Guest Post by Adam

im back from the hospital and still numb. i became desensitized to death as a kid, i remember 11 years old and my dad coming into my bedroom to tell me my mom had finally died and not crying. i knew it was coming, i had bawled a few times after seeing her with the morphine drip, she not wanting us to be sad. my dad cried, he held me, we were all shocked and in pain, but i wanted to be strong like she said, not knowing what else to do. i know i lost something that day, something that makes people normal and emotionally developed. it wasnt a conscious decision, my mind made it for me. i was protecting myself. it didnt make me hard, it just made me different. so now am i being strong sitting here still not crying, trying to stay moving? i dont think corinna wants to die, and for now, she wont. but her mind will not stop serving her pain, and as anyone who was abused by a parent can attest, the emotional kind is far more painful. she feels different like me i know that, and that difference makes communicating difficult and increases any feelings of isolation. its so hard to guess at what you think you want, what might make you happier, when you dont know what any of that happiness is made of. nobody swallows pills and wine to hurt anyone but themselves. it is not an aggressive action, it is not aimed at any target, it is a frustrated action, it comes from anguish. prolonged pain makes us feel like we deserve it, that it defines our lives. i only wish i could feel more and have her feel less, because she deserves a break from the restlessness and breath it takes. nobody needs to understand this, i dont, she doesnt, but its there. and if you dont feel comfortable being so close to something that so often looks evil, if you cant get past it, then dont bother asking yourself why this little blond girl sleeping at st pauls with an iv drip in her arm is so scary. you wont get it. its not about answers. its about remembering that you are human. and alive. i love you all anyways. even the shitheads. we all hurt people, get hurt, lose people and die. simple.

this post is brought to you by david bowie and jonathan richman. i dont know what the right thing to do is either. if you love her, be yourself and keep doing that. everything will follow.

I’m pretty sure I was one of the first fifty or so people to register for Northern Voice 2008; B.C.’s large and widely attended personal blogging and social media conference. Already blogger buddies but now buddy buddies Jennie came in from Pittsburgh and Dan came in from Toronto.

I was excited about many things beyond the buttons and stickers, the kick-ass brown ‘Bloggable‘ t-shirt that I have the most PERFECT place to wear, my Moo cards, [that still haven’t arrived], using the laptop an awesome couple lent me [M & JWC], the opening party, plus meeting loads of bloggers and people I’d only heard of and or had been reading for years. I was also looking forward to many of the sessions that were being offered over the two days.

There were posts about Northern Voice popping up all over - I’m pretty sure all of the posts on my feed were from people going, except one by Barbara Doduk that I didn’t realize until later had seeped its way into my subconscious mind.

Last Thursday rolled around and I was fine, I had my outfit and hair planned for the opening party. I was having a good day and I had gathered all of the things I was going to take in my bag for Friday on the chair in the living room when, unexpectedly, I was triggered by something so small it is not even worth mentioning because it is just part of my depression garbage and I lost it.

At first I thought I was ok, that I was just having a minor anxiety attack and that I would calm right down. I didn’t even take a Clonazepam because I knew I’d be drinking that night. With depression in general there are so many things that trigger behavior directly related to my mood disorders that it ends up being no different than learning which battles to pick in life, if I react the same way to every single panic attack then every single panic attack would be debilitating. I try to give the panic attack the benefit of the doubt, think positive, TRY TO BREATHE. But it doesn’t always work, and I ended up crying and shaking and then couldn’t stop crying and shaking and that was it I was done.

Adam probably remembers better than me because I have a tendency to block out the memories of just how often this happens but I know that this happened when we had tickets to see The White Stripes and BAM I had a major attack and we didn’t go. I remember that one because I know Adam was very disappointed, I’ve progressed enough in dealing with them even if I can’t get myself out that I can handle Adam going.

The weekend preceding NV it had come up that I am normally inconsolably depressed between December and the beginning of March and that so far this year, at that time, I had only been depressed for a maximum of three full weeks I guesstimated, I think I am looking at four weeks maybe more now but Adam and I still high fived because I have been working really hard.

Just writing this damn post is giving me anxiety.

