Personal Crap

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Meaford, ON, Canada
A big lover of all types of media, from Movies to Video Games, Books to Music, Television to Stage.

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Okay, here's the deal: Blogger has been having problems with their counters as of late, specifically with those blogs marked as having adult content. Now, this particular blog was marked as adult content since it is written as a train of thought, including all the rotten language that flows through my head constantly :) As a result, I marked it adult for that, not for having pornographic photos all over the place. So, simply put, be aware that there is language on this blogsite, and if you are offended don't bother complaining because I wrote this so that you'd know it before reading, and it is your fault if you don't believe me and decide to possibly get offended anyway. If language of a vulgar nature might make you upset, go read something by Disney.

2/21/11

How My Depression Scares Me

Never has there been a more apt title for this blogsite.  This post is truly going to deal with what happened inside my head yesterday, between 2:20 pm. and 2:55 pm. without my permission or acceptance.  In order to get everyone on the same page, I'm going to have to set the scene, and that requires a bit of back-story.  At some point, a more fleshed out version of this will appear on my autobiography blogsite (see column to right for link), but given that I am trying to write that fairly linearly, we're talking over a year before some of the pertinent information would appear there.

Three very important things have happened in my life to cause the freak out that occurred on Sunday.  The first happened when I was about ten or eleven.  I was riding my bike in front of my house, doing lazy circles on the road, waiting for a friend of mine to arrive.  I was bored, and he was late, so I was just killing time.  I started to imagine his route, in a way to explain to myself what could be taking him so long to get to me, and actively began to imagine him turning this corner, pedalling down this street, turning the next corner, and so forth.  As I imagined him turning the corner on to my street, I shit you not, at the exact same speed I was seeing it in my mind, he turned the corner on to my street.  I wasn't filling in details about clothing, or his bike, but it unnerved me enough that I somehow synced my thoughts with his movements without seeing him until that moment.  Freaked me out, and still bothers me a bit as you'll see as we continue.

Second past event that figures into this occurred in the late 90s.  I was semi-seeing my future (and ex) wife at the time, and she was on her way home in her car.  She was talking to me on the phone, and was on her street only two corners away from her house.  She said she'd call me back once she got inside and settled, and we hung up.  I didn't hear from her again for over seven hours.  Lots of things could explain what happened...she got home, and her mother was in need of help, and as a result she forgot to call and fell asleep afterwards; her cell phone battery died and the telephone lines to her neighbourhood were down (this was before e-mailing was a thing, and the internet consisted of dial-up modems and BBSes [Bulletin Board Services] only - AOL was about to make the world change); myriad other possibilities could explain the lack of a phone call, but the fact that after about two hours of waiting I was able to call and wake nobody up, getting the answering machine, concerned me as well.  I, however, focused on exactly one thing: a car crash.  Couldn't get the idea out of my head that just around the corner from her house, somehow she had a car crash.  So what had happened as I learned the next day?  She had a car crash, right around the corner from her house.  She dropped the phone after hanging up with me, glanced down to get it, hit some black ice, skidded and crashed headlong into a cement light standard.  Went to the hospital within the hour, didn't get back home until mid-morning.  Before this event, I wasn't the type of person who thought the worst about things like this, but for some reason that belief stuck in my head, and it was right on the money.  It changed me in negative ways that, as you'll see, still affect me to this day and beyond.

The third incident I need to refer to before explaining Sunday happened a lot more recently.  It involves Andi, and her family.  One day, a Saturday if I'm not mistaken, back in 2007, Andi and I had planned on driving around our area, doing some shopping, and otherwise having a great day.  Then I get a knock on the door with Andi still asleep upstairs.  These two big guys want to speak with her, and they are giving me these evil scowls.  I got Andi up, she went downstairs and greeted them, and then went out to their vehicle and vanished for about a half hour.  When she came back, she packed up some stuff and said they were demanding to take her to her sister's, whether she wanted to go or not.  They were giving her no option to refuse, and were ready to beat the shit out of me if I intervened in any way.  We didn't know what to do, so she left with them.  Of course, since this time we've spoken to the police regarding it, and I rightly considered this a kidnapping and should have blown the whistle on it immediately, but I was concerned for Andi's safety and, after all, this was her family doing this (the guys at the door were not family, they were friends of Andi's father, and are no longer as a result of this incident).  I didn't want to get in the way of her family, despite the pain and worry I was experiencing.

