State of the Jay: BC edition
Jun. 2nd, 2007 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
linden_jaySo it's been just over a week now since we came back to the town we both grew up in, and moved back in with my in-laws.
God, it sounds kind of pathetic worded like that *shudder*. All right, moving on.
It's been all right, although it's a big adjustment. Not all adjustment is bad, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't take some time to get used to. I went a long time in Ontario where AH was at school a lot, and I was at home playing housewife. I got used to being on my own, and switching over to being in a house with five people (and two dogs, in addition to our two cats), all of whom have schedules and routines that are of course very different to my own... it's taking some time.
Even stupid simple things like having to put shoes in the closet so the dogs don't eat them, or having to do dishes and put things away Right Now as soon as I use them because my mother in law has some serious stealth capability and if I turn my back, all of a sudden she's doing my dishes (just because she's nice like that, but it still makes me feel GUILTY), and just... it's not my space. They've made us as welcome as possible, they've been amazing, but going from a two bedroom apartment with a lot of space to a bedroom that's basically a 10' cube...well... like I said, it's an adjustment.
My brothers and sister in law all own their own homes even though they're younger, but they're nurses and engineers and married to nurses and in med school, and we went the pays-nothing route of post-graduate social sciences and never-pays-anything-much route of theatre. We knew that, going in. We know that it's going to be awhile before we're really getting our feet underneath us, that it's not going to pay off right away, but later. But sometimes, it's still just hard. It's embarrassing, and then I feel stupid for feeling embarrassed that we're in the spare bedroom, and my 25 year old engineer brother in law is taking calls from the bank because he's going to sell the house he's got and move up to something bigger.
I know it won't always be like this. But it's like this now.
AH is still being paid to do research for someone, and when that's done he's got his own research to do, and he's spending all his spare time outside of that trying to find an actual job so that we can get our own place and end up living... wherever we end up living. Something's going to happen soon, I hope, and a lot of things will be a lot less uncertain. But in the meantime, I just don't know what I should be doing.
When we were still in Ontario, I stopped working at the movie theatre because I had an interview at Stratford (for a job I didn't get), but the movie theatre was just killing me. It was one of those jobs that was both boring and frustrating and maddening all at the same time, to the point that I was dreading going there every damned day, getting more and more depressed and unable to do anything about it. Where you know that it's stupid that you're letting it get to you like that, but at the same time... just nothing you can do about it. It just 'is'.
When I didn't get the Strat job, I decided to just hang on awhile and see what happened next, talk to some theatre people, see if there was any work there. And I knew that I was going to need to go to work soon, get some kind of job, but the idea of going back to working minimum wage with sixteen year olds again (and I've known some great sixteen year olds, but not so much working where I was working), just made me feel physically sick. So I put it off until I got called in to stage manage 'A Winter's Tale'.
When stage managing--something I'm actually trained for and good at--became a nightmare, that's when I had to finally accept that the depression I'd dealt with in my early/mid twenties had shown up again. Granted, part of what made the show a nightmare was the director being a tool of epic proportions and completely unqualified, but even still. Something I usually loved doing, even when it was stressful and frustrating and hard became just about impossible. If I wasn't so stubborn, if I wasn't so determined to make it to the end of the production, and if I hadn't cared so much about the cast, I think I would have walked out. In a lot of ways, I probably should have, but I couldn't. Canada's a big country, but theatre can be very often a very, very small world. If I'd pulled something like that, it would have followed me for a long damned time.
I stuck the show out to the end of the run, finished it successfully, and didn't go looking for anything else afterward. Basically, I figured that at that point, in order to go somewhere and work and cope at the same time, it was probably going to take going back on anti-depressants again. Now--side note. I have no issue with people taking medication, to needing it to function/be healthy. I have no problem with ME taking medication. I came off it because at the time, my doctor and I decided that I didn't need it any longer. And for about four years or so, I didn't.
The problem was that I was in Ontario, where they are chronically short on doctors, and getting a GP that you can see regularly as opposed to going to a walk-in is just about impossible. So doing the dance of figuring out which I should be on, which dosage, all of that, which I'd done earlier, was going to be incredibly frustrating and tricky, and none of it conducted with the same doctor.
On top of that, I'm not currently insured for medication. AH is, through the university, but their spousal prescription coverage was for shit, so yeah. Canada's great, sure, and there are a lot of amazing things about their medical system, but when we balanced how much we were going to end up paying out of pocket for me to be taking medication so that I'd be able to work, there just really wasn't going to be much point in me working at all. Fun circle. And because I was managing and 'okay' without it, so long as I was keeping my stress levels low and not trying to work at Pizza Pizza, I decided to stick out the remaining time in Ontario, and re-evaluate when we got to BC and I actually was covered by insurance.
