Dusting Away the Cobwebs: An update on the last two years.

It's been a long time since I've written a decent blog.  I wrote one a few months after I got back from China.  I was writing on Tumblr pretty consistently while I was there.  But the last...almost three years now I've been busy.  Busy trying to be me.  I sometimes with existing wasn't a full time job but it is.

To update on my life, i spent a year and half as a receptionist for the business of someone I go to church with.  I enjoyed the work but it had it's share of stresses that I wouldn't look for in a job.  Then I started having issues with being on time.

Now to be clear, I've always had a lateness issue.  It's a giant part of having ADD.  Just not being able to be on time...ever...at all.  It's not because I'm lazy, or because I just don't try hard enough.  ADD is a disorder of the Executive functions and unfortunately this means that I often can't organize everything in front of me the way that I should.
I thought it was normal ADD stuff, but it was getting more out of hand than usual.  I attributed the spike in lateness to stress.  Yeah...stress.  That's why I'm having difficulty waking up in the morning. Stress.

As a disciplinary action my boss cut down my hours which was understandable but still humiliating.  It also meant that i was getting less money and since I was already working for a fabulous eight dollars an hour it made things very tight.  I had to look for another job.  I asked a friend if he had heard of anything, he had, and next thing I knew I was interviewing for a billing position at a local nonprofit.

I couldn't believe the gift I'd been given.  This was a real office job, in a non profit, with people who cared about other people.  It was a dream come true to be working in a compassion driven organization and my boss was another dream come true.  He was fair, and caring.  He made sure everyone in the office wasn't working through lunch, that they were actually eating and taking breaks. He made sure I had as much education as I could get about my job to be trained properly.  We had a good working relationship.  I felt like it was a place where despite my ADD and anxiety, I could really excel.

But I was late.

I couldn't get up on time, and it got worse.  Worse and worse and worse until finally he approached me about it.  I should have approached him first and said something sooner, but I was so scared and confused.  I was trying to just work hard and get things done and hoped that my good work would save me from this issue.  I explained I believed I had a sleeping disorder.  I had been talking to my doctor at that point for a couple of months, and they were prescribing me sleeping meds to try and get me to bed sooner.

But its not sleep i was having trouble with.  It was waking up.  Alarms go off and I sleep through them.  My brother tries to wake me up and i fall back asleep dreaming.  Finally the stress of it all would rouse me enough to get moving and I would stumble into work one or two hours late.

At first he was understanding.  He said I should have told him, and he was right.  But in addition to battling my own circadian rhythm I was battling my own pride.  I didn't want there to be a problem.  I wanted to act like there wasn't a problem and just work.

Then came the warning. Then came the written warning.  Then he walked into my office for our weekly meeting and said he had to let me go.

I cried. A lot.  I wish I could have been more mature. I wish I could have been more business professional about it.  But I couldn't.  I loved that job.  I had such a gift from God in that office.  And I failed.  I failed. I failed.

And still I can't wake up.  Of course I have no job so there's nothing to get up for in the morning.  That plus the added depression completely flipped my sleep cycle.  It is now my norm to be asleep from early to mid morning, to evening. My days are my nights and my nights are my days.  I wake up and the dinner my mother has cooked becomes my breakfast.  And if someone tries to wake me up before my body has decided to, i just slip back into dreams.  If i set an alarm, i either don't hear it or I turn it off in my haze. 

But there's more.

My dear friend and "big sister" Gina passed away.  She had been fighting cancer for a long time.  She was 36.
Then my dear friend Nancy passed away.  We'd lived together in China, she also had cancer.

Now I sit, writing a blog, recounting the last few months.  The everything I was that has been lost.  The everything I was hoping for unbelievably beyond my grasp.  I still have faith that God will bring me through this, that he has a plan for me, but I am left so broken I'm not sure how to pursue it.  I just keep applying to jobs.

I'm trying to take heart in the little things, the little victories.  The small steps to lift myself out of this hole.  After I lost my job I reached out to a counselor in my town and I've been seeing her mostly consistently.  I am not sure if I can point to anything in myself that has specifically come from that but every time I go I feel like I'm doing something productive for myself and that's important to me right now.  I finally got around to making a doctors appointment yesterday so I can start the search for "whatever the heck is wrong with me" again.  It's next week and I'm going to try to ask for more blood tests or something.

So why am I writing this blog?  After so much time of not blogging at all?  Well, a couple reasons.  Firstly, this week has been especially heavy.  One night in my facebook memories there were three happy pictures that felt like kicks to the gut.  One was of my first birthday in China and the memory of that community I miss so much.  Another was a selfie at my job, looking happy and ready to work.  And finally there was a compilation of pictures of my friend Gina's farm and I realized that was the last time I had seen her before the very end, and can't stop kicking myself for not taking pictures of us together.  All the pictures are of her lovely farm. I guess I just needed to write all this out.  It has officially overflowed out of me.  I can't handle it.

Secondly, I've noticed that I rarely do any of the things I like anymore.  I know that's one of those symptoms of depression.  Losing interest in hobbies.  And so I'm trying to, I dunno, do things.  Things I might enjoy.  And I used to adore blogging.

So here it is. Laid bare. My sorrow and frustration that couldn't fit in a tweet.  I'm going to post it on the socials because I want to make this a thing like I used to do.  Blog and share. My thoughts and feelings.  I'm hoping this isn't too angsty.  But it's where I am, and it's who I am, and so I shouldn't be ashamed.  After all, if a friend had just told all of this to me I wouldn't think less of them.