Depression Hurts

Dear Friend,

It has certainly been a while since I last posted. I read only the first few sentences of my last post to remember why I was so downtrodden at that time - my job. Months later, in December, I still loathe my work but only now it has crept it's way into my personal life and manifested itself in me as my second (conscious) episode of depression and anxiety. Lately, I have been straining my relationship with my partner, putting her through countless fights and circular arguments. Hurting her feelings. Perhaps, as she asked, unconsciously sabotaging this relationship that I hold so dear. History has repeated itself. So here I am again in another relationship, one that I cherish to the heavens, and my depression enters. It's like a bull in a china shop. As much as I scream for it to stop running and leave, it just leaves a path of destruction that I am left staring at blankly in disbelief. Once the bull has stopped breaking delicate items, I am left to pick up the shattered pieces and hopefully, be able to repair them. That is what my depression feels like to me. This mad beast that lives within me to torment my mind before he leaves me barren and alone in the wasteland he created.

My depression hurts me in the way that it paralyzes me. It usurps my thinking and drives me into a state of insecurity, worry and despair. It highjacks my rational thinking and leaves me with nothing left to do but sit teary-eyed on my bed, wondering why this is happening to me. Life goes on around me. People are working, striving, loving, accomplishing, and I am stuck, or seemingly so. The effort required to push myself is greater than most times, and it feels so demeaning to be shackled within my own thoughts. Don't I control my body? My mind? Don't I control what I want to do!? It's a frustrating place to live within. Unfortunately, I am not the only person I affect when I feel like this. I affect those around me, closest to me, those I wish to confide in and be 'real' around. When those people are your partner, it is the hardest thing. Frankly, you don't want them to see you like that. You want them to desire you and care for you and long for you the way they did before. Not to pity you, or see you as weak. Inevitably and undeniably, most that don't understand this feeling, don't know why you are behaving strangely or harshly. They see it as a personal attack on themselves and this complicates the situation. For you wish nothing but to foster love with that person, but your sense of insecurity and fear is so great that you unwittingly behave erratically and alienate yourself from them.   I am not sure why I was triggered into this episode. Only four months ago, I felt fine. I felt confident and alive. I pray everyday that all I am doing to support myself will help me to overcome this.

Oddly, this being the second aware moment of depression/anxiety I have experienced, I feel better knowing that I am buried underneath all this turmoil. It is hard to think this is a side of you....I don't believe it is a part of who I am. I think I am plagued by this when I feel misunderstood and isolated. Depression and anxiety are still stigmatized in our world. We see a cheery person on the outside and cannot imagine that inside they are hurting, wretched from feelings of loneliness, sadness, frustration, worry. But you have everything you ever wanted! Why do you feel so alone? So sad? That's the one million dollar question. I have always fought with feelings of anxiety throughout my life. I never could name them. I never knew what I was experiencing, I just knew it didn't feel like me. As of late, I have felt compelled to talk more openly about my feelings and try to shed light on how debilitating it can be to feel like this for those that have never experienced it. I want to help others too. I want them to know this: the people who love you and know YOU, know that this isn't you. This is your inner demons, your childhood trauma re-visited, anxiety on not being where you want to be. This isn't you and we understand.

The Hardest 9 months of my Life

I have been waiting for an appropriate moment to write this post. I wouldn't say Monday lunch is the best time, but I am sitting to eat anyway and my tablet happens to be here. I suppose there isn't a better time than now. Oh gosh old friend, I almost need to hold back the tears as I try to verbalize in words the months of dissatisfaction I have experienced in my current job and the disappointment I have experienced looking for a new one.

I am going to make a bold statement and then completely contradict myself. I dislike always complaining about my work. I really hate my work. I know it is unproductive to complain day in and day out about my frustrations with our management, their lack of direction and strategy, their inability to support me, and a company, that frankly is just bottom line unorganized. I decided, just barely past the one year mark, that I could no longer thrive in such an organization - in fact, it was draining me of all my energy, my motivation and my happiness. So, nine months ago I took matters into my own hands and worked diligently to create new job prospects for myself. I started with the usual LinkedIn, Workopolis, Monster.ca, every recruitment boutique that specialized in healthcare sales and essentially flew my banner as hard as I could. The results were promising. I attained six interviews within this period. I made it quite far in the interview process, and in most cases, was a final candidate for the position. I know you're wondering, what is the problem? That's great! It's tough to get interviews! The final candidate! Wow - they must really like you out there! The problem, dear friend, is that I didn't land any of the positions! Not one. The response was always: "You're great, but there was someone with experience in this area", "We wished we had two positions", "I am not sure of your commitment to sales" - ok, that last one I made up. However, I am pretty sure that the HR that interviewed me at one pharma company definitely had her mind made up that sales was not my true calling. Honestly, after all this, I am not sure it is.