Andi was held by her sister for the entire weekend, one in which I got virtually zero sleep or food, and which ultimately ended with her sister reluctantly bowing to her wishes to return her to the house as long as she promised to come for month-long stays starting the following week.  Never mind whether Andi was working, never mind that Andi and I were in love, ignore the fact that Andi didn't want to.  When Andi and I started to discuss this, the blinders came off her eyes as she realized just what had really been going on from the view of an outsider, and Andi has never been back to her sister's since that kidnapping.  In fact, not long after that she stopped talking to her sister entirely.  It has only been within the last year that my belief that her sister was manipulating her like a puppet on strings was proven to be 100% accurate, when Andi discovered that since before that incident, as far back as 2005, her sister was using her S.I.N. number and usurping her identity in order to rack up bills for utilities and leaving Andi to pay them.  If I had anything to do with ruining Andi's relationship with her sister by talknig her out of following her decision to stay with her for extended periods of time, I was totally vindicated the first time a collection agency called to demand that Andi pay a $2000 bill for Rogers Television services used at a Brampton residence when she was living in Ajax with her aunt.

The reason I include this third event is due to the fact that, out of nowhere, on just an average day, all hell broke loose for a weekend-long worryfest, and I was pretty much powerless to stop it.  Adding to that, the guys who came to the house to collect Andi and spirit her away were, before this happened, good friends of her and her father.  This showed me that, where her sister was concerned, even a close friend couldn't be trusted necessarily.

Which finally brings me to Sunday.  Andi has a friend, Irena (hope I spelled that correctly - if not, when Andi gets up I'll fix it, so the error will only be temporary...and I apologise to Irena if she reads this before that happens), who is her best friend.  Reina, and her husband Grey (see previous bracketed note), have taken Andi out before to just catch up on stuff, no big deal.  The plan yesterday was for the three of them to get together for a few hours, hang out, chat about stuff, and then have Andi back at home around 2pm..  I had no problem with any of this, wasn't worried, had met Irena and Grey the last time they picked her up to hang out, and wasn't concerned at all.  Still, Andi ensured that I knew where Irena's phone number was, and if I needed to for any reason (I'm sure she was thinking medical accident when she was telling me this) I could just call the cell phone and talk to her.  Irena's cell phone, that is.  Anyway, 2pm. came and went, and I thought not a lot about it.  Scott was out doing his usual Sunday running around getting groceries and stuff, and when he got back at 2:20pm he said he had to go back out to get chicken as the weight of what he had already carried made the idea of going to M&Ms a ridiculous notion.  So, he goes back out, and I am now acutely aware that Andi is late and the phone hasn't rung.  Those of you who have been reading closely can now see things starting to edge downhill.

I went to the living room and figured that I'd just give a quick call to Irena's cell, not to demand that Andi get home immediately, but just to check in and say hello, get a revised time for her arrival so I could plan what to do with Scott when he got back from his second short venture out into the big world of chicken breasts, and basically reassure myself that everything was still fine.  My mind was at ease to this point, and at least I believe that I was only calling for the reasons mentioned above.

The phone rang a few times and then went to her answering machine.

