Musings

Depression: A Decade in Review

When my dad killed himself in 2008, it touched off a major depression for me and I almost didn’t escape from it. It lasted over 10 years, and while I thought I dealt with it through talk therapy, due to hurtful stigmas, I avoided seeing a psychiatrist or getting on meds to help with those consistent, recurrent suicidal thoughts and ideations, and ever-present negative thoughts and feelings. I mistakenly thought that I’d be able to handle it on my own and slowly I started accepting worse and worse standards of living accepting that, “this is ok”, “these are perfectly normal and ok thoughts to think. I’m just having a hard time and will get through this. Eventually…”  For me, eventually never came, and out of desperation and a “well I haven’t tried that yet” mentality I barely escaped the clutches of my depression. This is how it has affected me these last 11 years and what drove me to a seek a better place.

Suicide Destroys MANY Lives

When someone decides to take their own life, it’s usually out of a place of pain, desperation, loneliness, and more. Their focus usually isn’t towards messing up everyone else’s life, rather trying to stop the pain in theirs. At least, that’s what I tell myself because that’s how I felt when my suicidal ideations would gain traction and start forming into plans. When my dad killed himself back in 2008, it broke me. It broke me more than I knew and it took me 11 years to figure out how badly I was broken. It didn’t just break me though. It also broke my brother, sister, half-sister, his sister, his family, and like a stone tossed in the pond, the ripples keep going.

This happened about 6 months before Mrs. SSC and I got married and it broke that relationship too. It broke my relationship with the kids, or it tried very hard to. Suicide wreaks havoc with everything in its path, directly or indirectly. I knew things were bad when around the first of the year or so, I was making plans to kill myself too. I hurt, every day, all day. When I was awake, when I was at work, in meetings, hanging with Mrs. SSC, it was a pain that cut deep, and didn’t disappear no matter where I was, who I was with, how much alcohol I drank or who I talked to about it. I didn’t want to feel that way anymore so I made a plan and then waited to act on it.

My Suicide Plan

My plan was pretty simple really, just wait until Mrs. SSC goes to bed and shoot myself. Pretty straightforward, but I’d do it in a way to minimize cleanup and all of that. I mean it’s the least I could do right? Typically, Mrs. SSC goes to bed before me, and so I was waiting and waiting and waiting. She kept staying up and hanging out, and we were at like 10pm which is way past her bedtime. Maybe she could sense something was wrong, but she just didn’t go to bed. Finally, she asked me if there was anything wrong or something I wanted to talk about and I literally thought, “Fuck it, I can always do this tomorrow.” And I opened up to her and told her about my feelings and my plan that night.

We found a talk therapist for me and I saw her for the next 4.5 years, sometimes for 2x a week but mostly once a week due to insurance restrictions. In hindsight, I should’ve checked into an inpatient place for a week or so, but I didn’t think I was “that bad.” Those places are for “crazy people”. Um, wanting to kill yourself, isn’t sane, so maybe that should’ve been a clue.

Stigmas prevailed and I slogged on with talk therapy. Over that 4.5 years, we unpacked and dealt with all sorts of childhood crap, trauma, feelings, and more. It was amazing. But I never had the ever-present negativity and suicidal thoughts and ideations disappear. It was like the world’s most insidious salesman hanging out in your head every single day trying to convince you that today’s the day, you’ve had enough of this shit, and you should just do it. That was my life for over a decade.

Life Goes On, Right?

Sure, life goes one with depression, fortunately, unfortunately, but in what way, and at what quality? I self medicated with alcohol to try and get my brain to shut up. If you imagine a flood control reservoir and dam, that’s how I picture my emotional storage capacity. Essentially, my emotional reservoir was full, overflowing, and the flood gates were fully open. Due to the depression, I didn’t have emotional capacity to deal with life. I couldn’t handle anymore. So instead of dealing with emotions in a calm, responsible manner, I exploded, I snapped, I yelled. I became the worst version of myself that I could be. I wasn’t physically abusive, but emotionally and verbally abusive behaviors were what happened when I was at home. Not all the time, but enough that I got the nickname Angry Dad from the kids. Yay, parent of the year, right here folks! It’s so embarrassing, and shameful, and holy shit it just feeds the negativity that’s already there and makes a maddening shame spiral of self-defeat.

