So long, summer, hello fall.
It was a decent summer on my end, I guess. A lot of folks would think, "well, if I had most of spring and all of summer off, I'd be pretty damn happy!" Because I've been off since April 23 due to issues surrounding my mental illness. Fact really is, it's been lonely. My wife Janice was able to scatter her vacation days throughout the season so we could spend time together at various points through the short months, so that part of it was nice.
But here's the deal... the spectre of being off work a lot longer is staring at me in the mirror. I thought about things a little bit in depth the other day, and something occurred to me: With every job I've had in my life, everything I did, the self-loathing, self-harm and crashing confidence has tailed me everywhere I went. I can't actually blame the jobs I've had or any people I've worked with for my troubles on the job. Work is where I largely can't center myself when I confront adversity. It's just that at my current job, I encounter adversity a lot. In fact, where I've been employed in retail for the vast majority of my working life, it's where the stress has heightened the most. The more people I deal with, it seems, the more trouble I have. That's a shortcoming of my own. If there were actually issues with any given job, others didn't seem to experience them as much as I have. Therefore, the issues lie with me.
The frequency of my anxiety attacks has lessened considerably since I've been off work. But the fact of the matter is that they still happen. Only twice since I've been off, however. That doesn't mean that just because I'm not at work, they won't happen. A couple of weeks ago, I got into a spat online defending a sibling of mine on issues related to the whole Covid mess going on, and the related vaccines. I wound up being personally attacked by at least a couple of people, rather unfairly, and though I recognized this and tried to be conciliatory, it just seemed to get worse. When multiple people... i.e. two or more... focus their anger on somebody like me for whatever reasons, I tend to join them. I literally bashed myself. It was late, and I got into this altercation with these two people I don't even know, and I wound up just leaving it and trying to go to sleep. The way my brain works, though, it won't let me off that easily. For whatever reason, I decided to try to sleep without my THC oil though, and a couple of hours later I was there in bed, awake, with my brain recycling what I just dealt with online. It festered itself into me blaming myself for the whole thing. I felt like I was the one who was wrong (I wasn't), and that I was being a stupid ass of a person, and that I really was literally stupid. I do this a lot. But this got out of control. I smashed that can in my forehead multiple times so hard, that it bled in two places. For a week I wound up trying to get my wits about me after it all happened, staggering around with my bad balance, and trying to come down from the horrific high point of self-violence. It's hard to do. I'm not myself for at least a week after something like this happens. The worst thing about all of it is that Janice has to witness it all. She's quite remarkable in how she handles it. She stays calm and offers support in any way she can. It's almost like talking a guy down off a bridge who's about to jump. I don't know what would become of me if she wasn't around.
I'm pretty much back to where I was before all that happened now. And I have to wonder... until when? What will set me off next time? Can I avoid it? It's worth noting that, since this is a public forum for anyone to read, that I've never hurt anyone physically over this illness or anything else for that matter. But the emotional distress caused, though involuntarily, can be just as bad, and I'm aware of this. This adds to my guilt. I guess you could say if you're holding a bowl while someone's filling it with hot soup, and there's one scoop too many and the bowl overflows, your hands get burned and you drop the whole bowl. Perhaps a series of events is what touches these things off sometimes... the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak.
I've never really learned how to properly deal with it all, because throughout the last few decades, we've been in a state of recovery financially. We weren't real good with money from the get-go. We signed a lousy mortgage deal with a broker when we got the house (we were totally green), and we fixed that with financial advice from a debt consolidator, but not before we dug ourselves into a fairly large hole. I blame myself for that, once again. In the beginning, I was making our budgets, and failed rather fantastically at it. But Janice took that over, and now we're here, with no credit card debt, no outstanding bills, and things more in balance than they ever were since we got together 30 years ago. Thus, we can kinda-sorta handle paying for counseling maybe once a month, for now. The fact that this isn't covered by medicare or our paid health insurance is disheartening, though. If I needed medical attention for my burned hand from that bowl of soup, I'd get it no questions asked, for free even. But since you can't see mental illness, not everyone believes it, and you're often on your own. I have cuts healing on my forehead right now that actually allows you to 'see' it, and I've noticed that got all kinds of attention and support, which I obviously appreciate; but it illustrates my point. I've had my GP looking after me since I admitted my self-harm struggles back in '96 after my daughter was born, and I knew I had to do something because she deserved a daddy. Enter Zoloft, and not long after that, my mindset changed. The severity and frequency of anxiety attacks lessened, and I was able to be more reflective of situations. Zoloft quite literally saved my life, in tandem with Janice. Whenever I tried to come off of the drug, though, once I was clear of it I'd wind up being the person I was before I was taking it. The big drawbacks to taking anti-depressants are well-known. Life becomes somewhat dulled. Sensations are less sensational. Apathy heightens. Worst of all, the libido pretty much flatlines. You kind of trade being subject to self-incrimination for being a zombie. That might be overstating it a little, but anyone who's ever been on SSRI's knows exactly what I mean. There's a trade-off, but I'll take the latter, because I get to still be alive.
