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Post by timoteiy on Jul 27, 2007 12:19:18 GMT -5
This first post is just small talk.
I don't feel like getting a journal started now. I only have 4 days. My life has fallen appart and there are some urgent matters that I have to take care of for basic survival Hopefully I'll get back later]
Here I am adding something.I am at the end of my 5days off work. I have 1 hour left before I go to work. It is 1 oclock in the morning. I work irregualr and long hours- up to 18 hours per 24 hours and I am called at irregular hours to do so and can book up to 30 hours off at a home terminal and up to 8 hours at an away from home terminal. At present I am training as a locomotive engineer on the most trecherous subdivision in North America. I have a one on one trainer for up to a year and I am under pressure to qualify on two subdivisions in a year. Alot of stress Long irregular hours. sleep deprivation. What's more, guys often bring out Pn on the Locomotive for Entertainment. Massiver trigger. At the away from home terminal I have mb in my room many times.
I worked prior to this in logging in various positions, ran equipment, owned a company, always worked hard under dangerous conditions and grueling conditions that most people
would find hard to believe. I was a big tough guy who spent a
lot of time in remote camps and learned a certain set of social
rules that could only be termed redneck, put myself to sleep with
pn magazines and had trouble committing to a relationship.
I did put myself through university but was tempted into a logging business again that made more money. A stark contrast to my upbringing byleft wing activists and feminists. So I've spent my life since the age of 16 working with the tough crowd who drank,partied, fought, womanised and then went back to work. The guy's on this new career seem tame in comparison, but the pn is there nonetheless.
I told the guy I'm training with about my problem yesterday
figuring if I'm going to have to deal with this I had to get the cat out of the bag. There is guy's that like to teel unbelievably graphic
tales of sx pursuits. So I'm off to face this guerrilla. Bye for now.
Just got back from another trip and look at what I wrote. I know I want to make contact with people but making small talk on a web site like this is kind of pointless.
With the ongoing crisis I can't concentrate well with this on the job training and I'm going to have to pre-view, study and work extra hard to get through it. If I try to have a conversation I lose myself and can't concentrate. I want so bad to have a decent conversation that I get into it and can't think about what I'm doing operating the train. So I'll have to shut up ad play the part of the silent type and try to get those needs met elsewhere.
I think about my past and know that I have allways been working, working, working.... Long hours.
[IN THE END THIS DISEASE OF THE MIND HAS TAKEN AWAY ALL THE FRUITS OF MY LABOUR
MY MIND CONSTANTLY DWELLS ON REGRET. I TRY TO SLEEP AND FIERCE THOUGHTS PIERCE THE HOPE OF PEACE LIKE A THUNDERBOLT, SQUEEZING COLD SWEAT OUT OF MY PORES WITH THOUGHTS LIKE : WHAT A HORRIBLE LIFE HAVE YOU GIVEN TO YOUR CHILDREN, OR HOW COULD I HAVE CAUSED SO MUCH PAIN TO A WIFE WHO CARED ABOUT YOU?IS THERE ANY HOPE?
MUST I LIVE IN THE SHADOW OF ANGER FOREVER?
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Post by timoteiy on Jul 30, 2007 11:24:21 GMT -5
The depths of my dispair come from the surfacing knowledge that I allways had difficulty making bonds with the world. My father was mostly absent. My mother was distant
and absorbed with other things. We moved alot, I seldom felt apart of a community. At first all there was was pain and then there was how I dealt with the pain, which took on a life of its
own. I began to live elsewhere in my head long before I discovered alcohol, drugs, s.addiction
or the whole range of compensations. I cringe because I see that in my 2 children now..I knew little about love, except for the anaestetic feeling of falling in love. Fear dominates the range of my emotions to this day. I walked away from healing or recovery 15 years ago because I feared that my wife would reject me if she knew the truth. At one time I noticed that people that cared only triggered grief in me. I drifted to more angry people perhaps because I thought at some level that i'd never have to get close.
Still clean, still remorsefull.