I hung up, and decided to just fool around with some CoD on the 360 while I sat there waiting for Scott to return.  No dice, I couldn't put anything together.  This was not me consciously making wrong turns, or not paying attention to what I was seeing - my mind had completely ignored the fact that I was trying to play this game, and my in-game avatar just stood there and got killed twice before I realized that I was useless and turned the game off.  I then cruised my Arcade titles to find something mindless and repetitive to play to keep my mind from going where it was surely headed, and instead could only read the titles of the games, not focused enough to actually play one of them.  Now it was 2:30pm, and I tried the cell number again.  Again no answer, so I left some bullshit message about just wanting to check with Andi if our choice for dinner was acceptable (I had zero ideas for dinner), something deliberately innocuous so that Andi would get the phone from Irena and call me back.  This is because, at this point, my state had changed for the worse.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point my logical mind was locked away, as though behind a door, and my emotional state took over - that part of my brain that can envision car accidents, kidnappings, widespread chaos...all without a second's notice.  I went back to the front room, sat in front of the computer as I am doing now, and fidgeted as I somehow went to both the CTV and City websites to look for news of accidents in the area.  Keep in mind, this is only after maybe 15 minutes of not getting a response on the cell phone, and with Andi being only 35 minutes late than her estimated return.  I was not in control of myself, not in any way, shape or form.  In my state, my brain couldn't get the logic to rule over the emotion at this point, regardless of how much sense I was making internally.  I knew Andi wasn't going far, as she still had her backpack here on the floor in the living room.  I knew she at most took the clothes on her back, her coat, and maybe her purse.  Logic tells me she had no intention of being gone long.  My thoughts then made the illogical jump to the idea that maybe Irena was in cahoots with Andi's sister and she was already in Brampton again, and this was how things were going to crash down around us.  What I am trying, probably unsuccessfully, to explain is that I had absolutely no control over my emotional state at this point.  My brain was on auto-pilot, even though I was inside trying to reason myself calm.  I knew she had seen Irena before, she was no threat.  Andi had given Scott a grocery list for him to pick up stuff so she could make me a fresh soup, you don't do that if you're intending to leave.  I even found her bank card on a table near the laptop in the other room.  No dice, my brain wasn't listening as I attempted to logic my way into control.

Scott got back, and now it is almost 2:50pm..  I'm in the front room again, after nervously circling the living room trying to calm down, sitting at the computer and wishing there was more recent news on the websites than Saturday's.  I start trying to explain what I'm going through to Scott as he stands in the doorway, but I can't look at him due to my being ashamed that my dependable logic functions are non-existent and I am unable to control what is happening to me internally.  I yell at him for looking at me while I talk about it, accusing him of staring at me like I'm nuts, which he probably wasn't doing even though at this point I certainly feel unhinged.  He goes to the kitchen to put away groceries.  Soon, I follow him and start to wander the living room again, trying without success to once again talk to myself out loud logically about what is going on, trying to break through the wall of emotion that has cut me off from thinking clearly.  It was around this time, 2:55pm., when Andi came in through the front door.

I walked to the hall, made sure she was inside, and immediately began to apologise (which I have been doing ever since) and explain what happened.  I am fully aware, as I have been the entire time, that this is not her fault, that a simple connection on the phone would have defused the entire mindset I was in, and that it wasn't her fault the phone was not heard by the three of them when it rang (which is what I was told when she had a chance to speak).  Be aware that I was not angry, not loud, not in tears, nothing.  I was simply regaining control internally over the emotional rut my brain had gotten into.  The worry that something bad had occurred, combined with the knowledge that when I had expected things to happen in the past I had been eerily accurate, came together to imagine the worst and freak out over the possibility that I might be right.  For no reason other than 'hey, it happened before,' my mind was prepared to block all clear thinking and just react to the worst visual and mental imaginings I could conjure on the spot, and given that I'm an aspiring writer, you might think that my imagination is quite good, and you'd be right.  In the space of less than half an hour, I put myself through more stress than I had experienced in the last month, and we've been switching mortgage companies!

This is why my depression scares the shit out of me.  I literally had no control over where my mind was heading, and with such a tiny bit of information had created a scenario that realized the vast majority of my worst fears.  This was unintentional, and seemingly unavoidable, though I did not know that before it happened.  Much like someone wrestling the steering wheel of a car away from the driver, my conscious thought was torn from my grasp and set upon this path without my having any control over it occurring.  This has never happened before (I've worried about people before, don't get me wrong, but freaking out to that extent in less than half an hour?  NEVER.), and I worry about it happening again.  It is kind of like admiring a famous painting all your life, and then one day you notice that the artist's name is misspelled, and suddenly you are aware that the entire thing is a forgery.  I feel completely betrayed by my brain over this incident, and I also feel that somehow the words I'm using to attempt to describe this is falling way short of allowing people to understand what I mean without simply dismissing it as some asshole losing his mind.

Anyway, this post is long enough.  If I haven't described it well by now, more words will not do the deed.  I hope that I haven't come across as too much of a psycho, and I hope that nobody looks at my writings and such with a different eye than they had before.  I already feel freaked out by this happening, so don't worry, I have that aspect covered.  Blogs will continue as usual, intermittent until something worth saying comes to mind.  I was going to write a post on my autobiography today, but I think I covered the urge to do that with this, so it'll have to wait.  Happy Monday everyone, will write again soon.

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