Family Day Weekend

It's Family Day weekend here where I live.  I was thinking about previous Family Day weekends today.  I have an up and down history with this weekend.

For a few years, a few years ago now, I worked at a place that was targeted for families and tourists.  Family Day was always the busiest day of the year.  Work was crazy... but not in a bad way.  Mostly it was fun and time sure went fast.  I was always tired at the end of the day and generally my voice wasn't doing so well.

5 years ago  Family Day weekend was a totally different story.  My life was a disaster.  I had been dealing with a bully at least once a day and generally more than that.  And I was still expected to be my normal self.  I had such bad anxiety that I was barely sleeping.  It had been 3 weeks of the bully when the family day weekend arrived.  And I couldn't take it anymore.

So, I found myself at my parents house, a three hour drive away.  I spent the whole weekend letting them take care of me, and crying.  Now, I am one of those people that doesn't cry easily and at that time even harder to  make me cry than it is now.  I had no idea what to do to make things in my life better.  I was scared and unable to cope. I didn't even know how to tell my parents about it really, but to their credit they did what they could, what I would let them, to be there for me and to help.  To put it bluntly I was in crisis (it was about 3 weeks later when I very seriously considered killing myself).

When I think about how bad things were I am actually crying.  Crying for how bad things were.  Crying for how terrified I was.  Crying for how long it took me to get help.

Funny though that was the weekend that ultimately would change things for me.  That was the weekend I decided to move to the city my parents live in.  Somewhere I knew I needed change, I needed help, I needed support. And, I knew that my parents and my sister were the people I needed to support me through that (add in my brother-in-law and nephews since then).  It took my awhile to make the move happen and the crisis got worse in the meantime, but I did take action to make it happen.

When I look at how things are now, 5 years later, it's amazing to me.  My life is so different.  I have been learning to live with depression.  I have come out.  I have so many more tools to deal with things than I did then.  I know myself so much better.  I know a lot more about what is really important to me and I am making choices to honour that (including hanging out with my family this weekend and the only tears were those of laughter as my nephew is hilarious).  My life is not perfect (frankly whose is?).  My life is mine though.  It is no longer horrible.  I am no longer in crisis.  For these things I am truly grateful this Family Day.