I mentioned once (either here or to someone I was talking to…I can’t remember now) that when I’m depressed I get annoyed because I can’t describe what is bugging me, or exactly how I feel without defaulting to using the broad term “depressed.”
Along those same lines I’ve noticed lately that while I struggle with issues of feeling disrespected or disregarded I have a similar feeling.
Yes, it bugs me to no end that I feel disrespected by the people around (which happens a lot, because respect is one of my personal little hangups), but I feel like if I were to get the respect I feel like I want, I would still have most or all of the pain I relate to being disrespected.
So in my mind I’m trying to compartmentalize so I can break things down and think about them, and I think I should disassociate my issues surrounding respect with my current pain. I try to see the respect thing as a separate issue that seems more immediate or urgent that seems related, but is not. Which I think is a logical thing to do given my guess that things would not improve if I received whatever respect I was looking for at any given time.
But, I always come back to that one issue in my brain. I play out little scenarios where I can weasel what I’m looking for out of people, or I lace into someone who is pissing me off. Only to later feel like that would play out in real life and leave me empty. And in my brain though I predict that would happen, I still can’t rid myself of the pain and anger related to the respect issue.
So, I go other ways looking for other answers. Forgiveness, praying more, praying in tongues, praying the psalms, reading more of the Bible, paying more attention to my wife, paying less attention to my wife, reading other fun books, learning new programming languages, working harder, working lazier, thanking God for what is doing through the pain, yelling at God because this generally sucks and I’m tired of it, drinking more, not drinking at all for weeks, etc, etc. With little to no relief from this nagging issue of respect.
So, I usually decide that it is best if I put my nose to the grind-stone, keep working hard to get what needs to be done now done, and I try to see where this is going and if it is a time issue.
And when people ask me how I feel during one of these times, and I don’t feel like brushing them off, I still have to default to telling them I’m “depressed.”