Lonely Obsessions.

Days when my family are not home can be very, very difficult. I enjoy spending time with them, talking to them, simply having them around. When they are not home I feel extremely alone and I miss them greatly. I have been making great progress with getting my wife to understand that I really need her right now and I feel like she understands the importance of the work I'm doing. I feel closer to her and her support is helping. This makes me miss her even more.

Today I was thinking about how it sucks to have to return to a job where my schedule only allows me to see my family two evenings out of the week and weekday mornings. I can't go out with my family, I can't help my son with his homework, I can't go out with my wife. This sucks. I feel that right now my family is a major part of my recovery and I am very afraid about going back to work. Sure the pay is good and we are financially stable but at what cost. I feel that I don't have the education or the skills needed to just pick up and move to a job with a 9 to 5 schedule that pays well, especially now with the economy the way it is.

This feeling of inadequacy has caused me to obsess about my future career and going back to school to upgrade my skills. I would love to go back to school to have a more meaningful career but I keep picturing myself having horrible panic attacks in meetings, presentations, or in classes, failing and then going back to square one.

I discussed my predicament with my wife today and we both agreed that the job I have right now does pay well and I might be able to have some type of accommodation at work that will allow me to spend more time with my family and continue to work on myself. We also discussed the possibility of me going back to university someday but right now is not the best time to think about that because there are many things on my plate that need to be addressed first. I feel that this condition robbed me of my plans for my future and I can't let that go because it will be a way of letting it win. I want to pick up where I left off.