I'm going to try to work with the crazy.

This post is full of possible triggers. Protect yourself as you need to.

This tweet is the end of the story as of Tuesday, 11 August.

As someone who hit bottom and bounced just a couple of weeks ago, Imma go lay down.
— LKid (@LKid) August 12, 2014

***

I am not the biggest Robin Williams fan in the world.

But like with the deaths of Kurt Cobain, Alexander McQueen, Hunter S. Thompson, L'Wren Scott, Elliott Smith, Aaron Swartz, Wendy O. Williams, and Greg Giraldo; I have a difficult time dealing with the suicides of people far more talented, popular and wealthy than I am.

I mean, if these people can't find a reason to go on living for one more minute, what's my reason? 
What have I got to keep going for?

***

A little over two weeks ago I had to take my spousal unit aside and tell him that I was thinking about being dead.

I wasn't suicidal, per se, I was just at the point where if I didn't wake up tomorrow I'd be pretty okay with that.

"...I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing." - Allie Brosch - Hyperbole and a Half

It's the second step down the spiral of depression for me.

***

Before I turned 16 I had more dead peers than I had dead relatives.

I had all four of my grandparents and a great-grandmother. My parents are still living, as are all their siblings, and their children.

But I had 4 dead friends - 2 by suicide. 2 were murdered.

By the time I was 18, that number had doubled. 1 more suicide and 3 auto accidents.

***

I am having a very difficult time accepting that no matter how hard I work, it's never good enough. We've been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for over a year. I really don't want to get into how we've managed to keep our plates spinning, but it can't last for much longer.

The past year has not worked out like we originally planned when we moved back east. That seems to be the nature of plans. This plan was supposed to make things better. Instead every thing is worse.

***

I first tried to kill myself in 1989 with an overdose of everything I could find in my parents drug cabinet.

I don't remember anything other than laying down in my bed. The next morning my mother was furious at me for drinking underage, after school, because I had come home, went directly to bed, and then proceeded to throw up for hours.

I would rather my mom think I was a terrible, irresponsible, rebellious teenager than know I was suicidal and had failed.

I was just immensely upset that I was still alive and absolutely disgusted with myself for failing. AGAIN.
I was so useless, I couldn't even DIE right.

***

It's difficult to have a conversation with someone who doesn't really understand how mental illness works, and is really confused because they thought that I was "over that". 

Like it was a phase, or had something to do with my level of maturity.

Trying to explain a broken brain to someone who doesn't understand can be an epic exercise of shame and self-loathing.

***

The second time I tried to kill myself was in 1990.

The rope broke. When I tried again, the branch broke.

The next day my mother was furious with me for trying to hide the "hickeys" on my neck.

I would rather my mom think I was big ol' slut than know I was suicidal and had failed.

I was so worthless, it wasn't something I think she should be worried about.

***

When I finally got it all out that I was quickly descending into depression and he, the love of my muthahfuckin' LIFE, needed to know that it was like a weight had been lifted.

Not keeping secrets really helps.

My mental health had to stop being a secret (or a big hairy lie I kept telling people) in order for me to start getting well.

It has to remain out in the open for me to deal with changes as they come up.

***

Suicide attempts obviously weren't the answer to my problems.
I was going to stop with the all-out *dramatic* attempts to kill myself.
I had a death wish. 

I regularly mixed drugs I knew were a bad addition to the copious amounts of alcohol I managed to consume.

I did drugs that I could not and didn't care to identify, though this happened less often.

I routinely got into cars with, entered the houses of, and had sex with strangers.

I was voted "Most Likely To Be Found Dead in a Dumpster" by my friends.

***

I was first hospitalized because of my mental state in 1988.

I lied to every doctor, nurse, social worker, and occupational therapist they had.

According to my mother, there was nothing wrong with me. I was just a bad, selfish, irresponsible, rebellious teenager that would grow out of it.

My parents never missed an opportunity to remind me of my badness, selfishness, and irresponsibility.

Whenever depression becomes an issue (again) that's the mental narrative that begins.

I am bad, selfish, and irresponsible.

As it gets worse, it will become bad, selfish, irresponsible and attention seeking.

***

The last time I decided that I was going to die was July 12, 2004.

I had my plan. I was going to wake up in the morning and go at a certain time because, while this method was fool proof, it would inconvenience a few people, so I wanted to make that as least chaotic as I could.

