Kick At the Darkness

These are strange days, eh?  I mean, cripes.

Way back in 2019 ... it sure seems way back ... around Christmas time, things were as they usually are on my own end.  Kind of a downer, a bit of a spiral, and more or less an endurance test for those of us who have a hard time with that season, namely Depression and Anxiety patients.  It's hard to escape memories for some of us.  I'm constantly battling with things I miss from days gone by to dealing with guilt for all I've done wrong that I'd love a second chance at.  The trick is to look ahead.  But wait... 2020 is just gonna up the ante, ain't it??

Really, Christmas wasn't too bad.  As is every year, though, there's a deft loneliness that lingers, because so many people are missing year to year due to passing away, leaving for other places, or just plain split apart.  You have to make the best of what you've got.  I've got my wife and daughter to get me through the holidays.  Without them, I'd be utterly, completely lost.  

Working in retail as a receiver at a drug store, October and November are the toughest months to get through, as that's when the most product arrives at the store.  And seeing as I'm a receiver, I'm the guy that takes it in and records it all, mostly, in the store computers before it has to be merchandised.  A lot of interaction happens on the main floor of the store, so that's a bit of a nightmare for a guy like me.  I have no problem helping someone or dealing with pleasant folks.  It's just the ratio of rude people accelerates during those busy times.  And that I have a hard time dealing with.  So, I rejoice at the thought of January.  I often say that January is my Christmas month, because things notably slow down after a hectic season.  Well, January saw its share of challenges, with me working hard and non-stop, through my breaks and lunches and into overtime, but I got a sense of accomplishment through it all.  I was feeling good.  The wife and me cleared a substantial debt at the bank, we were going to the gym on a regular basis, and generally feeling good.  The new year looked promising!  

2020:  "Hold my beer..."

In January, I had my MRI on my right knee which was really acting up, and subsequently saw my ortho doctor about what could be done.  The short answer is, nothing.  My knee frequently gives out and sends searing shots of pain through my leg that causes it to buckle a lot.  I thought there was more ligament or tendon damage that needed repair, or whatever, or maybe it's arthritis.  The doc said, yep, lots of arthritis in there, another tear in the miniscus, but the tear was horizontal not vertical, which apparently makes a difference in urgency.  Repairing it would produce scar tissue, he said.  Also I had a Baker's Cyst on the back of that same knee which made squatting excruciating.  I do that a lot at work as part of my job, which is really physical, so these things are piling up, you know?  Ultimately, according to the doc, no course of action is to be taken.  In other words, I have to live with the searing pain when it happens, which is a lot at work, and the doc recommended I change the way I work.  I can't.   Anyone who knows me knows I can't work 'easy' or 'slowly'.  So, I roll the dice every day and take extra care to avoid the worst.  I mean, geez, I'm 54, not 84.  Still, the month was going pretty good.  Things looked promising.  Tax time was coming, which we get a decent refund for every year to help fix up the house because of our disability claims.  There's stuff we need to do to keep this building respectable.  We were psyched at how the future was shaping up.

In early February, while receiving one of the big orders that I do on Tuesdays and Fridays at 5am, I slipped while pulling a very heavy pallet of stock and fell backwards, landing on my left arm.  It hurt, but I dusted myself off and kept going.  The truck driver seemed concerned and helped me with unloading the rest.  He's a really nice guy, a big, fit fella with this deep voice that reminds me of the Brawny paper towel guy that used to be on commercials on TV.  I worked through the next three hours alone, with my left wrist hurting, and got myself a brace to support it until staff showed up around 8am-ish.  I proceeded to unload product from the pallets with considerable pain; not only was my wrist hurting, but my knee was acting up too.  I wanted to stay until my boss arrived so I could give him a rundown on what happened before I headed to the hospital to have my wrist looked at.  After I briefed him on the situation, he offered his support, and off to the hospital I went.

Janice was working, so I was there by myself, but certainly not alone.  The waiting room was loaded, which meant a long wait, so I passed time by... well, waiting.  It was a long six hours.  Janice joined me when she was done work.  They finally called me in and I got an x-ray, which revealed fractures in two places in my left wrist.  A splint was put on, I was referred to an ortho guy at the other hospital, and the waiting game began.  It's not easy sleeping with one of those things on your arm, as most people who dealt with it would know.  The guy who put the splint on told me all the wrong things to do with my broken wrist, which were refuted days later when my cast got put on.  I was given pain meds, a nice red fiberglass cast, and a note saying I was off work for six weeks.  Six friggin' weeks!  To some that might sound like a vacation.  I say, I'll take a vacation on my own terms, or else it's not a vacation at all.  I couldn't work out or run, lest I sweat and make a balloon out of my cast arm, so I generally had to loaf around for a month and a half.  This sucks more than it reads.  Keeping in mind I have D&A, non-productive thoughts began creeping into my head.  I was having bad dreams.  My diet went to hell.  But wait... there's more!  

