My life is gray

I am not having a lot of "I can't stand another second more" moments these days. I am just having my moments of wondering how much longer I have to put up with going on living. There seems to be nothing that I want. I can't even figure out what to eat for breakfast- there is nothing that I want to eat. But it is my late day at work, I will be starving by lunch (and then eat something bad).

I have a problem with initiation and with keeping going through difficulty and I don't know how much of it is depression, meds, or my underlying personality. But perhaps it doesn't matter. The answer is the same- I have to treat initiation as a muscle and see if I can strengthen it.

There is this catch-22 about depression. If you are depressed, in part because your life is empty and miserable- then the answer, at least in part- is action. But the thought of action seems very unpleasant, and it is all that I can do just to keep going in the basics of my life- how can I do more? And so the thought of doing more makes me more depressed, and yet not doing more makes me more depressed because it does nothing to make my life better.

There are many reasons why I am so devastated by my mother's cancer. But a part of it is that I have so few people in my life. My brother has a wife, kids, even in-laws. I still can't figure out how he turned out so normal! I think his wife has a lot to do with it. Plus he has always made connections with people, wherever he went.

In two and a half weeks I go to see my mother, who is now on oxygen. I'll see if a week is the right amount of time to go for. My plan is to go every month until I use up my PTO, and then to start using family leave. I don't know how much time she has left. A doctor in July told her she had less than a year (and he made it sound like quite a bit less) if she did not do chemo or surgery. But that is just an average, and I don't know if any of the alternative things that she did bought her some time.