I went to bed that night feeling like I was finally going to be free.

***

Here's the thing about crazy.

It's just crazy. 

It's no more selfish than cancer, or MS, or any of the other myriad of diseases and conditions that can fuck up your life and kill you. It's not attention seeking. It's crazy.

***

A friend of mine put this on Facebook: 

""Suicide is the coward's way out" 
translates to "My pain in mourning your death (is/will be) greater and more important than your current suffering which drove you to this place, so in an attempt to avoid future pain on my part, I will pile more shame on you and on all other people who contemplate suicide. You think you're lesser than me, and I think you're right."

***

There is absolutely no judgment or slur or negative thing you can say about me that I haven't already said to myself a thousand times.

There are more days in my life when I have felt worthless and that my life does not matter than there have been days that I have felt that I have worth and that my life means something.

***

On July 13, 2004 I was woken up, not by my alarm, but by a knock on my apartment door.

I didn't die because two people from the internet - One in Birmingham, Alabama, and the other in Sunderland, England sent me a bouquet of Stargazer lilies.

And then Margaret Cho told me I didn't have to die because I had failed.

So I went to the doctor the next day.

***

It doesn't matter that you love me now, or ever. Someday, depression is going to kill me. I know this. I have a plan for this.

It isn't going to kill me today. It's not even going to kill me soon.

Your love isn't going to save me. And as crazy as it may sound to you, and as angry as this may make you, my love for you isn't going to save me forever.

It's saving me right now. And that's what matters.

Right now.

***

I am only alive today because of Canada's strict gun laws, floral delivery, and SLUT PRIDE.

***

Which brings me around to that tweet.

A little over 2 weeks ago, I hit bottom and bounced.

I told my husband my dirty little secret.

I pulled out my notes from cognitive behaviour therapy.

I started writing again. I started adding structure to my completely unstructured days. I stopped thinking about it.

***

For a while.

***

“Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.” - Jean Paul Sartre

***

And for something...

... completely the same.

Still hate it here, but change is coming. We're moving to a more interesting neighbourhood on June 1.

Bigger apartment, for less, in a neighbourhood that has a grocery store I can walk to.

There's a public library and an art gallery that appears to have a cafe a block away.

It's closed on Mondays so I'll have to check it out for certain before we move.

There are also 4 bars within 4 blocks of my house.

***

I love my friend Erin and I don't care who knows it.

She literally sent me mail that will save my life.

***

I've decided that I am going to stick it out here in Windsor, whilst keeping my options open to leave.

I will spend an hour a week looking for jobs away from here and making contacts with people in other cities, but otherwise my focus is on trying to make this place livable and growing my business.

This place could have so much going for it if only it would start acting like a city and not a working-class suburb of a US city.

***

“

Suicidal feelings are not the same as giving up on life. Suicidal feelings often express a powerful and overwhelming need for a different life. Suicidal feelings can mean, in a desperate and unyielding way, a demand for something new. Listen to someone who is suicidal and you often hear a need for change so important, so indispensable, that they would rather die than go on living without the change. And when the person feels powerless to make that change happen, they become suicidal. Help comes when the person identifies the change they want and starts to believe it can actually happen. Whether it is overcoming an impossible family situation, making a career or study change, standing up to an oppressor, gaining relief from chronic physical pain, igniting creative inspiration, feeling less alone, or beginning to value their self worth, at the root of suicidal feelings is often powerlessness to change your life – not giving up on life itself.

-- Will Hall, Living with suicidal feelings

Multi-tasking

I thought I had made a decision last night, but now I think it goes against absolutely everything that I stand for professionally.

What I wanted to think of as "keeping my options open" is probably a little bit closer to "extreme multi-tasking, ensuring lack of focus on any one thing and either failing at or half-assing everything."

I'm either going to be here for another year and a bit, or I'm going to be absolutely somewhere else by July. I am going to focus on finding ways to make sure that Windsor does not kill me, or I am going to devote the bulk of my daily energies on getting the FUCK out of here.

My spouse is a wonderful human being who wants me to be happy.
He'll support whatever I need to do.

Now I just have to figure out what it is that I need to do.

Wrong person

There's a comment in my previous post from some for-profit, US Healthcare bullshit, asking if I would post a short video of hope, encouragement and inspiration for those just diagnosed with MS.

