Out With A Whimper

My personal essay series has been pretty quiet this year. Not because nothing’s been going on, but because too much has been rocking my world. If you follow me on traditional social media, you might have some idea of what I've been going through. That said, I haven’t been talking about some of the things I’ve been dealing with, and that might have been a mistake. In keeping my issues to myself or confining it to a small group of friends and family, I broke the cardinal rule of my mental health regime I established in 2012.

I stopped talking.

Really the absence of sharing started back in 2017, but as of this summer, it’s reached a height not seen since my mini-breakdown of 2010/2011. That breakdown resulted in my finally seeking medical help for my mental and emotional situation. Also, this was when I started my journaling (I will never not hate the fucking word blogging, and I will never use it if I can avoid it) for good and ill. The good being finally processing some of the shit I’ve been carrying around and the bad being the feeling of others I never meant to hurt but did.

I’m sorry, Dad.

That said, there were more than a couple of people who I hope had their feeling wrecked in the process.

A quick comment. My journaling started under the advice of my doctor. I was unwilling to attend regular therapy, and I still am, but I needed to unload and unpack all of the baggage I’d been carrying for thirty-five years.

The journal entries I made during 2011 and 2012 saved my life.

Full stop.

Do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars.

Through them, I made the first steps in dealing with my PTSD from my rape as a child, my sexuality, and my fight against bipolar disorder. The journals allowed me to open up to my wife about issues I’d been afraid to broach for years, and through that, my marriage grew stronger.

Long story short, I got better.

Fast forward to 2017.

I’ve talked about the issues and drama surrounding my middle son ad nausea in the past, so I’m just going to give a quick recap of the situation up until the summer of 2017. In September of 2015, my middle son and his wife came to live with us. They were substance abusers, and the next two years were hell. There's no need or desire for me to rehash any of what went on during those two years. If you’re interested, check my journal entries during that time and the six to seven months following to get the basic rundown. When my son finally “Left,” I thought that was the end of my major problems.

Boy howdy was I fucking wrong about that.

Not only did issues with my son intensify, but I also started rapid cycling in my depression/bipolar disorder. I’m not going to go into any great detail on these issues because they all need their own journal entries and not paragraphs in the end of the year rundown.

Some of the highlights of the next year and a half (mid-2017 until the end of 2018) were me getting and leaving three good jobs. My wife decided we needed to buy a house even though I’d been adamant since we lost our first house that I would never own another one. In the end, she bought it, but my name isn’t associated with it at all. Near the end of 2018, I got the best job I’ve ever snagged and frankly a better job than I ever expected to have. We had a great Christmas, and we rolled into 2019 with a bright future on the horizon.

2019 has nearly broken me.

On January 7, 2019, I was fired from my job for a YouTube video I’d made in 2014 about how much I loved working in the Adult Care industry and how weird it could be at times. I took the firing to three lawyers, each of whom said it was a BS firing, but because of the way Ohio labor laws are written, there was nothing I could do. I filed for unemployment and appealed the hell out of it, but my former employer fought it, and in the end, I received nothing.

Between mid-March, when my unemployment was denied for the last time, and mid-June, I was hired for five different jobs, and I was unable to keep any of them. The long and the short explanation is anxiety.

It started with constant apprehension and an inability to sleep. It ended with me hiding in a janitor's closet and crying while I tried to catch my breath because the very idea of mopping fifty feet of hallway overwhelmed me.

I felt like I was lost.

I felt like I was crazy.

I felt like I was useless.

I felt like I wanted to die.

When I was nearing my breaking point, the night of the closet meltdown, my wife told me to quit my job and make a doctor's appointment. I did what I was told, and three days later, I was sitting in Doctor J’s office crying. She told me I’d progressed to a new level of mental illness and needed to apply for disability. It wasn’t the first time it’d been suggested, once I’d even started the process but stopped halfway through. She also said I needed to start seeing a Psychiatrist because first, it was mandatory for disability, and second a psychiatrist could prescribe medication she couldn’t.

I took her suggestions.

I’ll talk about the process of applying for disability later. I will say I was denied within two weeks of applying, but I’d done my research and knew that was par for the course in the process. I’m in the middle of my first appeal, and if that is denied, I’ll secure a disability lawyer. This all transpired in June and July.

The rest of the year has been a mixed bag. I turned forty-three. My first grandchild was born in October. The transmission in my truck that I still owe ten thousand dollars on died, and we had to take out a loan to fix it. My wife got promoted with no pay raise and then had her workload doubled with no raise during a consolidation process. Now she’s miserable, and I feel helpless about it. My middle son popped back up into our lives, and while my wife is receptive to a possible relationship with him, I am not.

So yeah, a mixed bag.

Now we’re moving into 2020. I have no real expectation of a better year. Maybe I’ll get my disability. Maybe my wife will get a better job. Maybe things will work out with my son. Maybe my father and I will talk again. Maybe Trump won’t be reelected. Maybe Bernie will be President. Maybe I’ll get my blood sugar back under control. Maybe I’ll lose weight. Maybe I won’t lose a foot to diabetes. Maybe I won’t have a panic attack before my oldest son’s wedding in August. Maybe I’ll love Christmas again.

Maybe I’ll sit on that bench on the beach in Mexico.

- Josh (12/27/2019)

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, I am 100% aware this entire journal entry comes off as whiny and self-indulgent. I don’t think I’m a victim of people or the universe. This is just the hand I’ve been dealt and drawn. This is just how I feel.