Friday, March 20, 2015

Come on Down Black Dog...

I have been trying to update this blog and write reviews, but work and life have just been getting in the way. It has been a very stressful 12 months. My dreadful brother in law managed to give my father his flu, which turned into pneumonia which almost killed dad. He survived, but his Parkinson’s is worse, dementia is setting in and with my mother at age 72, she’s not coping well. Add in a forced renovation of my bathroom with an angry and bizarrely unresponsive live in owner below my unit complaining randomly about leaks, and threatening me with legal action if nothing was done as well as falsely claiming that I knew about the leaks two years before she bought the place. Not only was the renovation highly stressful, it was done with money I really didn’t have, pushing me further into debt.

But work has been probably most stressful of all. Staff are disappearing and not being replaced. For three months I was forced to do the job of three people. Sometimes I had staff to help, whom didn’t know what the hell they were doing at times, sometimes I had none. Add in recently arrived senior staff who seemingly don’t give a shit about what works and what doesn’t, and seem hell bent on changing things as they see fit regardless of the outcomes, regardless of what staff tell them, ignoring the fact staff are leaving in droves. Luckily they’re the ones fronting Senate Estimates when everything goes pear shaped, not me.

Worst of all is that a long overseas holiday that had been in the planning for over a year had to be cancelled less than a two days before I was due to go because of a viral illness witch left me lethargic for nearly two weeks. I had saved and saved for this trip, giving up a lot of things and going without to reach this goal. The months and months of planning, and to have it all fall apart and have it all amount to naught is highly disappointing to say the least. With the realisation that the trip had to cancelled, an argument developed with a tenant’s real estate agent claiming my property as part of another unit’s sent me into an extremely rare epic meltdown. While in terms horrible experiences, it should have be mild but the stress was too much, it was the icing on the cake of a shitty year. From 1995 to around 2000, I had undiagnosed severe depression. It was pretty dreadful, but somehow I managed to dig myself out of it by myself without any drugs (legal or otherwise) and without killing myself. The periods of depression continued off and on for many years until I finally decided to seek some real professional help in late 2007. I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome which explained a lot of my behaviour and my constant failures with relationships.

I have managed to live a depression free life since then, but now I think I have reached my limit unfortunately. The cancelation of the trip has managed to trip everything over the edge. The anxiety has come back and along with moments where I can feel that that heavy lead coat called depression. It’s absolutely awful. Everything that I thought I had resolved long ago in terms of Asperger’s and depression, namely problems with relationships, both sexual, and to a lesser degree social, have come back big time. It is dreadful. I don’t want or really need this. My doctor is a very understanding and has given a mental health care plan, however I’m not sure if I will take up the chance to see my old psychologist again. I’m not all too fussed about going on medication again. I thought Lexapro made a bit manic and I crashed on it a few weeks later. It’s not been two weeks yet, so I’m hoping the anxiety goes away by itself and I can sleep a bit better. The good thing is I can now recognise what is happening and can plan to head off what is coming. I really don’t want to go through the same experiences I had in the late 1990’s.

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