I'm the WRONG person for that.

You see, I know that that the "power of positive" thinking is bullshit.

It's not going to help me get better. It's not going to make my symptoms go away. It's not going to give me back functioning ovaries, or put my hair and nails back to healthy.

I can't think my way to not having MS.

What I can do is share my experience:

In a nutshell, if you liked your life before MS, you're going to hate it now.

If you hated your life before MS, you're going to go through bouts of suicidal depression and a level of self-loathing that will make you wish you were dead.

Any plans you had that go beyond maybe a year from now: accept that they're just plans, and probably not the likely outcome.

No one has a cure for MS. From the best research available, most people with RRMS are not completely disabled after 10 years who:

do not smoke.
get regular exercise.
eat a diet of small amounts of protein and large amounts of plants.

Which is kind of funny, because that's what they tell people who DON'T have MS to do to stay healthy.

MS broke me at a time where I was just getting my shit together. I will never be able to make up for what MS cost me.

I don't have anything to offer a newly-diagnosed person. My MS isn't your MS, and if forced to choose between the MS I got and the MS you got, I'll stick with what I have. It's not a gift, it's not full of great lessons, and it did not happen for a reason.

I will concede one thing about the "power of positive thinking".

It makes my family and friends happier to be around me when I pretend I have it.

Long time ago

in a land, far, far away; my last and only hope to stay in Vancouver was dashed.

A year ago I got the call that I would not get the job I'd been hoping for. They decided to go with the person they thought they would get along with better.

Yeah, I know. I think about that sentence at least once a day.

I regret not staying in Vancouver less and less. When I realize how little money we actually make, we'd have been homeless by now had we stayed.

***

This weather though.
Fuck this winter.

***

I spend a great deal of my time pretending to be someone I am not.

It's difficult.

Still, I haven't had a progression in my MS symptoms since I originally got sick in December 2008.

It just the same shit, every day, all day.

I'm trying my hand at self-employment.

I really hate it.

I really hate the people you have to deal with in order to both eat AND pay the bills. I hate the person I have to become in order to be perceived as competent and capable.

I'm depressed, but not as bad as I have been before.

I hate it here.

I need to start dating an extrovert with money, because I'm bored to fucking tears around here.

Meltdown

This morning I just lost it.

Faced with a to-do list of "clean out the fridge", "pack files for office", "write blog post", and "clean out under the kitchen sink", I began to cry.

I didn't stop for 20 minutes. Even as I type this, tears are springing to my eyes.

There's so much... small town horror here. Everyone has kids. EVERYONE. And religious beliefs just get shared as fact, at business functions. And I'm supposed to take reiki-practicing reflexologists seriously at those meetups. Half the business community is terrified of the internet or the technology that goes with it. I've talked to FOUR people UNDER 50 who don't know how Facebook works.

What kind of fresh hell is this place?

***

I'm not allowed to buy furniture, even if I did have the money, because we're moving in less than 11 months, we live on the third floor, and Joe's not moving that shit. I'm living out of boxes and piles on the floor. Joe won't even hang up the three pictures that go on the wall because we're taking them down in 11 months.

I can't have anything today, because life is going to change in 10 months.

***

Ah well, that stinky crisper drawer ain't gonna clean itself.

Supercranky

So the woman I was teaching to do my job quit today. Turns out, she's over half way through her training to be a certified general accountant and has never worked as an assistant before.

Why he chose her, I have no idea.

Actually, I do... but that's not something I can explain in a public blog post.

Anyway, in 6.5 days (maybe less, because if I can get in to see my GP on Friday, I'm going to take the day) it's no longer my problem.

If he can't find someone to fill the job for long enough after I leave, that ain't my problem.

***

This job is killing my will to live. I have so much to do, but I come home every day just vibrating in rage and disgust that I end up sitting with my laptop in bed making lists of shit that needs to be done before we leave.

And watching The Daily Show and Colbert at 9 PM because I can thanks to Time Shift.

***

If you have depression or a history or depression, READ THIS!

As promised... Fuck This Shit

If you were reading last week, the title of this post means that I didn't get the job.

For the fourth time, it's come down to me and one other person and I wasn't "the right fit".

So that's it. We're done.

