Voice of a depressed soul

You can quit your job, give up some responsibilities or step down from appointments, but how do you quit, give up or step down from depression if it’s there within? You can’t even run away from it or holiday it away.

Why am I depressed? I don’t know. It’s likely due to a number of factors intertwined and chained together over the years, but I think the root cause is my struggle with hearing impairment over these few decades. Although I have done well in my studies, enjoy a good & rewarding career, and have been given opportunities to prove myself and stretch beyond what a deaf person would generally be confined to, although I have a supporting family and a faithful wife, who is my lifelong partner & cheerleader, although I am blessed with 3 beautiful daughters, although my family and I enjoy good health, although we get by financially pretty well, even though we could not afford the luxury of a family car, deep inside me, I feel lousy. Over the years, my circle of friends and business associates became smaller and smaller. I do not feel comfortable socialising with a deteriorating sense of hearing and a growing sense of inferiority. I would often withdraw to an emotional closet, just me and nothing, nobody else. I think at some point, my social circle will be reduced to just my family, my department at work, and my cell group in church. In fact, I am there already.

I feel stuck, working at a place where I do not enjoy, where what's happening behind the scenes are really hard to swallow, but is probably the most befitting or tolerating because of my deteriorating hearing. If I move back to the commercial sector, I am not sure I can cope with the level of verbal interactions. I don’t think the civil service wants me either at this age and disabled. If I remain here, do I have to stay for another 20 years till retirement, till my housing loan is fully repaid? I cannot be unfair to my employer. At some time, younger blood should take over and inject not just a few new ideas but a whole new vision & capabilities. At the same time, I can sense the economic challenges ahead. If I continue working here, my pay will continue to lag way behind the surging cost of living, not to mention the salary of my wife, which incidentally is becoming a problem for me. Initially, I rationalised that since I work in a non-profit organization, it’s reasonable to expect a lower pay, and it is OK to trail behind my wife’s in the short term. But with no viable choice in sight, the short term looks set to becoming the long term and if I continue working here, the lag will get more and more glaring & uncomfortable, for me at least. Already I feel inferior in some sense. Sometimes when we discuss issues, I feel obliged to go along with her even though I disagree. After all, who’s the main breadwinner here? It is certainly not me. I am not being chauvinistic here, but it is hard to say I am the father and head of this household, but my wife brings home most of the dough.

I don’t know how long more I can keep this up. Already, I am lashing out violently at my children, even hitting them violently. I cried out to GOD to help me. I do not want to continue in this state. It is miserable. And I can sense my children losing their confidence in me, seeing that I can lose my cool like a mad man anytime, and behaving like a psychopath. Yet, this is a man who claims that he loves GOD, that he is born-again Christian, a man who teaches Sunday School and leads a cell group. It’s hard to reconcile. Perhaps before I hurt any more, I should really come to terms with this depression, and deal with it the way GOD wants me to. I should seek help formally rather than to go on with my strength, which is really ebbing away.