An era in my life has truly passed.

Tonight, I messaged FG on ICQ, a medium he and I have been chatting on for 7+ years. I noticed he was actually available and I wanted to commiserate with him about Indiana. (Refresher course: FG and I went to high school together, and he moved to California a few years ago. He knows how my mom can be and he knows how I feel about Indiana in general.)

I teased him about his upcoming trip to Europe, of which I am insanely jealous (I want a vacation!), and about the girl he was going there with. I reminded him that he definitely needed to get laid if he got the chance, which made him stick his tongue out at me (he’s so conservative… it’s hilarious.) Then he told me something I didn’t expect. He said, “Well, I guess I should tell you I’m seeing someone, and you know who it is.”

Of course, I knew immediately… he’s had a crush on another girl from his other high school, since before he even knew me. Although she turned him down a long time ago, apparently she’s finally come to her senses and they’re really in love. I knew immediately when he told me that there wouldn’t be anyone else for him… that in a couple of years, I’d go to their wedding, and all that. It all hit me like a bombshell and for some reason, I started crying.

I figured out pretty quickly why I was crying. First of all, I’m immensely happy for him. I love FG to death, and he completely deserves to be happy. But what was really welling up inside of me was regret. Regret that I couldn’t be that person for him. I know he’s going to be amazingly happy in this life; he’s going to get married and have kids and they’re going to have kids and he’s going to travel and buy some cute little house in the mountains somewhere next to a lake (that’s your second home, FG… the vacation home, yes? No, not in Canada. In the Pacific Northwest.) And he’s going to park his phat BMW out front and all the little redhead kiddies are going to hop out and he’s just going to grin like mad. And I’ll just have to sit back and laugh and say “I told you so,” because he’s had this future planned since high school, and probably really even before that.

I wanted to be a part of that future so badly, that even though I knew it wasn’t my true destiny, because it just sounded so damn happy. I mean, who wouldn’t want cute little kiddies and a nice house in the mountains? And who wouldn’t want to be married to one of the sweetest, nicest guys on this planet, who will love you with his whole heart, and who would do anything to make you happy as long as you commit the same thing to him? Who will look into your eyes and say “I love you,” and mean it so deeply that you can feel it reverberate through your whole soul? And that’s what had me crying, because it turned out he wasn’t right for me, and I wasn’t right for him, and yet I tasted that life and some part of me still wants that.

FG and I never would have made it, and I know this now, and I think I knew it way back in 1998 when we first broke up. I’m an entrepreneur and he doesn’t understand that lifestyle; his house and kiddies come at a price, and that price is that he is risk-averse. In 1998 I wrote this poem when we first broke up, and the last two verses still hold true… I’m looking for someone where life will be an adventure, and with FG you always know what you’re getting. Some part of me just couldn’t handle that, and while I still want kiddies and a nice comfy house, I also want more of a thrill ride than life with FG was ever going to be.

Still, I have to say, he saw me as a messed-up teenager and was one of the first people to see the beautiful woman inside. He brought that part out of me and it’s truly amazing. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without his calming influence and his amazing ability to forgive me again and again as I struggled with right and wrong (and broke his heart several times in the process.) I owe him so much and yet I am completely unable to repay my debt to him–on purpose, I think, because I know he wants me to pay it forward and love others with as much compassion as he loves me. I will never be able to truly explain how thankful I am for everything he has done for me.

One day last year, he looked at me and said, “You know, I think I’m done here,” and I knew it was true. His mission in my life was to show me love and beauty so I could show it to others, and he did. Whenever he does decide to get married — and it’ll probably be a couple years yet — you’ll find me crying my eyes out in the audience, so unbelievably happy that someone who showed me so much love has finally found what he truly wanted.

God bless you, man. You deserve it.

Remember that blog entry I wrote a couple weeks ago (titled “I Will Win”?) In it, I said I’d made the decision to not be depressed any more.

Amazingly, it worked.

