The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
No, it's not Christmas for me. For me, my absolute favourite time of the year is Halloween. I love it! I love that we have a day in a year where it's okay to dress up in silly costumes and pig out on candy. It's great!
I was however starting to dislike it this year, because the topic of having a "group costume contest challenge" came up at work. It was starting to look like a team, work "corporate" thing. I don't want to say I'm not a team player, but Halloween is my jam, you know? I don't want to be forced to wear something I didn't want to wear, and I really start planning my next costume after Halloween ends. This year, for the first time in my life, I'm doing a Star Wars costume. I won't say who and will post on social media on the Friday before Halloween when I do it, but I ordered one way ahead of time and it came here a week ago. I still have to try it on, and do I ever hope it fits, but yeah, the idea that Halloween would be hijacked by some dumb work thing was getting to me. I am pleased to report they decided not to do it because they felt it's really a contest between 2 departments and wouldn't be fair to everyone else. Wonderful!
As COVID-19 is still a part of our lives due in part to all the anti-vaxxers and the terrible misinformation floating around online about vaccines, I doubt there will be much other than the Friday before Halloween at work for me again this year. I think that's why I was hesitant with the idea of a group costume contest. Also, once again, our Christmas Party is going to be at work and not at some fancy place where we can dress up, which I found to be disappointing as I really want to go out again. That in and of itself is an odd thing for me to type, because I usually feel awkward getting all dolled up, especially when my weight is up, which sadly it is again. But I really miss going places and doing things outside of work and home.
There is another reason why I chose this title for this post. It's that time of year in Canada when the daylight hours start to diminish. I find it very difficult to get up in the mornings when it's dark outside, and looking out the window at just 6:00 at night to see it pitch black. I do think I get affected by the Seasonal Affective Disorder, but also because the year is quickly coming to an end. That means constant Christmas ads and shows are coming up, which can be depressing to those who are alone and lonely during the holidays, and my birthday arrives, which means another year older. It's a usual thing for me to start feeling anxious about my birthday and the end of the year. I start to wonder if this is all there is to life. Have I accomplished everything I've wanted to accomplish? Am I still stuck in my life? Am I in a rut? I miss people! I hate being alone all the time. Maybe I should start learning new things, like learn to play the piano, which I've always wanted to do, but then I'd have to get a piano, or at least a digital piano or a keyboard with a stand and seat. Then again, would that just be another thing I want to learn that I wind up pushing to the side while I hold off on tackling my organizing goals?
This, incidentally, is what it's like to live with an attention deficit disorder brain. I want to do so many things, that I tend to get overwhelmed by the list of things I want to accomplish. I never know where to start because my mind keeps coming up with things that I want to learn to do, or goals to work on, or suddenly get off my train of thought and wonder what it would be like to be Superman, or any alien, and why do humans fear aliens, anyway? Ah, the life of ADD! Isn't it grand?
After my low I experienced back in March this year, I do know I'm in a far better place than I was then, or even this time last year. I'm back to working full-time. I feel far better than I did in March. I'm participating in my community by volunteering to be on the CACR promotions committee, and I'm once again going to regular EA meetings. Although all of these meetings are held virtually, it's still nice to talk to other people and not feel so isolated.
For the past week, I've been struggling. I had an argument with my mom on Facebook Messenger. It triggered a painful memory in me which led me down a dark path. Normally, I avoid discussing things like this on my blog, because if I know I'm going to be posting it on my Facebook page, I know my parents will see it. I do feel like I have to write it out of my system so I can get myself out of the funk that this incident put me in, so please bear with me.
The argument wasn't even the issue at all. My mom criticized something about how I keep my home. No big deal, right? Well, it wound up triggering memories of a very painful time in my life. The Year of Hell I spent after high school. Even the link I've shared hasn't really delved into it as much as it could have. After high school, I felt trapped in my own home. I couldn't find a job to save my life, as the choices in town were quite limited at the time, and the few places there were, I would apply to, but would hear someone I knew from school tell their manager not to hire me as I left. I felt so trapped. I didn't have my driver's licence at the time, and couldn't leave town.