Houston was where it all came to a head. I’d had a talk therapist in LA, so I had an outlet there even if she wasn’t helping with the chemical issues in my brain. In Houston, our schedules were different, busier, and remember me saying I was slowly lowering my bar for “good quality of life”? Well, that bar hovered near the ground at this point with me accepting the daily suicidal thoughts, ideations, and constant negative chatter as “acceptable” and “the new normal.” I hated me, I hate my thoughts, my life, the dad I’d become. I was over it and after 7-8 years of feeling like this, I’m more than over it.

Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC)

During this whole depression, I should’ve been enjoying life. I mean, I graduated with a Master’s from CO School of Mines, a tough school to get into, I got hired on with a major oil company, I got married to an amazing woman and life was good. Yet I was the least happy I’d been in my life. With our FFLC revelation, I was glad to hear that, because I wasn’t planning on making it to retirement. Life sucked too much and I didn’t want anymore to do with it, who gives a shit if it’s FI or not FI? Fucking keep it, was my attitude. So, I developed my own plan. I was planning on getting our family to the FFLC point, and since Mrs. SSC was planning on keeping working, I didn’t have to worry about leaving them in a lurch financially if our planning was wrong. She will be WAY more than taken care of, the same with the kids.

I was planning to get our house in Canyon Lake built, paid off, and then check out. That would leave Mrs. SSC and the kids with $500k of house/land, more than enough money to be FI, the kids had a great start in their college funds (~$50k each then) AND I wouldn’t be around to make their lives miserable anymore. It’s a win for everyone. At least that’s what I told myself then.

New Location, Same Old Problems

When Mrs. SSC got this position in Oklahoma, I was more than okay with it. Again, she wanted to keep working now that she’s gotten into her dream job, and this would require me to quit my career, become a SAHD, and then be default parent for our new single income household. Sure, that sounds great! One caveat if I moved with the family, (yes, we discussed me not moving with the family, I mean have you read anything up until now?) was that I need to focus on my mental health and get that shit sorted. Sure, sure, I am on board with that, no problem, whatsoever. Honestly, I was on board with it because I’d hit my rock bottom, or the point that I needed to shit or get off the pot. I figured, why not try a psychiatrist, I can always kill myself later. Seriously, that’s how “normal” and present those thoughts had become in my brain. Suicide was ALWAYS an option and had been for 10 years at that point. My attitude was the same, my thoughts were the same, my suicidal ideations/thoughts were still just as present, the negativity tagged along to Oklahoma too.

DBSA, Shrinks, and Meds, Oh My!

I started going to the DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) meetings here in town and found them to be helpful. Like when I attended my first Fincon and finally felt like I was with people that got me, it was the same thing at DBSA. I joke that it’s like Alcoholics Anonymous for mental health issues, we just don’t offer as many meetings. Although, I think more meetings than once a week could be a good thing, but it is what it is. I finally met other people that I could talk candidly about my depression, suicidal thoughts and more and not be judged, but also get helpful feedback and validation and support. It was amazing! Over a year later and unless I’m single parenting, out of town, or sick, I’m at my weekly DBSA meeting.

I also found a psychiatrist (shrink) and started taking an anti-depressant and lithium. My family history with mental health issues is that my dad was undiagnosed bipolar for 50+ years and only got diagnosed after his alcoholism was in full force. That didn’t help trying to get meds balanced out to work for him when they’re getting messed up with a fifth or 2 of liquor a day… My sister was diagnosed bipolar in high school and on meds until she was “better” and would stop taking them, and then wasn’t better and she went back and forth like that for years. I asked my therapist if she thought I was bipolar and always got, nope, you’re not bipolar. Ok, settled. Whew!

