A Dose of My Own Medicine
When you just have to take your own fucking advice
In case you need a catch-up, over the last few years I’ve been stuggling with depression and anxiety. For almost a year while I’ve dealt with the Dodge thing, I’ve been taking medication. Antidepressants which basically numb me all the way through. They don’t squash the homicidal rage or cool the wild anxiety, but I can tell you I never fucking cry. Really, like never. And since I’ve stopped having daily meltdowns resulting in complete hysterics, I’ve thought I was getting better. Even when my cat was mauled and almost died, I rather calmly drove him to the hospital, nary squeaking out a single tear. I’ve been convinced that all of the waterworks were either a clear imbalance chemically or a response to the crushing circumstances that have befallen me recently.
Funny story: it is me. Not chemicals or circumstances. Just good old fashioned crazy fucking me responsible for my own mental health issues.
I ran into someone last night that so thoroughly reminded me how fucked up things have been for me that I came home and balled my eyes out. Like real ugly fucking crying. Not cute. This guy I used to work with is on his third managerial promotion, having been demoted the last two times. He fell into an amazing opportunity at a coveted location making a shit ton of dough. He threw a tiny amount of money into crypto and it blew up…so much so he bought a fucking house! So here’s this guy that I wouldn’t even hire onto my staff a few years ago because he wasn’t reliable or trustworthy, absolutely fucking thriving.
He brings up my old corporate position and how hard I worked and how terrible my location was, and I realized I’m still mad. Not a little mad. Seething fucking mad. Go to someone’s house and knock their car windows out mad. Find them checked in on social media and slam their head against the bar top mad. Because I invested eight years into a business that employs drunks, degenerates, and idiots. I’m mad I waited so long to leave. I’m mad I was so underappreciated. I’m mad they continued to retain and promote staff that was far less qualified. And after almost a decade, I gave up everything. My whole life, gone.
I’m writing this from a tiny bedroom in an overpriced apartment I don’t even want to be in while I work graves making so little I can’t buy groceries. This week, after three years, I was finally accepted into Google AdSense, my first opportunity to make some income from my website. THREE FUCKING YEARS of slaving away on a project just for the fun of it. That’s determination. And that’s the same blind loyalty I showed to my career. I should be happy that we’re making forward strides and that something positive is coming from my efforts, but I’m not. Instead, I’m just mad. I am bitter. I am hateful. I am jealous. I covet these opportunities everyone else had and it makes me fucking insane. I obsess over my losses and the future that was stolen from me. The medication only dumbed me down, made me feel less for awhile, but the rage is still fresh right under the surface. It’s still boiling. And I want revenge.
I thought about doing something crazy, something radical, something wildly illegal. And honestly, this is the closest I’ve ever felt to actually carrying through with it. But then that’s it. It’s all over. I would never recover with a felony and likely jail time. And what would all the hard work and wasted effort be for then? So while I laid in bed at 3am wailing into my pillow, I came up with a plan. Revenge on every mother fucker who ever wronged me, looked at me stupid, said a single fucking word in my direction. And while a car bomb at corporate headquarters would probably make me feel better than anything else, I decided the most effective method is to get over it. I know how fucking ridiculous that sounds, but it’s the truth. I can’t live my life constantly reliving the injustices of the past. It’s done, fucking finito, and roiling in rage daily is doing nothing for my gastrointestinal health. I have to get the fuck over it and move on, and moving away from everything I know and love was just an escape, not a resolution.
The greatest revenge is personal success. Some dipshit told me that once and I laughed, but it’s unfortunately true. I have to do better. It’s not just about letting the rage go. It’s not just about surviving. It is also about beating these mother fuckers at their own game. I don’t want to tell everyone how great I’m doing, I want to actually be doing great. I want to be succeeding. I want to be thriving. I want to be so busy with my wonderful fucking life that I just forget about all the transgressions. I owe it to myself because I just can’t let these stupid mother fuckers beat me like this. And what that really means is I just have to work harder. I have to work twice as hard as I have been, completely immerse myself in work so much that all I have time to do is sleep and count my money.
The takeaway here is that some people succeed on luck and that’s just fucking great. But if you’re like me and that’s never going to be your story, don’t quit. Don’t let them win. Don’t let them get in your head. There is nothing more satisfying than succeeding through strength and determination so stay the course and put in the work. One day it will all be worth it and by then, those mother fuckers won’t even exist.