Wow. It has been a long time since I laid finger to keyboard and loosed my thoughts upon the world.

It’s kind of hard, getting back on the wagon. You get away from writing and then suddenly it becomes this impossible task–the words just stop flowing the way they used to. I suppose that’s why you need to keep practicing, always practicing.

I have been going through a very trying period in my life. The old saying “when it rains, it pours” carries truth with it!

Since April my life has been in a state of chaos and upheaval. Things changed at work (and NOT for the better), I realized that I don’t really know what I want to do with my life right now and am going through what Mr. Darcy called a quarter-life crisis.  I never thought I would be one of those people, if you catch my drift. In April I was also in the process of acquiring a new roommate and trying to deal with the old one–definitely a sticky situation and high on the stress-o-meter.

Amidst all this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad change my dear pup Lady passed away suddenly. Try dealing with all the chaos in your life and then add a nice layer of grief on top of that. I’m still not done crying for her.

My new cat Sheba caused me additional grief, but more of the lighter kind: she started peeing on things and it just drove me over the edge, no exaggeration. I don’t have an easy way to clean things or do laundry, so I was going through bed sheets like crazy, and the pee leaked onto the mattress. Luckily I found a great recipe to remove it so I’m not sleeping on something gross anymore but the whole process was just the icing on the cake.

I broke down, folks.

I am a strong person. I can carry the worries and woes of everyone around me, plus my own burdens. I do not break easily. But when I break, I break.

I would have episodes of the shakes, my heart racing a million miless a minute, breathing altered and shallow. I called my mom to try and calm me down and just babbled into the phone, apparently not even making sense anymore. I was breaking down into sobs, the deep wracking kind and was freaking out, thinking:

“Oh, there it goes. See you later sanity. …Or will I?”

I forgot complete events, which was terrifying.  Have you ever felt like you were losing your marbles for real? Early onset Alzheimer’s?

I was unable to control my emotions and could barely make it through work. I would have to get up and leave at lunch to go cry in a park on the phone with my mom. I would spend time thinking about whether I should take some kind of stress leave (and how the hell does one go about that, anyway?). My coworker got concerned because I would be almost-crying at my desk and he had no idea why.

It was one hell of a time. So much was going on and I was losing my ability to cope and control my life. I just wanted to give it all up and had thoughts of just saying fuck you to my whole career and signing up to be a receptionist somewhere.

Easy-peasy, something a monkey could do. I was beat. I think I still am beat. All I could think about was getting away–away from everything and everyone. Just crawling up into a little ball in a nice, padded room or high-walled garden and letting someone else take care of me for a while. I just couldn’t deal.

It was awful.

Not much has changed yet, but I seem to be getting better. For those of you who are interested: Yes. I am in fact getting professional help to deal with my mental illness and issues. Because that is what it truly is. I have a mental illness.

I don’t like to say “I suffer from…” anything, because it was always in the past for me. Growing up I suffered from a profound case of depression and social anxiety. But I fought it (with the help of lots of drugs and therapy) and I won a tentative truce. You can normally only see shades of my illness nowadays.

But you see why I was so worried that I was losing my sanity, because  for me, it CAN happen.

Now that I am recovering, I learned that I had a slip back into depressive mode brought on by stress. I also had some kind of weird anxiety issue which basically fed the depression fire, which in turn created more anxiety, etc. in a vicious circle.

I think I got through this time with the support of my friends and family. Well, mostly one friend. I never actually had anyone outside of my family to help me through the first time around, so this was a different experience. I credit her love and kindness with helping me recover so quickly. If not for her I may still be in the breakdown lane. I’m still kind of awed that I have someone that cares for me like that in my life. I think I’m going to buy her some flowers.

So now you know why I haven’t been around much these days. I hope to be back writing (I have a LOT I want to talk about) much more frequently, but I’m not going to stress about it, mmkay? Otherwise I may be gone for good next time!

I guess to finish off this post, I want to give a shout-out to all my peeps who also suffer from some sort of mental illness. I never thought there would be anyone who could help me. The first time around there wasn’t anyone. But finally, finally there was someone. Wow.

Hang in there. People who have other mentally-ill people in their lives, YOU hang in there, too. I know it’s tough, but we really need you.

If you or someone you know is living with a mental illness, here are some good reference links for you. The best help for anyone dealing with mental illness is understanding and support from their friends and family. Educate yourselves.

Canadian Mental Health Association

Mental Health Canada

Breakdown: Canada’s Mental Health Crisis (The Globe & Mail special series)

PS. Just Google for more results relevant to you!