Recalled to Life

Hello and Happy Hump-day!

It most certainly has been a while since my last post back in May 2017 when my grandfather passed away, which is why I took the phrase “Recalled to life” from a Tale of Two Cities as a fitting title for this week’s blog post. In many ways, I have been recalled to life again. I have had my ups and downs, and most recently survived a very dark and harrowing time.

Looking back on last year, I say with great certainty that it was the best year I’ve had so far in my life so far. I was doing a contract job that I was very happy and enthusiastic about performing. I learnt a lot about planning projects and time management. I learnt how to edit photos to reflect the actual product (i.e., paintings), I stepped out of my comfort zone and did portraits for the first time. I was exposed to a lot of new experiences. I traveled to Spain to shoot a wedding, and then went to Italy and traveled around there. Overall a very good experience. And on top of all that, I lost 80lbs in about 2 months. Lots of walking, especially in Italy; constantly chasing after trains and wandering the streets, my watch told me that on average I walked 20km every day.

After working in another province away from home, I finally got to go home. And I was back to my old lazy habits. I gained weight again because I had all the luxuries of home and zero responsibilities. When I was out of town working, my depression didn’t hit me as hard as it did when I got back home. I had work to keep my hands busy. When I got home, things started to darken. The ominous dark cloud started to creep back and the familiar face of death came back into view. I couldn’t help but start spiraling out of control. I came back to my little house of horrors. The fear of abandonment, whether real or not, came back and I would sit on my floor and cry endlessly. My anxiety skyrocketed. I would avoid social events, avoid talking to people even though I desperately wanted to and needed to talk to people. I had trouble falling asleep and nightmares haunted me. My hours were all lopsided. These bouts would seemingly last forever, then the sky would clear and I’d be productive and useful for about a week before dipping back down into the depression. No matter how much weight I lost, I would see myself in the mirror and my mind would automatically say, “You fat fuck. You’re useless. Pathetic. Absolutely worthless.” Money matters didn’t help me feel good about myself either. I applied for government aid and they’ve taken forever to get anything done and give me a cheque. I have bills and debts to pay. I’ve done a budget forecast and it just made me even more depressed about my future. I certainly wasn’t able to ride the high of 2017 into 2018. 2018 started off terribly and it felt like starting back at square one as if nothing I did in 2017 counted for anything. It’s a terrible feeling.

Within the past several weeks, I had hit rock bottom again and was either going to be in the psych ward or dead. But I managed to lock myself in my room and keep myself from killing myself or from ending up in the hospital. And during that dark time, I had an appointment with my psychiatrist. I asked him very bluntly, “Do you think I should be in a facility right now?” and he answered very plainly, “No.” He went on to explain that he felt that I needed a change of scenery, just like working in another province was a change of scenery for me. He suggested that I go for a short vacation around the province. But I countered that I had no money to do that. And he countered that I could do an easy hike and take photos while doing it. Ultimately, I didn’t do any of those things, as after the session, I was back on the upswing of things and rock bottom was a thing of the past but will be coming back soon; I just ride the sine wave.

I have cut back on a lot of gaming to try to be more productive in other areas and improve on things. I’ve been slacking off on an online course but I’ll get it done sooner or later. I’m still working out the time management aspects of my day and trying to schedule things like exercise, time to eat, time to do school work and time to relax. But so far, time just flies by and I don’t even know where my hours go. My medications make me spacey and zone out for hours on end and I can’t remember things as simple as what I just finished eating. Trying to cut back on expenditures and instead try and what little money I have left. Overall, I have a very disjointed view of the world right now and everything is all over the place and I don’t know how to reach out for help. My friends are all busy with work and relationships or are overseas working, so there’s very little support from them and I don’t know how to communicate with my family, nor do they seem to care much about trying to understand the underlying issues. So I’m just sort of floating around in the ocean just waiting for the next storm to hit me and trying to stay afloat when it does hit.

Anyway, I think that’s enough of my pointless rant. I’ve set a schedule to write a blog post every Monday and post it on Wednesday because after Tuesday even the calendar says WTF. Hahaha!

Cheers and have a good rest of the week!