Good morning, all --

This morning,, I became aware of how much LACK OF SELF-CONFIDENCE is the underlying root of a lot of my depression, and how many triggers relate to that issue.

For those of you who are busy and can't read a long post, I'm going to start with my Big Fat Questions, and then I'll prose on a bit for those who have time or interest to read more.

Big Fat Question #1: How do we develop self-confidence? Any reading? Any tips from your T's? Things that have worked for you?

Big Fat Question #2: How do we maintain self-confidence when a number of people in our life have said very ugly things to us? In my case, the only 3 men in my life.

Last week, I found online info that distinguises between SELF-ESTEEM and SELF-CONFIDENCE. Self-esteem is valuing oneself. Self-confidence is behaviors that reflect self-esteem.

I have a certain amount of self-esteem. I believe that I am a good person. I do my best not to harm others, but I will protect myself from perceived threats -- and sometimes my perceptions are paranoid and off.

Confidence is a real problem. The phrase "hiding your light under a bushel" is an advice theme throughout my life.

Self-confidence seems like some magical quality that a Good Fairy Godmother bestows at one's christening, or doesn't. It is the toothpaste white smile of the always-laughing cheerleaders, and the bonhomie of the sales person who wins all the awards, and the minister who always knows the right thing to say. It is some ease for being with people, and being liked and loved, that we who live with our noses pressed to the glass of life long for. How do I get this magical thing called self-confidence? Any books, advice, experience?

The second part of my ramblings are my dark secrets. Haven 't talked w/new T about it. Don't want to go on anymore about it with friends who've heard it already. But I am carrying this crap around with me. All of it relates to negative feedback from males -- the only 3 males with whom I've had any significant contact.

1. My relationship with P, the man I lived with for 15 years

After P. called from California May 5, 2003, to say, "It's over, my feelings have changed," I couldn't believe it. We hadn't been fighting.

I suppose there were signs, but I was going through a grueling tenure review and a year of medical tests, and I missed the signs. We were never a lovey-dovey kinda couple, and he was on the road as a trucker most of the time.

After 5 days, I called him, and I begged him to tell me why he was doing this. He said, "It's because you're so filled with hate and anger and bitterness that I can't even go out with you in public."

I have talked at length about this with 3 close friends, 2 therapists, one psychiatirst, one spiritual mentor in her 80s who has known me for 20 years, and partridge in a pear tree. My mom said, "Well, you can be snippy, but angry and bitter, no I can't say that about you." My friend M, standing in the aisle and saying "Yoohoo" to get a waiter's attention, said, "What does he mean? Are you rude to waiters?"

Mom also said caustically, "Well, it sure took him long enough to find out."

I cried and cried to think that this was P's last and final impression of me, and why had he kept his true feelings about me a secret for so long? I kept asking my T to talk about my hate and anger so I could come to terms with it, and she always refused. She asked me why I put so much stock in what P had said. I said, there must be some truth to it that I can use to improve. My T said -- I'd put some stock in what P said if he hadn't left when you got sick and lost your job. But that makes everything that he said a lie he told himself so that he could look in the mirror in the morning.

But I carry P's words with me -- that I am filled with hate and anger and bitterness and have business being out in public, and no matter how many people tell me it taint true, I've got to know inside me that that it's not true -- and I don't. How can I? I used to call P "my angel." I thought he was the "best person I ever met." We were a team for 15 years. How can I trust what onlookers say, compared with what the man who was my life partner has said?

The other mean thing P said was that I was "forcing him into a marriage" he "didn't want." I asked him if he would marry me so I'd have health insurance to cover some tests that are running $2K a few times a year for screenings that can potentially save my life if the disease gets worse in ways that affect internal organs. So by running away when he did, the message is, "I'd rather that you die than marry me." I stuck with him went he went through depression; kept us going on a tiny, poverty level teaching assistant's pay; got him into free therapy when he was too far gone to help himself. My college mentor told me outright to leave him, he was using me. My T asked me to discuss it, and I refused. He was my angel. And when my angel's actions say, "I'd rather let you die than marry you," when they say, "You were good enough to live with for 15 years, but now that you're sick and don't have a good job, you're not good enoug to marry," it hurts in ways that I am having a hard time getting over.