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Post by timoteiy on Jul 30, 2007 11:43:43 GMT -5
S. addiction took roots before I even saw porn. The first seed was at age twelve when I went with a cousin a year older to a swimming pool/park and a man convinced us too go into the bush because we could see a couple having sx and ended up
starting to mb in front of us. We ran away and laughed nervously but it had instantly opened up a can of worms that developed later in life as I fantasised about girls and mb'ed.
I started working in the logging industry when I was still a teenager and it was in the camps that I first became attracted to porn magazines. Drinking and smoking dope were actually more sociable addictions for me, so later, after quiting the drinking and pot completely and in the absence of honesty and healing, the pn addiction just grew.
And with it the isolation, which had been me all along, so I failed to honestly see the connection or the way that the sx addiction contributed to the isolation. I spent hours alone with the magazines and the mb, trying to stay one step away from the shame and depression.Shame and Depression eventually and continually caught up to me though. Today I'm shrouded in it.
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Post by LookingUp on Jul 30, 2007 12:29:35 GMT -5
At present I am training as a locomotive engineer on the most trecherous subdivision in North America. What an adventerous and unique vocation. I've road the passenger train on a very remote rail; quite an adventure with 563 KM (350 miles) and no towns, cross-roads, etc. Just a few rail camps for when they repair the rails in the summer. Awesome! That is quite a difference. For me, I have trouble with isolation. I find forums a wonderful way to observe how others interrelate, word things, how others respond and it helps me formulate what/how I can say things. I've recently started trying to extrapolate what I learn here about communication to face-to-face communication. For me, this is a training ground.. I can make mistakes in communication and have time to figure out how to respond to that - so I don't feel so much communication anxiety. I also find talking to God helps me learn to communicate. Have you found the thread about "Withdrawal Symptoms"? It sounds like you might be in the early stages for you? lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1085184716Glad you've started a journal. I hope it helps you maintain your sobriety and find how to recover the skills your addiction stole from you. LookingUp |
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Post by timoteiy on Jul 30, 2007 20:53:42 GMT -5
I am going insane. I have been only 6 days now. I have isolated out of shame and am hiding from the world as I have done when in my addiction. I am still in my addiction even though i haven't acted out in 6 days. I have been obsessive about this recovery without really getting anywhere will it. I've got to be patient. I'm facing the facts here.
When my wife and I got together 15 years ago she found a whole range of stuff I had written like a Diary for what you call the 4th step-- A very personal inventory taking, that I shared only with A.A. sponsers and counsellors. Some of it was done in preparation for making amends to people I had harmed, and there was plenty of sexual stuff in there too, and the stuff about trying to stop my mb and pn. There were also pre-recovery stuff that I written do pen my own insanity.These aren't things we had discussed. She found and read them, confronted me. She questioned me on the things she had read. I answered her quite honestly, because at the time I was still into the whole process of recovery and spiritual growth. She said she was worried someone would see this and the shame it would cause. She was right. I said, and I complied with her request to throw it all away. This process had really been at a lull anyways because I was re-coiling and stepping back from recovery the year before when I lived through being emotionally raw, along with my father dying in the middle of me dealing with resentments towards him. It was definitely hard for me to have this relationship and be in recovery.My wife had a father in A.A. recovery too. Close quarters. There was always a watchful eye on me. I'm not so sure it was all related to pn and mb. Before we got into religion I had the self help books, including some books on Mythology and Anthropology, (which was just my overintellectualising about what God or a Higher Power was about for A.A. purposes). I was told to get rid of these.This was because, according to one Christian friend of my wife's, I was worshipping "false gods" and "new age gods" (I wasn't even aware there was a thing). Those boxes of books were burned in a ritual in the wood fired boiler. My A.A. sponsers were screened by my wife. Church was prison to me. I could write chapters on all the instances of control and anger, some trajectly comic and others downright bizare. I'm REALLY not sure how much my pn and mb caused my wife to become more angry and controlling, but I know for sure it threw her off the deep end. It eventually would throw most women off the deep end, I'm sure. I kind of take it that it would be politically correct on this forum to blame everything on my pn and mb. It put me in crazy land more than once.
However, I've seen the same scenario played out with other addictions, where the significant others begin to see everything in terms of a reaction to the addict. Not that they've done anything to cause the addiction or there's anything they can do about it. Its just that addicts screw up their heads so much they can lose all sense of who they are.