I started my Canadian Securities Course recently and although I enjoy reading about the stock market and how business is conducted in that industry - I don't know if working in it is what I want either. I looking for something that is fulfilling. I am looking for a job where I feel valued and not just some lackey or coffee fetcher. I want a job where I use my mind and challenge my skill to solve problems and creative new ideas. Am I an ungrateful millennial that is just never satisfied? I tend not to think so, but I wonder, how many of us are out there that would just jump on the first offer because we need change and are afraid that it may never come again. I have never in my life felt so lost with "what I want to do when I grow up". I thought I had that all figured out, but then when plan A failed, my plan B wasn't well-developed and left me in a bit of a tailspin - looking for a job that was reputable, paid well and in healthcare - just never thought that I would be a fucking sales rep. I don't want to give up hope that I will find something fulfilling whether it be in this space or not. However, I am not convinced that I am doing even near what I was meant to do. Perhaps, that is an acknowledgement that my objectives are skewed. I am thinking I need to evaluate what my top priorities are from my job. Is it money? Or is it job satisfaction and meaningful work? Who am I even asking right now.....

Till next time.

Feel this rift in your soul old friend....remember.

Hello old friend.....it has been a long time since I have written here. I suppose the last two years were less than inspiring to be able to put words to the page. This year has been full of introspection, and keeping in the theme, I did a short review of all my data tracking sources for 2016 - The Five Minute Journal, Google Calendar, and this blog. Although, I never wrote in you this past year....it was refreshing to read about how I was feeling/thinking over the past three years. Certainly, that counts for something, no?

What did I learn? Let me see...well, I know I was a self-loathing, depressed fuck for a while. Anxious, sad, lost. I know this sounds cliché and a tad nauseating for those that felt like I did in 2013 but I feel light, full of light and shining. My energy is warm and bright and there is no doubt I am in love. How is this different from before? Very. I am in love, but I am not wearing any type of blinder, glass or filter. My vision is clear....my mind is clear....my outlook real. It is incredible. I can foresee a future with a person that I adore, who not completes me, but energizes me, inspires me, and makes me be my best person. Is this what it means to find that person? I think about it often friend.....I look into her eyes and they are the only eyes that I wish to look at when I fall asleep at night and wake in the morning. Surely, she is not like anyone else.

So - does love make everything OK? Well, one thing I have learned in my past 32 years friend is that love and compatibility comes with being who you truly are and having your partner's support, encouragement and trust. Love can make everything "OK" so to speak but the truth is, a relationship is fostered when both people come to that relationship with all the kinks worked out. It's not easy to build a solid foundation when you are aren't committed to giving yourself fully and completely to another with no expectations. I know myself better now that I have in the past 32 years....I feel like I am learning everyday and I am happy I with someone who is always seeking and learning and adventuring too. This is the spice of life friend, this is what makes the mundane routine bearable. This is what drives us....life is long and I never want to stop being my best person. I am grateful that I can share my best person now with this girl.....and maybe, if she feels like I do, take a step with me into something more.


I cannot believe its 2017....this truly feels like the beginning of a new chapter. I cannot say why I am so hopeful, why I am so at ease with things, but I am ready for the change. I embrace the change, the love, the wind whirl, the adventure, the movement, the beauty, the difficulty, the striving, the motivation, the perseverance, the humble becoming, the people, the music, this life. I am alive again, I feel the music....I feel it in my soul, my teenage angsty soul......thank you. Be well old friend. Talk again soon.

Frustrated and the splits

I am really bummed lately. Well, really just this week. I have started doing all the practice tests, with timing, for the upcoming exam I will be writing in April. I know, it's only February 20th but to me April feels like next week. I have spent a lot of time studying, but perhaps not that much practice until just now and what I am starting to realize is that I am not as polished as I would like to be. 

What scares me is will I ever be? This exam has been, literally not even fucking kidding, the most challenging thing I have had to do in the last five years. It plays on me like a disease….at bay when thinks are seemingly under control to full-blown when I loose my grip a bit. Truth be told, it's all I have wanted since I finished my Master's degree four years ago…but it feels so slippery like I just can't pin it down. I think I am super perplexed by this situation because it doesn't fit the bill. If you are more diligent and work hard, then things should be easier or things should work or you simply should just be successful. Do you mean to tell me this isn't true? How do people not give up? How do people not get discouraged? 

