68,000 Miles

My son turned 8 two weeks ago, and I was there in Maine to be with him, but it's taken me two weeks and more upheaval to be able to sit down and write about it. It was a typically complicated weekend by my standards, as it involved both his birthday and my cousin's wedding in New Jersey the next day. Thus, my miles were on the ground this time--I drove up and back. On the way, my wife and stepdaughter flew up from Atlanta to Manchester on Thursday night, where I picked them up, then we drove on to Maine to collect my kids for half of the weekend. We spent two days in Maine, drove to Connecticut, spent the night there, drove to New Jersey for the wedding on Sunday morning, then I dropped them at Newark Airport and drove back to Maryland.

Travel stress aside it was largely a great experience. It was the first time since New Years' that my whole family of choice (me, my kids, wife, stepdaughter) was all together at once, and we had a blast. We went swimming in the hotel pool for the afternoon, and then had dinner at a Japanese hibachi place on Friday night, which was great aside from my 4.5 year old daughter being scared of the flames shooting into the air. On Saturday I did the karate and dance routine for my kids then had a smaller than expected (more on that in a moment) birthday party at Joker's, where the kids got to be kids for a couple of hours. And then it was over, just like that. Poof, and back on the road.

The party was the very definition of bittersweet. Back in January I had asked my son to make a list of everyone he wanted to come to the party and then I talked with his mother and told her that I wanted to have one big party for him and that she was welcome to come. She agreed and even said that she would bring the cake. I then made a critical error: I asked her to handle the invitations, as she lives there and would be much more able to distribute them. I'm not exactly sure what happened over the next few weeks, but the end result was that only one of his friends RSVPed and that, a few days before the event, my ex told me that she wasn't coming. I asked her why and she told me that she was doing her own party the day after mine. I've learned my lesson.

Now it's been two weeks since I've seen my kids and it will be another two weeks until I see them again, and it's probably been the two worst weeks of my life. My father's illness has gotten worse, and I've become certain that he will be dead soon. Meanwhile, my brother came back with my parents from the wedding so he could be around to help take care of my dad so my mom could fly out to Arizona to retrieve my 93-year old grandmother. It was a very, very long few days with my brother in the house, as he basically won't even talk to me, for reasons that I don't understand. And then my mom returned with my grandmother, who is suffering from short-term memory loss and is nearly blind and deaf, and she wants to die too.

By last weekend here was the score: living in a nursing home/hospice, taking care of my invalid father, putting up with my martyr mother, facing a hellacious commute, having no space to myself. My wife did come up for a few days with her daughter and niece for their Spring Break, but it was of little comfort to me. By the time she went back to Atlanta, I had fallen into the deepest depression of my life. I couldn't get out of bed in the morning and only went to work two days last week. I pondered checking myself into a mental hospital but decided against it. I did find a counselor and am again in therapy, and I've resumed taking an antidepressant. But even after all of that the past two days got unbearable. I skipped work on Friday and spent most of the past 48 hours hiding out in the basement watching back episodes of Mad Men on Netflix.

Last night I finally decided that I simply needed to get out of there for good. I found a room for rent in a house that's 10 minutes from my office, and I paid for one month and moved in this morning. It's lonely, quiet, and strange here, but at least I'm away from the madness for a while. I don't yet know how long I'm going to stay here, but I've agreed with my wife to at least try this for two weeks to see if it makes it any easier for me to do my job and try to live a decent life. If it's just too much for me then I'm going to quit the job and go back to Atlanta where I'll probably check into some sort of mental health program. If I'm feeling better then we'll rent a place in Virginia and she'll move up in about 6 weeks.

It's an unpleasant and frankly scary time for me, and I'm having a hard time saying that I'll even make the most of it. I have spent about 36 hours with my kids in the past two months, and it can't be an accident that I'm feeling the way I am. I wish I could isolate those feelings from all of the job, family, and financial stress that I'm under, as then I could possibly deal with it. I know it's a bit selfish of me to run out on my parents when things are so dire over there, but I feel like I've done all I can do to help them, and if I try to do any more, I'll end up in a mental hospital. People may joke about stuff like that, but it's not funny to me.

I have never before seriously contemplated seeking that sort of help, and I'm trying one last, desperate move to avoid it. So here I am in this rented room, a stranger in a strange house, where the smell of death and old age won't haunt me all day, and where I don't have to worry about being stuck in traffic for two hours every afternoon. It's not going to solve my problems, but it has already removed two stresses from my life. I hope it works.