In the midst of my six weeks off, the Coronavirus crisis hit.  Businesses began shutting down, people retreated indoors by law, toilet paper suddenly was a hot commodity, and panic was setting in with the general public.  People were getting sick and dying, but it seemed at first that this might just be a variation of a flu virus.  A lot of us thought that.  Then more and more people got infected, the death rate took off, quarantines took effect, and racism was rearing its ugly head against Asians because the virus originated in Wuhan, China.  Conspiracy theories ran rampant.  The increasingly inept American president Trump told people how to treat themselves if they got sick, subsequently having to be corrected by the "fake news", as he calls it, which is everything in the general media that doesn't cheer with bright red pom poms for him.  If Trump calls it "fake news", chances are overwhelming it's very credible information, as opposed to Fox News and their ilk.  Let's be very honest, friends.  Trump is in power because of two things... his support for the pro-life crowd, which is very disingenuous to most of us, and his backing by the fanatical religious right.  Those are two tools that he uses to coerce his minions to continue to support the cult of personality that is Trump and his administration of fools.  His lack of action and degradation of his own intelligence organizations has plunged the U.S., and economically the world, into an epidemic of dangerous proportions and what will most likely be the next Great Depression.  Canada's Trudeau is throwing crazy amounts of cash at anything and everything to try to bury the problem, so we're not a lot better off, but Canada for the most part is relatively safe, at least until parliamentary budgets are released in the coming years for the rest of our lives to try to fix this giant monetary mess.  Oil is virtually free on the markets, which seems to have promptly shut up the likes of Alberta's Jason Kenny and his relentless push for pipelines.  The Green Party has never looked more relevant.  

But I digress....

Two weeks in with my six week recovery, I was up late at night one night trying to sleep, which I had great difficulty with during my entire time off.  I had my cannabis THC oil, which almost always helps me sleep, but it didn't seem to work enough this time.  At 4 in the morning, in our dark bedroom, I got up and went to Janice's side of the bed and administered some oil into a glass to mix with pop and wait for it to take effect and finally sleep.  As some time passed, I got really, really thirsty, and really 'out of it'.  My mouth felt like it was full of sand.  I sat up in bed with crazy dizziness and my ridiculously dry mouth, getting worried, and tried to summon Janice awake, but I couldn't put words together.  I wondered if I was having a stroke!  I shook her awake and told her I was in trouble of some sort.  She got up and rushed to my side of the bed, and not long after that, my head spun like a Tilt-a-Whirl and I headed to the bathroom, crashing into walls and falling, and barely made it before I puked anything and everything that was in my gut, heaving violently for over half an hour continuously.  My head was spinning with a "wow" effect, with things zooming in and out, and I was freaking out.  It occurred to me I might have taken too much cannabis oil.  I stumbled, barely, back to bed with Janice's help, who held my hair back while I was hugging the toilet, only to have to get up again after a few minutes to stumble and crash into the walls again and nearly falling into the bathtub in my rush to make it to the toilet in time.  It was even rougher this round, because there was nothing in me to vomit.  Another half an hour of retching ensued.  Our beloved cat Marbles was freaked out, as he stood in the doorway of the bathroom letting out what sounded like a crying version of meows.  The sweet little guy was worried.  When I was done, I fell to the floor, and it took me at least a half hour to crawl eight feet from the bathroom to the bed, only barely making it.  Janice was beside herself with concern.  I surmised, eventually, that I suffered a perfect storm of ailments... I had a severe anxiety attack, combined with too much oil -- as much as 4 mls, where 1 is sufficient (in my defense, it was dark, but I should have been far more careful) ... and acquired what seemed to be a bad stomach virus that was going around at the time.  It was probably the scariest round of stomach illness I've ever experienced.  Add to that I had this damned cast on and I had to be careful with everything where I was so spaced out.  After it was all over, it took weeks to recover from it.  Weeks!  I've normally bounced back from stomach viruses after a few days, but this seemed to take forever.  It made getting back to work even more challenging.

