You Try The Best You Can, The Best You Can Is Good Enough

PART THREE:

I know making the job transition was integral to this, pun intended, bitch-flip.  But another big part of it?  Pills.

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Yessirs and ma’ams, yours truly is on anti-depressants.  I have been dodging this bullet since my first suicidal ideation episode when I was 22 and I threatened it on the phone to my mother.  Her reaction set me straight till a good 4 or so years later when the thoughts came back while I was painting a piece for my brother and his soon-to-be-wife. 

And that lasted a few years, in New York City, and I tried to work it out onstage as a stand-up comic.  It kinda worked, but again what brought me out of that was when I walked out of my day job at the time.  I just left.  And instantly, I felt free.  

So I had never felt the need for anti-depressants because eventually, one day, even if it was a handful of precious years later, I would feel better.

This time was different.  It started back in 2009 when I started a business relationship I instinctively knew was going to implode.  Oh, hindsight and your Lasik, totally covered by the Universe's awesome health plan. I didn’t quite trust my partners from the very first time I met them and I pushed that feeling down inside to ride the enthusiasm towards my idea that these people shared with me.  And it worked for a little while.  Until my psychology caught up with my physiology (I was experiencing a lot of fear and anxiety, pains in my chest, depression, and reluctance/resistance around the project and my partners), wherein I practiced different ways to end it and eventually found what I thought was the best way to say it.  And then I was berated via email for what I literally felt necessary to my survival to do. Yep, literally.

I can see the other side, I really can.  Break-ups are rarely easy.  But they’re always for the best.  Nevertheless, the previous year in such toxicity had taken its toll and I gave my power up to the words in aforementioned email about my needing mental help and that I’m a raging egomaniac.

I took the words as truth, deep down.  On the outside, I think I successfully portrayed that I knew they were projection.  But those judgments ate away at me because they were already there and I think the author knew that.  

So, I did the thing any well-meaning depressed artist would do.  I ran a 5K that December and started going to yoga regularly (even if it was just once a week) that January.  I practiced my banjo with a metronome. I continued performing my work from the project and eventually got new partners to grow the project in the direction I never realized I wanted that badly.   But the whole time, I had those words streaming through my head, erupting from my subconscious, as they sank lower into that ether, whenever I would have a moment of forward movement. 

to be continued...