Happy Pills and Check Marks
Wiping the dust off the keyboard... and I'm back!
These are the days I'd hoped for, was depressed that I didn't have. These are the days of new beginnings, of opportunity, of unimaginable potential.
Girlfriend that loves me- check...
Successful escape from Texas- check...
Night job with no cap on overtime- check...
Newly built house ready to move into in 6 week's time... check...
College coursework planned to shape the future- check...
Bone-crushing, mind-numbing, blistering, festering depression- ugh... check...
(haha, thought you were gonna get through a psilo post without some grueling selfish depressed undertones didn't ya? Fail.)
In November I left Texas to join my Emily in North Carolina. We wanted to move and she put out applications in a few E/NE states, landed a job in Charlotte and we moved her up in October to begin our new life while I came back to Dallas to finish cleaning the apartment and finish the semester of school. I didn't finish the semester, but I did clean the apartment and smoke a year's worth of cig's in a month though...
When I arrived in NC, I found out that CO and NM have my driver's license held up from some bullshit tickets, so I couldn't get a NC license. I relentlessly looked for work and in 3 weeks after arriving I had a job fueling jets at the airport. talk about a shitty job. I definitely have a newfound respect for what goes into putting a flight in the air now.
I was unhappy with the pay and conditions of that job so I recalled a temp company called Aerotek I had a good experience with in ABQ, and looked up their Charlotte branch. They had an opening they thought fit me at a pharmaceuticals manufacturer so I interviewed with them, they liked me, and I started with only a weekend's time after leaving the putrid-smelling airport job.
Something I found comical regarding my interviewing experiences here is this: I interviewed for a delivery driver job with a construction materials supplier first, made a page-long pitch of my strengths in the workplace specific to that job which I memorized and recited, went to interview and was never called back (even though I thought I did great?). The night before the early-morning interview with the pharm company I had to take the sleep aid Melatonin to get to bed in time to be up, was delirious from the drug during the interview and thought I did horribly, but the interviewer who is now my boss stopped the interview early because I answered everything he needed to know in the first 2 questions.
Moral of that story is don't plan anything, fuck it... Moving on...
I have been working at the pharm company since, blending metric ton-sized batches of drug ingredients, and was recently moved up a notch to the weighing department. Yup, I officially weigh drugs for a living. Ironic undertones aside, it's a job that pays shit but I can work 80 hour weeks and they love it, and I'm finally getting somewhere financially.
I lined out a financial plan for this year in the form of a poster, one where I have small goals written out and check boxes by each one, like "pay rent every month" and "save X amount of dollars". My temporary status with the staffing company expires in about 2 weeks and I will be entitled to a raise and was granted the night shift I requested upon interviewing.
A couple months after being here we started noticing house prices being substantially lower than we were used to in Dallas, so we started looking around, got to talking to a builder and somehow ended up with a green 1500 sq ft 2-story house built to our specs that we are scheduled to move into in May. Life, for all intensive purposes, is good.
Except for the anger and depression.
I used to consider myself bipolar, by the clinical definition, but since I've not been to a doctor in 14 years, undiagnosed officially. Manic depression is like a stock chart, spikes of bliss, top of the world, and dips of unsurpassable depression. What I've noticed in the last few years is that all of the mania is gone, leaving me with a crushed spirit and hopelessness that infects even my deepest hopes. Optimism has been replaced entirely by stress and lethargy, and I have gained a cumulative feeling of overall misery.
Yay. sigh.
The fucked up thing in all of this is that my life is finally looking up, I have many of the components of what I need to move forward (child support being paid, money coming in as long as I work 70-80 hours a week, out of TX, girlfriend, etc) but this feeling of hatred and hopelessness overwhelms me. This is volatile.
I have recently quit smoking weed, which is the only thing that makes me remember what happiness is like, so that I can pass the drug test for work and transition to permanent employee. I have also been laying off the cigarettes for a few weeks and chewing nicotine gum to chill the blood pressure out. In my attempts to gain a feeling of relaxation on the one day off I get per week, I've turned to drinking, which is a bad idea to begin with given my family history of alcoholism. I don't like drinking, honestly don't like the feeling of being drunk, but it's the only thing I can do to that provides relaxation other than exercise, which is the last thing I want to do on my days off of a job that is very much physical.
Tis a slippery slope.
I've become angry to the core, and it's beginning to be an issue. My life is so far from what I want it to be, in so many ways, and the mental stress of working so much coupled with the stress of depression and hopelessness of all the elements of life makes for a Shawn that kicks things around at work and is generally wound the fuck up. I have entirely forgotten what happy is.
I love Emily, I know that fact but can't feel the feeling. I can't feel any feelings anymore, like the rewarding feeling I should have from working myself back up to par, or the feeling of hope for a very real future I can obtain through enough hard work. I can't feel a fucking thing but crushed and out of energy. I'm cashed, erased, over, out; I'm the kind of tired I shouldn't be for another 3 decades. Can't sleep it off or vacation it away or smoke it into submission. I can see objectively that I am in a good spot, that my hopes for a better life are coming into play, I know it but I can't feel ANYTHING.
Dopamine and Seratonin.
The only hope I can see on the horizon is that of happy pills once I get insurance at work. I always swore against them but the fact is that my brain no longer produces the chemicals that create happy feelings and feelings of worth. SSRI's, TCA's, whatever it takes to shake this massive crushing feeling I will try it. I'm sick of feeling like this. I've all but got life in check mate but it feels very much the opposite.
I just want to win for once.
Peace.