It’s Thursday, 5th January 2023, just 5 days before my 40th Birthday and I feel like crap. It really hasn’t helped that I’ve been ill since New Years Day, with a fever, a cold and cough. I think everyone I know has had it at some point over the holiday period, it’s the second virus I’ve picked up in quick succession over the period although I can’t complain, it didn’t interfere with Christmas or New Year’s Eve so I can count myself lucky.
I’ve been off sick since October with depression, the third time in the last couple of years I’ve had a long spell off. I don’t know what’s going to happen with my job. I’ve emailed them and been as completely honest as I can about the way I feel and I had hoped to have some kind of face to face meeting with them after my birthday to discuss a return to work and maybe a different role for a while as my confidence is shattered and my concentration fleeting. I’ve had no response at all though so who knows what will happen.
To be honest, I’m all out of plans and ideas. Back in November I was pretty sure I was going to end this shit on Monday 9th January, the day before my 40th. I was going to buy a rebreather mask, pure nitrogen tank and regulator then I’d drive away somewhere quiet and asphyxiate myself with the gas but I got confused about which was the right kind of regulator to release the gas at the right flow rate. Gas canisters are threaded so you can’t fit an oxygen regulator on a nitrogen canister, or maybe that was just the excuse I gave myself for my own cowardice. I’d already written my suicide note but stopped before all the other planning I needed to do.
I still have that same suicidal urge every day. I lack energy. I lack will to do anything. I lack drive. I wish I had the guts it takes to commit suicide. People don’t realise how hard it is, how many instincts you have to override to make it happen. It’s not easy. Perhaps if I lived in a different country with easy access to lethal weapons it would be different. Perhaps I need to learn how to be more impulsive. I don’t really see much point in prolonging this existence anymore right now. I don’t want to hurt people that care about me but you can’t just live for other people, you have to have a reason to live yourself.
My auntie’s death knocked me over. It was the way she died, it really wasn’t pleasant and I don’t want that for myself. I don’t want to die slowly in a hospital. I mean, it wouldn’t be the same for me anyway, I have no children that will mourn me and that’s a good thing.
My marriage lies in ruins. We’re both pretending it isn’t but it’s dead. Neither of us even acknowledged our 20 year anniversary. I felt abandoned when my aunty was dying, just like my mum was when her parents died. I tried to tell her but she either doesn’t care or just doesn’t know how to deal with it.
Since then she’s just got more and more distant, filling up her time with tiktok, friends, anyone so long as it’s not me. I don’t blame her, I’m not exactly fun to be with anymore. I’m not the same confident, intelligent, funny and kind man she married.
Every holiday she gets, she fills up everyday to spend as little time with me as possible. I know this sounds like I’m some kind of controlling arsehole not wanting her to have friends or a life of her own but it’s not like that. I’ve never stopped her or even wanted to stop her from doing things with her friends, in fact I’ve always been willing to support her, give her lifts, pick her up and she has been the same with me but this is different now. It’s been every night this week and even when she gets in she doesn’t come up to see me, it’s like she’s waiting, hoping I’m going to be asleep already. It’s not a marriage anymore, it’s a sham. There’s no love. There’s no genuine affection. She just goes through the motions pretending but I know the difference.
It’s not all her fault. I’m not easy to deal with when I’m down and I think she’s just got to the point where she doesn’t care anymore and is planning for a life without me. Her mum isn’t well either and that isn’t easy for her, they’re quite close. I know what that feels like.
I just don’t know what to do or how to confront her about it. The miscarriage changed everything. That’s when the drift started to happen. Before that we were as close as we had ever been. She just grieved in her own way and made new friends and I dealt with it in my way but now we’re just just strangers that happen to live in the same house, not married partners. Even when she’s with me I still feel lonely because she’s never really there, she always has her headphones in, she never watches anything with me, she never does anything with me and it feels like we’re only together for convenience because neither of us can afford to separate.
I don’t want to lose her, 20 years is an awful long time to throw away. I’ve been with her for more of my life than I haven’t. I don’t know how to salvage any of this or even if it is salvageable. I can’t be the rescuer anymore. I can’t be the one picking up the pieces of other people. This time I need rescuing. I’m out of answers and out of hope. My shattered heart lies in a thousand pieces. I can’t put it back together myself.
Rant Over 