I did wind up taking Social Studies 30 correspondently at home during the fall of 1994. I was surprised to see that I did far better in Social Studies correspondently than when I would take it in class, as Social Studies was always a bearly passing course for me. I think part of it was the undiagnosed ADD, and being home when everyone else was out of the house made it far easier for me to concentrate on my schoolwork. But the class structure was really the biggest part of the problem for me. A lot of the projects were "group projects" and when you are in a town where people are picking on you, they don't want you in their groups. They don't let you participate. They treat you like you don't exist or they even gang up on you and insult you as a group. I also found that in most of my classes, whenever there was a jerk in the class who would be disruptive to the class, 9 times out of 10 they would be moved to sit near me. This was definitely the case in pretty much all of my Social Studies classes since I moved to Strathmore. Instead of disrupting the entire class, that jerk would focus his attention on disrupting me and the other jerks around us who would laugh at the insults. It's hard to concentrate with ADD as it is, but even harder when you're hearing constant insults hurled in your direction.
During this difficult time in my life, I wound up getting obsessed with things. I slept through the mornings, got up, watched TV, did some work on the correspondence course, then would watch Star Trek: The Next Generation religiously at 4:00 every day, as it was on ABC. I had also became obsessed with collecting comic books at the time. Even though I didn't have a job, I did get an allowance from my parents, and I would use that allowance to go once a month or so when my parents would go into Calgary to get my stack of comics. I had a whole shelf under the counter and everything! Honestly, these were ways for me to distance myself from my difficult emotions that I just never wanted to deal with. I didn't want to deal with the pains I went through in school and the feelings of being stuck in what I perceived to be Hell. In fact, I often criticized religion for having a concept of Hell because I couldn't imagine a worse place to be than stuck in that town. I honestly felt like I must have been a real asshole in my past life because I was sure as Hell paying for it in this one. I was lonely. I was severely depressed. I was lost and didn't know what to do or how to get out of there. So I needed a mental escape. Comics and TNG were those for me.
I loved the future that TNG showed and still to this day hope someday humans will realize that the search for material possessions no longer drive us; that seeking out new things and learning more about life in general is. I would lose myself in the heroes and their lives through the comic book pages, and would imagine what would happen next? What would their lives be like? Careers? Who would they marry? What would their kids be like? And so many other things like that. Basically, my life became a fantasy of their lives. I didn't exist anymore, and that was fine by me.
One time during this Year of Hell, I learned my mother called my comic book store to cancel the account I had there. I was livid. I blew up at her. I argued it was my life, my money, and I could spend it any damned way I wanted to! I was over 18, almost 19, and she had no right to do that to me! Yada, yada, yada…
The real truth is this action scared the Hell out of me. Anger often masks pain, and my angry outburst certainly did that for me. I was in so much pain from the years of being bullied at school and didn't want to deal with that pain at all, so I was pushing it down and avoiding my emotions by avoiding my life. I certainly understand now where my mother was coming from, and don't want to come off as she "ruined my life when she cancelled my comic book account!" or any other dumb insinuation like that. If anything, this anger outburst should have been seen as a cry for help.
I think the reason why my mother recently criticizing the way I do things in my home triggered these memories is because there were times when they would push me to at least clean up the house when I was home. A very reasonable request of someone who was living there and not working. But I often felt like the effort to keep the house clean was either unappreciated when I did, or the place would be a mess again just as soon as everyone got home and it felt futile. Once again, honestly, it was really due to my depression and the fact that I wanted to avoid my life. So the recent argument over why I should do my dishes everyday really just pressed me to deal with these difficult emotions once again. I don't think I ever have dealt with them completely.
As I get more into therapy, and am working on completing EA steps questions, I am trying to learn better ways of dealing with my pain or difficult emotions. I am trying to face them head on now, rather than avoid them altogether. Of course I still struggle, as many times I've written blog posts about a lot of these issues and the depression beast. I have come to realize that the only way to fully deal with all of these issues and the difficult emotions that are attached to them is to actually deal with them, rather than to push them away. I learned to self-isolate before it became popular with COVID, and learned to suppress my emotions with food or escapism. At that time in my past, that skill helped keep me alive. It no longer serves me. If I am ever to fully heal from these issues, I need to explore them more in depth and stop running from them. I intend to do more frequent blog posts, and fully delve deeper into these EA questions so I can figure out how to regain control over my own life. The first step of EA is to admit I'm powerless over my emotions; that my life has become unmanageable. It is starting to feel a little more manageable again as I delve deeper into my emotions that I've long been suppressing. I honestly feel like I'm finally starting to take the first steps into the rest of my life.
I think I will wind up this blog post now. Thanks for reading for those who do.
To my mom: I'm sorry if I take things too far sometimes. It's not about you or anything we say or argue about. I have a lot of issues I need to deal with and hope you can be more patient with me while I figure these things out. I do appreciate you. I'm sorry I can be so touchy sometimes.