Once the six weeks were over, I promptly did go back to work, and after just a day or two was so sore and decrepit I felt like a tired old man.  I popped a lot of muscle meds and Gravol in the first week upon returning, but I knew that was just a conditioning thing, my body getting back in shape.  But now I'm battling what I call Coronablubber.  A lot of us are, I think.  With gyms closed, and being outside having been frowned upon, combined with a lot of emotional eating, we're all at war with this monster that seems to be fattening us up like turkeys for harvest next Christmas.  The wrist is still sore, but improving, despite me falling off a ladder at work the other day and landing on it again and badly bruising my hip (I did not report this).  Thankfully I had my brace on, so I only bent it to the point of straining it and not breaking it again.  The knee is another story.  It's getting worse seemingly by the day, and I don't really have anyone to go to for help, as I was basically told to suck it up and move on, in a nutshell.  The good part is, I've had no self-harm incidents yet this year, which is huge for me.  

2020:   sighs  "...hold my beer again."

Last week I took an unnerving anxiety attack at work.  I'd rather not discuss what brought it on, because I feel like I'm actually the one to blame, pretty much all the time.  In summary, I got thoughts in my head how stupid, useless and ugly I am, and proceeded again to cut and scratch myself in an effort to distract from the pain in my mind.  It's not something that works, but when I descend into that state of mind, there seem to be no other options.  Crying spells pop up out of nowhere.  Here's the thing... I have a doctor and a psychiatrist I go to from time to time to try to keep this in check.  The last time I saw my shrink was nearly a year ago.  He never made a follow-up appointment or checked in on me.  As for my doctor, I get moderate results from him only if Janice accompanies me, which she insists on because she also sees my lack of results from medical professionals.  Essentially, I'm hung out to dry here as far as my mental health goes, and keeping it under control... which I haven't had a lot of success with lately... is pretty much completely left up to me.  In short, there is no help for my D&A.  A couple of prescribed meds are issued to me and I'm sent on my way.  Self-inflicted cuts, scratches and bruises be damned.

Add to that, our lovely Liberal government has taken away our disability eligibility, for both of us, leaving us with no funds to get some much needed repairs done around here.  We've appealed numerous times, to no avail.  The irony being, the notoriously stingy Conservative government didn't give us any problems at all with our claims.  Now it's worse than pulling teeth.  

It doesn't look like this Coronavirus thing is going away anytime soon, despite my home province of New Brunswick weathering it quite well, so we're planning on making the best of this situation by having lots of backyard barbecues, maybe some washer-tossing, getting some mileage in from running if my knee permits; I did run an 11k not long ago, but my knee took a sharp downturn a few days ago, so it's a day by day thing.  Ultimately, I'm extremely fortunate to have a wife that couldn't be more supportive, and a job that's steadily paying the bills in a time where a lot of people have lost their own employment.  Things could have been a lot worse.  But 2020 is throwing curveball after curveball to all of us.

I just wish the healthcare system we have was as attentive to mental illness as it is with the Coronavirus.  Or even a fraction of it.  That being said, I urge anyone who might be reading this who's suffering from the same issues as I am to get help.  Kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

Friends, thank you for reading.  I am very blessed indeed to have earned your interest.

Nobody's Fault But Mine

That's the title of one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs.  It's also a phrase that just resounds in my head a lot, continually bouncing around my brain and soul.  A lot of people with mental issues hear a lot from others that what happens to you is no one's doing but your own; just the type of thing that people who are ill of mind don't need to hear.

But what if there's some truth to it in some instances?  In the last year or so, maybe more, I've actually believed it.  Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I didn't suffer all those traumatic brain injuries, or TBI's.  Because other things happened besides that which steered my life down certain paths.  Pondering the what-ifs, though, is rather destructive thinking.  You can't change the past.  And you only have a small amount of control over the future.

I've been dogged by thoughts of guilt for the last long while now, though, of things I could've done differently.  Namely how I've treated others.  I'll go through some of those in this post.  I'm not looking for absolution of any sort, rather than reflecting on how I can perhaps be better. 