The anxiety and stress I feel about my whole future riding on this exam and whether or not I get back into school has weighed me down for the past few years. It has affected me as an individual, my confidence in myself, my positivity towards life and my relationships with those I love (i.e. parents, girlfriends, even friends…). I can see that much clearer now. I am trying to remind myself that it is not the be all end all and life will go on….but I want this. Why can't I have it? Why am I not worthy of this opportunity? Is this some perseverance test that has been put forth me? Maybe…this is not a test of worth at all but of learning one of the hardest lessons of my life: maintaining my composure and positive outlook even when things seem shitty. I don't know, but I am certainly working on not allowing how I feel about this exam affect my life and what I love about feeling present, caring, giving, loving and alive. 

I want to be able to help people and actualize my dream to be a doctor. I don't want to give up on you, my dream. I want to know I am capable of anything. I am capable of this. Goodnight. 

Women

I started browsing an online dating site recently, however, let me just start by saying, dating was not the intention, well, not the primary one in all honesty. I just wanted to meet other 'like-minded, gay individuals looking for good conversation'. Yes, I believe that is a line in my profile written under "why you should contact me". The thing is whenever I meet someone and I am sexually attracted to them I automatically go into this love trance that most gay women experience where you suddenly move so quickly that by the time you know it you guys own a dog, have an apartment together and have stopped going out on Friday nights because you prefer to cuddle at home on the couch. Don't misunderstand me - if you love someone that much, then all those things are great. However, I don't think you need to project that far into the future and suddenly try to imagine how it "might be" to be with them. Can't shit just go at a normal, relaxed, and above all, natural pace?

So…I met a girl on there. We've only met a couple of times, but I am very attracted to her and her to me. Is that all we have in common though? I mean, it seems that we can talk effortlessly about nothingness for many hours without awkward pauses and still laugh. Although is that because we are just waiting until the end of the night when we can kiss? I don't know…but I know one thing that has thrown me off a bit. I vowed to myself that I didn't want another relationship with someone. I didn't want to feel in love with anyone, I didn't want to be distracted by things that were plainly and clearly, only distractions. Listen, it's been three dates. Not such a big deal, but I am distracted by the thought of her…fuck. I hate this shit. I don't want this. I just want to be footloose and fancy free! Does that even exist though? What guys really get away with this shit? Or I suppose the real question to ask - how do they not fall in love with people?

This Friday we are going out for drinks with friends of mine. The truth be told at first all I wanted to do was just fuck her. Then after Monday night, when we were kissing in my car, and the way she kept her face close to mine without looking into my eyes, just being close to me and wanting to touch me, reminded me, although distantly, of a time before when that is all I wanted to do with another human being. So, now when I think of Friday night I think of making love….why, I ask myself, why. It likely will be some weird mix of the two. There, I officially predicted what sex I am going to have on Friday night. I hope this isn't a terrible jinx…but I can help but fantasize a bit about it. I wonder if she is fantasizing about it too. I do suppose there is nothing wrong with distractions that keep you sane.

Thanks for listening good friend - talk to you again soon.

Sleeping beauty

I haven't been able to sleep lately, probably more so after speaking with my married couple friends this past weekend and asking them their opinion about contacting my ex. "But she's always on my mind," I explained, "I only want closure from the situation." They both looked at each other as if it was clear I was just going through the grieving motions of someone still broken hearted. "It will pass," he said to me. "Believe me, I've been through this before. You think about that person for a while after, but eventually it ceases to have the same effect on you that it is having now." Everything they were saying to me was true. Our relationship, even via outside eyes was less than perfect. I had put her on a pedestal of greatness and now, here I am dwelling on your absence but I don't even remember what made you so great.

I suppose that is what makes never having closure with someone so difficult. If indeed, closure is what you think you need. The problem is I still think of her. Perhaps, almost everyday. It used to be 'scenes' of the past that would jog my memory or something she said to me that stuck. Now, more often than not, it is just thinking of her. Where she is, how she would talk to me if we did speak, how we might serendipitously encounter each other again - her, visiting her family in my neighbourhood of Toronto and us bumping into each other at the local bakery/cafe. I can't believe I just wrote that, but I am almost not ashamed to say that this really has stayed with me. I secretly wish those things would happen just so I could see her again and go 'Aha! You're ordinary!' and feel relieved to just tell her I wish it would have ended differently.

