Today is the last day of National Suicide Prevention Month, making this post apropos. I’ve been fighting bouts of depression for years, just like any parent in America trying to keep their heads above water. It’s hard to keep up with multiple responsibilities at home, at work, to extended family, to friends and neighbors and nonprofits. Add the occasional surprise, like unexpected surgery or a sudden opportunity for your child that costs an arm and a leg. Not to mention the guilt around grabbing fast food for the family when you come home too beat or too late to cook.

Intermittent depression, pierced with rays of joy here and there, is just the American way of life, and most people don’t complain about it. They just keep swimming, and enjoying those infrequent stretches of rest on sunlit beaches. As do I, usually.  It’s just this year has been unusually hard.

It started in March. I was working long hours, barely seeing my family, eating crap, feeling the onset of menopause with hot flashes and other symptoms, and feeling like my boss was setting me up to fail at every budget meeting. Then my grandfather got sick, my stepfather was diagnosed with cancer, and my nightmares increased to almost daily.

I don’t only have the stresses of an overburdened American life. I also have the memories of a violent childhood and first marriage. Life has been one very long struggle and I’m pretty tired. In March I realized I was too tired to keep going.

I wrote the below a couple months later, and looking back at it, I can see the sparks that were going to head me to the hospital in June.

May 15, 2014

I just turned in my annual financial disclosure form to the NYS Legislative Ethics Commission. It’s due by May 15th every year. I dragged my feet on it. It’s long and complicated, and anyone who is a policymaker has to report from where and how much money we get throughout the year, to prove we aren’t taking bribes to pass legislation.

I cried as I handed it in. Far from showing kickbacks or unexplained windfalls, that 14-page public document shows the world that I have nothing. Almost every line is filled with “non-applicable” in my tight handwriting. I just turned 49 years old, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. No property, no savings, no investment accounts, nothing. The lady was sweet and sympathetic, and not at all surprised to see a face of tears turning the form in. I’m guessing I’m not the first. She noted the front of the form which clearly stated ‘single with child’ and remarked that I needed to find myself a rich husband, or at least buy a lottery ticket. Then she stamped my form as received and handed me a receipt.

And you know what? I didn’t walk away in feminist outrage. I walked away, still in tears, thinking no wealthy man would want a middle-aged fat woman like me, and that my three-cent bank balance would not even get me a lottery ticket.

I’m tired of being outraged. I’m tired of being broke. I’m tired of doing meaningless work. I’m tired of fighting battles and – win or lose – living to fight again another day. I am life-battle weary. So very weary. If only I would get sick and have to be in a hospital for a month. Just one whole month of someone else taking care of me for awhile. I’m done.