This week's stories

I had to take a break from the personal blog last week because I was feeling a little worn down again. I think it’s a combination of a few things: overload from the news cycle, overwhelming feelings (some of which I decided to finally book an appointment with a therapist to figure out), and the time change making it dark by the time I head home (I’ve always been affected by this time of year). I was also a bit sick two weeks ago; I’m better now, but I ended up taking a day off work. Despite having sick days, I’m still reluctant to use them; I guess that’s a leftover anxiety from years working in jobs paid by the hour (and particularly one with an “attendance bonus” which was really a $2/hr pay dock for the rest of the week if you had to miss a day’s work).

It’s tempting to “bank” posts for times like these. I tried this, but the two drafts I had started months before just felt false to me. One was about trying to unpack my religious upbringing, the other was about emotions provoked by looking at places you used to live on Google Maps. The topics themselves may be worth exploring in the future, but I couldn’t connect to what I had already written, and figured it’s better to start fresh than to try to bring together something written by differing versions of myself. I’m just not the person to tell these stories at the moment.

As frank as I am here about my mental health, I still have the tendency to say I’m fine or alright whenever I’m making small talk. It’s more a moment-to-moment thing. Besides, I tend to pull away when I’m feeling particularly bad (especially when I’m too tired to articulate). I guess that’s the thing about having depression; there are a lot of times where in that instant you can be fine, but the overall picture is a little more complicated than that. When I’m “fine”, I’m functional, or don’t really feel the need to burden others with my various neuroses and insecurities. I ran into a former co-worker at the bus stop the other day; as much as I still think about her and would have loved to chat more in depth about life, I felt a little awkward through the conversation. Maybe I was just afraid of saying too much or making a pleasant encounter weird.

For the most part, I’m doing better than I was two years ago when I first started on the meds. I went to my friends Steve and Alecia’s joint birthday party (Cougars and Cocktails) a few weeks ago; the last one of these parties was right before I saw a doctor about my depression for the first time, and that time I was just not feeling up to being around people, even if I had a few drinks in me. I was in a much better frame of mind this time around: it helps that these parties are mostly filled with familiar faces, some of which I’ve known for about 20 years.

I mentioned a few times in other posts about how I’ve pulled away from people this year. Part of it is because after my last big get-together in March, I just felt so wiped out from the combination of drinks, plans-making and socializing that I needed to rest, and knew that I also had to save money for my vacation weeks. The hangovers were also starting to become harder to recover from, and as much as I liked the excuse to be out of the house, I felt like I was sinking back into myself whenever I was somewhere like Charlie’s or Good Robot. I think my liver (which is just fatty, according to the doctor) is thanking me for this, but I’m starting to miss people again.

It’s not like I’m always spending my free time at home, though; I just need to really have a good excuse like Cougars and Cocktails or something else. My friend Dave generously gifted me a ticket to the Gordon Lightfoot show on Saturday, so I went to that. Gord’s voice is considerably weaker than it was in its prime, but he put on a good show (and turned 81 that week). But as soon as it was over, it was back to the comfort of my apartment with my Autumn Bottom by my side.

View fullsize

Gordon Lightfoot and band in concert at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, November 23, 2019

I’m going to do my best to post every Wednesday; there’s a lot on my mind these days even if I’m not going out to parties or seeing legendary Canadian singer-songwriters in concert.