November 12th 2017 4:11am
Tofino is never worrying about running out of battery life, or the gas tank. Or atm service charges.
It’s is an odd place. Living on the mainland you get hit with the same cold and rain and you learn pretty early on how to shelter yourself in the rat race, to keep busy until the clouds roll through. Tofino is this weird anomalous places where people travel here for the express reason of running headlong into the rainy cold. Duh, the waves are better for surfing and storm watching. It’s weird being this close to the ocean. You’re surrounded by it here, you can hear it from the dead middle of town. It’s dark, cold and can swallow you up, and yet here we are grabbing neon coloured boards and wearing goofy rubber suits and paddling away from shore. Standing up, riding it. There’s a metaphor there somewhere I think. A really lame one. Suffice to say Tofino is the setting where I’ve always been most comfortable with entertaining feelings of optimism, they linger in my mind a little bit longer here, there aren’t a lot of things here that can take them away.
A girl bought me a drink and told me how happy she was that everything about this place wasn’t like home.
this trip was really about running away.
The band getting to create beautiful music for people to enjoy on a Saturday night, Thats pretty amazing right?
I remember how hard learning 3 chords was and thinking how weird it must be to be able to do so much more but the peak of your musical ambition is playing for my drunk ass.
I met a girl at the merch table. She was kind and she was pretty and in our conversation about the logistics of fitting a surfboard on a motorcycle I noticed her biting her lip…and looking at mine…and exhibiting every universal sign I could think of to express a “shut the fuck up and let’s make out already” sentiment–
“All I could do was wonder how much she’d have to know about me, to hate me as much as I do.”
This isn’t me. I’m so tired of this
I’ve been diagnosed with clinical major depression.
atleast I think thats what its called, I kinda zoned out when I hear it.
I’ve known that somethings been wrong forever but I’ve never had it named by someone else before. I’ve never been in a position where I could go out and really do that. I’ve been getting help for months but this weekend was the first time I’ve been able to process it all.
2 doctor’s a therapist and a councillor. 4 different opinions. The same mdi-10 depression index score. How it works is, 20 is dysthemia or mild depression and 25+ is no bueno moderate depression. 30+ is major depression. I figured I’d be around 18-19 with my shiny psych degree and my practicing of mindfullness and understanding of CBT and readings of Dr. Marsha Linehan and Brené Brown.–-
Of all the fucking tests to ace I sure know how to pick em lol.
Talk therapy’s helped narrowed it down, where In reality I’ve likely been dealing with this for over a decade. I could have and likely should have gotten help when I was in early highschool/late middle school. The fact that I’ve never been on medication pretty deeply concerns my therapist. I still don’t know if I want the pills, I stare at the prescription sometimes and wonder what the sweet fuck I’m going to do. It’s hard to plan things in a pros and con’s type of scenario with brain altering chemicals, like its not like theres a frame of reference or anything. I’ve always been getting by with habits and discipline. Reading ahead, doing homework early in case I sleep through my classes again. Never letting anyone get close enough to be in a position to judge you. Never be vulnerable. You’re not cool enough to have baggage.
It’s not like I’m like this all of the time. I have good days, mostly when I’m around other people, even strangers. It’s when I’m by myself for too long that it starts to creep into my mind, a little voice getting progressively louder and more persuasive. I Have fun by remembering what it’s supposed to feel like and selling it to everyone who can see me. This isn’t the stereotypical 3am negative thoughts, I mean those happen too but its more like 3pm, in the middle of my group of friends laughing, just getting hit with this whole body feeling of dread and trying to crack a joke anyway. I then follow this with sullen, silent car rides home or 45 minutes sitting on the shower floor wondering if I’ll always feel this numb?
That’s the worst part…the numbness of it all. Losing hours in the day to this thing that I can’t even really describe. I never get mad or sad or happy just attenuated, dulled versions of these emotions. I’m scared of heights, like really fucking scared of heights but I learned to rock climb because fear hits me in such a meaningless way now. This is such a weirdly strong biological component. I feel like I can never move forward to create myself because I’m always looking back, trying to get back to how I used to feel. That’s the one thing I know is missing, that sense of self that guides my decision making. I’ve never been able to go with my gut, the kind of spontaneity and passion and creativity that comes with that, Instead Its always minimize the damage, lower the risk. I feel inadequate in every measurable and measurable way, to the point of it being physically crippling.
I’ve been really fucking good at hiding this. Its the thing I’m honestly the most proud of, which is a bit counterintuitive. It’s allowed me to flip something that feels so intrinsically selfish and allowed me to keep focus on the people that are important to me. It’s allowed me to learn some really important lessons about friendships and relationships, coping and empathy, all without the vulnerability of facing those things head on. Depression to me, at least the way that i’m doing it (which I know is the wrong way to think about it) is this selfishness I don’t want to indulge.