What sparked me to write this particular post is something the wife told me the other day, about a mutual friend that she saw at her work.  This friend of ours has been mine since I was a teenager in high school.  I have a lot of nagging feelings about things I've done or reacted to, or whatever, throughout our time of knowing each other.  I was going to put 'throughout our time together' but edited it.  To say 'together' would imply that we were close.  In a sense we were.  We started out knowing each other by dating a few times, which transitioned into being friends once she moved away due to career choices.  I think she did a whole lot more for me than I ever did for her, in the way that she gave me confidence in those years that I'd not previously known.  But all I can actually remember doing for her are all the wrong things.  I used to insist on taking pictures sometimes, even a video once, much to her chagrin.  I wanted something I could always remember.  She was positively uncomfortable with it.  Do I regret it?  Yes, I do.  One time she came over to where I lived while my band rehearsed for a gig that was coming up.  We played in the basement of the house while she was alone upstairs.  "How Not to Treat a Girl 101".  She's asked me repeatedly over the years to go out to the country to see her, and my shyness held me back from ever doing it.  She eventually stopped asking, which I clearly deserved.  Some time ago recently, her daughter got married, where Janice, Lexy and me were all invited to go, and of course I mucked that up seemingly irreparably.  The fault lies with me on that one solely, and now her daughter has completely disowned me and forced her to reconsider our friendship with me.  I deserve that.  I wrote a letter of contrition recently shouldering all the blame for it on myself, which was accepted, but fell short of forgiveness.  I get that too.  Again, 100% deserved.  When she saw Janice at work the other day, the distinct impression I got from the exchange the two of them had was it was over.  That wedding invite I botched was the last brick in the wall by the look of things.  And I'm the one who laid every brick in that wall.  I do accept that I'm the heel in that entire story.  No excuses.  The day my wife told me of her encounter with this old friend, I lay in bed beside her with tears streaming down my cheeks, unbeknownst to her.  I do that a lot, actually.

I rarely talk or communicate with my family in any way these days.  In fact, if they read these blogs, it's probably the main source of communication between us.  I've noticed through the years the gatherings that have happened without my presence there.  Sometimes I was invited, many I wasn't.  I don't blame anyone for not inviting me, in retrospect.  Who wants Mr. Sad Sack in their midst for jovial events?  But not only that.  In writing, not so much in person, I've pissed off my oldest brother with my musings in these blogs, especially in years past.  The last time I was in Ontario, it was clear I displeased him, and I nearly left on a plane alone to come home.  What stopped me was I didn't want my wife and kid driving back alone in the car.  There was a hurricane brewing in the southern States that I used as an excuse to cut our stay much shorter instead.  I haven't gone back since, not because of my family, but because of me.  I keep creating these situations that piss people off, whether I intend to or not.  *hint:  I NEVER intend to.*  There are countless other times where I made stupid judgment calls that I can't take back.  Knowing I've done all this has made me want to not be around anyone I've angered, because I don't want to do it anymore.  All the blame goes on me and I accept it.

There's another brother of mine who wound up being my best man at my re-saying of the vows in the Catholic Church.  He's done so much for me over the years that I feel like I've never given appropriate appreciation for.  There were a couple of times we took trips to Montreal, near where he lived in Ottawa, to see shows, so we'd stay at his place or his girlfriend's.  I feel like I took it all for granted, and that I actually put them out.  I remember he booked a hotel for us that I told him was a dive that I didn't want to stay at again.  If those sound like the musings of a spoiled brat, it's because they are.  Funny, every year I look back and think, "God, I'm glad I grew up a little since then."  Only to reflect the next year on how childish I was yet again.  As much as I was thankful at the time, I don't think I was nearly as appreciative as I should have been.  The same goes for his two boys, who are great friends of mine.  Why they stay close to me, I haven't a clue, and I feel again like I haven't told them enough how much they mean to me. 

Then there's a brother of mine who used to fix my old cars constantly and jump to my aid whenever I put up the bat signal.  And that was a lot.  I have tried through the years to repay him but the debt is too heavy to ever do so.  Yet I don't believe I've expressed enough thanks for everything he ever did.  He's had a rough time of it from the get-go, yet he only concentrates on how he can help everyone else.  His three boys are awesome human beings.  They've always been super nice to me and I don't have a clue why, because I feel like I'm this selfish leech who takes and doesn't give enough.  One of those boys, I've caused a lot of heartache to because of a bad judgment call based on silly beliefs from the past.  He's forgiven me for that.  I haven't been quite as kind to myself.

