Chronically Lost and Confused

I, like most people here, am looking for answers that we all know don’t exist.  Despite that we all continue, we push on with blind faith, hoping, wishing, praying that the answers will just suddenly appear before us.  But I have lost my faith and hope and my wishes and prayers go without response.

I am now 45, and I have been struggling with depression ever since I was 17.  It has been a long and exhausting trip.  It has caused me to lose all of my friends, resulted in me being hospitalized for a total of 3 months between high school and college.    And I have obviously caused my family tremendous stress.  I have had several periods of strength, I worked my way through college, professional school, business school, got married and I have a daughter.  We have lived a privileged life on many counts and I am not the product of a split or abusive childhood.  Result…….even more confusion.

The very thing I have worked so hard to avoid I have somehow created.  I have tried to remove entangling alliances from every aspect f my life.  Despite this I married, became a father and own a large business with my wife.  The result, the creation of massive obligations and commitments.  Every winter when business slows, I crash.  I fall into a deep hole for weeks to months.  I have never been this deep though.  I get to work, do my work, and then find any and every excuse to come home and sleep. I am unproductive.  My wife knows what I am doing but has no clue as to why.  She does not understand depression.  She is the antithesis of the depressed.  In many ways I think she is the reason I am still around.

I spend quite a bit of time online looking for these answers, I peruse sites like best gore, etc. in secret.  I preoccupy myself with self doubt and my own death.  I have access to just about every medication known to man through my profession.  It would be simple yet I don’t do it.  My wife doesn’t deserve that but most importantly my daughter.  At 17, I don’t want her to be that kid who’s father killed himself.  She is a wonderful kid, smart and quite the athlete.  She is looking forward to going to college.  It scares me though, not my daughter but for me.  She has been my strength and now she is going to leave, to start her own life.

What is a man to do when he cannot end it but dreams about it, does not have the strength anymore to pull himself together and is just beaten down and tired.  I just want peace and quiet…….eternal rest.