I'll just start. I suppose some perspective is necessary here. About 6 months ago I had steady employment, it wasn't challenging, perhaps a little boring and filled with the kind of sordid banality that can only exist in modern offices. But it had routine and that is it turns out was unreasonably important. An inflection occurred in September when I was at a conference and presented some things I had been working on. I gave a presentation on phenomena I thought everyone new about, I was wrong and this turned into an offer of employment with a specialist company. No sane person turns down employment that comes to you with little effort. Especially when it's with a global specialist firm. However this work require me to travel and be away from home. This has been my utter undoing.
The last 6 months have been agony. I have consistent and ever present anxiety about the upcoming work away from home. It is all consuming and requires Sisyphean mental gymnastics to keep it at bay. The fear and sadness of being away from home is totally crippling, a large portion of my day is spent controlling the fear and the overwhelming sadness. The raw mental horsepower required to maintain a semblance of function in society is unbelievable. By the end of the day, I am spent, gone. I have no energy for even the most basic tasks, it's all spent on managing the sadness and fear. Little processing power is available for anything else. To add morbid insult to injury, the anxiety sadness and fear is ever present now. Fear and crippling sadness knowing that I am going and fear and sadness when I am away.
There is a component of self loathing of course. I feel like I should have had more insight into my emotional well being criteria. I had my child hood in the Balkans, right at the time when the entire Balkan region was going through a process of self immolation. A lot of the horrors I have seen will accompany my to my grave. I was Diagnosed with PTSD when I first came to Australia, but I have since managed to control it. This is possibly where the requirement for routine came in. Of course now it’s a wonderful chemical cocktail of PTSD and Anxiety and whatever else is going on in the 1,500CC of salty porridge I have residing in my skull.
I am writing this maybe for posterity, maybe as an exercise in self-exorcism. An attempt to externalise the thoughts. I want to quit, I am so very tired of this self torment.
The sadness and fear on repeat without respite.