What I'm going to have to do is take notes from my counselor, I think, and recite to myself the advice I'm given. My consultations are actually over the phone, with the option of video chat, so if I can get my wits about me enough, I'll have to step up to that. But I'm made to think of things in different perspectives, and that's clearly a good thing. I originally decided to pay for counseling with the possibility of getting EMDR treatment, which I've been told about by several friends. It sounds heavy, but I'm willing to try almost anything to get ahead of this. A friend of mine, Mima, directed me to a video by a doctor who has a largely holistic approach to issues related to depression and anxiety. Something I did pick up was a trick to learn to love yourself, with which I had no freakin' idea what to do. But he said you have to love your brain. Give it a name and talk to it. It's only been a few days since I've done this, but it seems to help. I call my brain "Gary", an acronym for 'gray', as in gray matter that makes up the brain. So a negative thought will creep up on me, as they always do, and I'll have a chat with him. "Gary! Come on, you know better than that. That's NOT how it is and you know it. Snap out of it! I love you, man!" When I inject some humor into it, it seems to help, even. I mean, frig, Janice and me give names to everything. We call our Panasonic TV 'Ms. Viera', our car 'Big Red' (it's not big, but it's a male designation, so to personify Big Red we gave him/it the title to make him/it 'feel more confident'. I know), our air fryer Nina the Ninja, even our laptops. Janice's Hewlett Packard computer's name is 'Hugh'. We pretend it always says 'we are Hugh!' after the famous Star Trek TNG episode with the Borg character with that name. My 11 inch laptop is 'Little Ace'. And we put words into our cat Marbles' mouth all the time. Why not Gary??
I overcame my fear of spiders years ago by personifying them. I put myself in their spot. A little thing looking up at this ginormous beast of a human being. "You're not gonna hurt me are you?" I'd say on its behalf. Immediately, you're giving that little spider a sense of self awareness. Now my wife nicknames me the Spider Monkey, because I love spiders and monkeys. Whenever I see a spider in the house, I'll talk to him/her, gently escort it into a glass, and bring her outside where she's safe, and where all the food is. I get the instant gratification of having saved a little bitty life, as well as a way to make peace with these little creatures. Over the years, it's become amusing. Just a couple of months ago, there was a spider in the corner of our bedroom, and she was just minding her own business, so we left her alone. But the next day webs were showing up, so I literally spoke to her. "K, look, I'm going to have to move you someplace else, because there'll be no mess in here." She'll dodge the glass I try to corral her in, and I'll try the next night. So then, the next evening, she wound up directly on the wall straight above my head (this kind of thing happens with me a LOT). I was on my laptop surfing the web, no pun intended, and just let her be while she spied on me. Not long after, she lost her footing or something on the wall and fell between my glasses and my eyes and scurried away. I thought it was quite funny, I literally laughed out loud. "K, look.... I know you didn't mean that. I'll wait for you to come back and I'll try to help you tomorrow." Tomorrow comes, and there she is, right on the wall on my side of the bed again. She fell on the floor and I helped her into the glass ... "atta girl! Now you're being good!" ... and bid her farewell as I brought her outside.
That was a lengthy story to illustrate my point that, if you name something and personify it, you can form a relationship of sorts. So I've started a relationship with Gary. It's yet to be seen if there's any longevity to this strategy, but I'm willing to try anything reasonable. The Gary Strategy has yet to be fully tested, but it's an active one. And I like it up to this point. And Janice thinks it's cute.
This, coupled with Janice and me going back to the gym since the beginning of August, and my therapy added to it, is all in an effort to calm down the racket in my head. Since I've been dealing with this all my life, I don't expect to ever be rid of it completely. But I do want to take extra measures to cope with it. Not working is allowing me the time and space to do this. In fact, just writing this is also an effective coping mechanism.
What my future holds monetarily is the part that scares me the most. I can't keep switching jobs because I'm having vicious anxiety attacks at work. The source problem needs to be addressed. Confidence is a major key to beating back this illness to a more manageable level. Perhaps my admission that I'll never fully be recovered from this is also a step toward realizing this as a disability as well, because there's a large part of me that feels guilty for accepting that label. Still, disability benefits would help keep me alive, but definitely not thrive. And that's bothersome to think of.
Ultimately, time will tell whether this path I'm currently on will lead me to sunnier days. Odds are it won't, but I can't give up hope either.
If you've been kind enough to read this and/or offer your support, please know I acknowledge it. A lot of people have indeed given up on me and are just 'peripheral' friends. And that's fine, we all have those. But I know I'm a lot more challenging to have as a friend than most others.
GARY!!!! Smarten the fuck up!!
There's what I'm talking about.
Thanks for reading.