Bad things still happen. I still cry. I still get angry. But the depression that was hanging over my head on a daily basis has disappeared.

Of course, you are probably asking “How did you do it?” I am still mulling that over myself. I found that there were a few things I needed to do to stop myself from being depressed.

#1, realize that there are people out there who love me. From those of you who write comments in this blog (I read them all) to those of you who call and make sure I’m okay, there are a lot of people out there who really would care if something happened to me.

#2 (and this was the huge one) realize it was okay to be happy. I know this may sound strange to some of you, but something in my brain was seriously telling me “You should be depressed.” My normal response to it was “Why?” This, of course, evoked a flood of misery as it explained to me why my life was a horrible failure.

I figured out that the right response to this was not “Why?”, but “No, I shouldn’t. Shut up.” And it worked! The thing actually listened to me and shut up! I still hear it every once in a while; it’s there, reminding me that I should be depressed. But now I simply ignore it. I have regained the power and control in my mind, and now I am a lot happier.

#3 (and this one really works, too; try it sometime!) My friend Jan had me buy this book called Blink. It’s a fascinating book and worth the read anyway, but the best part was where the author revealed that a study showed that smiling or laughing on the outside (even if you have nothing to smile or laugh about) is just as effective as actually having something to smile or laugh about. That is, it produces the same “happy hormones” that a true laugh does. This one works amazingly well. Sometimes I just smile to myself and I feel myself getting happier.

The final step is to get myself out of relationships and situations that make me unhappy. While this is a longer, more involved process, I can now recognize what those situations are and who they involve, and I will continue to distance myself from them. At the same time, I’m forming closer bonds with my friends who truly do make me happy and make me love life.

I am surprised (and somewhat amazed) that all of this depression hanging over my head, that at times seemed so large that it would be impossible to deal with, was really the result of the tiny voice in my head saying “You should be depressed! You have so much to be depressed about!” It’s even hard to write about, because as I write about it, I feel it there, itching for me to ask it “Why?” But I refuse. And I smile… because, in the grand scheme of things, my life is going pretty well, and I want to keep it going that way.

🙂

EDIT: I also wanted to add that it’s worth remembering that no matter how good or bad your life is, it’s always your choice to be depressed or happy. This is an important realization as well. You can blame your unhappiness on the outside world and the many times it’s f*cked you over, or you can realize that everyone else wades through piles of crap as well and that you’re going to make the best of it. The second choice is the only one that will make you happy in the long run.

It’s the next morning and I’m still sick. If possible, I feel more sick than I did yesterday. The cold triggered a huge wave of depression when I woke up this morning, which took this time to remind me that there’s no one to take care of me when I’m sick like this, and that — while I am completely exhausted and even a flight of stairs seems insurmountable — I still have to drag my butt out of bed and do everything myself.

I am now considering that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

One thing has become clear to me in the past several months. I have a 10-year-old cloud of depression hanging over my head, and I’m not going to have a successful relationship until I can lift it myself without relying on someone else.

I remember when it all started. My best friend moved away when I was in 7th grade, leaving me with no one. I can remember wandering the playground idly (I still hate the fact that they gave 7th graders recess) with no friends at all. It was the worst 6 months of my life, bar none.

That 6 months of my life, somehow, still has a grip on me. I still get depressed and lonely, even when I have a boyfriend. I get even more depressed and lonely when I don’t have a boyfriend. The last 6 months of my life have been rough, and I’ve gone through a lot. I know this is a large transition in my life; it’s the same one most people go through when they get out of college and enter the “real world.” It is probably one of the largest transition periods I’ll go through. I would say I’m depressed about 60% of the time right now. No, when you see me online, or even when you meet me in person, you don’t see it. But it’s there, and it likes to come out at inopportune times (mostly when I’m going to bed or waking up.) It hits me when I’m most vulnerable and least expecting it, and it turns me from a confident CEO to an overly-emotional stress ball in seconds.

