It’s the focus, and the fact that it’s a physical task. I’m doing something, I’m making something and I can quieten my brain and do what needs to be done to get the dinner ready.

Sunday morning comes and I can feel that I’ve got myself into quite a state. I drank again on Saturday night. I gave keeping up appearances more importance than my need to balance myself. When I’m in that state I always convince myself that I can handle things. I can’t let anyone else know what’s going on. As soon as I give myself a chance to breathe, I see how silly that is.

We run the kids at the school and play outside. Physical activity and fresh air are a relief, in what has felt like a pretty claustrophobic weekend of two families living on top of each other. But the kids are getting to that point where they have been together too long and patience is being tested. Trying to referee and council kids to be rational with each other is hard. It's even harder when I’m not in the best frame of mind. It feels hypocritical and fraught.

We farewell the extended family and get the kids to sleep relatively easily that night. Everyone is pretty exhausted from the weekend's fun. As we do the dishes I do a terrible job of trying to explain why I was grumpy all weekend. Because I struggle to articulate my feelings verbally. It’s why I started writing this down. So I could make sense of things myself before trying to explain to my wife or a therapist. Anyway, my terrible explanation comes out of me like I can’t be bothered entertaining kids. Especially ones that aren’t my own. I know I’ve done a terrible job explaining myself. I pile in on myself.

After all that trying to go through the weekend without being a burden and ruining it I end up breaking down crying on the couch. I try to tell her the things I've written here. I think it comes out as jumbled nonsense. She gets the gist though. I’m not being an asshole, I’m anxious and depressed. It feels like a relief to at least let it out a little bit though. I can start to try to take the steps I know I need to to get myself well again.

If you feel like this right now, please take the time to talk to someone you trust. I do recommend seeing a professional. If you're not comfortable with that, try someone you trust.