My psychiatrist also thought I wasn’t bipolar, rather I suffered from major depression with mixed features, meaning instead of being a bed slug when I’m depressed, I turn into an angry, bitter, asshole. Oh, joy!! What a treat! Also, since my suicidal thoughts and ideations were so present, consistent and I had no protections (things to keep you from doing it) he prescribed lithium which is also good for suppressing suicidal thoughts.

Meds To The Rescue

I won’t say all problems can be solved with the right meds, because that’s not true, nor the best way to attack any problem. However, when the problem is chemical, no amount of talk therapy can correct it. For the first time in a LONG time, I started feeling like me again! However, it didn’t come without its bumps, and rough patches. My last suicidal plan came together this past summer while on vacation. Yeah, on vacation, because that’s how this stuff works. We were in Santa Fe for the night and I had to get my steps because we had been driving most of the day. I went out to walk around this mall we were right beside and during that walk, something clicked. Something bad clicked and my brain started making plans to kill myself. I’d been “retired/sahd” for almost a year at this point. Involved in all my volunteer work, yet my brain still wants to kill me. WTF, brain!? This plan culminated in me taking $10-$15k out of one of my retirement accounts, putting it in a bank account that’s accessible overseas, and go hit a couple of bucket list places before checking out somewhere in the world. My thought was that this way, the kids and Mrs. SSC don’t have the trauma of finding me anywhere, and I can just be that dad that “left to get smokes” and is never coming back. Again, these all sound like good plans when you’re depressed.

The whole crew at the Farmer’s Market!

I reached out to some PF Twitter peeps and they helped talk me off the proverbial ledge. We were all staying in one room in a hotel that night so I was sequestered to my phone in the dark much earlier than usual. After conversations with that person, thank-you person, you know who you are!! I started trying to think about this from a rational standpoint. I realized I’d probably dealt with my dad’s death the least of all the problems that got brought up in therapy. Looking back over the past 10 years, I realized that almost ALL of these issues have come up because of his suicide and how badly it broke me emotionally. While my latest suicide plan tried to ease that loss with the kids by me “disappearing”, it would still leave them with years and potentially decades of trauma and bad feelings to deal with, and I didn’t want to do that to them either.

For the first time in over 10 years, I decided that suicide wasn’t an option.

Moving Forward

Moving forward with this new life is interesting. I feel like me, like the me from back when dad was alive and I’d be looking forward to calling him later in the afternoon to catch up. The me that didn’t walk around with this interminably deep, wrenching pain in their heart for years and years and years. It has been amazing! Angry dad is gone too, and that kicks ass! The kids notice a HUGE difference in OK dad vs TX dad. I have patience, understanding and more with them. Sure, I can still get stressed with them and they can drive me crazy, just like those dang 5th graders but my emotional reservoir is only like half full all the time, so I have capacity to handle emotions, life and more without going apeshit over nothing. Mrs. SSC and I have been working to repair our relationship as well. Me being a depressed, bitter, angry, resentful asshole for our whole marriage has just done wonders for our relationship let me tell you. No, no it hasn’t. Not at all. There’s a lot there to unpack with defensive behaviors that came about as a result of my shitty mental situation and well, it hasn’t been good. We can just leave it at that.

Summary

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that I should’ve just gotten checked in to an inpatient facility and nipped this in the bud back in 2009, right? That would’ve been awesome, because all this shit wouldn’t have happened and I could have 10 years of my life back. Hell, we all could get those 10 years back. But, that’s not how life works. Life always moves forward, never looking back, and that’s what I’m doing. I can’t waste energy beating myself up for what could’ve been, or what an asshole I was this past decade, I can just move forward to try and be the person I want to be for me, the kids, and Mrs. SSC. The person that this guy was for me when he was in the “good part” of “being undiagnosed bipolar”.