I’ve made the decision that I have to beat this or I’m not going to survive on my own. I know this from looking at my previous depression cycles. At some point, they all got so bad that I didn’t want to live any more, and I don’t want to be in that state any longer. Some of you would advise anti-depressants or even a therapist. Though I think a therapist would probably help me more than drugs, and I haven’t quite ruled out that possibility, I’m going to see if I can beat this one myself. It’s been part of my life for 10 years and I finally feel like I have the strength to tackle it head-on.

I know facing the depression will make me face some things I don’t want to face about myself. I’ve treated a lot of people I love poorly in the past. I have actually worked out most of those by this point thanks to Landmark forum. Now it’s time to turn inward and really focus on letting that go inside myself. It’s also time to build my self-confidence and really love who I am. I’ve gotten a lot better at that, but I’m still not 100%, and I turn on myself too quickly when I do something wrong. I also tend to blame myself for things that aren’t my fault, which just makes me miserable since I can’t fix whatever it is.

I realize that there is no perfection in this life, and I won’t ever be happy 100% of the time. But if I can focus on fighting through each individual depression and finally getting to the root of it and clearing that up with myself, I can at least have a positive, healthy outlook the vast majority of the time. I can’t run away from my problems any more and hide behind relationships. It’s time to get this out and taken care of once and for all.

Well, I know a couple of people said I shouldn’t post personal stuff in my blog. I didn’t post any personal stuff for a while. Now it’s time to post personal stuff again, so here I go.

N broke up with me. I think most of you already knew that, but let’s get that out in the open. That means, for one thing, that the T-shirt business has taken a leave of absence. So sorry to those of you who needed T-shirts. It also means that, once again, I am upset, confused, angry, and depressed.

I think my depression stems from the fact that I know there’s really no one in a 1000-mile radius of me who really cares what happens to me. I could drive the Miata off a cliff tomorrow and people might not know for days. Even then, I think most people’s reaction (including some of you I’d call friends) would be “What’s going to happen to Simpli?” not “What happened to Erica?”

It really hit me hard tonight, like a punch in the stomach. Simpli had an outage, and people were calling me left and right, demanding to know what was going on. I didn’t have any answers for them, as at the time, I didn’t know what was happening either. At the same time, I was trying to halfway enjoy a night in San Francisco at a bar with someone who would probably be considered a friend (see last paragraph) and one of his friends.

It was on the way home that I felt something snap inside of me. It was just like a tree branch that has bits of snow pile up on it, and it takes it and takes it and takes it until one day, this big pile of snow falls down from above and whuff…. SNAP. That was exactly what it was like for me. I called my friend in somewhat of a panic, thinking I’d do something really stupid if left alone to contemplate all the emotions I was having. Halfway through the conversation, I realized he didn’t really need me anyway, as he sounded like he was having fun without me and he didn’t really care that something major had just happened to me, and so I hung up, embarrassed. I spent the rest of the drive home crying, and at some point, the depression sunk in like a black hole. I’m angry. I’m angry that my company had a major failure tonight. I’m angry at N’s decision to break up with me. But most of all, I’m not sure the world sees me and Simpli as two different things, and I think that’s what drove me off the edge tonight. It dawned on me that a lot of the people I consider friends are really just business associates. They host with Simpli, or some of them don’t, and they ask me about my business, and I ask them about theirs, and that’s great, but when it comes down to it, I don’t really matter to them. Tonight was a stunning example of exactly what matters about ME in people’s lives… and that is, mostly nothing. I don’t think these people (friends?) really know anything about who I am. Not only that, but they don’t really care, as long as their websites stay online and I smile and nod at their polite conversations.

The sad truth is I don’t have very many true friends — the kind of people where, even if Simpli failed, they would still call me and tell me that I’m a cool person to hang out with. That, even if I decided to move to some faraway country, they’d still call and come visit me. I think I have 2 people in my life who would do that, and neither of them live in California. And, when I’m faced with coming home to an empty house at 1:30AM after one of the roughest nights of my life, and I have no one to call and tell this to, that hurts. It really does.