Reinvestment

I start this with an admission: I’m honestly wasn’t sure if I was going to ever come back to this again.

I say that for a number of reasons that could turn this into something akin to a standard-issue fantasy novel. The most predominant reason, however, is the same one I’ve been hearing in one form or another since I was old enough to start transposing the things I see, think and most importantly, feel, onto a page:

No one cares or wants to hear about it anymore and you need to be stop ‘baring your soul’ so much. It’s why you can’t get a job and why people don’t like you.

Over the years, I’ve heard those words in one form or another more times than I can count from my parents, friends, significant others and on down the list and in a lot of ways, I understand why.

It’s one thing to be in a state where you’re having a bad day and things aren’t going well at work, home, school, etc. We all have the need to vent and allow our frustrations, angst and other despondencies bounce off the sounding board of another person who hopefully both empathize and sympathize with us to a degree where it no longer bothers us as much.

But I recently wrapped up a calendar year in which the following took place:

• I’d managed to go back to the one place in the world I’d truly wanted to live in – my hometown of Boston.
• Lost my initial living accommodations because I was quickly reminded of how utterly dysfunctional and broken my family is and became homeless.
• Got a temp job at a place I’d been wanting to work for since I was old enough to know what I wanted my career to be.
• Was making the most money I’ve ever made, yet had to live out of my car at a public truck stop because the job wasn’t stable enough and the cost of living in Boston is beyond insane.
• Lost said temp job because of dollars, cents and idiotic management who told me, “You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just going in another direction.” (That direction was bankruptcy, BTW.)
• Tried to reconcile and rebuild a functioning platonic relationship with the woman who broke my heart and sent me into retirement seven years ago, only to have it end in my being ghosted after one conversation because adulting is hard, even for someone with a Masters Degree.

Now, that is not to suggest that I didn’t have my share of good days among those 365 steps around the sun. Along the way, I got to travel around New England and see a lot of things I didn’t know existed previously. I saw sunsets over Lake Champlain, snow on a Maine beach and my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park on my 40th birthday.

But those genuinely happy moments weren’t always enough to counterbalance all the big, heavy, negative life things that I had to grind through day after day after day, all the while hoping that things which were completely beyond my control actually happened.

Editorial Note: Spoiler Alert – they didn’t. Not a single one.

On this point, I want to make sure you know I understand. To have a bad day is one thing. A bad year is something else…

But a bad life is an entirely different beast to battle with and that’s what I’ve been dealing with since I was old enough to figure out what life is.

I don’t say that with either the want or the expectation of sympathy, so don’t confuse or misinterpret me here. If I wanted that, I’d do what a lot of people do and drop the victim card, saying it’s solely everyone else’s fault, rather than being the least bit introspective and self-aware.

The simple fact and the harsh reality of my life is that the responsibility for what it was and what it’s become balances the scales of responsibility out between everyone who’s impacted me and my simultaneous impact on them. My hands are just as dirty as anyone who ever dirtied theirs at my expense. I know that all too well and I also know I get to live with it, regardless of what comes later.

What I’ve come to discover as I get older is that what seems to separate me from them is my need, often times to my detriment, to both make amends and rebuild bridges with the people who mattered to me, rather than just disposing of them for the sake of moving on or getting over it.

In a perfect world, I would’ve been able to process all the shit I’ve gone through in a more constructive fashion, had I the means to address it in a constructive way. Over the years, my attempts at therapy were far from successful. Not because I didn’t want to do it or I didn’t take it seriously. What I was told from the doctors I went to was that I just had to accept that life isn’t fair, as if that wasn’t something I was overwhelmingly aware of every second of every day.

Ultimately, my interactions with people would come down to that same stupid, condescending question: Don’t you want to be happy?

It’s right around the point where they’re vocally putting the dot on the question mark that I wish I could turn my voice up to the level of a 747’s jet engines on full chuff and scream the following reply in their face before they go flying through the nearest wall or six.

YES!!!

Of course I want to be happy! Do you REALLY think I prefer feeling like this all the time?! 

But living with Severe Chronic Depression is not like deciding to go vegan or taking up painting or frisbee golf. And I don’t care how tough or strong you think you are, if your life calendar consists of one good day for every 50-200 shitty ones, that is going to chew you up and spit you out.

Editorial Note: Before you opt to send me a comment lecturing me on how that’s what life is, I would request you go to your own social media pages and take a good look at how many times you’ve posted something to illustrate and formally declare just how awesome your life apparently is by comparison to the rest of us. Go ahead…I’ll wait.

Which brings me to the here and now:

At the end of the year, I packed up what I could load in my jeep and left New England.

It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, nor is it one I look back on fondly. I went home for a reason and I was hell-bent on making it work there. The circumstances were such, however, that had I been stubborn and stayed, I would also most likely be dead at the present time.

As it stands, I’m not. Instead, I’m in Ohio on the banks of Lake Erie and in the last three months, this is what’s transpired:

• I have a long-term place to live.
• I have a job that doesn’t pay as much as my Boston job, but it’s enough to pay my bills, it’s permanent and the company I work for is much more stable.
• I have medical insurance for the first time since 2014, but they’re the first one I can actually afford to use since about 2002, and I intend to use it. (Seriously, think about how different you’d be if you had to go 15 years without being able to see a doctor and get help.)
• I have both time and space to do things for myself again like go to the gym and get back to creative projects I’ve had to put off for years now, without feeling so anxious about it.

If the last year taught me anything, it’s that I’ve long passed the point where I need to invest my time and energy more into myself than other people. I know that admission will been by some as selfish and ignorant of the fact that they are going through their own struggles and might need someone like me to help along the way.

Maybe it is selfish, but the conclusion I’ve come to is that nobody else is going to make this investment for me and if I truly want to start feeling better, then it has to be done.

If that’s going to be an issue for you, then that is your prerogative, but this had always been the plan for me since I first understood that I had Chronic Depression and realized just how bad it became.

Until now, I didn’t have the means to do something about it. Now, hopefully, I do. It’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be fun. But if it gets me to where I want to be…which is happy again…then this is what has to happen. I just hope it’s not too late to get started and I find the right people who can help me.

Tally Ho.