Depression - This is my story and this is why I am here

This journey, if that’s the appropriate word for it, started August 31st with a simple phone call. The phone call, quite common with us, came from my wife. Things were difficult between us. She was a partier and due to health reasons I chose not to drink. Back in 2009 I was admitted to the hospital for a condition called atrial fibrillation. Luckily the condition is not life threatening for someone my age but I know that health factors caused it to occur and chose not to drink as it was a trigger. I was around 300 pounds at that point and didn’t include working out as a part of my daily routine. We fought a lot, as most couples do, and things were definitely on the downhill slope with our marriage. The call, routine as it seemed, would change my life forever. I’m sure she had been mulling this for a while but at 11:15am that day she asked me for a divorce. She had mentioned it before but I knew her well enough that this time she actually meant it. That day was quite possibly one of the most difficult days of my life. I had committed to a lifelong marriage, through thick and thin, but it takes two to make that commitment and she didn’t want it.
About the same time our family noticed something wasn’t quite right with my Mom. She had lapses in memory and would often tell the same story over and over again. She would often refer to previous events in her life, dating back to her childhood; something that she had never really talked about with her children. We realized about a month prior to my wife asking for a divorce that she was stricken with Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately Alzheimer’s, if you’ve never been through it before, is an incurable and devastating disease. I remember asking my wife, as she walked up the stairs, to please not leave as I knew things were on the rocks and that my life was going to be extremely difficult over the next few years and I needed her as support as my family life was about to crumble. Unfortunately, as stated earlier, that did not happen and I was forced to deal with two major, life altering, events. I managed pretty well in the beginning, partially because I was in denial. I started doing Crossfit and working out to try to get my mind off of things. This lasted about three months until another relationship that I had started faltered and at this point life had became so hectic that I stopped working out. I was in Chicago, Monday thru Friday, for about four and a half months in the beginning of the year last year. I should have continued working out but the travel schedule and work got the best of me. Fast-forward to May and I had gained all the weight I had lost during the few months of doing Crossfit and now weighed in around 305lbs.
June is when things started to get really bad with my Mom. Hearing stories about how she threw a wine bottle at my Dad and couldn’t figure out how to tie her shoe laces really made a crushing impact on my emotional health. My parents have always been the rock in my life and the people that I could always count on. I had lost this in addition to my wife in what seemed like overnight. The tailspin of my life started about this point and is the reason why I am here now.
I then lost a friend in July. She was married to my best friend and they went through a divorce at a similar time that I did. She was with him for over ten years and was a friend of mine for about the same amount of time. She stopped eating, often only consuming one or two hundred calories a day in addition to being an alcoholic for over a year. The depression, along with her terrible eating habits cost her life. The sad thing is; I could understand why she made those choices. Unfortunately we stopped talking after they divorced and it is the one thing I regret in life the most.
I sold the house that my ex-wife and I lived at in August. I was trying to find something to get my life back on track and get back the feeling of caring that I had lost almost a year prior. It is difficult to state how depression can really affect an individual but I knew it was affecting me and I didn’t know what to do. I was latching on to anything that would make me happy and would be crushed when it didn’t work out. I found myself drinking quite a bit once I moved into my apartment, sometimes on a daily basis. IThis wasn’t something that was healthy for me but it was an escape. I never thought in my life I would be in this situation but here I was. I also work from home so there would be weeks where I wouldn’t leave my apartment for days. I would recluse in my apartment, often shutting out friends, trying not to deal with what was in front of me. I ordered take-out on a daily basis and was consuming thousands of calories on a daily basis. Food was another escape. I was admitted to the ER about two months ago after a long “Sunday Funday” for throwing up blood. This was a major wake-up call for me but the negative behavior still occurred, although on a much smaller scale. I had had stints of trying to work-out but always faltered because I didn’t have the complete package to make things work.
The real change occurred when my sister moved in with me for about a month. This was in mid-November. She saw the things that I was doing to myself and did the simple things to show that she cared. The small things, no matter how insignificant they seemed, made a huge impact on me and I began searching for the things necessary to make a major life change. Here I was, life starting me in the face, asking me what I was going to do with everything that had been put in front of me. I had two choices, continue the bad behavior or give life a bit FU and grab it by the horns and do the things necessary to life a healthy and happy life, despite everything that had and was occurring.
I am going to lose my Mom. This is a given. She is at the point now where she cannot make complete sentences and often doesn’t know who we are. I hate who I have become. I hate how much I weigh. I hate the things that I have done to myself and I’m angry. I’m using this anger and frustration as fuel to working out, to make myself healthier and to tackle life’s obstacles put in front of me. I’ve made commitments to working out and eating healthy before but this time it’s different. This time I’m not doing it for all the normal reasons. I’m doing it for me, my parents, my family and my health and my future. I’ve found the tools necessary, MFP being one of them, to be successful. I am making all the positive life changes that I know how and refuse to go back to where I was. I never want to go back. I know I’m stronger than that.

So if you’ve made it this far, add me as a friend. I wish you all the best of luck in your journey. Here’s to happiness and to never letting life drag you down.