In the last fourteen months, I have gone from being a person so plagued by social anxiety, someone who had so little confidence that I’ve never even been able to stand up straight and worst of all someone who believed I was incapable of making new friends and being accepted for ME that you could say I was mildly agoraphobic. I would even tell people I was to avoid having to explain and give details every time I didn’t want to get off my ass and leave my apartment, it was easier to just put out a big word that encompassed how I saw myself but at the core was not the real problem.

Right now, I’m ALMOST a wee little social butterfly.

Also in that fourteen months, I’ve grown, I’ve changed, I’ve taken steps backwards and forwards, I’ve failed, I’ve disappointed myself, I’ve let myself down, I’ve let others down. I’ve actually lived outside of the box. After some serious thought I decided I was happy with where I am in the blog world right now. That even though I know that Northern Voice is not about a bunch of blogging rules that it is still structured and my blog has never really had any structure and it has done fine. I’m sure my friends would love it if they didn’t have to help me with my blog issues any more but I don’t know where this year is going to lead, maybe I will still end up learning all that I missed.

It has taken a lot of conversations with my shrink and more passive aggressive behavior than I ever thought I was capable of, more foot in my mouth moments than I’d like to admit to, just to get me to the place where I am learning to say NO and learning what I want and deciding that even though I fully intend on doing my best to enter more of the blog community at monthly meet ups this year, that I want to do it at my pace. It was all happening too fast and it felt overwhelming and I thought this isn’t why people started reading me. Yes, I love that I have been accepted into some of Vancouver’s blogging circles but there is still a part of me who wants to stay behind my screen and isn’t ready to do all the acting and mental preparation it takes me to go out and become who I want to be through projecting only the positive, I’m just scared of being myself sometimes because I am going through so many personal changes. Entering my thirties has also thrown in some nice new challenges and I have to accept that not everyone is going to like the new me behind the screen or in their face shaking their hand.

I don’t know if this will even make sense to anyone, if even I understand to the fullest extent why I flipped out and didn’t go. I just know that it’s my blog and I’ll post what I want and I’ll go to whatever meet ups I want and that I’ll still be thankful for fucked up situations like not going to a conference I paid for because I still learned so much about myself and why I blog and how important to me it is to not lose sight of those reasons and lately - I don’t know, I just feel like I’ve been letting my long time readers down, losing myself a little, I know I can’t please everyone but I guess I want to move forward without forgetting anyone who helped me get my voice heard.

On a side note I would just like to thank everyone for their support over the last few days I was pretty floored by how many people took the time to tell me I was missed and it really meant a lot.

Last week was a seriously huge week for Adam and me. We were both completely absorbed in ourselves, I a bit too much.

We had the absolute pleasure of selling our very first Sock Monkey to Phaedra, the ‘official’ site where they will be available is not finished yet, just email us through the contact page if you want details on obtaining one. We have now sold two monkeys.

Phaedra’s Monkey who she has named Bobby has already been out on the town ripping it up. Here he is hanging out with Marc Emery. Oh, I know one of OUR Monkeys is hanging with Mr. Emery, CRAZY!!!. ROCK ON BOBBY!! The Monkeys we make for people never cease to make us proud.

Photo © Phaedra on Flickr

Looks like Bobby will be joining us bowling as well, and the Bollwitt’s [R and J] have a Monkey and we have the original Dr. Vegas so who knows what sort of monkey business will take place. Naked bowling as per Keira’s comment and Monkeys? I’d say sponsor us or I mean me. [Please]

My Parents also dropped the HUGE news on us that they are moving to Asia, Bali to be exact. Everything is happening extremely fast right now. They put their house on the market last week and it is sold already. Adam and I are currently in negotiations with them over what we can have, buy, lease, and/or ship of theirs. Right now we are very concentrated on the Yamaha piano that I played growing up and some other stuff. It’ll be interesting I don’t think we can fit the piano in here Adam says we can and he wants it really really bad. I think our land lord is going to kill us but oh well we only like her 50% of the time anyway.

The kicker the hugest news of all is that my parents are I kid you not, flying us out once a year. Did I mention they were moving to Bali? They are having a house built for retirement and of course once the insanity of knowing we get to go to BALI ONCE A YEAR wears off [if it does] I wonder what phases I’m going to go through with this? I’ve already mentioned to my shrink that I feel like I am losing my ‘Northern Roots’. He said that is normal but it is just starting to bother me. There was a big deciding factor in their decision to go so far away that did consider us, but I’m choosing to keep it private at this time.

