The Year of Hell
The year after I graduated from high school was a very hard time for me. I didn't have my driver's licence, and I wasn't accepted into a college, as I did need to have Social Studies 30, instead of 33, to get to where I was going. I decided to take the course correspondently, so I could get that under my belt. My parents insisted on me getting a job. However, that proved to be impossible. I was limited to looking within that small town. Any time I applied at a place, someone was working there that I went to school with would recognize me and advise their boss not to hire me. I had no way of looking for work in Calgary, as I had no way of getting there. I was stuck in Hell!
There was something else that was working against me. An evil entity that was disrupting my life, and my desires. A dark spot tucked away within my very being, called depression.
All the years of verbal abuse, of being bullied, of having no real friends at all, had taken a huge, dramatic toll on me. I found myself losing all hope for living, just sleeping in until noon on some days and watching TV throughout the day. It was very difficult to be able to pick myself up. I felt like I was the biggest loser on the face of the Earth. I hadn't noticed this depression when I was in school, but it was definitely present and accounted for this year.
It was lurking in the shadows. It made me silent. It was the power I had given away by choosing to passively accept every insult that I had ever had thrown at me.
I never noticed this depression in my school years, as I think I was in huge denial about what was actually happening to me. Only through looking back, I finally accepted the fact that I was depressed since probably grade seven at least, maybe even sooner than that.
During this year, where I felt I had very little hope of achieving anything at all, I found it very difficult to keep myself high. My parents would bug me about it, trying to get my ass out there and look for work. All my efforts proved to be futile. It was such a painful time in my life, that even now, as I am typing this, I find it very difficult to talk about.
My days consisted of very little. Light housework on days that I could get my ass off the couch, checking the want ads, getting rejection calls, and watching television. I became addicted to watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was on ABC at 5:00 every weekday night. I must have watched every episode at least twenty times during this phase of my life, which turned me into the huge Star Trek fan that I am today.
I also had discovered a weird coping device. I became interested in comic books when I was in Junior High, as a way that I could step outside myself. I always had a deep fascination with superheroes, so discovering DC Comics was pretty reasonable for me. I was collecting several titles at this time. Even though I didn't have a job, I was still getting an allowance, and that is what I spent my money on. Comics.
After I would read an issue of my favourite title, I would try to imagine what would happen next. I think this started as soon as I was not allowed to play with toys anymore, which, coincidentally, was in Junior High School. I would sort of phase into an imaginary world, where all was well in this DC Universe. It's hard to explain this, but I would completely live in this imaginary world, seeing the characters move on with their lives, get married, have kids, and see their kids get married and have kids, and so on. It's like I was pretending that I didn't exist anymore, putting my whole life on hold for them. It was why I didn't realize I was depressed as a teenager. I just didn't give a shit about my own life anymore.
One day, I discovered much to my dismay that my mother canceled my membership to the comic book store I frequented in Calgary whenever we could go there on a weekend. I was enraged! Comics and the heroes in the stories was my life. I now understand why she tried to do that, but at the time I was angry as Hell. That was my only way out of a hopeless situation. It was the only way I could continue to live and breathe. Without comics, I would be forced to live my life, and that prospect seemed very frightening to me.
I guess I must have really freaked out at her, because I got back on to my account at the comic store. (I had my own shelf!) I know after writing this now as a much older adult it seems really ridiculous to have that freak out. On the other hand, it may very well have tipped my mother off that something might be wrong with me and rather than cause a scene she allowed me to continue to have my shelf at the comic store. (Incidentally, when I did go to college, I stopped collecting comics altogether.)
I did complete my Social Studies 30 class, with a much higher grade than I would have gotten if I went through the regular student-filled class. Solitary studying must have been the key for me, and sometimes I wish I had done that instead of going to school. Aside from that, I didn't really accomplish much. I was extremely angry whenever the subject would come up from my parents. I believed they could never understand what I was going through, and I couldn't quite explain it, as I didn't even know what I was going through.
One excerpt from a diary I wrote during this time period pretty much speaks for itself. It reads as follows:
April 28, 1995 - The New Plan has failed me. I don't know what to do now. I think mom doesn't want me to go to the Medicine Hat College or any university because I don't think she can afford it. I really have to work at getting my driver's license and a job. I'm most likely not going to achieve this and I'm probably never going to leave this house ever! Help! I'm trapped here and there's no way out! Ahh!! I have to make my goals more realistic.
In fact, after reading through some of these diary entries, I can see just how desperate I was. I was convinced that my acne problem was the reason why no one was hiring me. This is what I perceived everyone who called me ugly was seeing, as I really didn't see how else I could have been ugly. Obviously, I was traumatized by the verbal abuse and tried to struggle with what it was that people saw that made them think I was ugly.
I often tried to give myself schedules of daily tasks to achieve, and never fell through with them. I was punishing myself whenever I failed to achieve some sort of goal. I'm really quite surprised that no one in my family realized I was going through this personal Hell. Perhaps I was good at hiding it, or perhaps they didn't want to see it, but I could definitely see a lot of desperation in my journal entries.
I also thought the reason I couldn't get anywhere in life was because of Strathmore. I had associated that town's name with Hell, as I couldn't imagine a place worse than what I was going through. I began to have a strong desire to leave that town, and hoped to never return.
Things started to look up for me, as finally, I was accepted into Medicine Hat College for the Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree transfer program. At long last, I would finally get out of that Hell and begin to live my life, for the first time since I became an adult.