hey, i'm alive!!!

Sep 01, 2007 11:27

 
A girl has to stop ignoring her blog and break the silence some time. I think that there just is so much to write about that sometimes it is hard to commit all the emotions into writing it.

I’ve had a nervous breakdown. It was a biggie but quite possibly the best thing that happened to me.

Since about April, I was finding pressures in my life mounting.. Felt a little heartbroken, left my job at the ‘house of finance nightmares’ optimistic for good things, visited friends and family at home that turned into a disaster and a loss of my most significant friend and the person I talked to every single day on the phone, I allowed things around me to encompass me and I almost failed one of my classes, I hated being alone so I worked every day, money woes started making me feel trapped in all situations…. Pressure building, pressure building, pressure buiiiiillllding…

By the time I got to July I was finding myself continually ill. I felt like a complete failure at my job and I took a vacation from myself and retreated into my head. Having a nervous ‘shutdown’ is a funny thing….a very selfish thing. I closed myself off from my friends and family, I would cry in my office every day allowing all the work to pile up around me, I was destructing my body and sabotaging everything around me on purpose.. my friends from my job started to get worried… I went from the office clown to a ball of anxiety and my good friend there told me she could barely recognize me anymore. Where did I go?? Would I come back from the dead and be her friend again?

In late july/early august, I would say that I was at my absolute worst. I completely lost myself to the stresses around me… one of my best friends in the city had moved back home to be with her dying mother, my boss began yelling at me about things and bad mouthing me behind closed doors, i failed my 3 month work review, this guy I started seeing told me I was a mental case and dumped me on the middle of main street in the wee hours of the morning claiming he was just using me for sex anyways and that I was an idiot for believing any of his lies that we could ever be more…i had put myself on medication in july as I was hoping that it was the answer and it was not… it actually made things worse. I was still desperately lonely but only because I chose to be. I had hands reaching out to me everywhere and I was the one that turned them away…

A few weeks ago I woke up with a super virus from hell.. it felt like mono as every gland in my body was swollen.. my mouth started breaking out in fever blisters and painful sores and is started laying around the house in tears. Shit started going down at work and I would hyperventilate at the thought of being there.

The moment my bubble burst was when my mum called me. She knew that I was on medication and feeling low but I always put on a brave optimistic face. This one day that she had called me though I was in the 4th day of my fever hell and I just couldn’t keep the tears from coming. My mum started crying too and had to hand the phone to my dad. Apparently they knew already that I was breaking down and they sat there for over 2 hours listening to me wail (I don’t even know if they could make out half of what I said). I let out all my fears that I’ve been hiding from her and not saying out loud; they offered to pay for my move back home…

When I got off the phone I fell to my knees on my carpet…I let my face lay in the dirty carpet and sobbed… and sobbed… and sobbed. I prayed to god for the relief of death and that is when it hit me… when did I become more afraid of life than death???

I got back up on my knees and this light of clarity hit me.. it was a very religious and personal moment. I mopped up my tears and went to bed. The next day I had a job interview with UBC with their temp agency which I did with a fever…

The following morning I went to work on a mission to quit my job. I came in barely being able to talk (mouth sores) and when I sat down with my boss I slid my resignation letter across the table towards him and cried my final tears.. ‘I just can’t do it anymore, it is affecting my health’.

The funny thing about nervous breakdowns is that as soon as you realize you’ve hit the bottom you can literally pick yourself off and dust off the soot and feel like you’re reborn.  I honestly feel like I died and raised from the dead. I’ve never been happier because I appreciate all that is around me more than I perhaps ever did.

To quote Mariah Carey,
‘yes, I did have a nervous breakdown but I’d consider it more of a nervous breakthrough’

Cha cha changes…. 
 
  • My work wrote me a letter while my bosses were away saying that I was indeed working with them and I flukily was able to consolidate my debts with a consolidation loan.  This was the biggest stress off my shouldser...I have a plan stan and I no longer have to work myself to death with the fear of starving.
  • New job - UBC… I sunbathe semi nude every day on the beach during my lunch breaks (LIBERATING!), I have no stress and I’m working towards my goal of continuing my studies for free. Sometimes it is hard for me to let go of the idea that a job doesn’t define who you are…it pays the bills. 
  • Renewed friendships - I’d like to say thank you to all of those who have been there for me in the summer I lived up my ass. 
  • A continued sense of optimism (with a warning label to myself that if things go wrong it is not the end of the world). Not being so hard on myself about everything is an ongoing journey 
  • A new honesty with my parents; I’ve never been so close with them… 
  • I’m off all medication…I think it was more harmful than it was helping and I think I’d rather learn to let people in to help me than shut everyone else and rely on drugs. 
  • A new dude? Maybe… we’ll see. The fact that I can still hold a sense of optimism in this department is shocking even to me.

nervous breakdown, death, life

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