That news combined with the sock monkeys starting to sell has us both really excited and really busy. The possibilities feel endless right now.

I have some new reading on more advanced breathing and meditation which I have been trying to learn for months but I am just so high strung even with the two anti-anxiety medications I take it is going to take a long while to master, but the new breathing techniques and the combination of taking some Hatha Yoga [soon] should start to make it a little easier for me to learn how to calm myself down. Not being able to calm myself down when a situation rises when I’m alone has caused me to do so many stupid things I can’t even count them and I don’t want to do that shit anymore I’m sick of it there is no excuse for it ‘mentally ill’ or not, my negative attentionial bias takes over all of my thought processes and nothing can convince myself I’m not losing it. Most of the time there is some sense to my madness, I just can’t articulate it or am so wrapped up in my insecurities and what people will think of me if I just come out and say what I would normally say anyway but with confidence that I say it without confidence and the whole room goes silent.

I’m being held back by my demons. No matter how hard I work on myself demons are still demons. It takes a hell of a lot more than just one exercise to remove them and sometimes with the removal of one out pops another, even long after you are onto them and think you’ve got them sorted, covered, cleared from your system, they are still one step ahead of you, they are part of you they know you and they know how to get you, they know what triggers you.

I think this is where the being friends with me is hard comes in. On one hand I want to be left alone completely when I feel like this but on the other hand when there are people who know I’m feeling like absolute shit and they don’t even email or text message me or anything I think to myself are these people really my friends? And this sends me off analyzing every conversation every everything to try and decipher if they are fair weather friends and do I care if they are, does it matter, my ‘real’ friends do always come through in the end so does it make it ok that some people want to be friends or shall I maybe say acquainted with me but want nothing to do with me when I’m depressed OR is it all in my head and they still care for me they just don’t know what to do or how to show it and because I am such a FOOK OFF LEAVE ME ALONE I’M DEPRESSED RIGHT NOW I’LL SEE YOU WHEN I GET MY HEAD OUT OF MY ASS THANKS kind of depressed person. Not to mention the fact that I have friends who are like me when they are in depressive states the pattern just repeats over and over again with them and someone normally has to remind me when I’m pissed of because I haven’t heard from so and so that, well so and so was just weeks or days ago for example trying to get a hold of me and I was no where to be found.

Dear PH,

Today is the five year anniversary of your death. They say that sometimes it helps to write the dead a letter to aid in the healing but I never did that and the time has flown and I never really wanted to let you go never really wanted to forget anything. Sucks I have such a bad memory but I’ve done everything possible to hang onto as many memories of our times together and my memories of you as I can.

I recently found the bag that your mother made you filled with lavender that you gave me for my dresser, I thought I had lost it, it was in a place I never look, I thought it was gone forever I thought I had looked for it everywhere.

I like to believe that if you hadn’t have taken your own life that everything would have been easier. I’d like to think that if your death wasn’t one of the only ones I’ve had to deal with in thirty years of life that it wouldn’t have taken me until last year to finally remove your email address and to have finally taken your phone number out of my cell phone.

But the fact remains, that in so many ways you keep me here and I need those memories. The really tough ones that peek through the cloud of shock that I was buried under and the sweet and tender ones that I love to tell and people who love me tolerate hearing over and over and over and over and over again.

When I want to give up for good, when I honestly believe I am capable of inflicting this never ending pain on everyone you flood me. An image too real of the car, the hose, the tape, the bottle, the pills the receipt the lone book and you dead. B coming up to my place at 8:15pm after N had left with M to be told separate and change us all forever.

The letter your family sent us was so nice and touching and I read it from time to time but one from you would have been nice. I like to think I’d leave one. I left a rather short one in grade 11 but it was a note none the less. I guess this is where the anger and the whys come in. The “YOU KNEW I SUFFERED FROM DEPRESSION YOU ASSHOLE”, the “YOU KNEW IF ANYONE YOU COULD HAVE TALKED TO ME”. Depression can be such a selfish disorder.

I didn’t and don’t really spend much time angry at you. I understand man. But that has never made it any easier.

