Halloween is the best, isn’t it?

News of the day? The site’s being redesigned. Sorta. During the next week or so I’ll be reorganizing like a mofo, resetting the hit counter and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. (Well, I’ll be doing stuff, anyway.) Check back in a few days if you’re keen to see the oh-so-exciting changes in effect. Woo hoo! Not.

Jen

P.S. 2018-05-22: CN Depression, Eating Disorder, Substance Abuse

You’ll note that after getting off to a pretty strong start with the whole blogging thing, I suddenly dropped out for over a month. This is because I was fired. Or rather, my contract wasn’t renewed. That’s their story. Really, I was fired. The whole tale of what happened is long and upsetting. I think it’s time to tell it, seeing as how it happened more than a decade ago, but I need some time to get it all out coherently, so for the moment, that will have to wait.

Photo by Michael Olsen on Unsplash

What I can tell you right now is that I spent a lot of October 2005 either crying or in an alcohol-and-drug-induced fog. I realized I was going to be fired, and then they made me wait before actually firing me, keeping me in suspense so that some asshole could fly from Toronto to Vancouver to do it in person. I couldn’t sleep, so I started drinking to help me fall asleep, and then I’d wake up after a couple hours, be unable to fall asleep again, and panic. Since I was in Vancouver, about nine different people suggested (and provided) pot, so in addition to the drinking, I started smoking that occasionally, in an effort to claw my way through the days without breaking down in front of anyone. Eventually, I mostly stopped leaving the house except to buy more coffee, wine, or fast food.

Darrell would leave for work in the mornings, and I would wait until he was gone, close all the curtains, and lie in front of the television, occasionally eating, but mostly consuming poisonous substances and praying for evening, when the guilt and self-disgust I felt seemed to lesson a little bit, because while watching television and drinking in the light of day made me feel dirty, something about the dark seemed to legitimize it. I also switched up my eating disorder behaviours, which up to this point had been largely about periodic restriction. I’d go on “diets” (read: periods of anorexia) and take on excessive exercise, but after the trauma of losing my job, I started binging (usually if I had smoked pot) and purging, largely by vomiting. I did this once a day, nearly every day. Occasionally I broke up the cycle of television, wine, and vomiting by searching Darrell’s computer and browser history for porn, which he’d promised me he wasn’t watching. All of this was clearly super healthy. I was drowning, but if I had to see someone in real life, I generally managed to pull myself together, so I don’t think anyone really knew what I was going through. All in all, it was a very dark time, and that dark time went on for a long time.