* Disclaimer * If you are someone I know IRL and have happened to stumble across this after years of silence, I want to assure you I am fine and IN NO WAY want to discuss this in person. I want no pity, or sad eyes, or "How are you... really?" questions. You are welcome to comment, but keep it light or commiserating. This means you, Dad, as well as a handful of others. * End disclaimer *
Update time - in the 6 or 7 years
since I've been here, I have:
- left the church of my childhood once and for all,
- completed my Masters in Social Work,
- left my job as a Crisis Worker (not easily or well),
- lost our beloved Monty,
- worked every day of the pandemic either in hospital or in public programing,
- got diagnosed with ADHD,
- start a private counselling practice (while on meds for ADHD that created mania, but that's another story),
- brought home our grumpy-pants dog, Jedi, and our love-bug dopey dog, Gruber,
- moved cities to a job (senior social worker in mental health) that I love in as equal parts as it drains me,
- continue working part time in my private practice, and
- managed to stay married to The Guy (aka Wade) as we build a life here (I contribute most of this to him).
Last fall, I slipped into the depths of depression. It was less of a sadness as it was a heavy fog of despair and emptiness that made it nearly impossible to lift my limbs or even my head unless I was at work or with a client. I expect part of it was finally running out of steam after the year of getting our new life together.
It was a whirlwind. I had been unsuccessfully looking for MSW work in my home city where, having moved to a different government body, I was deemed to have no experience because I had only been with their corporate machine for 3 years. Suddenly, the nearly 20 years (19 years, 9 months, 3 weeks) of intensive crisis counselling, intervention, therapy, mediation, and training meant as much as a 23 year old just out of university. This was nothing new to me, I have never much fit in to the system I was apart of, but it meant being passed over (over and over) for jobs that I was well-qualified for.
As a lark, I started applying in other cities, and eventually I got a call. A manager had noticed that my resume listed me as part of her overall organization but I was not in the system. We spoke, she expressed interest, and she went out of her way to fix the issue that kept me out of the system. Within a week, I was interviewed and hired to start that next month. Within that month, we bought a house, sold a house, and I left to stay with my sister until The Guy could follow.
So, a year and three months later, all I could do was lay on the couch once I was done at work. I loved (love) the job. It is all the elements that I love - some client work, some admin, some supervision. But it was really more of 1.75 jobs in one and I was determined to make it work. Add to that, masking my ADHD so that I would be accepted, was exhausting. I did my work with energy and attention, saw my private clients with enthusiasm, and then collapsed.
I started to come out of that doom in March or April that year. I upped my medications (Effexor and Trazadone), got an excellent therapist, and slowly crawled out. However, some damage had been done. I had checked out of nearly every chore in the house. I had given limited energy to my relationship, almost none to making friends (apart from one extremely determined younger woman who is a pitbull of kindness), and less to doing anything to get out of it.
Since then, I have attempted to return to the world - and have in some ways - but it has not been easy. I have had multiple injuries in the last two years (torn ligaments and tendons) so exercise in my preferred forms have been out of the question. I could do my physio exercises, but in my brain that isn't as appealing as yoga or walking - and those I need my limbs to do - so, of course, I couldn't do anything!
I've noticed the last few weeks that this heaviness is creeping in again - heavier than before. It may be a fall thing - I have many clients and friends who find fall extremely difficult. It may be a mind thing - the heaviness taking over my body when my mind is whirring about without boundaries.
However, I heard a podcast that said self-care is about the reasons we do the things, not just the things we do. I'm reading the book Burnout by the Nagasi sisters (I can't remember their names at the moment and I'm too lazy to go look) and they note that to come back from burnout also involves creativity and my brain went, "Ah ha! Write more!" And so, here we are. Doing something different and yet not - deeply familiar and yet not.
And I'm doing it here in sort of secret. I hear most people are on Substack so I should be safe. It's been a theme this week with clients and friends alike - wanting to be seen but not observed. And here I am.