So, now we're here. In BC, at the parents houses, dealing with a whole new kind of stress, and living in a town where every store has a help wanted sign in it. And I can't figure out what to do next. The thing is, this all just feels so alien to me, in a lot of ways. Not working. I was working as a nanny from the time I was fourteen, and I had a job 3 afternoons a week by the time I was fifteen. I was carrying a full high school load, plus drama, plus choir, plus band, plus piano, and working four and five days a week from sixteen on, plus full-time in the summers, and I was working the whole time I was going to school, despite working towards a double major, and doing theatre, which was a full time job all on it's own. I've always worked. It feels weird not to.
I'm afraid. That's the bottom line, really. Of a lot of things. Of trying to work somewhere and failing. Of how it will look (and yes, I know that's a STUPID reason, but it's still there) to the parents, in-laws, siblings, grandmothers, church people, aunts, and cousins, if I try and can't do it. I'm afraid of how it looks right now, with me staying at home and not forcing myself to go out and apply because hell, they need people at Staples or whatever.
And I'm tired. I'm tired of having to feel like I'm apologizing or making an excuse or feeling embarrassed when I say yeah, I have depression. I've known about it since I was about twenty-one. I ducked out of being treated for it for about a year and a half because I didn't think I had a 'right' to be depressed. That I'd be taking resources from someone who needed it more if I sought treatment. I'm tired of people looking at me like it's an excuse to be lazy. I'm tired of looking at myself and saying that I'm using it as an excuse to be lazy. And I'm tired of twisting myself around in circles until I feel like I don't even know what I think anymore.
Okay. So, that's out of my head now, for the moment anyway. I'm going to go shower and scrub the general feeling of ICK I'm walking around with off of me, and before I'm made to go out to yet another thing with people tonight (like I was last night at the last minute, which is why I missed people last night), I'll see if I can come back and write something up about my mom hitting a cow.
God, it sounds kind of pathetic worded like that *shudder*. All right, moving on.
It's been all right, although it's a big adjustment. Not all adjustment is bad, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't take some time to get used to. I went a long time in Ontario where AH was at school a lot, and I was at home playing housewife. I got used to being on my own, and switching over to being in a house with five people (and two dogs, in addition to our two cats), all of whom have schedules and routines that are of course very different to my own... it's taking some time.
Even stupid simple things like having to put shoes in the closet so the dogs don't eat them, or having to do dishes and put things away Right Now as soon as I use them because my mother in law has some serious stealth capability and if I turn my back, all of a sudden she's doing my dishes (just because she's nice like that, but it still makes me feel GUILTY), and just... it's not my space. They've made us as welcome as possible, they've been amazing, but going from a two bedroom apartment with a lot of space to a bedroom that's basically a 10' cube...well... like I said, it's an adjustment.
My brothers and sister in law all own their own homes even though they're younger, but they're nurses and engineers and married to nurses and in med school, and we went the pays-nothing route of post-graduate social sciences and never-pays-anything-much route of theatre. We knew that, going in. We know that it's going to be awhile before we're really getting our feet underneath us, that it's not going to pay off right away, but later. But sometimes, it's still just hard. It's embarrassing, and then I feel stupid for feeling embarrassed that we're in the spare bedroom, and my 25 year old engineer brother in law is taking calls from the bank because he's going to sell the house he's got and move up to something bigger.
I know it won't always be like this. But it's like this now.
AH is still being paid to do research for someone, and when that's done he's got his own research to do, and he's spending all his spare time outside of that trying to find an actual job so that we can get our own place and end up living... wherever we end up living. Something's going to happen soon, I hope, and a lot of things will be a lot less uncertain. But in the meantime, I just don't know what I should be doing.
When we were still in Ontario, I stopped working at the movie theatre because I had an interview at Stratford (for a job I didn't get), but the movie theatre was just killing me. It was one of those jobs that was both boring and frustrating and maddening all at the same time, to the point that I was dreading going there every damned day, getting more and more depressed and unable to do anything about it. Where you know that it's stupid that you're letting it get to you like that, but at the same time... just nothing you can do about it. It just 'is'.
When I didn't get the Strat job, I decided to just hang on awhile and see what happened next, talk to some theatre people, see if there was any work there. And I knew that I was going to need to go to work soon, get some kind of job, but the idea of going back to working minimum wage with sixteen year olds again (and I've known some great sixteen year olds, but not so much working where I was working), just made me feel physically sick. So I put it off until I got called in to stage manage 'A Winter's Tale'.
