I find myself asking questions a lot lately.  I am wondering who I am. When I speak, I say things other people have said, and I am just a copycat.  Thats me.  I dont know who I am, I am a composite of all those people I have been around all these years.  Not thinking on my own, not speaking on my own.  Just a series of  phrases borrowed from others, repeated as needed, usually correct, but sometimes not. 

I take that behavior with me everywhere.  Work, home, social events.  I do not converse, I repeat something I heard someone else  say to get get conversations started and to carry on.  I hid behide what others say to make me feel save and protected. 

What I do not understand is what I am afraid of.  Is it loneliness?  Heartache? Other people? Rejection?  I dont know.  Still sorting that out. 

I need to figure out a way to be me.  To express me and not all those other peoples thoughts and ideas.  Where am I?  Who am I?  How do I do this?  Am I just the sum of my parts and do I add up to something worse or good, or average? 

Its been almost a year now since I learned that the feelings I have been harboring inside are known as depression.  For better than 30 years now, I have felt at odds with the world, after having a good childhood, with loving parents.  How I got to this point, I still am trying to sort out, but hopefully, getting out of my head and onto the screen might help, or so my therapist(s) have said.

It all came to a head in late September 2010.  A bad situation at work, the public office I am in charge of, came under attack by people I thought of as friends.  I thought I had done my homework, but alas, I had only managed to fool myself.  Somehow, through the mess, I managed to reach down deep inside and pull things together just enough to save the office and the people there, many of whom I have worked with for 15 or more years.  And, with that, I began the noticable decent into hell.  Well, at least a public sort of hell.

One major breakdown later, I still have a job, but life has changed. Through caring therapists and doctors, and some meds, I was able to come back to something of a normal life, but its there, the past, something I think about every minute or two.   I am no longer "in charge."  People treat me differently, as if I am made of china. I am back to my previous position, where I have excelled, but I feel as if I am a failure.  My spouse, who's own father has suffered through years of neglected mental illness visible to anyone who visits with him, has begun treating me differently, in ways I cannot quite describe today.  But in perhaps the only positive, I have developed a better, closer relationship to our three children. 

As mentioned, I am hoping this blog will help me to clear my head, and maybe help someone else before they begin their own personal trip to hell.