Given my individual circumstances it is only natural that I would come to the conclusion that if my recovery can't be controled by my wife. Shame and anger can convict me but it works against healing me. So the chances of us getting together again are pretty slim.
To steal a joke I heard years ago in another context: How many SO's does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. they just stand back and watch it screw itself.
Therein lies the difficult task faced by the SO, or co-dependant or whatever else you want to call it.
Wow, the last few paragraphs I just turned from a grieving and angry sex addict into a B grade intellectual. Its amazing to feel the difference and how I used it not to feel my feelings. I better quit.
I'm actually falling back into a pattern I started in Childhood. Isolating out of shame. For 6 days all I've talked to is distant family, some people at work and the counsellor. I feel like a dirty porn infested demented freak. Like a low life that's afraid to come of the shadows.
Sharing here really doesn't help enough with that feeling. I'm more desparate than I have ever been,because now I feel i have started another generation of dysfunction. Even if my wife hates me too much and if we never get back together, I sure as hell hope she gets recovery. My kids are at stake here, and my love for them has got to be a power higher than myself. My not admitting my situation and getting help hurts them. I haven't been following my higher power all these years.
Look what trouble it has got me in.
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Post by nompman on Jul 31, 2007 2:13:58 GMT -5
Timoteiy, you don't give yourself enough credit. You have been through a lot and still want to get rid of this demon. You actually know what some of your demons are. Naming the demons in your life, (porn, sexual addiction, anger, grief, isolation, loneliness, shame) are away of starting toward solving the problem. First, let me say there are people that care about you. I believe there is a God who loves you and has inspired you to come here because He knows this can help you. You may not think that writing those words did much but they not only let you get out what is hurting but may help someone else identify their feelings that they can not express. You are not a grade B intellectual. You are a very smart man who is trying to sort things out because he wants a better way.
Try joining an accountability circle. Read other peoples story and you will find out that you are not so different. Learn to love yourself in a positive way. Tell yourself you are good enough, smart enough, loving enough to beat this. God bless you and you will be in my prayers.
nompman.
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Post by LookingUp on Jul 31, 2007 6:05:40 GMT -5
It sounds like you enjoy reading and intellectualizing. Have you read anything about shame? I found a few books quite helpful when I was doing my O.A. 12-step: - Deceived by Shame – Desired by God by Cynthia Spell Humbert
- Shattered by Shame: Crowned in Glory by Laurie Smucker
- Sexual Shame: An Urgent Call to Healing by Karen A. McClintock
- Shame: Thief of Intimacy (Unmasking the Accuser) by Marie Powers
- Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw
There's probably a lot of good books out there to help you understand shame - how it works - and how to outsmart it so it can't keep you bound. LookingUp |
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Post by timoteiy on Jul 31, 2007 22:46:51 GMT -5
Thanks Looking Up. I got a long list of books to go to the library with. I hope I can get through this.
I just got back from another work trip and it was hell. My depression and confusion is so bad now that I can't do the job. I screwed up so bad today I fear it may be the begining of the end there. I have a one on one trainer and for 12 hours straight he corrected critical mistakes that I made and basically read me the riot act. He knows I'm going through hell but this is a safety critical job and if I can't do it too bad. I am going to see a counsellor attached to the company and see if I can gut the training until next winter. My mind is gone. Depression has floored me. I've lost my wife and now I've got to try to find a way to keep my job. My wife says if I commit suicide I should try to make it look like an accident so she can get some insurance.
I've got 7 days clean of mb and porn. I've gone longer than that without too much problem but the difference now is the bottom I'm in. Rock bottom. My mother invited me to meet to a lake where some cousins and an Aunt are this weekend and although I haven't seen family for so long and I have grieved not being able to for so long, I feel now that I would a lost soul in the company of strangers. My own family.
I can't seem to get the basic tasks done. I've got to make mini steps every day.
I'll have to keep my life simple. I don't know where to ask for help where I wouldn't feel ashamed.