Talking about giving, there's another brother of mine who arguably did his best to step up to the plate as a father figure after our dad died.  Actually all my brothers did that, and this guy was really selfless.  He included me in a lot of the things he did, and treated me as much like a son as a little brother.  He would go to bat for me when no one else would.  I'm a drummer because of him.  When I was thirteen, just a year after Dad passed, he got me this little drum set to bang on to serve as a distraction to the upheaval that was going on at the time.  I taught myself to play, and it brought me immense joy through the years, and indeed, being a drummer served as an outlet for frustration when I needed it the most.  So what did I have to offer in return?  An inadequate amount of appreciation.  That's the way I see it.

Then there are my two sisters, one who I don't know much, mainly because of my own ignorance and lack of appreciation.  The other whom I tormented as a little kid, that seems to have stuck with her over the years.  And to be completely fair, she's given through her life to me to which I've given back nothing.  There's been a lot of hurt that happened back and forth with us, I think mostly of my own doing.  I haven't gone to visit her in years nearly completely out of guilt of having been an asshole for the entirety of my life.  There was one point a couple of years ago where she alluded to that which confirmed this belief.  Thus, rather than spoiling the picture with my inclusion, I removed myself from it. 

I have an ex-girlfriend/current friend that commented on something that made me realize how much I screwed up that relationship that we had.  One time she spent a lot of cash on an item I'd wanted for a long time, I think only to be reciprocated with an inadequate amount of gratitude.  That probably happened on too many occasions.  I broke up with her countless times over countless dumb reasons due to my own lack of good judgment.  I can forgive myself a little with that, chalking it up to growing up, except I wonder sometimes if I ever did.  Since we re-acquainted ourselves with each other, I've expressed opinions and criticisms that have offended her that nearly ruined the friendship we now have.  This all makes me wonder if I'm even capable of learning sometimes.  Or am I too stupid or selfish to?

There's one friend of mine who's stuck with me through the years that didn't need to.  I was her best friend in the late 80s-early 90s, only to screw the whole thing up, which is what I seemed to be best at especially during that time.  She rightfully disappeared for most of the rest of the 90s, and I was grateful enough to have her back in my life after she'd left it all behind.  She's still around, too.  One of the very few that still are.  Although I think I've been doing a bang-up job of making her feel awkward and perhaps regretting reuniting with me. 

Through the years past, I was involved in a lot of band arrangements with different friends that either amounted to fun jams or serious gigs.  When I reflect on those times, I realize quite a few things.  Namely how much of an ass I was in those bands.  I wasn't very good, but was too stone-headed to realize it.  My drumming sucked, my voice sucked, and my decisions sucked.  All of this just put strain on the bands I was in that had to accommodate my ego.  The songs always had to be perfect.  It was all cover songs that we did, and I always insisted on it being perfect to the last note, foolishly.  I wish I could have been more supportive of personal interpretation of the songs we covered rather than mirroring them.  I think I was just weird...or am?  I did get into a band that made its own songs, but didn't get far with it because of my own dumb decisions, besides the fact that I'm just not very good.  One bandmate that I've had the most consistently through the years essentially gave up on me a few years ago, for good reason.  It was due to a misunderstanding in scheduling at the time, but I know now that there had to be far bigger reasons for it.  Chiefly being my lack of talent, which is clear in retrospect.  It's caused me to re-evaluate my standing as a player of any sort... I hesitate to say "musician"... but also to be realistic.  I'm not in a band because I don't deserve to be.  Period.  I even got a guitar amp years ago so anyone who wanted to jam with me could just pick up the guitar I have and plug in and we could go at it, but no one ever did, even once.  Why would anyone!  Thus I'm selling all this stuff.  Why be pretentious?  I don't even listen to music anymore.  My love of all of that just died.

There's a reason that I don't get included in a lot of things, like family affairs, jamming and band things, or gatherings of any sort.  A friend of mine just got buried and I wasn't even told about it.  Why?  It's clear!  Who wants that Sad Sack weird wannabe drummer guy around who's just gonna make everything awkward?  I'm not upset with anyone about it.  I'm upset with ME.  The more I shake the picture like I've done the last little while, the more clearly I see that the common denominator with all of this is myself.  I refuse to blame anyone for anything anymore, except myself.  I've made my own bed.  You know the rest.

There are so many others who left my life that I completely understand why now.  Every year I look back and wonder why I did certain things.  This year I look further back and wonder why it's taking me so long to fully become human.  If someone leaves my life, it's because I'm an idiot.  I've been such a dumbass for so long, but at least I've come to terms with it.  I'm done laying any blame whatsoever except to the mirror.  Including my medical professionals.  Even my own psychiatrist gave up on me.  How bad does it have to get for that to happen???

