Moving (Hopefully) Forward

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Oh, the joys of returning to work!

Yesterday was my first day working (and earning an income) in essentially nine months.  Though I did attempt to work last summer I don’t really count that time because it was very short and not fulfilling in the slightest.  Indeed, I can still vividly recall those moments in which I could not easily maintain my composure while working in catering.  I can recall going to the bathroom to cry and hoping and praying that I would find some relief from the upset I was feeling regarding my diagnosis of PTSD.  Thankfully I am in much better health now.  But still I do not find life very easy at the moment.

Going back to work after something like nine months is not necessarily easy even under the best of circumstances.  It’s all the more challenging for me because I have gone through such an amazing transformation in these last nine months.  And the transformation is still under way.  I haven’t even lived through one complete cycle of the seasons since I began writing my recovery blog.  And I honestly do not know how long it will take before I begin to feel ‘normal’ in my new identity as a person living without an unsuccessfully fully treated anxiety disorder.  I try not to think about that too much as doing so can leave me feeling very sad.  What I do know is that I continue to improve day after day.

I’ve been feeling some sadness recently in part due to a conversation I had with one of my cousins this past Sunday.  I called him for the purpose of trying to better understand his own mother.  He disclosed that his father has apparently told ‘nigger’ jokes in the past.  I find such apparent racist sentiments to be highly distasteful.  I find it a sad journey as I discover members of my paternal family of origin are not as enlightened, kind, compassionate and open-minded as I first thought them to be.  Such discoveries inevitably lead me to wonder if my perceptions of those blood relatives closest to me were distorted.  Have I been living in a fantasy-world for much of my life?  It seems I have indeed been living in a world of illusion.  It’s a type of world my father seems determined to live within.  It’s a realm I made a commitment to walk away from when I first received my PTSD diagnosis on June 25, 2013.

To this day I am mystified by how my father’s siblings did and did not respond in the immediate aftermath of his near-death.  For the sake of my own health I have made the decision not to see my father again (in this life anyhow) unless something fundamentally changes.  I almost had to bury my father when I was eight years old.  I will not go through that in the future in such a way that it results in more trauma for me.  I am going to take care of myself as best as I can.

I am doing my best to address the bitterness I have long carried within me.  Since beginning work yesterday I find I need to restructure my life around the reality of working again.  This is no small matter.

What was one highlight of my day yesterday (beyond the fact of working again)?  I could actually walk outside WITHOUT a coat on.  Yes, the clutches of winter are finally beginning to weaken.  One day soon the trees will start to blossom out and the world will turn green once again.

At the end of my workday I decided to do something a bit courageous.  I decided to send an email to my father and ask him, once again, for the money he has set aside in his will for me.  Our relationship is essentially dead so in a sense it seems completely fair to ask this of him.  If he denies my request a second time I might ask him to donate the money to an organization committed to addressing the issue of PTSD in the world.