Lets see what have I done. I've been addicted to mb and fantasy as some kind of a thumb
sucking substiitute for real love. I've hidden in shame and lied about it to practically everybody. I used to drink and smoke some dope, and at one time it was at least a sociable addiction but it turned me into a low life. then I quit that, went to A.A., counselling.
15 years ago before I got together with my wife I had started this journey. The result was continuous outpooring of grief, out and out bawling, that went on and on for months.Issues about my upbringing,mother, father, neglect, the results of my actions and others. I was crying everywhere, at work, at home even out walking. Eventually my intellect got ahold of things and said "enough is enough! After all what am I wining about anyways?"
During the same period of time my father died. I had six messages on my answering machine from him. I wouldn't call back because I was dealing with anger issues towards him.(In reality he really wasn't a monster. He had depression, anger, his own problems.)The next few messages came in the middle of one night, from my stepmother, and from my sister: "something terrible is wrong with your father, he's been taken to emergency at the hospital,", then: " They are operating on him" and finally: "He's dead".
I got up the next morning at 4 A.M.listened to the messages, went to work. That night I began breaking down. MY intellect blamed this emotional process I was going through for me not answering his messages . My brother and sister rarely talked to him, they hung on to their anger. He died quite isolated from the world, as I am today. Grieving after that became a dramatic event for me, I was grieving everything. It was like I was in an underground world fighting demons, crying, bawling. I eventually shut the taps off because I truly thought it would never end. I can say that during that time there was little thought of drinking, drugs, masturbation or porn. But the pain seemed unbearable.
Shortly after I had shut the taps of grief down I met my present wife. I wanted so bad to impress her and, at the time I was becoming fairly successful in work/a business, and what kind of women would start a relationship with a cry baby anyways? I started to enjoy an improved reputation. My ego perked up.
Then I started "the odd drink, and the odd toke" with co-workers and lied to my wife. I eventually totally hid it from everyone. Eventually I quit that. Then the pn and mb came front and center, a hidden world of filth and shame. I should have know better. I was influenced by feminist ( my mother was a pioneer feminist) thinking: I could have written an essay on the objectivication of women. I'm a kind of a secular paralell to the paster addicted but unwilling to give up his status to get help. No amount of thinking could get me out of this.
My life has been going down stream for a long time.This is sink or swim.......
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 1, 2007 15:18:50 GMT -5
I'm going to stay off this Forum for the rest of the day and see if I can accomplish some urgent tasks. I haven't accomplished much in a week and I have 2 days to get out of this place and find new accomadations.I don't want to stay anywhere where I would feel obligated to hide the fact that I am dealing with an addiction/depression. That, I'm afraid would trigger another relapse. I wish all my ducks were in order and I could get it together.
I have totally let go of any attempt to get back with my wife. That's just more crazy making for me. I wish I could re-establish a relationship with my children beyond just talking on the phone; I have no idea how to re-earn their respect, other than getting some healing under my belt, which I told them I would. I fear that my children will hate me in the same dark way that my brother hated my father, which left my brother incapacitated later in life. I think they will absorb their mother's anger. My son stands a good chance of growing up angry. My daughter seems like she'll get caught in a dream world. I must keep going. There is too much at stake.
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 2, 2007 0:16:27 GMT -5
Today I was at the library looking for recovery books. Found myself grabbing for some novels with lusty stories and caught myself, walked out. Talked to a counsellor, tryed to look for a
place to live. I got another day off work to deal with the crisis.Coming back to where I was staying (on a motorbike) I zipped by when I saw the family van my wife is driving. She had tracked me down. When she left I went in, but she came back and after letting me visit my daughter she then started to confront me. I want to have some help from a non-profit society that helps with budgeting. She feels that I am taking control away from her and the arguments began. If I mention anything about her money management she goes on about what I've spent on, or ties the argument into how I destroyed her with sex addiction. The argument circled and circled until even agreeing with her wouldn't end it. I kept thinking: did I cause all this craziness?
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 2, 2007 19:55:34 GMT -5
Many years ago I was single. living alone and working out of remote logging camps, and hanging with a rowdy crowd. I had inherited the tendancy to isolate and a difficulty talking about myself and feelings. I was tagging along with a crowd that was entirely different than my politically correct less alcohol oriented friends from school. I was drinking and smoking dope. Dope smoking was the camp activity at night. Town was party party. Loose relationships. Pn and mb were part of the mix.
