So, I'm not really sure if this belongs here, but... Well, I haven't really been able to talk about it with anyone, and I'm mostly hoping that just letting this out helps a little bit.
About four years ago, my life was on an upward trajectory - still is, maybe, but it doesn't feel that way anymore. I've always been kind of hard on myself, and I've tended towards depression my entire life. I'd sort of half-failed-half-dropped-out of college, and spent a decade working a dead-end job. I'd convinced myself that I'd never amount to anything, and made peace with the fact that I'd always be poor and overworked.
But, things were looking up: I was going to therapy regularly, and it actually starting to make a difference. I was going to therapy regularly, and I was starting to have a little bit of self-esteem. I managed to at least work up the confidence to start applying to other jobs again, and somehow I actually started getting interviews. I also found a cat living under the back porch of my building, but I assumed at the time that he was someone else's indoor/outdoor cat that would wander the neighborhood sometimes.
But then, just as things started to come together, they started to fall apart.
The therapist that had done so much for my self-esteem? I stopped going. My wife has an anxiety problem, and she had taken to asking me if my therapist thought that we should leave each other. She insisted that I must complain about her to my therapist. He didn't, and I hadn't. But now I was in a tough spot - I could either say nothing to my therapist, and tell her that truthfully; or I could tell my therapist about it, and maybe work towards a solution, but then it would be a lie when I told my wife that I hadn't talked about her. In the end, stopping therapy was the easiest solution.
It was also a huge fucking mistake.
The cat that I mentioned earlier - over the course of the winter, we realized that he might actually be living under our back porch. While I was grappling with whether or not I should stop seeing my therapist, I started spending more time out back with the cat. He seemed to like my company, and eventually (right around when I dropped out of therapy) we decided to take him in. I had been hesitant because I'd never cared for a cat before, but my wife said it wouldn't be hard, and encouraged me to bring him inside. He actually adjusted to our apartment very quickly, and I was incredibly glad to welcome him into my life for real.
Well, his time in our home lasted all of six days: turns out, cats are a trigger for my wife's eczema, so we had to give him up to the local humane society. I begged and pleaded, but she said there was no other way: if it was an allergy, she could take pills or get a series or shots, but there was nothing to be done about an eczema trigger.
I was heartbroken.
We'd barely gotten his litter box out of the house before my wife was looking for a dog. I asked for some time to grieve - I'd always wanted a cat when I was younger, but my mom was allergic. I'd just had a childhood dream come true, then had it snatched away from me; a couple of weeks to get over that doesn't seem unreasonable. She admitted that she had never seen me so distraught ("you look like you just lost your best friend!"), then gave me two fucking days before she started looking at dogs again. I told her that looking for a dog so soon kind of felt like we were just trying to replace our cat, and... Wow, three days this time.
Now, to drive home how simultaneous these two events were, I stopped going to therapy about two weeks before we brought the cat in. So, to recap, so far I have no external support, I just gave up a pet, and my wife is actively making things harder for me to cope with.
But, at least I have a dog now, right? And my wife let my vent and talk about my feelings when I was depressed?
Ha!
At the end of the summer, she decided that our apartment was too small for a dog. She couldn't give me time to get over our cat, she dragged me through trying to adopt like four different dogs (all of which already had families interested in adopting them), and then dropped all of it in favor of "we'll just get a dog when we own a home."
...Which was great, because she had already told me that she couldn't deal with me being sad about the cat, and told me to not talk about him. She couldn't even wait a week to start trying to shove a dog into the cat-sized hole in my heart, but I held my tongue for a goddamn year. If she asked what was bothering me, I would just brush it off and act like it was nothing.
And... That should be the end of it. I grew up repressing my feelings. Bottling this up should have been par for the course.
But she helped her parents get a dog. Her also very anxious parents. If I don't visit them often, their dog gets anxious and sad. I'm basically a therapy dog's fucking therapist, which is really depressing. I couldn't have a cat in my life, I couldn't have time to get over giving him up, and now I'm responsible for the happiness of somebody else's dog? I cry on the way home almost every time.
And now, her brother and his girlfriend are planning on getting a cat. Her brother who also has eczema. Who knows that cats trigger his eczema. Her brother... Who plans on getting the fucking allergy shots because eczema is also an immune reaction and apparently allergy shots have been shown to help with eczema triggers.
So... That's where I'm at. I did end up getting a better job, with better hours and better pay, but now I cry almost every day. I cry for what's gone wrong, for having to bottle my feelings back up, having to give up a pet, and having to care for someone else's pet instead; but mostly I cry for what could have been.
That's why you try to line up the new job before you quit - they can't talk shit about you quitting on short notice if you're still there.
I actually tried to give two weeks at my old job - they didn't deserve it, but I figured I should. The application for my new job even had a checkbox labeled "I am currently employed and will need two weeks notice of my first shift."
Instead, they called me on a monday and asked "can you start next monday?"
...My boss wasn't in that day, and I really wanted a weekend before starting my new job; so on Tuesday, they found out that Friday was my last day.