a Scarlet D

It’s been over 7 months since I last posted. Quite a bit has happened, most of it good.

At some point my therapy and recovery was for me. Not for therapists or for my family. Not for friends and not for doctors. For me. It. wasn’t immediate, but it was pretty quick. And it didn’t solve everything, but it gave me hope.

In the last three years I whittled it all down to one hobby. Planning my death. Methods, situations, reliabilities. At the worst times it gave me some hope to think it was finally going to be over. At the better times it was still a compulsion. See a bus? Figure out what it would take to get in front of it. Take some medicine, go online and see how much it would take to be lethal. I could find a way to think about suicide in any situation. I would say goodby to places. When we closed the cabin for the season I thought about how it would feel without me there.

Eventually, in little bursts and whispers, I would have another thought. What would my life be like if I changed how I lived my life? It was a hard thought, and scary as hell. Over months and weeks the thought kept coming back. I talked to my therapists about it, I wrote about it, and I thought about it.

Eventually my dark days would enjoy my first hobby. My less dark, eventually brighter days I would think about my second. At some point they were neck and neck. But as time went by and my thoughts about how I was living my life gave way to serious thoughts, the hobby began to be about understanding and planning that change.

In December I turned a corner. Was it the meds? The ketamine? DBT? Therapy? After three years it all ran it’s course? But it wasn’t that simple. I think it was a combination of things. Eventually my thoughts of suicide lessened and lessened, and thoughts of hope gained strength. That hope gave me some drive and motivation. Everything built on itself and eventually I was finding myself happy at times. Hopeful for my future. I had been looking for a job since September, but those first three months I was afraid that if I got one, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Memory issues. Balance issues. Exhaustion. Lingering anxiety. It was hard.

I threw myself into the job hunt. I still felt quite a bit like shit, but I put on a good face and worked hard. I had been on the hunt a few times after layoffs or company implosions. I knew what I was doing. I would land the odd phone interview, and even some extended interviews. But no job. I passed 100 applications posted. That sucked. 500. 700. Finally 1000 applications posted over six months. It’s a brutal market.

And one day I got a great interview and an offer. I’m not anxious, I’m excited. I feel like I can do this job and that I will enjoy it. And I’m making other changes, some serious and others small. I wake up in the morning with more energy, and I feel more confident. Oh, I know it’s not over. This is something I am going to have to manage for the rest of my life. But I finally feel like I may have the tools and life to do that fairly successfully.

I’ve wanted to add to this blog but was either too low or too busy. But now, dear reader, I feel the need to properly put this into storage. I may contribute to it again some day if I need to, you never know.

I wish you all well. I hope this blog helped in some way, and I wish you hope for your future.

Thank you, and Goodbye,

The Scarlet D