I haven't journaled in a while but today i thought i would try again.  Life has been up and down.  i have good and bad days like all of us do.  It seems that over the past few days they have all been bad again.  I feel as though my family hates me, my wife hates me, etc.  I am planning on moving out and moving to another town and leaving my family to do as they will without me.  I think they will be better off.  no one should have to endure what I put them through.  That is what bottom line reality is.  my 16 year old son does not want to have anythng to do with me because i have hurt him so badly.  i have poured my life and soul into him since he was adopted at the age of 6 and it destroys me.   but that is just the life of a bipolar individual.  i destory relationships.  that is what i do best.  i which they had a job for that, i wold be very good at it.

Just last week my wife's brother and his wife had they first child and it was such a wonderful experience.  The family was all there, everyone was so excited to see the baby come, everyonewanted to see her, everyone wanted to hold her, everyone wanted to be there.  In shart contrast, there was my birthday today.  First, all I have wanted to do for the past three day is just die.  My life is getting worse by the day.  On the day before my birthday, I received a certified letter from the licensing board for my education credentials stating that I was under investigation for alleged misconduct and that was being placed on my certificate.  Basically that means, I won't be getting a job in education.  I have spend 15 years working in education 10 years preparing for education, and now I can't work in education.  I don't know what I am going to do.  Anyway, back to the b-day. I did not even want to get out of bed.  I did not roll out of bed until my wife woke me up at 12:15 p.m.  Even then I cried for about 20 minutes.  My wife came back into the room and said my children were wanting to go out and eat and I yelled at her and said I don't want to go out and eat.  She left crying.  I don't know what really happend next, but then my children came into the bedroom with my favorite food from Sonic.  That made me smile and then they brought me the gifts they had bought for me.  they were all very thoughtful gifts.  The kids spent the whole day with me even though I did not even get out of the house.  One of my children bought me a DVD set of Law and Order SVU which is one of my favorite tv shows.  My daughter made me a card that just made me cry and cry as well.  I left throughout the day to just go to my room and cry.  It seems that was all I could do all day long was cry and weep.  There is so much stress between my wife and I.  I try to be hopeful, but i just doesn't work for me.  Hope seems so far away.  Happiness seems so far away.  I hate myself.  I don't deserve such a wonderful spouse and children.  They deserve a father that can do so much more for them than I can.  God make a mistake on me......

Let me start by saying...I HATE COUNSELING!!!  I get so tired of driving an hour one way spending $30 a session and never really getting anything out of it.  Or so it seems to me.  Iam really upset with my wife again today.  She made a big parenting choice without even consulting me and I was very hurt by it and she does not even seem to think it was a big deal at all and I am very angry about it.  So now she is just ignoring me.  She has her step sister and her boyfriend her and so it is easy for her to ignore me.  She has made dinner for everyone and I have been reading in the bedroom and she did not even ask if I would like to join them for dinner.  That hurt as well.  My oldest son who is 17 went out last night, got drunk, then my wife found him this afternoon trying to have sex with his gf on our bed in our room, and then he was late to work.  Don't know what to do about that.

My daughter got to come home from boot camp today.  She is doing well.  She has had four weekend visits and they have gone well so I am very excited.  My other two sons have both secured summer jobs and are doing very well.

Well, that all the info for today, we will see how things go.

I went to my regular medical doctor yesterday found out that some of my blood pressure medication that I take to protect my kidneys from my diabetes is causing low blood pressure which could also bemaking my depression worse.  Great!  My blood pressure was 79 / 54.  That is probably why i want to sleep all the time and so unmotivated to do anything.  So the doctor made a change and I hope that it will help.  I have not noticed any real change yet today.

Also today, my wife and I got into a pretty big argument where in a rage she said some very hurtful things that I am having a very hard time forgiving.  She referred to my depression, my lack of an ability to find a job, my being unmotivated, and some other very hurtful things.  All I could do was cry and she felt that I was crying just to manipulate her.  She has later apologized, but I am truly having a hard time forgiving because it hurt so badly.  I just really hurt.  This is the first time in about six weeks and since our turning point together that we have had this kind of interaction.  I am not sure what to think, feel, or even do at this point.

Of course, my kids are still acting like teenagers, but now school is out, and that makes the food bill just skyrocket, but the stress of monitoring them just grows and for me the fear and the worry just multiplies.

This thing called recovery is not so easy.  I find that taking care of myself is much harder than i thought it would be.  Also, dealing with people and judgement is overwhelming me.  I get easily overwhelmed which in turn overwhelms the family very easily.  There is a very delicate balance going on and it is so easy to disrupt it.

