Continued from yesterday’s post…

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July 2008

Between January and May, I pretty much shut down emotionally.

Completely.

I put up agood front, but each night I would just sit in the dark and mope and simply forget the entire world around me.  Phone calls…bills…friends…mail…I didn’t care about any of it.  I was wasting money on nothing and not paying my bills.  If any friends DID call I wouldn’t have known…I only answered the phone for my parents and my daughter, putting on a brave front as much as possible.

In July I lost it.

I had just come back from a week-long vacation with The Rugrat, who had come down to visit.  We camped in a tent and had an amazing bonding experience that week.  When she left that Sunday, my world seemed to crash around me.  I realized that my only friend in the world was my daughter…and she was gone.

I didn’t think, emotionally, that I could sink any deeper.

Then on Monday I was in a training session.  It wasn’t a particularly weird one or hard one…but I was in rare form.  I was rude and sarcastic and defiant.  When our FREE CATERED LUNCH arrived I complained about the tomatoes on the subs.  Loudly and without justification.  I then went on a rant about something or other…I don’t remember anymore. All I know is that at the end of the day I had felt a lot better for getting things off of my chest, but I really didn’t have a clue just how bad my co-workers had been made to feel.  I acted like a total jerk for no reason whatsoever and was oblivious to it.

A week later, my world crashed around me and I pretty much hit rock bottom.

I was called into a small room and there sat my supervisor with HIS supervisor sitting next to him.  They explained to me that my job was in jeopardy. My work was A+ and wasn’t in question.  My attitude, however, was the issue.  My boss’s boss proceeded to tell me of the complaints  he had received about my anger issues and how I was making people around me feel uncomfortable.  He said people were under the impression that I was a Jeckly & Hyde personality…perfectly fun one minute but super angry the next.

This all hit me like a ton of bricks.  This job is the only one I’ve ever really liked since graduating from university.  This job is one I could potentially see as a career.  My supervisor looked like I had kicked him in the stomach.  His boss actually interviewed me for the job a year prior and you could tell that I wasn’t living up to his expectations.

But to know that I was making those around me uncomfortable…well that just really hit me.  Hard.

I was asked to sign a document that pretty much said “you have been warned” and then told I could go home if I wanted to.  I didn’t…I stayed and immediately enrolled in the company’s Employee Assistance Program.   That night I had absolutely hit rock bottom…both emotionally and also financially, as months and months of simply ignoring mail and phone calls and bills had caught up to me.

Looking back, it probably was a good 1-2 punch for me.  It woke me up and helped me realize what I needed to do in order to get back on my feet.  At that point, there was nowhere to go but up, right?

July 2009

The online psychologist helped me work through a LOT of issues at the time.  It was soon after that I changed my entire outlook on life. That may sound a bit cliche, but it’s 100% true.  I can’t tell you how much my personality has changed for the better in the past year.  It’s literally a night-and-day situation.  The CBG you know from this blog is the CBG that I’ve always wanted to be my entire life, but never could be due to repressed emotions.

I don’t think I would have ever married The Ex if I was the person I am today (not to mention I wouldn’t have The Ankle Biter in my life), so it’s not like I’ve got any regrets about my life.  I’m perfectly content with the mistakes I’ve made as an adult and totally happy with who I am as a person right now…which I’ve never been before.

I’m a good person.  I’m a good father.  I’m a good boyfriend.  I’ll be a good husband.

It feels good to be able to write this story down. I remember having dinner with Sunshine awhile back and telling her the details.  It was hard for me because it meant re-visiting the person that I used to be…the person I can’t believe I was.

But after doing it, I felt free of the chains that my past life had wrapped around me.  That’s one of the wonderful things that Sunshine brings into my life…an ear and an open mind.

I’m in such a better place now.  I look in the mirror and actually like what what I see, which is a huge step-up from the self-hatred and self-loathing that used to engulf me whenever I saw myself.

Life, my friends, is good.  It could always be better…but I’m definitely okay with where things are.