Goals and dreams

 In order to explain how hard it is to understand what mental illness does to you, I often use the analogy of a cancer patient. No one can understand what it’s like to go through a cancer diagnosis and it’s treatment without getting the diagnosis themselves. Yesterday, at my first appointment with my new counsellor, I had an exceedingly difficult time accepting that I deserved the help and hearing her say positive things about me. Even now, nearly a day later, just considering the possibility of getting better brings up emotions I am wholly unprepared for and the tears begin to well in my eyes. She wants me to spend this week focusing on my goals so I am trying to balance that prospect with my emotional stability.

I don’t know exactly where this comes from other than to say that I know my self esteem is extremely low and has been for many years. It may be a function of my BDP and the lack of sense of self that comes with it. It may be the lack of positive reinforcement I received throughout my life. It may be the bullying I’ve faced throughout my life due to my obesity. I honestly don’t know but I’m going to explore each possibility here. It is a core belief and I don’t expect it to change in the short term no matter what I do but it would be nice to at least have relief from time to time of the lies my emotions are telling me

Borderline personality disorder often leaves its wounded victims with a complete lack of a sense of self. This often manifests itself by removing any knowledge of what a person should do for a living or future goals (although, as I re-read this, my use of the word “should” is a sign that I need to rethink that perspective). This is my issue. I was asked by my counsellor what goals I have for the future, as it pertained to my treatment, and the only answer I had was to survive until tomorrow. That’s how I’ve been living for so long now that I don’t really have a healthy answer to the question. I know, in my mind, that I deserve to have something to shoot for but my emotions are constantly sabotaging me and nearly always drown out the logical thoughts. Does a lack of self mean I am inevitably destined to have a lack of goals and dreams or is it possible to have them. Maybe having them will help give me the sense of self I have been missing throughout my life.

When I was a young boy, I was playing defence in a game of hockey. We were killing a penalty but had control of the puck. It came back to me but I couldn’t hold the blueline, to keep the play onside, so I quickly turned and skated the puck backwards into our own zone so we could regroup. Once there, I wheeled around and fired the puck down the ice to give our team a chance to change the lineup and get some fresh legs on the ice. When I got to the bench, the coach came over and patted me on the back, saying “Good job.” That is only one of the two times from my childhood, that I remember, when I was praised for doing something well and neither of those moments came from my parents. In fact, neither of my parents ever told me that they were proud of me. My teachers were always critical of me, as school was tediously boring for the most part and I seldom applied myself, so school life was a constant exercise in not getting myself in trouble. As an adult, my employers and customers became the first people in my life to, on a regular basis, thank me for doing a good job. I became my job and my bosses became surrogate father figures for me. But even from them, positive feedback was such a foreign thing to me that it made me feel extremely uncomfortable, doubting the motives of the person giving it to me, and always questioning whether it was true or not. I simply didn’t feel that I deserved compliments and, to this day, they are distressing. 

Not all of my interactions with employers were positive. One of my former bosses knew that my coworkers were bullying me and did nothing to stop it. When I informed him, it was the first time in my life that I took it upon myself to try and end the torment that another person was putting me through. His response was that I needed to toughen up. I had been bullied all through school, from about grade four all the way to grade twelve. In high school there was a group of five or six boys who took it upon themselves to try and beat me up on a regular basis. I never asked for help from any of my teachers or either of my parents. Back then, you just didn’t do that sort of thing, especially in my family. As far as I was concerned, the correct action was to suck it up, accept that it was going to happen and try to move on. I was perpetually the victim in my peer groups, from school to sports to work. Maybe that’s another part of the reason I needed to be in a management position in each place I worked. It’s difficult to bully your boss and get away with it. 

It’s difficult to believe one deserves to be happy when they are constantly being shown to be less than normal by their peers and then not receiving positive feedback in other areas of their lives. For me, I eventually just got to believe that making others happy, making others like me by whatever means, was the main goal of my life. I tried to make my restaurant patrons happy for twenty five years. As I type this, I am reminded of a couple who used to come into the last restaurant I worked at. If I apologised for anything, keeping them waiting for me or a problem with their meal, they would admonish me for doing so. They said that apologising made me weak and that I should stop. Their point of view made no sense to me at the time but looking back, I can see a curtain logic to what they were saying. I was constantly putting the happiness of others ahead of my own and eventually it got to the point where my own mental state was irrelevant. I was stuffing my dissatisfaction with my life down inside where it wouldn’t be anything I’d have to deal with. The longer I worked in restaurants, the easier it became to believe my own wellbeing was irrelevant to my life, and that’s a lesson I am desperately trying to unlearn to this day. 

And having written and thought about all of that I feel like I’m no closer to the answer to the question and it has raised another question. What comes first, the goals and dreams or the sense of self? If I don’t have a sense of self, can I even identify what my goals for the future are and, more frighteningly, does it even matter? Without a sense of self, will the goals I set be nothing more than arbitrary marks upon a timeline that may or may not even belong to me. Maybe wanting to find a sense of self can be a goal in and of itself. I have so many questions and so few answers and although I know that asking difficult questions is the path to wisdom, I am not feeling very wise today.

