I was talking to my therapist this morning.  I said “My family is unhappy.  My wife is unhappy.  My son is unhappy.”  In a quiet voice I followed that with, “and I’m unhappy”.  He had to get his hearing aids because he heard the first two statements but missed the third and thought maybe he just hadn’t heard it.  He got it the second time.

The three of us had a bit of trouble last night and I had been thinking about it on the trip to his office.  Why is everyone unhappy?

Before I get to that I want to mention the run in I had with a policeman this morning.  I was traveling down a main road that had breakdown lanes on each side.  I came to a point where there were trucks and backhoes working in the one on my side.  And of course there was the obligatory policeman.  He had stopped my lane of traffic so that trucks could move and men could sweep the street.  He was standing in the lane for oncoming traffic and he was signaling those cars to pass behind him in their breakdown lane.  This would seem that we would then have room to drive down a short distance on the lane he was standing in but we had to wait.

When he decided we could go he stepped into our lane and waved the cars on.  The oncoming cars were still traveling the breakdown lane so those in front of me pulled into the oncoming lane so they wouldn’t hit him.  As they passed him he began to scream, jump up and down, and point with both hands towards the lane he was standing in.

“Morons!  You are supposed to be driving in this lane!!  THIS LANE, IDIOTS!!”

After the first 3 cars passed him he jumped into the oncoming lane in front of me…good thing I was going slowly.

“Why are you following those morons??  Move over into that lane!” he said again pointing downwards with both hands.

I pulled my car into the correct lane and started to pass him.  I thanked him for directing me but that seemed to set him off more.

“You are a MORON for following THEM!!”

I responded “You’re a moron”.  Luckily my windows were closed.  When I thought about it later I wondered who the bigger moron was, us, or the person leading us.

I bring this story up because of the fact that I went from 0 to 60 in anger when this man yelled at me and called me a moron.  I certainly spent enough time worrying about him rather than about my family’s and my issues.  When I arrived at my therapist’s office I told him the story.  I brought up the question of depression again; am I depressed?  He doesn’t see it; he has told me this many times before.  I’ve also gone to doctors and they say the same thing; basically that I am sad, unhappy, and down in the dumps but I am not clinically depressed and the anger is a result of this.

I have a lot of things on my plate right now: no job, an 8 year old son with bipolar disorder, pdd/nos, and odd, and a wife with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.  The doctors believe once I get everything straightened out my mood will shift.  This is known as nonclinical depression.

On the other hand my wife has clinical depression.  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) describes this as feeling sad, helpless, and hopeless.  She was taking medication for it but stopped when she became pregnant with Max.  After he was born she found that she couldn’t start taking it again because she was now getting a reaction from it.  She has tried many things since but nothing has helped.

And then there is Max; with his diagnoses and living with two parents who are unhappy what is a boy to do?  He already feels very different from other kids.  He has mood swings that bother him.  He’s constantly taking medicine that he doesn’t like.  And he has two parents that are very unhappy.  Even though they try to hide their feelings it still affects him.  As a result he is very unhappy and possibly depressed.

I would say that individually we are three depressed people but I find that combining us together is more than the sum of its parts.  We work off each other and things tend to get worse.  We become 3 times 3 times 3 depressed or depressed cubed.

What can we do about this?  Well, we are all in therapy separately.  We also have a family therapist.  My wife and I are looking for marriage counseling because as she said this morning we don’t want to divorce we just want to stop being unhappy.  I continue looking for work.  She is still looking for some medication that will provide relief while not killing her. And we both are continuing to find the best help for Max