In the end, I still have my wife and daughter.  Except I've put them both through hell.  My daughter moved out before she was even out of her teens.  It's no secret as to why she did.  I went through breakdown after breakdown, with my two ladies being left to pick up the pieces and put me back together again, only to see me self destruct repeatedly.  My wife is a virtual saint to endure what she's had to with me.  I've made her cry and be upset so many times with me, only to have her support and forgive me for the numerous things that happened.  She's witnessed me literally nearly beat myself to death, bleed out from extreme nosebleeds, go through ridiculous bouts of self-pity and self-loathing, and crazy crying spells to the point where she could have left simply out of self-preservation, but didn't.  I do hope that I've given her the appreciation she deserves, but I feel I didn't.  And I have great sorrow and regret for how I mishandled fatherhood.  An actual jackass could have done a better job being a dad than I did.

I realize how much of a downer this post is.  But these are the musings of a person who is mentally ill.  It's my state of mind, and I've chosen to stare back at it, in the hopes of.... I don't even know.  I guess after all these years, I don't know what's left to do. 

It's all nobody's fault but mine.

Y or Y not?

If you've been following my blog here, you might know that I suffer from depression and anxiety since I was a teen.  I've tried multiple treatments.  Some have had a positive effect, some negative, some nothing.  But one treatment I've come to know that is consistently positive has been exercise.

That's a dirty word to a lot of us.  Going to the gym isn't necessarily a fun thing, but, if you go enough and see results -- or let me clarify:  FEEL results -- you find yourself forming a habit and addiction that's actually good for you.  A good sweat session clears the head, purges negativity, and increases confidence.  While it may not be a cure-all for everyone for depression and/or anxiety, it's going to have a good impact on your body and soul if you let yourself in the right mindspace in conjunction with physical activity.  I wholly endorse it. 

Many years ago, the wife and I made the decision to join our neighbourhood YMCA once our taekwondo club closed its doors.  We didn't want to continue with martial arts, so we elected to take the plunge and join the Y with its large gym facilities.  It's just a five minute casual walk from where we live, to boot, so it was almost like it was meant to be. 

Our finances were in a bit of a shambles at the time.  We were very green to the process of buying a house, and we took the one we have out of desperation and necessity, since I was more or less dying of mould poisoning at our previous residence.  For real.  I went to the ER several times from not being able to breathe.  As it turns out, moving away from where we were to this house saved my life.  But, as I said about being green to the world of mortgages, we unknowingly signed into a horrible deal where we were going to pay an insane amount of our lifetime earnings for our dwelling space.  We did resolve this eventually, but not without considerable trial and error. 

With that in regard, spending over $100 a month on a gym membership was rather daunting, but we took the plunge anyway.  Months later, we realized we couldn't continue with it, and we sought out and tried other gyms, all of them considerably cheaper.  Then we learned about the Y's subsidization program, where you pay a fraction of the designated monthly fee once they see proof of your income and expenditures.  We wound up re-joining and staying with them for many years with this plan because it was affordable to us.  Their policy is that they never turn anyone away, and they didn't with us.    .......yet.

Janice lost an incredible 75 pounds through training at the Y, and I think it may have saved her life.  She developed courage to fight her numerous diseases and defied doctors who told her she couldn't do any kind of even moderate physical activity; she was even told she was going to wind up in a wheelchair.  But she persevered and transformed herself.  The welcoming atmosphere at the Y was just what we both needed to keep going back.  For myself, the consistent exercise that I decided to make a part of my lifestyle very much helped me manage my anxiety issues.  This was an integral part of the therapy needed to keep my issues somewhat at bay; not a cure by any means, but it made a world of difference. 

The counter staff were always very gregarious and understanding of our situation when it came time to reassess our income and expenses to meet the standards of the subsidization program.  Until March of this year.  During our last reassessment, a newer person discussed our situation with us, and upon this person's own view of our finances, starkly decided we didn't qualify for the subsidization.  This left us both in shock.  Nothing had changed, yet, although we knew with the new year coming, the time was going to arrive where we actually would be able to pay the full price of membership, but not until then. To make things worse, on the statement in question, there was a $200 balance in our account, which seemed to convince the associate that we were actually doing fine financially.  Telling this person we had car repairs to take care of that week did nothing to sway her opinion (those repairs wound up costing us $800, to make it worse).  But this associate was quite cold and demeaning to my wife when Janice pleaded her to reconsider and shut us down.  This left us both in shock.  We were welcomed there with open, friendly arms for years.  Now all of a sudden, we were virtually thrown out.