This decision was made weeks ago, contingent on this one last job prospect. Now that I have failed, there's only one choice. Joe and I will be leaving Vancouver at some point after April 20 and before April 30. There's no reason to stay.

For 48 weeks I have been unable to secure long-term, somewhat secure, non-exploitive employment. We've spent our savings, we've maxed-out our credit cards, and now we are almost out of Employment Insurance. We have no prospects. We're at the brink of poverty.

Joe has a plan for his further education that he'll be happy to share with you if he knows you.

I have no plan.

For the second time in my life I'm taking this absolute leap of faith and hoping for a survivable landing in a place I have never really been, pretty much sight unseen. I am unconvinced this the right thing, I just know that it's the only thing Joe can do, and I might as well go along for the ride.

***

That said, if we own something that you want, it's yours for $20 OBO. We are only taking our clothes, laptops, and a few personal items. Everything else must go. If it can't be donated or recycled, it is going in landfill.

***

I want to be full of foot-stompin' rage right now, but I just don't have it in me at this moment. I feel so defeated, rejected, and hopeless. Vancouver has made it clear that there is no place for me here, so all I can do is hope that something will be different somewhere else.

***

This is all I have to say about this right now. I'll be back shortly to vent my spleen about my experience with this city.

Two choices

I have composed two blog posts for next week.

The first is entitled "I Got The Job!"

The second is called "Fuck This Shit".

At this point the uncertainty is killing me and makes me want to... do things I should not discuss on the internet.

***

I haven't been this sad in years. I have not had reliable employment in almost 11 months. I have never felt so useless in my life.

***

I don't know what to do any more.

Better

Sometimes the misery of others reminds me just how far I've come.

I haven't thought about killing myself in over two years. (I think)

I haven't done anything damaging to my life or my relationship or my continued employability in well over 7 years.

Today I was forced to think about the graphic details of my own history with depression. I was talking to someone I love very much (and who's association in my life will remain confidential) who's life imploded on Friday. Relationship, home, security, everything just gone because this person couldn't deal with their depression. That sucks. I offered what little I had, but mostly I just listened.

The Crazy (as I like to call it) is irrational. What's balls about it is that most people I know with it are some of the most logical, rational and reasoned people I know... and among the smartest I know as well. I know my biggest problem has often been reasoning myself out of a reason to live.

Wellbutrin and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy saved my life. The Wellbutrin kept me from killing myself long enough for the therapy to work, and a few years later I'm not on Wellbutrin or in therapy any more. But that wasn't a quick fix and I suspect that I am not even close to sane.

But I'm employed, my relationship with my husband is awesome, my friends are great and I've got some sort of a plan - as vague as that is - and as far as I am concerned that kind of peace of mind is good enough. Happiness is fleeting. I'll take content.

***

Had We're Awesome Lunch  with my friend Erin today.
We're doing pretty good. We've both come a long way in the past two years. So we had lunch in Yaletown to celebrate our Collective Awesome.

Warning:

"No Inspirational Life Lessons Will Be Found In These Pages"

That is the disclaimer on the front cover of David Rakoff's "Half Empty".

"In this deeply funny memoir, David Rakoff examines his own life and the realities of our sunny, gosh-everyone-can-be-a-star contemporary culture. He finds that, pretty much as a universal rule, the best is not yet to come, adversity will triumph, justice will not be served, and your dreams won't come true."

I need to read this book.

I hate this.

5,000 I.U. of vitamin D, 300 mg of Wellbutrin, 1500 mg of wild salmon and fish oils and a protein rich diet aren't kicking this depression.

That signals to me that my depression is "situational".

No fixing that.

What they don't tell you.

I've been waking up every morning and not recognizing the face staring back from the mirror.

My physical being has gone rogue. I don't recognize my face, my hair or my body. My bodily functions are alien to me.

I cried in public today. That's really not my style. I haven't cried in some time and to do it in public just made it more like a humiliating kick in the teeth rather than the painful punch in the gut it is in private.

The MS people talk a lot about symptoms and how to manage them but they don't tell you *why* you just want to stay in your house and never come out. It's not just the symptoms, I am now convinced of this.

It's the little embarrassments. It's the constant mental calculations of where you can go because every trip is a metric of distance + time + seating + washrooms. It's about the little stumbles, the lack of fine motor skills making it difficult to hold a pen, the small inabilities that just build up and up and up until the degradation brings you down and down and down.