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2. Relationship with ex-husband

I tried to get back with my ex-husband, with whom I hadn't talked in 15 years, bec. I've always loved him passionately, but he is improvident and doesn't like to work, and is a sex addict, and I couldn't live like that anymore.

And I love him so much that in order to have a relationship with P, I had to cut out all contact with him. During the 12 years during which T and I were friends after our divorce, I did not have a stable, LT relationship with any other man, bec. T fills my heart and thoughts, and no man every compared favorably with him, despite T's own enormous dysfunctions.

But T understands suicidal depression, esp. our sucidal depressions, better than anyone I know, and I sought some kindness from him.

Within the first 15 minutes of our phone call, he said, "You know I still love you. It's just that there's some people you can't live with." He insisted that I come to Portland to visit him, bec. I was going to CA to see other friends and a religious retreat.

He didn't have a girlfriend -- he's had at least 7 live-in relationships in the 30 years I've known him, including 3 wives (I'm #2). This is a man who can't live without woman, yet has never had a relationship that lasted longer than 5 years.

While on religious retreat, I came to terms with my part in our breakup, something I'd never faced before. Started with a letter of apology, went on to a love letter, then to request to try again. Meanwhile, he'd decided to go live with a woman he'd known 3-5 weeks -- but didn't have the honesty to tell me.

When he finally did write to me, he said that our relationship had been all about the sex -- reducing my outpouring of love to nothing. Friends who know this relationship (we were a well-known "Power Couple" in the city where we were married) say this simply isn't true -- he was as passionately in love with me as I with him. T's kiss-off letter arrived, to the day, on what would have been our 30th wedding anniversary, in an especially cruel twist of fate.

When I was giving away a lot of my possessions when I had to sell the house, I came upon an object that a famous person gave us for our wedding. I sent it to him. I got an email that said, "Leave me the f*** alone." I was still in a suicidal part of my depression, and so devastated that I fell off the chair where I was on the computer and started sobbing.

So that's the two men who I've loved best who have told me that I'm nothing -- a sex toy, a paycheck, better be healthy or I'm worth zero.

3. Relationship with my brother

My brother believes that P had good reasons for T to leave me. My mother says that B talks about P "as if he's a god." T trained B to be a long-haul trucker, so B is grateful that for the first time in his life (in his 50s, too), he has a job he likes and makes good money. I also think B doesn't have any close male friends, having worked as an assistant nurse for the past 15 years or so. B rode in T's truck for 6 months for his training, eating and sleeping in the bunks, so they bonded.

Just before having to sell the house, I was especially suicidal, and I started calling P, who doesn't answer my calls, and leaving phone messages about how grief-stricken I was. I just wanted him to know the pain he caused. Dumb, I know. I also know that P takes suicide seriously, bec. that's how his father died, and he found the body.

So P called my mother, who is in her 80s and not in good shape. And she was very upset, but didn't know what to do, and called my brother left the message on my answering machine saying, "Kill yourself. Just go ahead, do it." He blamed me for upsetting my mother -- instead of P who never cared enough about my life to have a few phone numbers of friends to intervene, whilst I've got a bunch of numbers of his friends.

My brother's voice was so filled with hate, and his message so hate-filled, that I couldn't even listen to the whole thing, and erased it, and had to call a telephone crisis line that evening. So, there you have it. THE ONLY MEN in my life are in COMPLETE AGREEMENT that I shouldn't be allowed to walk the face of the earth, that I should just kill myself, or die of a disease that could be treated, but just leave them the F*** alone.

This hurts so much. No matter how many people tell me that THESE MEN ARE THE ONES WITH PROBLEMS, I can't seem to escape the idea that there is something major WRONG WITH ME AS A HUMAN BEING, and I just want to fix it and be normal -- whatever that is -- and reasonably happy, or at least not in a depression hell, always self-critical, and fearful of what the future holds for me.

Sorry to write so long. I guess I had to get this all out onto a public forum.

In AA, some people say, "We are only as sick as our secrets," and mine is that men think I am a worthless piece of s***.

And that's more than enuf.