Wine Is Fine, but Whiskey’s Quicker: A Father’s Lament
Pain and depression keep this husband and father from doing what society’s gender norms have told him he should do for his family.
I live with severe depression. It is a blessing, and it is a curse.
My worst enemy is my own thought process, always dragging me to hell, always telling me how worthless I am as a human being.
My biggest strength is my thought process. I experience extreme empathy for others who suffer. I live life in a great deal of physical pain, and I use this experience with pain to write about others who suffer, and I try to encourage compassion towards others who are sometimes unfairly judged negatively.
As a man, friends, family, and society, in general, have an expectation that I work and earn an income, especially considering I have a wife and three sons. Throughout my 20s, going to work every day was my strength; it was what I did best. I was reliable in that way.
Then came pain, stress, and depression. When the ability to work for a living was taken away at age 30, as my optimism for healing faded, the depression strengthened. Eventually, depression took over my entire thought process. My number one…