It's the stares from strangers when they don't understand why half way down the block my left leg starts to drop or why I lose my balance trying to negotiate a curb. I'm not drunk and I'm not faking in order to ask for a seat on the bus.

It's all my old clothes and shoes mocking me from the closet. It's my wedding photo staring back at me on the wall. It's Marg's boots, Dianna's corsets, Sam's travels and Laurie's job.

But the thing that made me cry today was Speechless

Could we fix you if you broke?
And is your punch line just a joke?

2010

I’m sore. I’m wondering if I’ll ever feel like a human being again. And then I do some physio and I feel better, but I don’t do it everyday because it’s too much of a hassle. Much more of a hassle as having your body yell at you for letting it get stiffened up? It feels so good afterwards, why don’t I do this all the time?

I am uncomfortable. I’m not happy with the way things are going and if I have learned one thing it is that when I’m not happy with how I am, I have to change the way I act. I could take much better care of myself and I don’t because sometimes I don’t care. Sometimes I’m just tired. Sometimes I’m just lazy. Then I look at my body and I want to die because I’ve ruined it. I have to take getting my body back much more seriously, because I can’t do what people traditionally do to lose weight. No weight training, no endurance training, just diet and some biking.

Will it be worth all this effort? I have no fucking idea. I don’t know, but right now I’m thinking that it’s the process that means more than the actual outcome.

I’m having a lot of vestibular ataxia lately and being nauseous all the time from the resulting vertigo is getting a little old. I do hope the physiotherapist can put something together for me that will help me treat this and make it go away.

This is how insidious MS is. It creeps into your life just one crappy, rather small symptom at a time. Numb fingers, tingly toes, tripping over lines of latitude, bumping into the corners of desks or catching door jams in the shoulder; one of these things would be insignificant and easily ignored. all of them are annoying and constant reminders that I’m not right and I never will be. Even as I type this, my right thumb is losing feeling off and on. My left toes are tingling like little shocks you get from licking a 9 volt battery are rushing through the bottom of my feet. My wrists will hurt at some point today. They hurt with short, sharp pains off and on for most of the day, most days of the week.

It feels like the year doesn't start until tomorrow. I'm cautiously optimistic about 2010 but that's mostly the anti-depressants talking. I have reset a 101/1001 list for January 1, 2010 to September 28, 2012. I'm not sharing the list publicly because much of the list is highly personal or horribly tedious. But less than 3 days in I've kept up with what I wanted to do. I've even completed one thing.

I quit smoking because Joe thought I couldn't do it. My single resolution for 2010 is this.

I will not be in the same place I am now on December 31, 2010.

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." --- Eleanor Roosevelt

Weird.

The weather is finally back to normal. 24C, cloudy with sunny periods. Perfection. *This* is why I moved here. Temperate at all times. Except that it's not temperate at all times like it was when I first moved here. The past three winters have been hell on wheels and this past month has been absolutely terrible. My love for Vancouver has been waning for a while, but it's definitely over now.

Now that I have MS I am realizing that the things that Vancouver thinks are great are really, really ability focused. Climbing things. Cycling places. Camping. Beach bumming. Ski bumming. All things that get you away from the city.

When I moved here I thought I was moving to Canada's third largest city and it would be Toronto or Montreal to scale. It's not. I find that disappointing. Every time I thought about what I would like to be doing on those sweltering nights I was reminded that Vancouver doesn't do those things.

There is no pedestrian culture in this city. No late night bookstores and record stores, big patios to meet people at, walking down the block listening to the music that comes from the live music venues, or stores that host djs in their front windows while you browse or dance on the sidewalks. Street closures to watch films projected on the side of a building. Restaurants with not shitty rock bands or slick djs with an average drink price of $3. People don't throw house/balcony parties on a rotating schedule here. At least, none of the people I know do.

I moved around a lot in my 20s and living in the GTA made having a life really, really easy. Trains at all hours. Bars that catered to actual grown ups and people actually acted like grownups. People who would talk to strangers. Strangers that would talk to people.

In almost 6 years in Vancouver I have as many local friends as I made in my first 6 weeks in Toronto. Most of them I didn't really make until I had been here around 3 years. It took me 3 years to get into a job that was worth doing.