There is massive guilt with this. I have so much. I have taken so much time, love, energy, money from the people in my life and I feel like I am and I have so little to show for it. That I am a highlight in every worst way, of the differences between what is good and what is just nice. but the thing is I’m starting to realize that this thing, this depression thing it couldn’t give less of a shit about how you rationalize it, its taken better people than me, I’ve seen it first hand.
For me this thing hits two-fold. Its the physicality of these symptoms I can no longer ignore or fight through. Messed up eating schedules, sleeping too much or too little, missing classes, being late to events or appointments and just constantly feeling zoned out, in a daze.
On the mental side of it, its been management. I’ve been in a dark place for a long time and my diminishing ability for me to manage these mental health symptoms means that I feel increasingly less equipped to take on this complete feeling of stagnation. This shit takes work. It’s like im trying to carry a weight with broken arms and no cast. It’s a feeling that even if I had an opportunity, job or otherwise, I lack the tools and the self belief to actually be and do what I want. It is such a weird sensation to feel the slide from wondering how to make it by 30…to wondering about making it to 30.
I Try to work hard to be grateful and find the joy in things. I spend my days trying to bridge the gap between the humility of recognizing this reality, with the ego of thinking I deserve better. I mean maybe this is as good as it gets? Maybe some people just spiral. I hope that isn’t me, I don’t want to see how far this rabbit hole goes, I don’t want to become what its trying to make me become, I think thats why I work so hard to keep being extraverted. I try to be around my friends, especially if I know that they have it a lot worse or are facing a difficulty. Being empathetic to what they’re dealing with makes you feel like a bit of a daft jerk for dwelling your own bullshit. That used to keep things quiet long enough. Then again you don’t win a fight by closing your eyes.
I went to the bar in Tofino where I bought my first legal drink and I thought about all the drinks I’ve had since then. I got hit with this really intense feeling of dread. Not that I had wasted all that time in those 5 years, Worse still, That I’ve never truly had the ability to truly appreciate all the amazing things that have happened since then.
Even if I couldn’t feel it I wanted to do the logical work towards getting out of this. I learned really early on to focus not on building a resume but on building a eulogy. To live a life well lived. To do things not for the spoils but for the man I’d become in the pursuit.
In the 5 year since I’ve been back to Tofino, I’ve hated that man. I still hate him. I am so much of what I told myself I’d never be: alone, weak, and of little consequence. I’ve tried everything to fix that man and I still can’t explain where that process went wrong. I’ve tried to surround myself with people who I love. But never letting them get close enough love me because of a combination of never feeling like I deserved it and never wanting to be burned or betrayed for being vulnerable.
I don’t know if I can really get better I don’t really know what better is. Thats the funniest bit about this, I don’t even think I can really imagine what better would be like, what the absence of all this would feel like.
I just know that there is more than this…that maybe I can be more than this.
I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.— Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anais Nin,
I want to make all of this mean something. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. I just know that I could set myself on fire to keep others warm. If I couldn’t feel wanted, or that I deserved to be wanted I could at least make people comfortable. I never knew there was a difference between happiness and the distraction from sadness. I would just connect to benevolence. I’d try volunteering, donating time and money partly because I enjoy those things, but deep down in a small way it was also an attempt to try reconciling the diminishing potential I felt. If I kept doing the right things, things would turn around, that I could out work this thing I was fighting. It was all just heading to nowhere, I realized I could get hit by a car tomorrow and nobody would know this truth about me, the uphill clawing. I think now I want to turn this pain into something tangible for myself and others.If this is rock bottom I want to look around, I want to carve my name in the rock beneath my feet and remember what this feels like. I never want to know it first hand again. Maybe this is that first step. Who the hell can see forever but maybe I can just win tomorrow.
—
This is the most I’ve ever written about myself and it’s a hell of a lot more than I’ve ever wanted to. Hell it’s the most I’ve ever thought of myself and part of me feels like this sounds really self obsessed. But I think, at least I hope, it’s just a self awareness that comes from no longer seeing the contrasts in life.
If you are reading this it means that 1) you’ve found this randomly, and in which case… “sup?” or 2) you are one of the maybe 4 people I genuinely trust to tell this too without fear of being treated differently after doing it. If it is option 2…Surprise? I’ve worked extremely hard to make sure you couldn’t have seen this coming. It also means that you’ve shown me love implicitly in such a way that removes so much doubt, I hope you know how powerful and beautiful that is.
I don’t know man I think this is all really just about wanting to feel that oneness with myself again, to finally find peace one day. I don’t have to live, I get to, and I want too. The world is abhorrently beautiful man. daunting, ridiculous, backbreaking and gorgeous. I want to feel all of it, I want to find my place in it and I can’t do it alone. Not anymore.
Happy Birthday to me. ayeee.
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