When I get to see you again I won’t start with with why I’ll start by poking you in the belly because I wanna see you smile and laugh and I want it in slow motion. Like a slide show I want to show you, I want you to have a birds eye view of how much our times together meant to me. It would start with cheese. The night you showed up at my apartment door with nothing but a tray of your favourite cheeses. No bread, no wine, just cheese and you and your stories of how every time you would house-sit for M & B that you would break something and how funny it was but really it wasn’t funny and our friendship started right there. The New Years we spent just the two of us, all the books and Caramel Macchiatos you’d bring me just because you were thinking of me, the endless hours of trying to teach me ‘real’ French that wasn’t dirty. Remember the time my I/T band blew out deep in Stanley Park and I had to sit on your handle bars for at least five maybe more kilometers of what was supposed to be a run. My ass hurt and you couldn’t see you weren’t wearing a helmet it wasn’t safe and I couldn’t stop laughing. HA remember when YOU wanted to go see Crossroads, I still have that ticket stub. I wonder what you’d think of Britney now. And Lance won not four Tour de France titles but seven and thanks to you being a FRENCH MAN who loved that arrogant but kick ass bastard I love him and I try to LIVESTRONG.

As fate would have it, the last time I ever got to spend time with you one on one you had just gotten back from your bike trip, you made it through Tijanua, Mexico and you came back in love. I left work early that day, and if I had not left the building with various different exits the exact way I did I would have missed you heading down the stairs towards me and I didn’t know until you told me that you were coming just to see me. I was heading towards my work provided councilor, on yet another hunt to find help with my depression. We got caught up on everything and who knew that would be our last meeting. I did see you again in group settings but ended up on a date with a guy I already knew was an asshole on your Birthday when you were again watching M & B’s place and came up to visit me and thank me for the card I had left by the door, you weren’t home from wherever you were yet when I left. You died just over a month later and I don’t regret much in life but I will never forgive myself for going out that night what I wouldn’t give to have had that time with you.

The legs of some cyclists, their helmets used to have me convinced you weren’t really gone and it was all some sick joke. I miss so much about you but I think I miss your acceptance most, the size of your heart, the sound of your laugh, the way you looked in a toque. I just want one more day.

As confirmed the other day one of the things that originally attracted people to GG was my scan art. Thanks to enough people emailing me and asking me when I moved to WP WHERE the HECK my scans had gone, I’m going to bring it back. I’m just older now and not as flexible it is harder to think of poses. Give me a bit.

And secondly this used to be a place where I spilled all about my struggles with depression and although no proof remains in comment form there are many emails in a folder and people did feel safe talking about their shit here.

I don’t know exactly what it was that made me stop. I’d say it probably has a lot to do with the fact that I leave my house now and I hide my depression as best I can when I’m out and I’m basically sick of it, I can’t do it anymore and I guess I don’t believe that people will still accept me if I’m down and out honest about what life behind closed doors is really like for me that in some ways it still feels like it is never going to get better and in other ways no matter which way you look at it I am doing better than ever. But the areas I’m doing better than ever in aren’t areas that people outside an incredibly small inner circle ever see.

Lately I have been grumpy and moody to a degree I have never experienced before. I’m not doing well in group settings haven’t been since January 20th. and I’m starting to lash out in negative ways. aka not thinking before speaking or twittering. Because sometimes it is easier to deal with making people not like me. I’m used to that and getting used to the idea that people do like me, honestly, I’m having some issues with it.

I think you are still going to see me as the genuinely nicer person you’ve seen develop over the years but I feel it necessary to stop hiding how seriously depressed I am because when I don’t post on it I just end up feeling overwhelmed and don’t post at all. Going back to the brutally honest way I used to write this blog just with a more mature outlook and less of the fook word are what I need right now with where I am in my therapy.

I want to make it clear to anyone who it wasn’t blatantly clear to before, kind of a disclaimer if you will, that I have never and will never post about MY depression, MY mood disorders, MY anxiety for sympathy and any oh please love me bull shit, not saying I don’t appreiate it but May 2008 will mark five full years with my Psychiatrist and if I wanted sympathy I wouldn’t look to the internet for it. Just saying. There are so many of us out there who struggle with these disorders and all I want to do is tell my story.