I keep telling myself that not finding a job will be okay and that we will find a way to live.  And I guess that is true.  But the bottom line and that I inside of myself won't be okay if I don't get a job.  I as a man will not be ok.  I have spent years of education and 15 years of experience to do what I do now and i won't be ok as a person if I am not able to do what I have been doing.  I just won't and I am scared to death of that happening right now that I can keep my brain focused for any length of time.  My goal has been to apply for one job a day since the process is so lengthy, but I think i am going to have to really spend most of my days looking into jobs and really searching for jobs and that is just to get some leads, that does not really ensure any possibilities at all.  that is what scares me the most.

Well, that is all I have for tonight.

I still don't know what i am doing really these days.  I am just stumbling through life right now.  My meds change has helped.  There is so much stress in my life.  Job stressand not having one is so difficult the deal with -- almost impossible --always overwhelming for everyone.  Teens are difficult because their life is in turmoil more than normal.  Wife is behaving emotionally because of the job, and then there is me who is behaving irrationally because i don't even know who I am without my job and the prospects are ZERO right now.  I am so bummed out.  I can't even get started looking again.  What is wrong with me?  Why am I so bad?  Why I am so wrong?  What is so terrible about me?  Why am I such an awful person?  I am heartbroken.  I am in so much emotional pain I can't even begin to describe it.  I hate my life.  i want things to change.  Why won't they change?  What do I need to do to change things?  Someone please answer my questions?  What do i need to do?  I will do it.  Please tell me because i am obviously not smart enough to figure this out on my own.  I DON'T WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. 

oh well...im not worthy enough to be forgiven of anything that i have done in the past anyway.  i deserve judgement and casting of stones.  maybe everyone would be happier if they could publically stone me!!! 

Nothing ever seems to improve.  I seem to be swimming in the same sewer of problems and nothing I do ever seems to help me move on with something positive in life.  There is always somethingthere to pull me back into the sewer of what is my life.  There is no purpose for my life.  There is no way that God could use my wreck of a life to help anyone.  In just a few months I won't even be able to afford food for me or my family.  Family--it won't be long before they will give up on me.  It is only a matter of time.  The stress is overwhelming them as well.  My counselor would say, what choices do you have now?  Well, I can do the next right thing.  The only problem is I don't know what is right and what is wrong.  I don't know which way is up or down anymore.  I have spent the whole day in bed crying today because I received some more very upsetting news that just blew the small amount of ego strength that I had built up over the past few weeks away.  Nothing ever really changes.  Life sucks.  I should just quit having faith that there is something other than just crap out there for me.  Everyone says suicide is selfish but if anyone had any conception of the way I have felt and am feeling, they would understand that living this life is worse than anything else and that there is no hope of things getting any better.  Just plain hoplelessness.  Everyone else would be better off without the pathetic, jobless, hopeless, loser known as scott.  What is the point anymore.................

To all my friends and all of those who have sent encouraging messages, a sincere THANK YOU.  It is your words that are keeping me going day by day.  It is amazing how words of encouragementhelp so very much.  I know that things take time, but when do things start to change.  Someone told me to take it five minutes at a time.  Great idea.  But then i could get overwhelmed in each five minute segments.  There are just so many things falling apart in my life right now.  There is not one aspect of my life that is not struggling.  My marriage, my children, my job, who I am, my authentic self, being bi-polar, depression, PTSD, legal issues, and on and on.  I know everyone must get sick of hearing me bitch all the time.  Everyone else has their problems as well. I am taking my meds, I am going to counseling, I am using my containment skills, I am doing everything I know to do and it is still more than I can handle at moments.  My wife is tired of me crying all the time.  My children are tired of me trying to talk to them all the time, my wife is tried of me watching tv to distract.  I don't know how to deal. 

 I am totally fearful today.  Today is memorial day and we have planned a family outing to eat and to a movie.  My children are 17, 16, 15, and just turned 13 so they are not to thrilled to go with mom and dad.  I need this because I think they are embarassed to be seen with me.  I am afraid of them fighting with mom, not agreeing, texting on their phones and not interacting wtih me, still ignoring me, and all.  I am afraid this may turn out terrible.  I am just plain scared.  I have a little hope it will go well.  I pray it will go well.

Ok, well, I will quit bitching for today and leave with my family.  Thanks everyone.

