Happy Birthday – I Got Fired Today and Moving to Wales/Holland

So much irony in this situation. Last year, when my mental health started to decline, I began getting reprimanded at work. I didn’t tell Cris. I was struggling to perform at work in all ways, much like I was in my personal life and in my relationship.

I’m still mentally processing what just happened at my (ex) workplace and trying to figure out what I’m going to do today, never-mind in the future, but thought I’d start with getting a few things off my chest.

When I think about Cris and how my mental health decline affected me/our relationship, there was a moment when she was trying to help me by making my problems seem smaller for me. I understood she was trying to help but it hurt when she began comparing her problems to mine and saying her problems are “real problems”, implying my struggles are not real.

At the time, when she talked about how insecure her job felt and she can lose it at any time, I felt like she wasn’t hearing what I was experiencing internally. I was already dealing with direct pressure and warnings from management, and I hadn’t told her yet…which meant I was experiencing this alone. I started to resent her for comparing her situation to mine in a way that minimized my overall reality, even if she had good intentions.

I’m not going to get in to the story of how I survived an extra 9-10 months at work beyond when I could have been fired already. But the short story is, I took mental health leave. Later, I returned to rebuild my reputation and recover from the mistakes I made. But I continued to make mistakes. Not at the same degree or frequency, but certainly mistakes.

I didn’t persue opportunities for workplace accommodations to help with some of these newer struggles that seem to have surfaced after quitting drinking alcohol. Part of me is still in denial how much I’m affected by the things I’ve been diagnosed with. Ironically, quitting alcohol has unearthed and exacerbated some symptoms. Alcohol truly was a “mask” and coping mechanism….a very unhealthy one, but still a coping mechanism. I’m working on figuring these things out. Even though I’ve seen progress, it still feels like there are some areas of my life that I’m re-learning how to be an “adult”. Therapy has shown me that some of my “coping skills” are stuck in early adulthood, due to masking symptoms (especially with alcohol) for so many years.

It hurts to admit how much this job mattered to me, and hurts deeply knowing I let myself down…in ways I’m still trying to understand. There’s a lot of patterns that go back decades here. Un-diagnosed ADHD is not to blame %100 but it certainly is a key piece to this puzzle. It certainly has been helping find strategies that might actually work for me instead of continually failing models that work for other people.

When I described my “triangle of death,” she heard something very different than what I meant. I was talking about my fear of collapse. My fear of overwhelm. My fear of spreading myself thin, because although I was working hard to change things and was doing “stuff”, nothing felt like it was progressing. There was too many different things my attention was spread across (both in “catgeories” and physical locations).

But I didn’t communicate that well enough, and I think she heard criticism towards her when I was trying to express how much I was fucking panicking about everything inside me. The triangle was North York (my relationship with Cris), Hamilton (work) and St. Catharines (losing my house or not being able to manage problems there. I include the boat here because it’s part of the housing and maintenance situation).

Looking back, some of what I was sensing through the chaos turned out to be real…but I also know I wasn’t seeing everything clearly, especially how my stress was bleeding into how I treated Cris and work performance.

One thing I do know is that I truly have put alcohol behind me forever. Literally zero thoughts or cravings for alcohol during this clearly stressful situation. But I do want a non-alcoholic beer right now and it’s the taste I want, not the easy dopamine “fix”. My brain no longer associates alcohol with feeling “normal”.

Maybe “Step One” is go grab a pack of those. I can decide what I’m going to do from there.

I’ve always said that if I ever lose my job, I’m looking for my next permanent career/job in Wales. Ironically, I’m going there in 2 weeks on Dec. 6th. So this will certainly be a scouting/business trip. Maybe check out some riverboats? Or do I finish my vision for Ontario first before moving onward? Move to where boat liveaboards are way more normal and fun, over in Holland/The Netherlands? Who knows…but it will be an adventure. Apparently my brain is wired for intense curiosity and adventure.