The environment in my flat has changed. The most noticeable change, other than the massive TV I'm looking at now, is the smell. Suddenly this place smells human.
My flatmate - let's call him Kevin - has had an even messier past than I guessed. He's got three kids to two different women. The two eldest are already teenagers; the youngest is four. Those aren't problems that simply go away. He used to chain-smoke and drink like a fish; I'd be surprised if his drug use wasn't/isn't restricted to legal substances. He's talked about his depression; I noticed he had a shoe box with "Kevin's Meds" written on it. Last night he had an anxiety attack and was unnecessarily embarrassed.
Kevin is trying to make positive changes. He's just started a web design course, at what to me is exorbitant cost.
I saw my counsellor on Tuesday. She said I still haven't got over the slow-motion car crash of three years ago when I got the actuarial job here in Wellington. She also said that by coming off my antidepressants I'm regaining emotions that were suppressed, and I should stay off them for that reason. I saw my (newer) doctor yesterday. I asked her if I could stay off the antidepressants but go on beta-blockers instead to help with my anxiety, and she was fine with that. With the old doctor the outcome would have been totally different.
It was Bob Marley Day so both Kevin and I had the day off. We were both trying to use the internet at the same time and an IP address conflict was giving us all kinds of problems. I think Kevin fixed it on his computer and we're OK now. I applied for another job, this time with the council, but I don't expect my application to get very far.
It hasn't been a bad week at work. My boss has taken the week off. It would be a neat arrangement, we each take alternate weeks off - if I could arrange that I wouldn't be looking for another job.
There was a lot of discussion about flags last week (and a little bit today as you'd expect). I'm up for changing it, but not to the silver fern on a black background. Yes it would be distinctive alright, and I like the silver fern as an emblem, but I think a national flag needs an injection of colour, and why does it need to be the same as what our sports teams wear? How much blue is in the Italian flag, or orange in the Dutch flag, or white in the German flag? Or, for that matter, green and yellow (I know they call it gold) in the Australian flag?
Here's a really good article about the guy who claims to have survived 13 months at sea. The author of the article says he wouldn't cope very well in that situation, and I know I wouldn't either. And I don't even feel like a particularly modern male. (The article reminds me that I should get Life of Pi out on DVD, now that I've got a near-cinematic screen to view it on.)
Showing posts with label counsellor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label counsellor. Show all posts
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
I need hope
My new flatmate just called me to say he's running late, so that's given me the chance to write something here.
Yesterday I didn't want to get back to Wellington and this never-ending cycle of impossibility. I was hoping some massive storm would brew up and we'd circle for a while before being diverted somewhere, anywhere, I wouldn't have cared.
I felt pretty terrible a lot of the time I was away. Sometimes I was visibly upset, and that made Mum upset and both my parents very worried. I was still able to do things, but most of the time I felt sick to the stomach and like I was running through treacle. Mum took me out for tennis three times - we just hit the ball; no scoring. I was hopeless the first time, much better the second time, and dreadful again the third time. Mum was rusty to begin with but steadily improved - if she played competitive age-group tennis I'm sure she'd do really well. The last time we played, a bloke perhaps a shade older than me turned up with his two small daughters on bikes with stabilisers. He was cleaning up the area around the courts. His girls were clearly giving him a lot of pleasure and this made me upset because in all likelihood it's a pleasure I'll never experience.
Mum even took me to the golf course - we did nine holes but I didn't even finish some of them. I hit trees, mounds, boundary fence posts, even the trolley once. Sometimes I hit nothing at all, not even the ball. I would have racked up scores well into double figures on a few occasions if I'd been counting. And amongst all of that I managed a par three.
On Friday we saw Captain Phillips at the cinema in Geraldine. It was a gripping, if rather scary film about Somali pirates. It starred Tom Hanks and was based on a true story. My brother has been on armed patrol ships in the Gulf of Aden - most of the time he didn't have a lot to do.
Before going to the cinema we had fish and chips. I think I could have eaten my plateful all over again.
We talked about the few months I spent down in South Canterbury before moving to Auckland. I was very organised and motivated in my job search. One afternoon I drove into Timaru and knocked on doors of banks and finance companies (both South Canterbury Finance and Mascot Finance were in existence then). I had a chat with a very pleasant woman at BNZ. She eventually offered me a job, but by that stage I'd already taken the actuarial job in Auckland. Things could have turned out very differently. (Nearly all the jobs I applied for were in Christchurch or Canterbury. Maybe a couple were Wellington-based. Only one was in Auckland.)
We met my uncle; he's done much better with his lung cancer than anyone predicted. But his cough was back and he was extremely negative about, well, pretty much everything. Regarding the situation in Christchurch, he said they should take dynamite to the cathedral with Gerry Brownlee inside it.
I started this blog five years ago. Things are a lot, lot worse than they were then, and I've now got five fewer years to remedy the situation. The good news is that my counsellor is back on the scene and I'll be seeing her on Tuesday. And the flatmate is, on balance, good news too. Having someone to talk to should make a big difference.
Yesterday I didn't want to get back to Wellington and this never-ending cycle of impossibility. I was hoping some massive storm would brew up and we'd circle for a while before being diverted somewhere, anywhere, I wouldn't have cared.
I felt pretty terrible a lot of the time I was away. Sometimes I was visibly upset, and that made Mum upset and both my parents very worried. I was still able to do things, but most of the time I felt sick to the stomach and like I was running through treacle. Mum took me out for tennis three times - we just hit the ball; no scoring. I was hopeless the first time, much better the second time, and dreadful again the third time. Mum was rusty to begin with but steadily improved - if she played competitive age-group tennis I'm sure she'd do really well. The last time we played, a bloke perhaps a shade older than me turned up with his two small daughters on bikes with stabilisers. He was cleaning up the area around the courts. His girls were clearly giving him a lot of pleasure and this made me upset because in all likelihood it's a pleasure I'll never experience.
Mum even took me to the golf course - we did nine holes but I didn't even finish some of them. I hit trees, mounds, boundary fence posts, even the trolley once. Sometimes I hit nothing at all, not even the ball. I would have racked up scores well into double figures on a few occasions if I'd been counting. And amongst all of that I managed a par three.
On Friday we saw Captain Phillips at the cinema in Geraldine. It was a gripping, if rather scary film about Somali pirates. It starred Tom Hanks and was based on a true story. My brother has been on armed patrol ships in the Gulf of Aden - most of the time he didn't have a lot to do.
Before going to the cinema we had fish and chips. I think I could have eaten my plateful all over again.
We talked about the few months I spent down in South Canterbury before moving to Auckland. I was very organised and motivated in my job search. One afternoon I drove into Timaru and knocked on doors of banks and finance companies (both South Canterbury Finance and Mascot Finance were in existence then). I had a chat with a very pleasant woman at BNZ. She eventually offered me a job, but by that stage I'd already taken the actuarial job in Auckland. Things could have turned out very differently. (Nearly all the jobs I applied for were in Christchurch or Canterbury. Maybe a couple were Wellington-based. Only one was in Auckland.)
We met my uncle; he's done much better with his lung cancer than anyone predicted. But his cough was back and he was extremely negative about, well, pretty much everything. Regarding the situation in Christchurch, he said they should take dynamite to the cathedral with Gerry Brownlee inside it.
I started this blog five years ago. Things are a lot, lot worse than they were then, and I've now got five fewer years to remedy the situation. The good news is that my counsellor is back on the scene and I'll be seeing her on Tuesday. And the flatmate is, on balance, good news too. Having someone to talk to should make a big difference.
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