Sometimes I wonder if "normal" people have as many problems as I seem to have or if I just don't deal with them as well.  Maybe I just become so much more overwhelmed with them thanothers do?  Who really knows.  All I know is that I am trying to find a job in education and I am getting so very frustrated.  I have been in education for 15 years not.  I have been a teacher for 6 years and a principal for 7.  I am a good educator, but since my hospitalization and the onset of my depression and my labels of reactive attachment disorder, bi polar disorder, PTSD, etc., finding a job has been almost impossible.  I have great credentials, but because of my "illness" they will not even look at my resume or my credentials.  i don't want to have to move my family again.  We seem to have to move all the time and I don't want to do that to my children again.  They are in high school now and it would devestate them.  My illness has been hard enough on the family.  If I don't get a job, i don't know how we are going to be able to live.  We won't even be able to buy food or make our house payment.  I just don't know.  i am getting so discouraged.  I start having my depressing thoughts that maybe my family would be better off without me.  It frustrates me to no end.  It seems that everyone is so judgemental.  I have tried to look into other fields, but I would have to start at entry level, and that is frustrating from the pay side of things.  Also, I have 15 years of retirement built up into the education retirement side and I would have to lose a percentage of that money if I took it out and put it somewhere else.  I don't know.  Someone should just shoot me and put me out of my misery........   later.

I had a psych doctor's visit today.  It is always interesting to me that when i visit with my psych doctor, I only see him for about 10 minutes and then I am on my way.  I have been throughso many changes in the past few months that I feel like I have been on a roller coaster.  Since I have been back from my most recent hospitilization my meds had been working pretty well.  The doctors there had added a mood stablizer that is really working well.  My wife reports that I am not cycling like I was in the past, I am not as moody, and that I am not near as angry as I was in the past.  Therapy while hospitalized helped a lot with the anger.  However, I have over the past three weeks began to feel like suicide is the answer again.  My life circumstances have been very difficult with almost losing my marriage, hurting my children emotionally and having to deal with that now, child in boot camp, losing my job, trying to find another job, financial stress, yada, yada, yada.  He upped my Effexor but stated it might cause problems with my mood swings.  I am worried about that because my marriage is so fragile right now.  i don't really know what I am saying except that I am scared and fearful of any changes in my life.  Life is so scary right now.  I do believe in God and I was listening to a Christian radio station today on the way to the doctor and there was a statement that made me really think.  "No matter who we are and what we have done, we all come to the same cross."  That really helped me deal in my own way.  Again, I am just rambling, but I will write it as if I believe it and that is that I can overcome.  I can get through this.

It has been a hard couple of weeks for me.  I am really struggling with my depression and PTSD since my hospitalization about a month ago.  I feel I am making progress but it is slow and my family is becoming very frustrated with me.  I have not been able to find a job and everytime I start working on it I get so overwhelmed all I can do is cry or isolate myself.  This weekend my son had a date with a senior to her senior prom.  I was so proud of him, he looked so very handsome, but I still feel that he is rejecting me.  He won't talk to me about the event.  He talks to his mom about what his needs are.  I think he is embarassed of me.  I ask him if he is embarassed of me and of course he says no, but his actions act as if he is.  His date has a baby that is so adorable.  He is about 9 months old.  She said that we could baby sit him on the night of prom.  Well when it was time, she said he was sick or something and she did not want us to baby sit him.  He came to when we were taking pictures, and he did not seem sick at all.  He was taking pictures, laughing, etc.  I don't think she or Dustin wanted him over with me.  I don't know what to do.  My counselor says it will take time.  I don't think my heart can take it much longer.  I love my son so much, but he is hurting me so much.  I don't know, maybe I am just perceiving things that are not there, but they sure seem like they are to me and it hurts so badly.    They are a cute couple.  They are not dating at this point.  He has a different girlfriend, or so that's what he tells me sometime ago.  I am not really sure.  Again, he does not really tell me anything.  He does not trust me with any information. 

Well, i tried this  yesterday and lost my thoughts.  As I was writing about before, my therapist states that journaling is a good way to have inner dialogue with myself about how I am feelingand getting in touch with my emotions.  Right now I am having a lot of anxiety and fear about what is going on in my life.  I have recently been hospitalized and I feel very ashamed about that and feel that people in my small community are very judgemental about that.  I have been placed on administrative leave from my job that I loved very deeply and I fear of getting a phone call or a letter at any moment that will tell me that I am terminated and then i will not have a way to support my family of four children and a wife.  It is paralyzing fear.  When I began to think about these items, my mind begins to race, I can't focus on one thing at once, and so it truly becomes panic and all I can do is find someway to disrupt my thought process by watching television, doing the dishes, cleaning house, or going to bed.  I can't seem to get out of the house because when I do, if someone looks at me, I feel overwhelmed by shame and just want to rush home and get back into bed.    What am I going to do?  I have to get out of this pattern!  I am going to see my therapist today.  I hope that he can help me.  When I left the hospital I had so much hope, so many skills, but now that i am five days home back in the same community away from the hospital, the support system of the hospital, it seems to be all falling apart and i am not dealing with it well.  I am worried and scared.  Fearful.  I am very fearful.  My wife does not seem to understand that answering the phone and getting the mail is a hard task for me the past few days.  Things will get better.  I know they will.