A much younger Mr. SSC and Dad hiking on Father’s Day.

I feel like I’ve got a new slate, a new start, a new life even, considering I wasn’t expecting to see 2020 with how things were going. What that will look like going forward, I don’t know, but I know suicide isn’t an option, my depression is managed right now, and I haven’t had any suicidal thoughts/ideations in over 4 months. That may not sound big, but to someone who had daily, constant suicidal thoughts/ideations for over a decade, it is ‘YUGE!!

If you’re dealing with depression, reach out! People want to help, even if you don’t believe them. You can call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. If you don’t want to talk to people you can go here and chat. That would’ve been SUPER handy for me back in the day. Find a local DBSA group near you. I found that super helpful for me. Please don’t let the stigma of meds or “seeing a shrink” keep you depressed. I fell victim to this one, as did Mrs. SSC, and it was super damaging to all of our lives. Had I seen a psychiatrist early on and gotten meds, I feel a LOT of this could’ve been avoided. Please, don’t make my same mistake, don’t accept that this is your new normal and that “it’s okay”. It’s not, get help and be a better you. Reach out to me if you need an ear or person to text and don’t want any judgement, I’m here. @coffeesippers for Twitter DM and I can give you my number. I’ll respond as soon as I see it. Reach out to any of your close friends too. I understand not wanting to go that route or trusting they may have different intentions, but they’ll be happy you opened up and want to help. I promise. Do whatever it takes for you to get better for yourself. Just don’t be like me.

70k Challenge Mid-Year Update!

This year, I did something I’ve never done before. I joined one of those fitness tracking groups that you see a lot of in January and then they fade away by March. Well, not this group, holy hell, this is a year long commitment baby! Yearlong! What did I commit to? Nothing major, just making sure I hit 70,000 steps a week, which is 10,000 steps per day, the random number of steps you “need” each day to be “healthy”. Well, since I was averaging around 5,000-6,000 steps a day for the days I wasn’t doing yard work, or volunteering at school, I thought it would be a good thing to commit to. Plus, since the people are all on Twitter, you know they’ll keep me accountable. At the halfway mark, how are things going? Pretty darn good. I’ve gotten a streak of 116 days with 10,000 steps, that’s never happened in my life. I dropped 6 lbs, and I’ve only had one week so far that I didn’t make the goal. 1 week! That’s impressive for me!

“Tanks” for the Memories: Justifying Large Expenditures

My Father-in-Law (Bob) celebrated his 70th birthday earlier this year and since we see it as a milestone birthday, so we wanted to do something special for him. We thought about a lot of different things we could get him, but he has pretty much anything that he needs or wants. So then we thought about some experiences we could look into for him. He has had some back and neck issues the last few years, so even those adventures would be limited for what we could do. Then, Mrs. SSC came across a website that we thought would not only offer a great present but also an excellent place to make memories. (not an affiliate link by the way, I wish, lol)

It’s Tank time! German Leopard we drove and I rode on in the turret.

Bob has been a pretty big WWII history buff and has read a lot about that time period so we thought this could incorporate that passion of his as well. What did we stumble across that would fulfill this passion, while providing a great gift and awesome memories? Ox Ranch, a place where you can literally drive a tank on one of their designed tank courses. They have over 18,000 acres, most dedicated to exotic animal hunting, but a large part is also dedicated to tanks and machine guns, because, Texas. They also offer you the chance to shoot the tank if you want to spend that kind of coin, we didn’t. Plus, there are options to shoot almost any type of WWII machine gun if you choose. We offered if he was interested, but Bob didn’t take us up on any of those options, whew… We had an excellent time and even got an upgrade on the tank we got to experience due to a delay caused by the History Channel shooting on location that day. Woohoo for little wins!! Even though we try to be frugal in a lot of areas in our life, this was one thing that we could justify paying for a memory making experience.

Time for Thanksgiving!