(I have long since quit the drinking and dope)
Result: feeling isolated. Tendancy to depression turned to all out depression, having to move home with mother and lay in the basement counting my demons. Saw a Doctor, got medication and onto a list for a depression day program, and kept dropping.
Unable to look after myself and no apetite, all out anxiety, no sleep for weeks. Nobody in my family thought to talk to me: it was a medical condition. My mother busied herself doing other things- she has the tendancy to isolate but doesn't experience the depression. One night out of desparation I force her to talk to me about the past. About my father, the Divorce, and eventually she began to talk about her past, her childhood.
That night my depression lifted and I actually went into abit of elation. This was a real eye opener to me, and one that I forget all too frequently. If we had of been talking Religion and God I would have started to believe in God. That wasn't the case though. My mother is a long time left wing athiest.What it showed me was that in order to lift the depression I have to get out of the isolating and feeling alienated. And here I've done it again. I have set myself up bad this time because I have lived years without friends, only going to work and coming home to an increasingly angry wife, with only pn and mb as an escape.
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 3, 2007 12:09:45 GMT -5
My wife phoned me and asked me alot of the same questions she asked over the years. About the porn and fantasies and masterbation. About if I didn't care about anyone but myself. Whether I did this on purpose because I was looking for an out. About what I thought about her attempts to improve our romantic life and how I screwed that up.
I told her that I used her anger as an excuse to deflect the shame off myself. I explained that I allways knew what I was doing was wrong, and that I felt shame about it. Instead of owning up to it, I said, I allowed her to internalise the shame and think that there was something wrong with her. That's the gist of what I said, and then I had to go off to an appointment and said bye.
There is a counsellor I see that is apart of an employee program at work. His office is next to, of all things, a sex shop! ( A town of 9,000 people with a sex shop!) I have never been in there. As I was walking out of the counsellor's office my wife drove by . I didn't notice her, but got on my motorbike and drove to the doctor's office. She phoned me on my cell phone. "where the hell are you", " I saw you walking by the sex shop"."You were in the sex shop weren't you?" " I want to check your bag and see what's in it!" She cried " Now do you see why I am crazy?". More anger and tears. No more talk about PMS, or her own anger issues, her own stuff. The great divide. SA and PA. Good and Evil.
It just so happened that this counsellor ( and the social worker, last week) had advised me that it would be better to keep my distance from my wife in order to get some recovery ( I have admitted to both about the sex addiction). Fresh from this advise, I had second thoughts about the earlier ammends I made to her about affecting her self esteem.
Added to that, I was begining to have second thoughts about this forum, and more importantly about the outcome of this whole proccess. There was so much hurt and I didn't see much positive coming out. I posted "Any thing positive on relationships?" on the General forum and waited. Nothing had been replied. I read alot of angry posts, heard alot of statements like: " There is no such thing as a good PA husband". My depression was listening. There didn't seem to be alot to look up to. Where was the gratitude? There certainly is alot to be said for a positive attitude. I wish I had it.
I understand that the full expression of feelings, down and up, angry and happy are neccesary in this process. I just don't get much of the up side. it could just be my depressive thinking. It is also a sign that I have to stay in the recovery, not in the problem.
I was advised here (John G. , Barnes) that I should stay on the recovering addicts side of the forum as a newcomer. This is a paralell to the advise by the counsellors to stay keep my distance from my wife until I get myself strong enough. I know that I feel more capable of dealing with these issues now that I'm away from my wife. I know that my healing won't happen if I discuss this with those that don't understand it from the inside out. I'm so used to dealing with the preachers, the finger pointers, qoutes from books, all condescending in the end. I'll never get better there.
The true teacher cannot teach you anything ... but can only remind
you of what, on some level, you already know ...
I have made contact with another sex addict from SAA ( I think that's the group?) in another bigger city about 2.5 hours drive from here. He first contacted me (by e-mail) saying he was still with his wife and they had agreed that if they could get recovery they would have a good marriage. The 3rd e-mail he had slipped and was out of the house. Discouraging. I want to give him support, although I'm no better off. I really hope things get better for him. I will try again phoning tonight.
