(and mandatory introduction to why the hell I am even writing here to begin with)
They say you are only as old as you feel and as I write this post I have an ice pack securely attached to my right knee following a soccer game – so coincidentally, today I feel old as fuck.
In addition to another year older, this birthday in particular marks my first writing achievement I set out for myself a few months back when I first came out of my most recent depression fog. Life was hard following a few shitty things that happened to the people in my life I love (and I was a very selfish person, so the list of people I even like, never mind love is small), which eventually prompted a leave of absence from work.
To preface, I was already mentally unwell before any of the below things happened. Anxiety, self hatred and issues with anger and an explosive tempter that kept people around me on constant egg shells was an everyday occurrence. I had the misguided but firm belief that my poor mental health was just a product of my own weakness and something I could champion through if I tried hard enough. Growing up, we didn’t talk about mental health in our family and therapy/antidepressants were out of the question. So that is to say, I wasn’t in the best state when not one, but three major stressors decided to enter the chat.
The condensed version of why I’m off work:
First, my brother died of a heart attack just shy of his 29th birthday. That almost destroyed me on its own as we were really tight siblings. I missed a lot of work, stopped working out and started eating like shit literally everyday when I was previously very fitness oriented – I gained 10 lbs and hated myself on the outside almost as much as on the inside. I couldn’t contain my sadness and would ugly cry anywhere without warning and eventually got my ass in therapy (even though I didn’t really think it would help).
Second, my dad had a heart attack and we found out later it was way worse than originally thought, requiring open heart surgery which was a fight to even convince him to do. The breakdowns from grieving my brother hadn’t stopped completely but they picked up again at the thought of losing half my original family in under a year. Surgery for dad went unprecedentedly well but my confidence in what physical health meant in my family was very shaken. We were a family of athletes, not couch potato’s and heart disease didn’t even seem like an option. We found out through my dads surgery and my brothers autopsy that they both had a heart defect that I would also need to get tested for.
Last, my only child (who is six by the way) got really sick. So sick that we had to go to emergency one night following some exorcist level puking. After a gruelling night in hospital, our family left traumatized with a fresh new Type 1 Diabetes (“T1D”) diagnosis for our youngest member. For those unaware, T1D is an autoimmune disease where the body decides to fuck up your insulin producing cells in the pancreas so the only way to get your body that sexy life saving hormone is through daily injections (not the way the doctor described it, but that’s basically it). You do NOT get this disease from eating too much sugar or not moving your body enough, it’s just bad fucking luck.
(Side note: I don’t think Type 2 Diabetes is some moral failing, but nothing makes me rage quicker than passive aggressive advice from people that don’t know there’s a difference between the two diseases.)
Anyway.
All that happened in a short amount of time and I was not functioning well at home or work (read: making a fuckton of mistakes everywhere) so I made the decision to leave work. My son needed the little parts of me I had left to offer so it should have been the clear easy answer and yet… It felt horrible having to admit I couldn’t do my job anymore, and that I couldn’t provide for my family in the normal way everyone else did. I felt bad for letting my employer down even though I had a clear priority to my family. I felt like a complete and utter failure with an overwhelming sense of guilt of having not been able to “do it all”.
I figured I would only be gone from work for a month while I figured out my sons disease, and be back in time to fix anything my backup may have messed up in the office (trust issues). I tried a lot of things to get back to “baseline” as soon as possible before realizing “baseline” shouldn’t even be the goal. I was miserable before anyone ever got sick or died and I knew I could do better. It’s been almost six months and there’s still no return to work date set.
In the six months I’ve been away from work, I’ve learned a lot about my sons illness and how to take care of him but through therapy, and trying various new things to better myself in body, mind and soul, I’ve also learned how to take better care of me. No, I haven’t found god, but I did lose that extra weight I put and am in the best shape of my life. I’ve also been able to start navigating the grief of losing my brother and the life I thought my child would have. More interesting, I’ve also found a love for life I previously thought impossible.
Along the journey of trying new things to help with my mental state, some old things I used to enjoy resurfaced and I began to draw and write creatively again. I had previously stopped both those things after entering the professional workforce over ten years ago when limited time and energy began to be an issue. What started as writing and illustrating short funny stories for my child each night for fun, morphed into a genuine goal to create and publish something.
I’ll use this blog to highlight some of the things that helped me on my mental health journey and made me a genuinely better person, I’ll share some of the hilarious fuck ups I’ve had so maybe you can avoid my mistakes and, I’ll document my creative endeavours and prove to myself (and my son) that I can do the hard things I set my mind to. My writing isn’t perfect and I’m sure there will be typos and grammatical errors but it’s my goal to work on my writing though this blog and organize my thoughts and goals.
Until next week! (when I’ve hopefully figured out how to build up the rest of the website properly)
Sincerely,
Sammy