Casino Regrets

 Nearly a year ago, in July of 2021 I was drinking and frustrated and broke after blowing a few hundred dollars at the slot machines. Rather than going home, I went to sit at the bar and blow my last few dollars on a couple of beers. At this point I was already stealing money from my mother and yet in complete denial about my gambling compulsion. This was as close as I would come to realising how far gone I was until I hit rock bottom and began my road to recovery. As the piece goes on, my increasing inebriation becomes more and more apparent. I remember this night but looking back at what I wrote, the level of honesty I could muster at the time is a little shocking.

I don’t want to be sitting here but I had to do it. I’m typing this at the bar in the local casino, having wasted $300 and drinking away my problems. Well, drinking so that they feel a little less painful for a while. I used to drink like I was trying to punish myself but now I drink to just survive the day. I don’t drink a lot by most people’s standards. I’m only working on my third beer in four hours but I’m out of practice, so this small amount is enough to get the creative juices flowing, I hope. 

There is so little of it left in me. I used to write for fun, sober. The idea of writing without a beer in my hand is now completely alien to me. As is writing in private, now needing some sort of hustle and bustle around me to get the job done. I think about the great writers of the world sitting in their quiet cabins and producing true pieces of art. I am not like them at all, where sombre sobriety leaves me alone and overwhelmed with my thoughts and emotions.

I long for the days from my past, where life was so much easier. When I could ignore my problems, go to work, get a buzz afterwards then go home to pass out for the night. Now I have to face them and it is not going well. My mental problems overwhelm me on a daily basis and I can no longer get through the day without an anxiety attack. It’s extremely difficult just to get out of the house and participate in society without a drink in my hand. Years ago, on my days off, I used to hang out at a local Starbucks and the sound of my computer keyboard could be heard through the coffee shop. Today, it’s the sound of drunk people and slot machines which drown out the sound of my fingers upon the keys. My creativity, as lacklustre as it has become, is only part of a cacophony of lost hope and money changing hands, from the poor to the wealthy.

Now I ramble on my computer, without a belief that anyone will ever want to read this. Beside me sits an older man banging on the bar to get some service. Obviously a regular, he now does what I used to do each day, the after work drinks are his reward for a day of labour. The bar is filling up now that happy hour has hit (this was a lie and I don’t know why I wrote it. The casino has no happy hour) and I’m seriously regretting sitting here rather than finding myself a quiet corner in which I could write. The old man has his drinks, not settling for only a beer but adding a shot of whiskey as well, but his drumming on the bar has increased in its percussiveness as he pretends to be the drummer in the band whose music is competing with the ringing of slot machines around me.

I am the odd man out here. Each of these men come in often based on their camaraderie. Many people would accuse me of wanting to be a part of this friendliness because I sat at the bar but the truth is far from that. It is simply a matter of comfort for me to plop my ass upon a stool and take a seat at the bar. This is where I have sat for years, the bartender always being the person I could relate to after eight hours of serving customers at my own job. Well, this is where I did sit for years but it still feels far more comfortable than sitting at a table in the corner, no matter just how desperately I want to be left alone. At least, so far, they have taken the hint to leave me alone. My laptop open and an earpiece slapped on the side of my head have kept their inquisitiveness at bay but I don't expect it to last forever. Sooner or later, one of them will accuse me of working when I shouldn’t be or they will simply ask me what it is that I’m doing. My solace is a short lived one as their increasing inebriation will eventually break open their box of questions and someone will disturb me. At least for the time being, their attention is more focused on the legs of the waitresses walking past us than on me, which is fine.

Perhaps it is the beer I am imbibing but those legs are beginning to attract my attention as well. 

The drumming from the end of the bar wouldn’t be bothering me so much if it were in time with the music but it is way off. It reminds me of an ex-friend of mine who once said that he hated when people would harmonise with whatever music was playing because, to him, you could sing any notes and they would work. Years of choir and music composition back in the day taught me about harmony and creativity and the friend was talking out of his ass but he was too ignorant to know it. That’s how the guy at the end of the bar reminds me of that friend from so many years ago. He is so ignorant of music that he thinks his drumming is somehow in time. It is becoming distracting as he becomes more forceful and is becoming like a jackhammer in my mind.

I hate that this is the place I am comfortable. Unlike these men, I have no woman to go home to after their drinks. I have only my ailing mother and her sore ankles which I will once again be rubbing down with ointment later tonight. I used to sit in this place to forget that I had no one. Now it is only a reminder. 

The other men at the bar have begun to sing along with the music. I have bad drumming at one side of me and off tune singing at the other. Soon I will be forced to put away this computer and resort to gambling again to occupy my mind. I can only ignore this for so long.

The bartender is trying to prepare for the evening shift, stocking the bar and filling the ice wells, which is far more interesting than the conversations which have broken out on either side of me. Their blandness is at least cancelling themselves out.

Eight hours to the east, my girlfriend has picked up her cell phone and has decided that midnight is the best time to tell me about her day. Now I have an actual excuse to put away my computer and focus on something important, far more important than I.