Hey guys, it’s that time of the year where we get to hang out with family, relax, maybe watch some football, and cook some good food. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I’m taking this week off from writing a thorough finance related post. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because of the focus around spending time with family and coming together around food. I like to do a lot of the cooking at our house, and I enjoy doing that for everyone. Having loved ones around to get to share a meal or three with makes that much more special for me.

My favorite pics of the kids!
The rest of the family!

Hopefully you also get some down time to spend with your family or loved ones, and you have a great holiday. That’s what we’ll be doing around our household.

Until next week, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and stay safe!

Preparation Helps but Expect the Unexpected

For 5 months this year, I’ve been training for a single race, the Kemah Olympic Triathlon, and this past weekend I completed it! Woohoo! It was scheduled to be run in April, however, due to some poor planning and lack of knowledge of TX DOT’s paving schedule, it was rescheduled only 2 weeks before the event. Yes, 2 weeks before the race, they moved the date 6 months later. I had been training for it for about 2.5 months at that point, and I was pretty frustrated to say the least. I looked for a similar race nearby so my training wouldn’t go to waste and I was able to sign up for the Texasman Olympic Triathlon just north of Dallas. While I was able to complete both races, they both had unexpected issues pop up that I had to work around. It reminded me that whether you’re planning for a race, for FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early), FFLC (Fully Funded Lifestyle Change), or anything else solid preparation is good, but being able to deal with adversity is key!

We’re almost a year away from starting our FFLC journey and we feel pretty solid with all of our planning. Since we don’t know for sure how that planning aligns with reality, we are going to spend 2018 test driving our FFLC budget and see if we hit any unexpected bumps in the road, like I have in my races. Like race prep, training is essential to make sure you’re ready, but the mental aspect accounts for a lot as well.

Weddings and Finances – Perspective Changes Everything

This past weekend we attended my brother-in-law’s wedding at the Isle of Palms in South Carolina. All the planning had been done by “Jill” (now his wife) so that she could cut costs where necessary and still keep the wedding affordable. We got our flights booked early enough that they weren’t exorbitant. We also split a house with Mrs. SSC’s parents and Aunt to defray those costs. As a bonus, on the weekend of the wedding I found out that the father-in-law offered to cover the housing cost. That news was a nice surprise indeed! While I was expecting a nice, modest sort of ceremony, reception, etc… because of so much talk of “keeping the wedding affordable” man, was I surprised how this “affordable wedding” fit my version of a really nice wedding. It reminded me that you see the same differences in perspective of affordable and extravagant, whether you’re talking about planning a wedding or planning for retirement and financial independence.

Summer Look Back and More!

This summer has seemed to fly by. We spent the first part of it researching and meeting with different homebuilders for our Canyon Lake property. That was followed by a month long road trip for Mrs. SSC and the kids, and I got to catch up with them for the last half in Montana and Idaho. I even got to spend a day solo exploring Seattle on my way out there.

The blown glass museum was awesome, the pics don't do it justice.
The blown glass museum was awesome, the pics don’t do it justice.

I even met up with a reader who was kind enough to let me pay homage to one of my childhood idols, Bruce Lee. Thanks again for the ride, Max!

I watched SO many of his movies over and over as a kid
I watched SO many of his movies over and over as a kid

We didn’t escape the heat of Texas, but you can’t match the beauty of Glacier NP anywhere in Texas I’ve seen yet. Coeur D’Alene was beautiful too and we spent almost a week there as well.

So hot, even in Glacier Nat'l Park!
So hot, even in Glacier Nat’l Park!
Lake McDonald - Glacier Nat'l Park
Lake McDonald – Glacier Nat’l Park

We were home just a short time before heading out to San Destin to spend a week on the beach.

Awesome week of boogie boarding and excellent waves!
Awesome week of boogie boarding and excellent waves!