When stage managing--something I'm actually trained for and good at--became a nightmare, that's when I had to finally accept that the depression I'd dealt with in my early/mid twenties had shown up again. Granted, part of what made the show a nightmare was the director being a tool of epic proportions and completely unqualified, but even still. Something I usually loved doing, even when it was stressful and frustrating and hard became just about impossible. If I wasn't so stubborn, if I wasn't so determined to make it to the end of the production, and if I hadn't cared so much about the cast, I think I would have walked out. In a lot of ways, I probably should have, but I couldn't. Canada's a big country, but theatre can be very often a very, very small world. If I'd pulled something like that, it would have followed me for a long damned time.
I stuck the show out to the end of the run, finished it successfully, and didn't go looking for anything else afterward. Basically, I figured that at that point, in order to go somewhere and work and cope at the same time, it was probably going to take going back on anti-depressants again. Now--side note. I have no issue with people taking medication, to needing it to function/be healthy. I have no problem with ME taking medication. I came off it because at the time, my doctor and I decided that I didn't need it any longer. And for about four years or so, I didn't.
The problem was that I was in Ontario, where they are chronically short on doctors, and getting a GP that you can see regularly as opposed to going to a walk-in is just about impossible. So doing the dance of figuring out which I should be on, which dosage, all of that, which I'd done earlier, was going to be incredibly frustrating and tricky, and none of it conducted with the same doctor.
On top of that, I'm not currently insured for medication. AH is, through the university, but their spousal prescription coverage was for shit, so yeah. Canada's great, sure, and there are a lot of amazing things about their medical system, but when we balanced how much we were going to end up paying out of pocket for me to be taking medication so that I'd be able to work, there just really wasn't going to be much point in me working at all. Fun circle. And because I was managing and 'okay' without it, so long as I was keeping my stress levels low and not trying to work at Pizza Pizza, I decided to stick out the remaining time in Ontario, and re-evaluate when we got to BC and I actually was covered by insurance.
So, now we're here. In BC, at the parents houses, dealing with a whole new kind of stress, and living in a town where every store has a help wanted sign in it. And I can't figure out what to do next. The thing is, this all just feels so alien to me, in a lot of ways. Not working. I was working as a nanny from the time I was fourteen, and I had a job 3 afternoons a week by the time I was fifteen. I was carrying a full high school load, plus drama, plus choir, plus band, plus piano, and working four and five days a week from sixteen on, plus full-time in the summers, and I was working the whole time I was going to school, despite working towards a double major, and doing theatre, which was a full time job all on it's own. I've always worked. It feels weird not to.
I'm afraid. That's the bottom line, really. Of a lot of things. Of trying to work somewhere and failing. Of how it will look (and yes, I know that's a STUPID reason, but it's still there) to the parents, in-laws, siblings, grandmothers, church people, aunts, and cousins, if I try and can't do it. I'm afraid of how it looks right now, with me staying at home and not forcing myself to go out and apply because hell, they need people at Staples or whatever.
And I'm tired. I'm tired of having to feel like I'm apologizing or making an excuse or feeling embarrassed when I say yeah, I have depression. I've known about it since I was about twenty-one. I ducked out of being treated for it for about a year and a half because I didn't think I had a 'right' to be depressed. That I'd be taking resources from someone who needed it more if I sought treatment. I'm tired of people looking at me like it's an excuse to be lazy. I'm tired of looking at myself and saying that I'm using it as an excuse to be lazy. And I'm tired of twisting myself around in circles until I feel like I don't even know what I think anymore.
Okay. So, that's out of my head now, for the moment anyway. I'm going to go shower and scrub the general feeling of ICK I'm walking around with off of me, and before I'm made to go out to yet another thing with people tonight (like I was last night at the last minute, which is why I missed people last night), I'll see if I can come back and write something up about my mom hitting a cow.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-02 08:02 pm (UTC)God, no wonder you feel tired with all of that to deal with...
And you're *not* lazy. You know that already - and if anyone else truly thinks so, then they're dickwads who know nothing about depression, and whose opinion really doesn't matter.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 07:41 pm (UTC)The dickwads I don't worry about all that much. It's the well meaning but ignorant ones--ignorant in the purest sense of the word who just don't KNOW anything--those are the ones that drive me crazy. Because it's so much harder to be mad at them or just write them off for it just because they don't understand.
But thank you--sometimes it's just nice to walk into the middle of the room and holler in a place where people do get it *hugs back*
no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 04:47 am (UTC)Damn right. *hugs you tight* Hon, you're an inspiration. Hang in there.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 08:31 pm (UTC)*hugs right back* I'll do my best, dude. MWAH.