A Step to a Better Feeling Life

Over the last several months I have complained on my blog about feeling depressed and anxious so much of the time.  There is of course the obvious reason that I have felt like this - the situation I created with Shelly and how our relationship and engagement came to an end.  To this day I still feel very bad about the whole situation.  I feel badly from two perspectives.  First, and the most important reason I feel badly is because I ruined our relationship.  I own what I did and understand it was me who caused the end our relationship.  Then there is the purely selfish reasons that I feel badly - the depression, the anxiety, etc, etc.

The only way I can every correct the problems I caused is to first stand on my own and resolve my own feelings of anxiety and depression.  I can never fix anything with Shelly if I am pursuing her just to fill the feelings I have.  I need to be able to pursue her without needing anything from her - just desiring her for her.

I need to start with small steps to correct my own feelings.  Today I began to understand one of the reason I feel so much anxiety by the loss of Shelly.  I feel adrift.  I feel abandoned.  Yes - there is probably some kind of trauma that happened to me when I was a kid that makes me have some kind of abandonment issue.  I really couldn't tell you - but there was something probably there.

As I thought about the situation this morning I realized that only I can change my own feelings.  So I need to take actions to change my feelings and rid myself of the anxiety and depression.  This isn't going to sound like much, but I realized one of the reasons I feel so anxious, stressed and depressed (which can feed into the abandonment feeling) is that I live in a state of pretty significant chaos.  The chaos has many different sources.  A primary source is just the situation I have found myself in life - single parent with a child who is difficult to parent.  There really isn't too much I can do about that situation other than constantly work with Zack so he is easier to parent.  And then I need to make sure I have mourned the loss of Patty.  I discovered this fall that I had not totally gotten that out of my system.

A secondary reason I live in a state of chaos is that I am organizationally challenged and I have so much clutter in my house.  I have done a ton to clean up and improve the situation but there is still clutter.  When I wake up in the morning and I am in a disorganized bedroom and then come down to a disorganized kitchen/family room, the level of stress in me immediately shoots through the roof.  So a very simple step that I am going to take to bring more calmness and tranquility into my life is a very simple one.  Every night before I go to bed, I am going to make sure that my bedroom and kitchen/family room are clean.  I know this seems really, really stupid - but I think it is going to go miles to reduce the level of anxiety I feel which is going to make me a better parent and make me be able to start addressing some of the more route causes of the pain I created between Shelly and me.

OK - I know now that most people have read that you think I am a total and complete whack job and potentially I am.  But in general I think any change right now for the positive is a good thing.  I truly believe that 2011 is going to be a very good year for me, Zack and hopefully others who are important to me.  This January marks the five year anniversary as to when so many of the troubles began.  Patty became sick in earnest in January of 2006 though she won't be diagnosed with leukemia for another 8 months.  So it has now been a half a decade since this stuff began.  It is a good time to final put it behind me!

It has been snowing constantly here in Denver since early this morning.  There are probably 5 - 7 inches of snow in my backyard at this point and it is supposed to snow until sometime tomorrow.  Despite the weather Zack and I got out for breakfast with Tim, Celinde, Cole and one of Cole's friends.  Nothing too fancy just breakfast at the Egg and I as an early celebration of my birthday as the other Kromer's will be up in the mountains for my b-day next weekend.

After that Zack and I did some shopping and then came home to an entire day of work.  I spent about 4 hours this afternoon and evening doing work for my job.  Zack had some homework to do so he sat next to me and worked on that.  Zack has been in the midst of a lot of fear and anxiety over the last 2 weeks.  I think he made some good strides on handling it today.  He read a book called "Talking Back to OCD" and then we talked about it for a good long time.  I think it helped him a good bit.

I watched most of the football games that were played today.  I was very disappointed that the Ravens won as now the Steelers have to play them again - boo!!!  Oh well - I have faith in the Steelers - I think that they can beat them!

I hope everyone had a great weekend and if you are in the Denver area I hope you are handling the snow and cold well.

Thanks and peace to all! ~J.

FYSRD!