It is not uncommon in various types of conversations for me to utter the words ‘you never really know anyone’, it normally goes unnoticed or is likely viewed as a loaded statement leaving it ignored. I said those words to some random guy whilst conversing outside the Holly McNarland concert a while back and the jist of his response in his wasted state was basically that I was full of shit. He is entitled to his opinion and being unused to being challenged on those words that do make a particularly strong statement, I was left fairly tongue tied and unable to elaborate realizing that I never mean it in a positive way and explaining would have been an instant downer. Significance = Believe it or not, I shut it.

I am not going to say that nothing shocks me. That would be a blatant lie. But in February 2003 when I lost a close friend to suicide parts of my life changed forever and with no note and with his closest friends unaware that he even suffered from depression and having known him in one of the more open and intimate friendships I have allowed into my life I decided to accept that I didn’t really know anyone and that I never would. Some people keep their secrets secret, and those who don’t I no longer believe are telling all and that is their right.

So the ridiculous things surprise me less.

1 through 25 from the First Quarter of 100 things about me can be found by clicking on this long line of green text.

You will likely want to review it because I started it a long time ago, like before I moved to Wordpress even.

So here goes:

26. The first concert I went to after moving to Vancouver was Jewel.
27. I try to dance every day and not just with Ellen.
28. My first concert t-shirt was that of the one and only Neko Case, as Aughra so nicely put it, “you and that shirt! Man.”
29. I do not use fabric softener. I do when I go home to my parents place though because then when I get back home it reminds me of home, my father has used the same kind for as long as I can remember.
30. I have a change sorter and save ALL of my change. [our rolled change payed for all of our tips on our honeymoon, saving change RULES]
31. I initially over react to almost everything but am actually very level headed.
32. I have ALWAYS spelled words how they sound and thus do not spell good.
33. As exhibit A. B. C. and D. clearly show, I am a hand talker extraordinaire for life.
34. I’m often referred to as a ‘childless soccer mom’ by my friends because I rarely leave home without an assorted combination of pain relief drugs, Purell [mini], Tide to Go, Band aids, hand cream [mini], lip balm and gloss, O.B. tampons [regular and super], a pen, hair ties and let us not forget the Visine. This is my purse it all fits nicely inside a small makeup bag.
35. I have very bad balance stemming from two serious issues with my inner ears, one self inflicted one not.
36. I have sensitive everything.
37. If you think you are more clumsy than me then I challenge you to a clumsy contest.
38. I have an irrational fear of the wind.
39. As a pre-teen and teen, I got pounded, beat up, bullied [whatever you prefer to call it] to the point of bruised skin on and off my face, split lips and an eventual first attempt at suicide that landed me in the hospital for a week. [some of that one is known but my depression and therapy category is a mess]
40. I have not worn a watch in years.
41. I do not own a scale because I refuse to become any more obsessed with weight beyond what I consider normal.
42. I have an extremely vivid imagination and am prone to exaggerate.
43. I don’t even want to admit how often I get in the shower with one of the following still on my person: my glasses, a tampon and my personal favourite, my underwear.
44. I stand up for myself and those I love at all costs.
45. I love the word plethora.
46. There is my life before Guitar Hero and then there is my life after Guitar Hero.
47. I cry at and over everything, seeing a friend WIN on TV, say on CBC’s Test the Nation last Sunday, commercials, TV shows, movies, vacation, SPORTS, CONCERTS, music in general, telling stories and etc.
48. I think about taking GG down at least once a day.
49. I am not easy to be friends with.
50. I yearn to learn how to be an affectionate person without using words.

As expected today was slightly crazy.

• work 9-1
• doctor appointment re: back
• psychiatrist re: crazy
• last minute shopping re: Christmas

In between the doctor and the psychiatrist I met up with two seriously pissed me off awesome situations.

I needed to go to Canadian Tire because there is a product on the telly that I want to get for my parents.

Actually, wait, let me be more specific, there is a product advertised on the TELEVISION that people watch, it is a commercial and at the end of the commercial it says available at these stores and one of them is Canadian Tire. I have seen it oh perhaps twenty times in the last two months maybe more and I work now so I watch less t.v; let us not forget that.

I think if it hadn’t been for the information desk that was available to customers at the front of the store I may have let this one go but an information desk says to me that you have information. On products. That YOU sell.

