Depression, or not?

Friends, do not worry for me. It's good that I am able to write this. It shows that I have insights to my symptoms and is resolving them. I am writing them out as a way of therapy to work things through this difficult phase of my life.

At this current moment, I am experiencing symptoms of depression. They are not clinical yet, so I am trying to work on them. As a trained therapist myself, I am very open about sharing my personal problems because I know that's part of carthasis - talking it out to let it go. I know this works well for me, which explains this entry. So friends, just read on, add your comments if need to, but do not text me to ask me how am I.

2 years ago, I made a decision to get married. I'd always wanted to marry, set up a family, and play a supportive role to my husband and children. The sad thing was, like many others, I went with the flow and married the man who was there at that time. I never had the "he's the one" feeling, but thought marriage was a natural progression since we'd been together for years. Unfortunately for me, during courtship, I never really allowed myself to be who I was, constantly shaping myself to suit him. I started losing my own identity, made fewer decisions in life (he always wanted to make decisions and would belittle all those decisions I made. So I slowly relinguished all duties of making decisions to him), and would be constantly be fearful of him, constantly looking to him for decisions. Don't ask me why, I don't know. Incidents in our relationship moulded me and conditioned to be who I was.

Friends who know me since young would have fallen flat when they read this. I was always known to be the 'leader of the pack', in school or at work. Colleagues made comments that I am totally different when I am with him. Even when there were blatant signals prior to the wedding that he wasn't the one, I never picked them up and blindly went on with the wedding.

I never felt proud to be called Mrs Goh. When I was to sign the Marriage Certificate, I paused and had to be prompted to sign. I still remember once when I got the curtain makers to our place, I was totally embarrassed by his poor attitude towards me and the curtain makers when I asked him for opinions on the colours. He simply wasn't involved.

We grew further apart when I changed job and started to manage people and a business. I felt empowered once more and found myself. I started to be who I was again. He felt that I'd changed, and spoke like a boss (all who knows me know I speak like that). Somehow he couldn't really accept it I think. We got entrenched into our own work and spent less time with each other.

So fast forward to a few months back when he suggested a separation and I moved into the study room. Since then I had my little world, no TV yes, but I spent more time online. Just 2 days back, after so long in the market, there is finally an offer for the house. The price is not then perfect one, but instead of delaying the pain of staying under one roof as strangers, I thought it would be better to stay separately. As I needed to get rid of this house before I buy the second one under the new government ruling, I had more urgency to sell the place.

He made things difficult at first, refusing to sign the option and insisted on seeing a lawyer before he act. He text series of messages to me, stressed me out with his threats of digging all past statements to determine all his past financial contributions for the settlement of this property to let me know how difficult it would be should I not sell to him at his preferred price. He only relented the following morning when he realized I was going ahead to sell the property and not taken in by his threats.

So after the agent came and left with the signed option, he started telling me which are the items he would move away. At that point, a strong sense of sadness engulfed me. Although most of these items were bought based on his decisions, we had, after all, been out together buying them. The carpet and sofa were bought just less than a year ago for the Chinese New Year.

It will not be fair to say we never have happy moments together. We were happier before the wedding. Things got taken for granted after "I Do". Little effort was spent to rebuild the feeling and communication. And also, we'd changed along the way. Our priorities shifted once more. For him, there was no urgency to plan for a family like all other couples do (when to start family, or discussing issues which may affect the family, etc). For me, since he wasn't interested in building a family, I'd spend my waking time building a career. So what good would a marriage be for us?

I never thought I would be so affected by this. I thought I would be objective and cool about this issue and end the marriage without emotions. I realize I can't. I cannot use the way I handle work to handle personal matters. Like what a friend told me, I can't always be so absolute and use black and white all the time (but what he doesn't know is that I have to resort to this logical way to resolve issues because they are more easily resolved this way).

Frankly I'm just fearful of what will happen 3 months later. I now urgently need to find a place to move into. I do not have enough money to buy a house until the settlement comes in. I'm afraid of the uncertainties that life is going to throw at me. I am also getting disillusioned in relationships because things may not work out in the end. I am feeling very insecure now.

Nonethless, I did fairly well yesterday coping with this, until night time. Hopefully today I can do even better.