Post Partum Depression, Karma and the Balance of Luck

My favorite definition of stress can be found here (it's the #2 version)

Did you read that? good, now this sentence will make more sense: For me, at the moment, that person has a name. I won't share that name at the moment as I'm sure some how it would get me in trouble. He's the guy that bought my house when the babies were born.

I was trying to fix up the house for us as it would have been a really nice place for my family for the next 4-5years. We would have had a big back yard for growing things, letting the dogs play and letting the kids play. We would have had a nice big room for Dorothy's studio so she could work with clients separated from the pets and allergies. We would have been in the middle of town so I could have avoided the hell that I-10 has become. Heck, we would have had a lower mortgage payment.

But for various reasons, I ran out of time and money to get the job done and I had to dump the house during a time of bad house prices and low turnover. Getting the house sold and realizing just how much I was losing in the process was one of the many contributing factors to my Postpartum Depression. Yes, men can get it to and there were a few things that added to my problems.

This leads me to my theory on the Balance of Luck. The basic idea is that luck will balance itself out. A run of bad luck will be followed up by good luck and so forth. Because of this, I try not to depend on luck. I just don't want to deal with the bad luck that follows the good. Karma is more my style. As I see it, Karma is the idea that what you do in life comes back to you. I try to be a good person, helping out friends as best I can, doing what I say and just being polite whenever possible.

Luck however, has had it's own ideas. I've been really lucky in the last few years. Meeting Dorothy, getting married, having 3 beautiful and healthy kids. Dorothy delivered naturally, we had probably the only doctor in Tucson that was willing to try. I was able to take her home the next day after she spent about 30 hours in the hospital from start to finish. The kids, even though they spent some time in the NICU, never needed any real assistance. They just had to get bigger and learn how to eat. We got through the dreaded RSV season with noone getting seriously sick. I got a cold for a week and wore a mask around the house, and towards the end of the season, all 3 girls got a brief cold. And the kids are doing very well. If I account for their "adjusted" age, they are doing things that the books say the should be doing a month from now, or more. These are all things in the good luck category.

So I was expecting some bad luck. Unfortunately I forgot that luck can come in small doses or great big doses. When I sold the house, I knew I wasn't going to get much of anything for it as it still needed work. The unnamed guy I sold it to basically took over the payments and agreed to pay off 2 credit accounts I had built up in doing some of the repairs. This was all done in a nice legal manner and I still have the 2nd lien on the house that's due when he sells the house. Unfortunately, Mr. Unnamed Guy seems to have a problem with paying the bills on time. This weekend marks the 4th time that he has paid the mortgage late. Which means that this is the 4th time I spent the weekend fielding calls from the mortgage company about why the payment was late and what was I going to do about it.

Now for those of you who haven't dealt with depression before, here's my take on how it works, at least for me. Depression is caused by stress. A body can only deal with a certain amount of stress before something snaps. That breakdown is the start of the depression. For me it manifests itself as a lack of appetite, feeling worthless, feeling like I can't take care of my family like I should, lack of sleep, a lack of energy and I tend to feel sick to my stomach. As you work out of the depression, it's important to note that the break in your stress response is still there and will take quite a while to fix. So now, things that wouldn't normally have bothered me are capable of kicking off little cycles of depression and I have to fight really hard to keep my head above water.

So, Mr. Unnamed Guy. Even though you have caused me an inordinate amount of grief since you bought my house. Even though you seem to have a problem living up to your side of the bargain. Even though I thing a jury of my peers probably wouldn't send me to jail for trying to teach you a lesson the hard way, I'm going to take the high road. I'm going to wish you all the Luck in the world and hope that your karma gives lady luck a push in the right direction.