The Road to Recovery

8pm is pretty dark this time of year, but I’ve learned to live quite well in the dark. This evening as I walked along the side of the highway, I noticed three things: the muscles in my legs were relatively strong, my mind was relatively clear, and the wet yellow leaves glistened like gold under the highway streetlights—all things that were not always the case. I began to reflect on the last three years. The last three years have not been easy, but they’ve provided me with teachings that I wouldn’t trade if given the choice.

 

Rewind to graduating high school. I was on track to becoming the man I thought the world wanted me to be. I figured with my stacked resume of athletics and customer service jobs that it was natural to progress into a form of service that would keep me on the move and keep people off my back. I thought I’d become a police officer. Then I thought I’d do search and rescue. Looking back at my mentality as a younger man, I realize I liked the idea of these jobs rather than actually doing them everyday. I wanted to be seen as a hero like my heroes before me. I wanted to be seen as a man of strength and courage like Muhammad Ali. But in my search for strength and courage, what I failed to see was grace and love.

 

After trying a year of university as a last ditch effort to figure out what I’d do with my life, I moved back home to PEI. I found a job at Quartermaster Marine where I worked cleaning, scraping barnacles, and bottom-painting boats. It was dirty, honest work and I didn’t mind doing it. I biked to work everyday and found a place to rent where I started building my own little life that wasn’t in a military barracks or a university residence. Though I’d taken a significant pay cut and had to deal with odd daily encounters like finding a family of raccoons living in a winterized boat, or befriending a young fox that visited the lot, I’d finally gained some control in my life and I began figuring out what was important to me.

 

Music was always a part of my life in some way but it became prominent when I moved back to P.E.I. It took me by the hand and introduced me to the right people, many of whom became great friends. My weekday evening ritual was to get home from work, get stoned, and learn a new song, guitar scale, or try my hand at writing. I found the music of Sturgill Simpson and Blaze Foley, who both sang bearing their heart and soul in their own way. I’d listen to their music and feel it deep in my chest. It was the beginning of something great.

 

During this time, I had many late and fun nights. And though I was meandering in my new passions, I had no aim. I was just flying by night and living in the moment. I think it’s important to live in the moment, but it’s also good to have goals for your life. I think both can be achieved, as I’m learning now. I also think that living too long without goals will take you out of the moment and then you’ll have no aim and can’t properly face the world. This is what happened to me when I started to slip.

 

I’d been living recklessly in the Navy and at university, but I was younger and these were structured institutions where my schedule was set and I could plan my partying around it. I soon realized that since I was now making my own decisions, I couldn’t keep up the same lifestyle. The things that once brought me joy began to turn on me. And besides, after a while you start to realize that you can’t party all the time, you’re here for a greater purpose. It can be a scary realization but you must listen.

About three years ago, I was at work with about an hour left in my shift. I felt a weird sensation in my chest. I started to get light-headed and had to sit down. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well and asked if I could leave early. At first I thought it might be a virus, but my mind started to take over and eventually my body tightened up, my breath was shallow, and it felt like I was about to pass out. I’d never felt anything like it before. I told my boss that I needed to go to the hospital. I felt like I was dying. He could sense the seriousness in my face and tone and got someone to drive me to the emergency room.

 

The closer we got to the hospital the more my body tightened to the point where my hands seized up into claws and were no longer functional. They took me in right away and of course asked if I was on any drugs. I wasn’t. They hooked me up to an IV, heart-rate monitor, did a blood test, and whatever else. My parents were called. I lied in the hospital bed wearing that sexy gown, hooked up to a bunch of shit. During this time, my parents were called. What the fuck was going on? Mom arrived, and so did Dad. I rarely saw them in the same room as one another. My little brother and sister were there too. There was a look of concern and an eerie stillness to their faces, but I was starting to feel ok again. We waited for some results and I was back to smiling and cracking jokes. I felt fine again.