Yesterday I backpedaled my way out of getting time off work at the counsellors, because my wife said we can't afford it. The day before because of a terifying day at work and a stern talking to by my trainer, I was looking at a 7 week long recovery program for sex addiction on the other side of the country. Today I'm just looking for help in any way I can.
Last night I fought temptation with every tooth and nail I had. A battle weary night. Day 10 now of no pn or mb.
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Post by timoteiy on Aug 4, 2007 17:25:08 GMT -5
I'm now homeless. I had to leave the house of the people I was house sitting for because they came back. I moved my collection of clothes etc. to a locker (and a suitcase on top) at work, gave back their motorbike I was using and without telling anyone, I moved out into the woods, to sleep in an unpitched tent in a hidden spot, wash up in a river fed by mountain snow pack and receding glaciers. It is actually within the municipal limits, mabe a kilometer and a half from downtown and my work headquarters in this town of about 9,000 people. Trying to sleep cocooned in a tent. My breath teases the buzzing mosquitos on the other side of the screen. I curse the noisy squirels and then wonder if they are communicating about my intrusion, or worse, the intrusion of a bear, or a couger(not the urban type)
My cell phone rings and I ignore it. I don't know if its work but I think its too soon for that call and I definitely don't want to talk to my wife.
I remember how my wife told me a few days ago:" You had it all, and you blew it."
I am reminded about my father, as a child, a successful lawyer with a new home on the beach. He lost it all. Probably an affair. Divource. Depression.
I think about the statement in the Bible, "the sins of the father are visited on the son". I believe it.
I had worked 28 years in an industry, got the the highest paying available, got into my own business. Economic signs were getting worse there. I hated the long hours, the lifestyle, the hard work. After much searching I fought my way into a completely different industry, a complete 180 degree turn. Within the past three years i have moved my family a thousand 0kilometres and a ferry ride away. Went into full time training. Spent 80,000 dollars on a new business building equipment myself,then haven't had the time to get it off the ground. My wife wanted the house massively renovated. We took out a 80,000 dollar loan and bought materials, got some things done by different trades and I learned how to do it all, books and questions. The government came after my company with an audit from previous years and got another 12 grand. The car started costing more money. Bills added up. I started a new and much more demanding round of training on a lower fixed income, with no time to start the side business and the paycheck wasn't keeping up to the bills. My wife and I were stressed to the max. She got eventually got so she was angry when she looked at me.
I had more and more trouble keeping up to what I had to do and the demands of my wife. I got sicker and sicker and couldn't see help. Near the end my wife had control of all my realtionships and was getting sicker trying to control my pn and mb. I just kept denying, kept my nose to the grindstone, until this last time of getting caught.
I need healing, help and a new outlook on life. I need to share with other addicts on a common path so that I can join the human race again.
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Post by unico on Aug 4, 2007 19:04:59 GMT -5
Hi Timoteiy, I am rooting for you, but like you struggling with depression. Just keep fighting each day as it comes. I am sure we will both feel in time the struggle was worth it, even though right now i struggle to see the wood for the trees. Take care.
Unico
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Post by whoami on Aug 4, 2007 20:33:23 GMT -5
Timoteiy, I have just looked through your journal, and it has moved me.
You do need healing, help, and a new outlook on life.
And you ARE sharing with other addicts on a common path...please keep doing this. Please realize by doing this, you ARE becoming part of the human race again.
Even if this SO can relate to your story, and your depression (long standing, like my own) you are rejoining the human race.
I thought the comment from your wife (if you commit suicide, make it look like an accident...) was harsh. I winced. I said harsh things to my SA too. But I never ever wanted him to die. That would have been the ultimate betrayal from him, that I woudn't have survived at the time.
I don't understand your exact situation, finances, etc....but could you posibly look into more medical help for the depression?
The sun is setting here, behind dark clouds but now it is raining on the cornfields below us, and it is beautiful to see. So much color, and life. I hope you can see some beauty soon, in life beyond all this muck.
My best wishes.
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