Take a sad song

So there's that moment when you realize, truly figure it out, that you're failing as husband, as a father, and as a man. It can happen at any tine. But for me it was tonight, when having spent the day butting against my son -- time outs, tantrums, him wailing, me yelling -- I put him to bed, and sang him the song I sing to him every night -- The Beatles, Hey Jude -- and he gripped me, wordlessly, and wouldn't let me go. Asleep, and holding onto me like he was holding on to the world.
Us old hardened depressives, us old dogs of war, we don't cry. Not anymore. When you start to slip into the abyss of depression you can't stop blubbing. You cry because the wrong (or the right) song comes on the radio, or you caught the scent of an ex-love in a crowd, or you ran out of fucking butter. But us old pros, us with the years of emptiness and numbness and pain behind us, we don't cry anymore.
So when my son held so hard our cheeks became one, and he snored gently in that sweet rumble that only a small child can elicit, all I felt was that familiar ball in my chest chomping away at another little piece of me. Making a little bit less of me than there was a moment before.
Eventually when he was deep enough to unlock so I could sit up and watch his heart-shaped little lips and those gentle eyelids that only come out at night, I thought about why we were here. Money? Opportunity? I'd taken him away from his life and given little back. And then I wept. I guess there's depression, and then there's just sadness.