getting out of the commercial lease i signed

The fault may be mine, but I'm having a hard time figuring out your situation from the information in your question.

When you say "commercial lease," that normally would refer to leasing a place in which to do commerce -- in other words, a business premises. But you also refer to an "apt," so I'm guessing you mean a residential apartment. And I'm not sure what kind of free-lancing you do, or how that relates to what you signed, or what kind of space you actually leased. Nor do I have a clue what you mean when you say it [the premises? the lease document?] "looked very old," or more specifically, why you think that might be important.

To assess your situation with any degree of confidence, any lawyer would need to review what you signed. It may be obvious to you now, in hindsight, that you ought not to have signed anything without keeping a copy of it.

In general, however, losing your job would not be a valid excuse for breaching your contractual obligations under a lease.

When you say "he [I assume meaning the landlord] now wants 1200 dollars, which is the total amount of the deposit," I assume you mean that the landlord is refusing to refund all or any part of the deposit. To know whether he has the right to do that, I or any lawyer would, again, need to review the terms of the lease to see what it says, if anything, about the deposit. But it would certainly be typical for most apartment leases to state that if you fail to take possession on the promised date, you forfeit your entire deposit.

The lease may also have other provisions which specify your liability. In general, absent some contrary provision in the lease, you're responsible for the landlord's damages as measured by his lost rentals over the term of the lease. However, the landlord has a duty to mitigate his damages by making a good-faith effort to re-lease the premises as soon as he's become aware of your intent not to take possession, and the income from any substitute tenant has to be credited against his damages from your breach. It sounds to me like this landlord may be suggesting to you that he's not going to seek damages for the rest of the lease term, but only the forfeiture of your deposit -- and if that's so, that's probably a pretty good deal for you.

But again, to know for sure, someone would need to review the lease.

Assuming, again, that this was for a residential apartment, then Texas has some very well-defined rules on when a landlord can withhold a security deposit for damages, but that's different than a deposit to hold an apartment prior to moving in. Nevertheless, I would suggest that you persist in trying to get him to furnish you with a copy of what you signed; offer to reimburse him for the copying costs. If he still refuses, send him a letter by certified mail, return receipt requested, politely demanding a copy of the lease and again offering to pay for the cost. You can say, truthfully, that you're trying to determine what rights you may have with respect to the deposit and the lease.

But unless there is unusual language -- unusually generous toward the prospective tenant that is -- in this particular lease form, I seriously doubt that you're going to be able to persuade him to return your deposit, or any court to require him to do so. There are often unpleasant consequences to signing contracts and then breaking them, and I suspect that you're going to be stuck with this one. Sorry not to have a more cheerful take on your situation (if I understand it correctly).