I was quite upset at the welcome mat being very rudely yanked out from underneath us, so I decided to contact the YMCA through their Facebook page via their messenger, on which they claim to typically respond within a day.  I sent this message in March.  I'm still waiting for an answer.  I know the message was read back then, because it's denoted on messenger that it was.

We made the decision to join another gym in the city, though nowhere near our neighbourhood, but the price for membership there is comparative to what we were paying under subsidies with the Y.  We're happy at this new gym, though.  It's open 24/7, is clean, with new machines and a spacious free weights space and stretching room.  It very well suits our purpose.  But we still feel very burned from our exile from the YMCA without any conversation whatsoever.

I figured six months was plenty, and so I'm going public now with the message I sent them.  I doubt this will have any affect whatsoever, but I do feel the need to put it out there.  Perhaps they can enlist any individuals at their desk with some kind of sensitivity training to learn how to properly deal with those reaching out for help, like we did.

This is the message I sent to them.  All of it is true and without exaggeration or embellishment. 

Hello, Just wanted to send you fine folks a few comments before my wife and I depart your facilities. We've been members of the Y for roughly 10 years, with a brief break somewhere in the middle. We came back after that break when we found out we could apply for subsidization, as we left in the first place because, with our modest incomes, we couldn't afford to go anymore. My wife and I both have registered disabilities. She suffers from psoriatic and rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, thyroid disease, and even other illnesses that challenge her daily. Going to the Y helped her enormously in mind and body. It was with you that she lost 75 lbs and made new, healthy habits to give her hope in leading a better life than fate had first laid out for her. I'm very grateful for your part in this. As for myself, I'm 53 years old. In my youth I suffered a number of serious head injuries, resulting in concussions that would leave me with permanent lasting effects that I have to face every day. I wound up with severe depression and anxiety issues that rather hinder my ability to handle matters of sociability, and other things, not the least of which are self-harm episodes.. My wife handles most of our communication dealings, because my anxiety issues prevent me from articulating properly. Of course, this does not apply to writing. I take medication and am under care of a physician and psychiatrist to try to help me handle things. My wife deals with her illnesses much the same way. We have drug plan coverage which pays for the cost of our very pricey meds that, without them, we simply couldn't live a normal life. My wife struggles sometimes, but with her medication and physical activity, partly through help from the good people at the Y, she does well. As for me, as you likely know, physical activity is great medicine for depression and anxiety too. Thus, we've been regulars at the Y for these many years. We also had troubles financially through those years, which is why help through you for our memberships was a Godsend. But we couldn't afford to go to the Y any other way. As of right now, for example, at the beginning of every calendar year, each of us has to pay a $150 deductible fee before our medication is covered. My wife's is paid up. As for me, I'm rationing my medication until we can get our finances together to bring things to balance. These are just facts that we're forced to deal with. When my wife was summoned for re-evaluation, as per every six months or so for subsidies with you, the person who looked after us told us we were no longer eligible. We don't want to mention names or get anyone in trouble, so we won't, but it left us rather shocked. We'd never been treated quite like that from you before. Tonight, my wife and I made the regrettable decision that we have to leave because of affordability issues. We thought we might hear something like, "is there something we can do?", but it was the same person we dealt with before, so that didn't quite happen. We wish you offered some kind of program where lower paying members only required the use of the wellness center section, since we never use the pools or gymnasium or anything. Perhaps in the future? As it is right now, we can't afford to stay. We weren't looking for a hand-out, as much as we were a hand up. We regret having to leave, because the staff and fellow members are top notch. You really do have the best gym in town. Unfortunately, we don't even feel welcome there now in light of the treatment from this desk server. We have till next Tuesday left on our current membership. We will take advantage of those few days left and figure out what to do and where to go from there. We didn't want to leave without being honest with you first as to why we did. We'll miss the staff in the wellness center, and hope that you don't take this as a hasty act on our part, as we've carefully considered everything. We don't ask that you beg us to stay or anything, but we do hope you consider our story and remember it in the future for when you deal with others like us, which I'm sure there will be many. Once again, thank you for the years of support. We do hate to go. Regards, Michael and Janice