There was no information at the information desk, even after my elaborate story with description of product, name, and the mentioning of the commercial at least six times.

I moved on to the next guy at the paint desk, I was just going to search the whole store because I had close to an hour but he made eye contact with me so I thought HEY why not, I’ll ask him. This guy at least tried to look it up in the computer but I couldn’t see what he was actually doing so for all I know he was watching midget porn.

I wander around and find nothing. I find many similar things, I find things I end up buying as gifts for my parents but no go on the televised product they sell that so far two staff plus the staff they yell out: “HEY HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ______” can’t find, no one has even heard of it.

One more try, finally, someone wants to help me, and guess what folks, together we found the product but not in the store in the computer, they were sold out so I went with a gift card and I will print out a picture of it for my parents and if they don’t want it and buy something else FINE but I am never buying anything off of the t.v that looks cool from Canadian Tire ever again. I’m not kidding you in a store called Canadian Tire I questioned myself as to whether it was at all possible that I had seen the commercial on an American station.

Now for the psychiatrist’s office. I intentionally sat down in the chairs directly outside of the reception area so that I could read 1984, it is a bit quieter out there. I am trying to read this book super fast because we are having another family book club meeting and because my dad and Adam have read it and my mother and I haven’t [I can not believe I have never read 1984] we are discussing it. This happened last time too when we went up to visit, everyone was done the chosen book but me and we had to wait on the meeting until I was done. Bad me.

I was trucking along, just starting to get into it when a woman in the reception waiting area started to read out loud to her child. For about two seconds I was cool with it, I was all, I love reading and kids should read and parents who read to their kids are rad and BLAH I couldn’t bloody concentrate at all on my book so I started to make sounds and hand gestures and I slapped my book on my leg. I think she might have noticed because her voice lowered and I was able to digest the words in my book again.

The reception lady wanted to close the doors so I had to move inside. I sat down and began to read my book again but I was so close to the woman and her child that there was no possible way to block out her reading of the Berenstein Bears and because it involved reading and not say an obnoxiously loud cell phone call in a public closed in waiting area where I would have NO PROBLEM telling you to SHUT IT I was torn because it was a kid and it was reading so I myself decided that I would then read my book out loud to myself and so I did and I know she heard me because when she would stop reading out loud, I would stop reading out loud also.

I find it insane that this woman was so thick she didn’t get the point and SHUT IT or AT LEAST lower her voice.

I had all these thoughts running through my head whilst trying to read to myself and of course exploded the second the door was closed. Turns out the shrink was happy that I had the balls to read my own book out loud because he agreed that it IS a small waiting area and that there was no need for her to be reading the book out loud and the only thing I could have done better would have been to POLITELY tell her to shut it by reminding her that it is a public place you don’t own it and I’m trying to read in relative QUIET please.

In the wee hours of last Sunday morning it finally hit, almost like I had been waiting for it, but I clearly wasn’t because just hours before I had stated that I was very proud of myself for making if this far into the ’season’ with just regular old depression nothing major, and then I went to sleep some heavy bricks fell and I woke up later in the day with that feeling of weight bearing down on me.

Getting out of the city can simply not come fast enough. Tomorrow is going to be a bloody hellish day and then Saturday we leave. I really hope that once I get up north this nasty cloud of depression, anxiety and inability to see anything without negative attentional bias [aka paranoia] passes because it is starting to wreak massive [extra] havoc already.

My back is not getting better and I am finding it extremely stressful, I was able to go out and get many missions done today but not without arriving home and realizing how much was left to do and how much pain I was in and how much ass I felt like and I crashed onto the pillow until Adam came home. I am seeing my actual Doctor tomorrow instead of the Chiropractor because I’m concerned I have never had back pain of any kind for this long before and I’m a clumsy bastard so I want stronger drugs is basically why I’m going.

Flying up north on its own is EXTREMELY stressful in the winter or really any time of year for that matter. The airports of Northern British Columbia are notorious for canceled flights due to weather because the planes simply can not land.

I am sure everyone is feeling their own level of Christmas and/or seasonal stress right now whether you love or hate the holidays, I just could have done fine without the crash in depressionville with it, thinking everyone hates you and is out to get you at Christmas it feels EXTRA good.