A Really Nice Man :(

All weekend I couldn’t stop the mantra in my head, “It should have been Chris. It should have been Chris. It should have been Chris.”

Self esteem is something I never really pay attention to until it disappears and it disappeared this past week, almost totally. I hated myself. H A T E D. My guess is that this man I met, and the way I feel about him, is causing me a tremendous amount of stress and grief mixed together. I like him a lot. He’s got the stuff I could fall in love with. He’s vulnerable, sweet, talkative, kind, easy-going.

I need to train myself to live in the present moment and I need to remind myself that this man may not be the next “one.” We have fun. He’s nice. I’m nice. That doesn’t mean this will amount to more than a hill of beans.

What if he finds out I’m depressed? What if he knew that I have cried every single night for the past week? Would he believe me if I told him that despite the fact that I cry, take an antidepressant and suffer from anxiety, that I’m really mostly happy? What if I can never prove that? What if he just doesn’t know what grief is like? He does, though. He lost his father, brother and sister. He knows. I just have to breathe and know that.

He knows about Chris. We talked at length about him on our first date. I wasn’t going to but he really wanted to know and he was so great about the whole thing, asking questions, relaying like experiences of his own, being compassionate and complimentary about how I seem to be handling it all. He’s a good guy. I just hope he can be patient. I think he can be.

I ran 5 miles this evening. Maybe I’m not really depressed. Maybe I just have my depressive episodes. Usually they occur when I’m alone and that’s a good thing. That’s what I need.

This is hard.