Part of me is in incredulous that I still think of that relationship that ended over one year and 7 months ago. How long does this process take? I just want to forget about it already, but it has its way of coming back to me. I think it hits me worst at night. I am 29 and just recently moved back to live with my parents amid a life change that I am making. I don't have my own apartment, or car, and I spend more nights than not here in my parent's study on my laptop. I do go out, but I am rediscovering my city after spending several years living abroad and away. It is almost the complete opposite to my former self to be back in my childhood house, and because I need to re-build friendships here in the city, it will take sometime till life is "normal" again. So, in the evenings when I am alone and everything is quiet I think of her.

Last night, before I went to bed I was reading. Upon finishing the chapter, I was genuinely tired, and in my freshly washed sheets I knew I was going to sleep soundly. This morning when I woke up abruptly to the sound of my cell phone alarm I realized I had dreamt something. I recognized there was a woman in my dream, to whom I could not distinguish, but she was not her. She was someone who captured me in the chaos of my dream, but it was not her. I was glad. It was someone different. It felt hopeful.

I often ask myself 'When?', when will I forget and fully move forward. I know that I cannot answer that. I know that it is a feeling. One that I have experienced time and time before, but for other reasons. I can say nothing profound at this point. It is time, only time, and I suppose it will be a little while. G'day.

Baby, it's snowy outside

This morning, I sat in our den looking through the living room windows that my Dad is anxiously waiting to cover with newly-bought shutters. The snow was falling, lightly, silently, gently, covering the window sills with in a white, powder puff. There was a tranquility about it, something that I felt deep within me but that I couldn't quite discern when I had felt that same way watching the snow. Minutes later, it dawned on me. It was a the winter of 2010 and I had gone skiing with Sarah's family in Whistler. Not a care in the world and the whole world ahead of me to explore, I was as carefree as a hawk in the fields, enjoying every wintry, cold moment to its fullest but feeling warm and loved all the while. Skiing a full day, coming back to a traditional, wooden log cabin with the people you love and care for, sipping on hot chocolate and whiskey, going to bed with the woman you love and cuddling up to her warm and supple body while drifting off into a long, deep sleep. That was when I once watched the snowflakes fall from another window as I lay, stomach-down, on the rug, close to the open fire studying from my Spanish textbook. It was another time, but a happy one.

Presently, I am watching these light flakes descend slowly to the ground of the library parking lot. My view, the large and tall rectangular windows of my local, public library, 5 minutes from my parent's home. I am not sipping whiskey and hot chocolate, I am not with anyone but myself, and I am about to open my Verbal reasoning notebook to start studying again for the MCAT, the medical entrance exam. It is a feeling that I can only describe as what it might feel like to have won the lottery a few years ago and then have lost it all gambling foolishly after which, you find yourself broke and alone, sitting only with memories of something that once was. Am I sad? No, I don't think so. Am I lonely? I am not sure I would say lonely, but I do reminsce from time to time about those days, a feeling of love and longing that I am sure will come again any time soon. (that was a typo but I'll leave it....something unconscious about that...)

It is times like these where people say you are meant to be alone. To forget about the past and stop living in it - move forward, but remain present. This is how we grow. To look forward is not always helpful, plan, yes, but live for the future, no. I can say this with full confidence. The past three years I was so eager for the future to come and to 'start' my life, I am now here three years later and part of me feels I wasn't present for the last three either. I haven't started anything. I have learned a lot though. Looking back isn't good either. I think of Sarah often. Too often perhaps. It is odd, I am not sure that I remember what being with her was really like, but I certainly remember how I felt. I felt happy. I felt in love.

Now, my outlook is different. Now, instead of looking back and looking forward. I am working on a day-to-day basis on being positive. On being respectful. On making others smile every chance I get and spreading good cheer, so to speak. Not just because it's the holiday season, but because if we are not positive and happy everyday, but good is life? What good is it to wait until we are? What good is it to hope that that day is 3 years from now, when in fact it isn't? It is now. I can't say that I don't wake up every morning to a what I like to call a drawn brain cloud. The type of cloud scribble that you draw with a black pen on white paper. A cartoon line cloud, tangled, convoluted, messy. Yep, it's like the Charlie Brown scribble is smack-dab and center in my mind every morning...but one day I will wake up soon and that scribble will be gone. That it when I will have forgiven myself and truly let go.