I moved to the city to *live* in the city. I know now that Vancouver is a city that's uncomfortable with being a city & doing the things that make city life worth doing. I really don't feel like I belong here, especially now.

I guess I'm just not a west coast person. Joe's tried twice to live West Coast Styles and does not like it either.

I've made the mistake of following Torontoist and Washingtonian on twitter and getting absolutely *green* with envy over what goes on every night, let alone every weekend. I miss being around people who don't like to get dirty and prefer concrete and glass towers to mountains. I miss being in a place that knows how to deal with snow and thunderstorms.

I miss being an Urban Diva. Here in Vancouver that makes you a vapid West Van trophy wife with a phony french manicure, Shake n'Bake tan, and brassy foil highlights, driving a Range Rover in 4WD whilst talking on a mobile complaining that Aritzia was out of size zeros. That's not what being an urban woman is, but it's the Vancouver stereotype of one.

The weather brought me here and it's the weather that is going to chase me away. Joe's got 18 months or so to graduation so we're probably out of here shortly after that. Some days that can't come soon enough. Others I can't imagine leaving. But most of the time, I'd rather be back east. I think I belong there.

(PS. this is not to sit in judgment of the people of Vancouver/British Columbia. It is simply to state what I want in a city experience and how Vancouver's not about that at all.)

One Week

I've been on Wellbutrin for a week. Joe says I'm already better, but he doesn't live inside my head.

Since 7 days went so well, I'm now on two pills a day. I take one at 9 AM and one at 2 PM. I have a reminder set up on my CrackBerry to make sure I make that 2 PM pill. I've also put 7 pills in the sample container the psychiatrist gave me whilst my Free Drugs for Nuts plan kicked in. These are for my purse, just in case I'm not home at 2 PM.

I have a coffee meeting on Thursday morning with someone who wants to talk possible job with her company. I don't have any details, but it could be interesting. Or it could be a total waste of time. I won't know until sometime after 10:30 AM on Thursday.

I had a lovely time in the park, except for the aphids. *shudder* Bugs and dirt are why I don't like it outside much or often.

Wednesday I have appointments with both my neurologist and my family doctor. That will be an interesting day. I'll also know then when my next mitoxantrone treatment will be. I'm not sure if I should try to have it two weeks before my birthday or wait until the week after my birthday. It's a bid decision, because I'm turning 35 and there may be a meltdown.

And a party. I'm having a fucking party and everyone I know in Vancouver had better show the fuck up for it.

Have a nice evening.

Day 3 of my captivity.

This shit blows. I've gained four levels in Mafia Wars though, so it's hasn't been a complete waste of time.

When I couldn't make it to the interview this week, that part-time job I mentioned went away. Bye Bye job!

I should've taken the polish off my toes before I painted my fingernails. Now I have to find gloves or redo my fingers.

The weather is forcasted to be cooler tomorrow, and with things progressively getting back to normal by Tuesday. Please bring the rain!

According to my stomach, a Klondike bar and a Dr. Pepper weren't a suitable lunch. According to my brain, it's indifferent toward food.

It's official. I'm in menopause, but it's likely to be temporary. It's funny, before I got MS "temporary" meant "4-6 weeks, maybe 8" but now it means "maybe we'll know more in 6 months, maybe a year, or even as much as two years".

It's also official. I am depressed and there's nothing I can do about it but take happy pills. Day 3 of Wellbutrin brings no relief to my depression and not a single side effect. I might as well be taking a placebo.

I got into a provincial drug coverage program for crazy people who can't afford their meds. I pay $0 for all my crazy drugs. YAY! Maybe next time they'll cover the 'Pams.

My return visit to the psychiatrist is July 13.

There's nothing quite like going to the psychiatrist to have your depression checked out on your 35 birthday after your life has been so incredibly disappointing thus far.

Here's to hoping I can leave the house tomorrow because Chang in going to be here.

Monday, Monday

Today I have an appointment with the neuro-psychiatrist at the MS clinic. I've been Googling for drugs that will make me not care that my life sucks. The drug information on the internet doesn't really have an overview in that area so I'm not sure that I'm going in with the right information.

I think I found a part-time job to apply to. I'll share more if I decide to go for it.

There's so much I don't say because it's just not worth the confrontation, hassle or explanation.

I still want to be anyone but who I am.