I am feeling a bit depressed lately and unlike many times past, this time I feel I do have a fair handle on the causes but really no idea what to do about them still.

     Last night and tonight, the nerve pain, particularly allodynia, where the sense of touch becomes searing burning instead of touch, has been fairly severe.  This caused my sleep to be highly interrupted.  I lie in bed from about 1AM last night to about 12pm today, got up for 4-1/2 hours and put out any fires that needed attending, then laid down again and went back to intermittently sleeping.

     I alluded to having some idea, well there are three components all kind of converging on a sense of hopelessness I don’t know how to get out of or to get around.

     First, my childhood was filled with broken relationships.  Both my mother and father worked, and so a good amount of the time as a young child we had baby sitters.  Two of them died, one from smoking in bed, a second from cancer.

     At ten, my father left home, initially he stayed with a friend in Seattle then rented a house in Seattle for a while, then moved to Yakima.  While he was in Seattle he had a girlfriend I couldn’t stand.  He would see us once a week but she was always there which means we basically didn’t exist.

     So somehow I survived all that, finally fell in love with someone that would stick around, we got married, had four children together and then in that part of my life I felt like I had a whole family again.  It felt good, except I had a great deal of anxiety because I knew it was temporary.

     I did some very bad things trying to make it permanent and hurt my daughter and indirectly my youngest son, both of whom I’ve quite successfully alienated.  It also got me 2-1/2 years in state prison.

     My oldest son is grown up and moved out for many years and it appears he is getting ready to start a family, at least the nest building stage seems to be under way.

     My second youngest son remains with me.  I have a hard time relating to him because he doesn’t relate to the real world all that well, stuck in video game mode.

     So the things that are bothering me right now, the impermanence of relationships, the shortening of days as summer ends, and my deteriorating physical condition as I age.

     My wife, I talk to her about these things but she does not seem to understand, she seems to accept the changes in life, the loss of relationships, the impermanence of everything, a lot better than I do.

     Our dog, I think she gets it.  I don’t know how but whenever I am feeling really low she does come to me and tries to help in her limited way, sad brown eyes staring at me.

     I figure I will likely not have a feeling of being part of a whole intact family again until I’m dead and gone from this planet and with God and the angels and the rest of his children.

     In the meantime, I’m not sure how to handle life.  I see customers slip away often hearing of their deaths months afterwards.  It would be not so bad if there were a steady influx of new people but that seems to be a trickle at present and I’m not sure what to do about it.

     I feel I’ve botched any chance at being involved with the grand children that are of two of my children.  I think by the time they understand it will only be after they’ve had another 40-50 years worth of life experience and by then I’ll be gone.

     So I don’t know.  I’m putting this out to you folks, the universe, God, everyone I know and praying that God provides me a direction because right now I feel like a ship without a rudder.  I’m just steaming ahead forward because I know not my destination.