 

The doctor came in and said everything looked normal. He said something about my heart and some sort of minor blockage but that I could’ve had it since birth and that it probably wasn’t what was causing my troubles. So everything was fine, yet an hour earlier I felt like I was on death’s doorstep. We all left the hospital not knowing what was going on, or at least not saying anything more about it. What was this? At that time I didn’t know anything about panic attacks, or anxiety, or mental illness. I’d never learned about it in school and no one had ever talked to me about it.

 

This was the first event but it wasn’t the last. Things started to spiral. I remember too many times waking up in the middle of the night in terror. I ran out of the bedroom, heart racing. I’d go outside in the middle of winter in my underwear because I was so hot, then instantly come back inside and curl up by the heater with blankets because I was so cold. I tried drinking water and pacing and laying down on the couch just trying to ride out this storm in my mind and body until I eventually rolled around on the hardwood floor, too weak to make another move, and surrendering to death. If you’ve never experienced this, it might sound pathetic or dramatic, but I’d honestly accepted death. It was such a weird feeling. I was in a fight with my mind and didn’t know it. Had I known, I would’ve prepared for the battle.

 

I didn’t ever go back to the hospital—I didn’t want to be a burden and I didn’t want anyone to know. Some nights I wouldn’t sleep at all, which became a vicious cycle of dealing with these exhausting episodes and being up all night, not being able to recover. Drinking was no longer about having fun, but as a means to temporarily numb my mind. I’d play video games to distract myself. I lost weight I didn’t have to lose, my face was sunk in, my skin was pale, I had no energy, I was sick but felt as though I couldn’t tell anyone, including myself. This went on for a good part of a year. I felt guilty playing music or even talking to my friends and family. I felt like I wasn’t able to be what they wanted me to be. Every conversation hurt even more because I wasn’t able to give anything, I was just treading water with waves crashing over my head, struggling to breathe. One time while visiting a friend, his dad said, “It looks like you have the devil in your eyes.” He wasn’t wrong. But I was still in there, just buried somewhere.

 

I would have never been able to write this two years ago, or even last year. I was too close to the experience. So besides the passage of time, what’s changed? Well for starters, at a lunch with my Mom a couple of winters ago, she opened up to me about some things in her life and it pushed me to finally say something. We cried and laughed together which I’m sure made the waitress quite uncomfortable. After this conversation, I was able to speak with my Dad and some friends, though perhaps not in this much detail. Talking was a big part of the road to recovery. I began exercising and put on fifteen pounds from lifting weights. I started to feel strong in my body. I became aware of my diet and what I needed more of and what I could cut back on. All of these things were important but there was still something missing. I needed to recalibrate. I needed an aim. I decided to pursue my goal of creating an album of my original songs. I set a date of completion and surrendered to the project, doing whatever it took to get it done. The lessons I learned in doing that were, for lack of a better word, life-changing.

 

There’s been more talk about mental health lately but I figured I’d share some of these more subtle details that often get overlooked. It’s easy to paint yourself as a victim. And maybe you are a victim. But that’s only step one. You’ve admitted that the world has done you wrong. But it doesn’t owe you anything and it for sure doesn’t end there. You are responsible for your recovery. That’s the next part of the conversation that doesn’t get mentioned enough. You have the controls. And I’m not looking for sympathy here—I’d rather not mention any of this at all. But I wanted to share my experience so that someone who is going through the same thing knows that it’s possible to get through these dark times. Or maybe someone who doesn’t know about these things will be aware if, God forbid, they or someone they love becomes ill.

 

There are still days where I dip, but I’ve weathered the storm so a little wind is nothing I can’t handle. I am grateful to be able to write, play music, and share my stories with anyone who chooses to listen. I’ve found a way to laugh at it all. We are so small in a world so big, though what we see in our day to day is just a fraction of the entire picture. I realize the importance of setting goals for your life, both big and small, both immediate and distant. If you’re ever feeling an illness like this, know that it is not you. You are above all of this. The brain is an organ, just like the heart or the kidneys and it too can malfunction. Talk to the person you need to talk to, take aim at something, and collect the life experience along the way. Maybe you’ll get a song out of it.

Image: https://www.gapyear.com/articles/travel-ideas/13-incredible-stops-on-the-pacific-coast-highway