Where as the last six years gone? They say,”time flies when you’re having fun.” But I say, “time flies whether you’re having fun or not.” Time is one thing we have no control over. It’s been six years since we moved from St.John’s to Bay Roberts, in some ways that seems like eternity and in other ways it seems like yesterday. But it’s time to move on, life has been so unkind to us here, no fault of the people and Town of Bay Roberts; it’s a beautiful place to live. It’s almost like the “universe” is telling us, “you’re done here, it’s time to move on.” So on August 3,2021 we are moving, I believe it’s what our family needs; a fresh start!
When we moved here on April, 2015 it wasn’t a good time in our lives, so we got off to an already stress filled, anxiety provoking and an uncertain future; that we had no control over. We had lost control of our lives and frantically trying to put the pieces back together. Little did we realize what was in store for us. The pieces of our lives were not being put back together but obstacles, events and illness would still pull us further apart. We would encounter more attacks and painful situations, then I would have ever experienced in all my lifetime combined. I won’t elaborate on any of those painful, controlling and disrespectful events because I feel we are trying desperately to put them in the past and to keep them there. And when we leave, we will symbolically leave them here, we will brush the dust off our feet, we will not take them with us. We deserve so much better and this new chapter in our lives will be a fresh start for our family.
What I will elaborate on is the present condition of my mental illness or my mental health. It’s difficult to have fairly good mental health when you are constantly being thrown into the den of lions; a very toxic environment. Not a place for someone trying to heal from a broken mind. It was like adding fuel to the fire. If I were to improve, I have to physically move to a new land. There were no options. There were just too many triggers, to ever even come close to living a “normal “ life. And that wasn’t going to happen here.
I am/was constantly judged by my outward or physical appearance. “He’s not sick, he doesn’t even look sick.” And this is one of the dangers of this illness; you don’t always see it! Are the only people that are sick, the ones who appear outwardly to show signs and symptoms that the eye could see? No, my illness was from deep within my mind, a place that the eye could not see. And I have become a master of hiding what I didn’t want others to see. What I was feeling and what others were seeing were two totally different pictures. And I had no obligation to expose my mental health to no one, except my own family; my mother, my wife and my two children (who I tried not to let see me at my worse). But even today I struggle and live one day at a time.
Mental illness is such an unforgiving illness. It’s so misunderstood, stigmatized and misjudged; that even today, it’s sufferers would rather hide it and suffer alone. I do many days because even today I feel ashamed and far from normal. Days when I feel I am not even worthy to live. Too sick, too tired and too alone to belong. That I am so different, that I’m not like ‘normal’ people; I just don’t fit in anymore. But yet I yearn to live a life that’s even a little normal. Mental illness has stolen so much from us. There are days when I am not fully present but pre occupied deep within my mind. My illness has not been a once in a lifetime occurrence but a lifetime of living with someone I do not even know or at times not even like.
Not only have my mental illness stolen from me but it has cost my family so much. My wife lost her husband on that day I had my last relapse (8 years ago). I became someone with no personality, no feelings, numb, trapped inside my mind; a person she no longer recognized. My children were deprived many times of a father. I was too sick to even play the part. But after years of fighting, counselling, therapy, medications; I gradually returned to someone similar to who I once was. I now give what I have, not at all meeting up to my expectations of what I should be but I work with what I have. I try not to dwell on what mental illness has stolen from me but I build on what I have left.
So in just 10 more days we will move to our new home, our new life. My only prayer is that God will go with us and bless us. May this be a new beginning, a light in the darkness, a new hope; A FRESH START! 