With one of the kids in school, our vacation is now timed with every other family with school aged children. Sigh… On the plus side, we were able to not have either kid in daycare/preschool over the summer and that saved a lot of coin. Woohoo! Our spending was good for most of the summer, even including the big road trip and beach vacation, but man was August spendy! We had a lot of big expenditures hit as we are starting to prep the house for sale in a few years. Why start this far out? Well, we want to enjoy some of those things as well and not just make improvements immediately before moving out.

When Work Makes You Want to Quit EVEN Sooner.

What a week it has been around the office. I’ve been back for a week from our most recent vacation up to the MT/ID area, and I was feeling pretty refreshed.

Lake McDonald - Glacier Nat'l Park
Lake McDonald – Glacier Nat’l Park

I had gone the whole vacation not even thinking about work, and after I got back I was even feeling super recharged from a Personal Finance (PF) standpoint. The field I’ve been working the last 3 years is almost ready for drilling and we’re just finalizing the field development plan. The other project I’ve been working on has gotten extended as we’ve come up with more ideas to test than upper management was expecting, so that has been fun too. There was even another minor reorg/power shift while I was gone and I lost 2 of my 7 bosses, so now I’m back to having only 5 baby, yeah! All, in all it was looking up. And then the rails came off of the train… I essentially got ambushed in a meeting that wasn’t even my group, and taken to task for things I didn’t work on and wasn’t responsible for. It didn’t matter though because I was the one that was there accounting for any and all work done on that project. Let me back up and set the stage for one of the weirdest, bizarre, and unprofessional experiences I’ve ever dealt with in my career, and how knowing where we were in relation to Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) helped me keep perspective and make the best out of a wack-a-doo situation.

I Like Work, but I Love Life More

Last week, Mrs. SSC and the kids were on Spring Break and they went to visit her parents for a few days leaving me alone in the house with the dogs. I missed them, but it was nice getting some quiet time to myself around the house. When I mentioned this situation to a co-worker, “Sue”, she responded with, “Oh, so you’ll be able to stay late and get a lot of work done this week, huh?” To which I promptly replied, “What?! No, I plan on leaving on time or maybe even early every day. I can finally be unbalanced on the life side of work life balance.” Then she mentioned when her partner is out of town she likes to come in early and work later than usual. I didn’t think too much about it though, you know, to each their own.

Then yesterday morning Sue was having a conversation with “Bill” and was asking him if he took any time off over Spring Break.

Bill: “No, I don’t generally take time off.”

Sue: “You must roll over a lot of vacation, then. That’s nice”  (How is it nice accruing vacation if you don’t use it I wondered?)

Bill: “Yeah, I’ve got over 200 hrs of vacation right now. Well, I take a day or two here and there, but no real time off. Just generally Fridays, but even then I’ll work on things from home. It’s not stressful, I just like it.”

Sue: “Yeah I like working from the house too. I’ll usually do some work on the weekends if I can squeeze time in.”

This conversation just blew my mind. I know workaholics exist, but neither of these struck me as that kind of personality before. The way they were talking about work made it sound like no big deal to work away from the office and not enjoy their time away from the office. Then the judgy-pants came on and I started thinking “What kind of life have you built for yourself if you would rather do work from home than live your life while at home”?

Retiring Early Creates a Perspective Shift at Work

This week has been crazier than usual and has me a little out of sorts. I hadn’t felt in the right mindset to write anything even with a funny idea like “Our retired greyhound needs an ikigai” sidenote – she does though, the transition from racing 69 races to retired has been a little rough on her. Even animals go through a transition from career to retired and it’s not always smooth.

It’s been a bit hectic at work, which is a nice change of pace, and the work has been fun but man, some people just haven’t figured out their new roles in this reorg. This week has made me so glad that today is my Friday. Yippee for the 9/80 schedule where I get every other Friday off! Seriously, since 9am Monday morning, I’ve been looking forward to today. Even with a positive perspective shift on Monday morning, it still only took 3 hrs of work before I was ready for the weekend. Here’s how it got to that point so quickly and why I’m excited about spending tomorrow outside, trimming bushes, doing yardwork, and weeding the flower beds.