Thursday 26 November 2015

Employment as an Antidepressant



The ads pushing pills are everywhere, and on every channel on tv.  It's difficult to avoid them. Images of what we're supposed to believe HAPPINESS looks like.  A pill a day keeps depression away!  I wish it were so simple.

For many of us, a pill a day keeps other things away.  Enjoyable things, necessary things, normal body processes even.  For some of us, the side effects from these pills are too much to handle, their ill effects negating any good the pills may do.

I just left my new Doc's office with a feeling I've rarely had.  You see, pills are not the only way to beat the blues.  Not that Big Pharma would have you believe that.  I guess they call them Alternative therapies.  Alternative to the norm~ the norm being man-made tablets?  Okay.  This feeling I have is a mixture of gratitude, relief, and hope.  I think I finally found a healer.  I finally found a great physician.

You see, I don't fear Doctors.  I fear their prescription pads.  I fear the pills they prescribe.  I fear the pressure to agree and to comply. No matter how much sugar my old Doctor spooned in, those pills just never felt right.

But Dr. P is different, he's like me.  He sees the need to dig deeper and find the root causes. Rather than feeling like your thoughts are in mental quicksand, as they did when I was on pharmaceuticals, alternative measures to depression and anxiety can be a life line to pull you out. Rather than feeling like failure grips your throat, the many talk therapies out there can ease that grip, putting you back into the driver's seat of your life.

The spectrum of therapies alternative to the norm is wide and far-reaching.  From Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to Yoga, and everything in between.  But Dr. P and I agree we need to add another one to that list, that one being Employment.

Many years ago, I thought the depression had won.  I was out of work and broke with bills piling up.  I needed income but felt too depressive to work.  My then Doctor tried to convince me that work was good for me.  But knowing this truth in a world where jobs are few is a cruel cruel joke.

Let's face it, we have too many employees and not enough jobs.  It is now an "Employer's Market" where employers can pick and choose, this employee or that.  If we can agree that employment is an antidepressant, then you can see the dangers in this fact.

Employment as therapy hits many chords in me.  The routine, the purpose, the pay check at the end of the week, these are all beneficial in some way.  Being surrounded by people to connect with may be even more beneficial than we suspect.  I mean, even in my darkest hours, a smile or kind gesture can be like a sunrise on a dark morn.  We are pack animals~ we work better in a team.

Every single one of us is unique and one pill will never fit all.  Which is why we have to keep searching, learning, inquiring of the pack to find the therapy that makes each one of us tick. 

Surrender to the darkness is not an option.

Tuesday 24 November 2015

A Reply to "Hello" ... From the Other Side


Adele's new song titled "Hello" is gripping isn't it?  Could she have found a more haunting tone?  It almost seems like she's saying hello to someone on the other side of the universe.  I love it.  But I don't like it.

The timing of the release placed Hello right in my lap.  A big steaming pile of nostaglic shit that stained me with more than a few moments of self-loathing.
I experienced my own Hello and it didn't hit a good note in me.  Let me explain.

About two months ago, an ex decided to Hello me by commenting on one of my blog posts.  He asked me to get in touch with him, and he left his number for all of the world wide web to see.  This is a mistake from over a dozen years ago.  This selfish, self-serving individual that I thought was a part of my history reached out to me.  I thought I was free of that memory, never to be seen again. Never to be dreamed of again.  Some reminders can rip a person apart.

Knowing this child better than I care to, I knew not to answer that call.  No doubt he ... 'was wondering if after all these years, (I'd) like to meet and go over everything.'

No doubt, this big baby dressed up in adult clothing is ... 'dreaming of how we used to be'.  He likely believes that like Adele, ...'time is supposed to heal', likely thinks he ... 'ain't done much healin'.'  

Funny that.  In my memory, it wasn't him that was broken.  Did HE dream about me for years and years in dreams of searching that kept on living in waking moments?  Did our time together demolish any of his relationships the way it did mine?  Does HE have scars that change how he sees himself the way my scars leave me?  

I doubt it.  He went on with his life.  And he left me picking up the pieces of mine, and seeing that they didn't fit together anymore.

Talk show hosts are saying that "Hello" is making listeners feel nostalgic for their past loves.  If this is true, I doubt it was Adele's intention.  What good can come of that I ask you?

Let me reiterate that I love Adele and her voice is just incredible in this song, but if we could look at it from another angle, we'd see that calling someone who's heart we've broken, is not conducive to sunny days for the one receiving that call.  And furthermore, that feeling you have that you just must reconnect, is guilt.  Pure and simply basic guilt, and the only reason for that call is to appease said guilt.  It is for your good only;  never for the good of the person answering your selfish Hello.

Now, when I hear "Hello", it's not Adele's amazing voice I hear. Instead, it's the voice of that big baby trying to suck me back in.  It's his voice telling me ... "I'm sorry, for everything that I've done."  It's him imploring ... "Can you hear me?" ... I'm sure he's ... "dreaming about who we used to be."

But he's wrong because I am not that person anymore.  And to anyone who's feeling nostalgic from these haunting lyrics, I have some advice as someone from the other side.  Let me respond to some of these lines:

"Hello from the other side." >>> back away from the phone.  If this person needed to hear your voice, they would have called you.

"I must've called a thousand times." >>>have you always been a slow learner?    TAKE THE HINT!!!    A non-answer IS your answer!

"To tell you I'm sorry, for everything that I've done.">>>too little too late.  My grey matter has swallowed that nightmare of an affair so that I don't have to care anymore.  Your apology, though 14 years too late, is not for me ... have you apologized to your wife yet douchebag?

"But when I call you never seem to be home.">>>Once again.  We're home.  We just don't want to open up that poisonous BPA-lined can of worms.  What's done is done and hopefully forgotten!

If you too get stuck with the uninvited Hello, do as I did and don't be fooled. Time does heal, but time also schools.  We are constantly growing, constantly evolving into something more than we were. Cherish this knowledge and keep it safe so you don't get stained with someone else's nostalgic pile of steaming merde.


"What you allow;  is what will follow."