A couple of days ago, when I changed the CD in my player from Moby to Garbage, I realised that one of my favourite songs on that debut album has as a major line 'pour your misery down on me', as well as only being happy when it rains, riding high on deep depressions and such like. And I have a grin a mile wide, even when I am actually listening to the lyrics.
And I got to thinking, when did it all start going wrong, thinking self esteem wise. I was always a quietish child, and have been terrified of and subservient to authority ever since I got a talking to from the teacher about a fight I was involved in at age six, or maybe seven.
Apart from that I think I had a pretty quiet school life while still in New Zealand - I was short, and I had glasses, and I didn't play sports because of those glasses, but it wasn't until I got to Australia at age ten that I really remember any bullying happening. Short, glasses and, the most crucial part, an accent. You know that cliche about kids can be so cruel? Well, I found out it was true.
And, rather than wasting energy fighting it, because I was small and lightly built and I would have been pummelled if I ever tried to fight, I took all the teasing and bullying in - it was never physical bullying, don't want to give that impression, but words that cut deeply. So deeply in fact that I haven't been able to get the splinters out since.
It also went along with my submissive nature that, rather than trying to point out what was wrong with people's perceptions, I took all that they said on board, and refined it so that I would get the digs in before anyone else did. A habit that has stuck with me ever since, I always take on criticism much more easily than praise, no alpha male here.
And, something that I just thought of, even my group of friends in Oz first time around made fun of me. Now, I always thought that I had difficulty making good friends (I can make average friends with people at the drop of a hat) because I had three primary schools and two high schools, but the thought I just had was that if my friends teased me along with everyone else, maybe I am scared of getting close to anyone again because of that? Or perhaps a combination of the two reasons.
Running with the thought, thinking further, I think that I have made fun of myself in front of new groups of friends ever since I left high school - or have tried to melt into the walls so much that I may as well not been there.
The thing I had most pride in throughout my school life was my grades. I was an A to A minus student in primary school, and I started out an A to B student in high school. For some reason I was never able to really study for exams, I was always better at remembering something when first taught and keeping it in my brain. I am sure I have described elsewhere in this blog - I wrote together a good 'Depression' series sometime last year - how I became a lazy B student, and how I started stressing about assignments. Not so much exams, just assignments, but still that was bad enough.
For some reason, after I had discussed my options with my parents, I decided to go to high school for the final year, rather than go out on a technical college course, and that was another bad decision in my life. I can't remember exactly what made me crack, a perfect storm kind of thing, depression, school issues, my birth family doing an ambush phone call on my seventeenth birthday, but I cracked big time.
One suicide attempt, that I now look back on as 'just' self mutilation, where I shredded my wrists with scissors and knives and stuff. Six months later, an overdose of the antidepressant pills I was supposed to be getting better on. That was the real attempt, a death or glory attitude to completely tuning out.
Obviously I survived.
After a spot of recovery working for three years, and a boost to my spirits and my self sufficiency by travelling in Europe and working in London, the next knock to my self esteem came with H. Bloody computer, meeting H on the other side of the Pacific - but that raises another interesting question - why have I never been able to find a potential partner in the same city as I have been in, why have my relationships always started off by long distance?
Easy answer would be the self esteem and the usual pall of negativity around me, at least in the realm of meeting women, but it is a thought that I would like to dig at a bit more, get some sort of deeper meaning or explanation from it.
Vancouver Island and Victoria were brilliant, but Ireland was a nightmare. There were good spots in there, good in bitterweet ways, but why oh why did I have to spend three grand on the plane ticket in the first place - cost benefit analysis completely out the window.
I had work to throw myself into, on arrival back in New Zealand. Lucky that, otherwise I may have done something drastic. My personal life, not the greatest at the best of times back then, was completely shredded for the next six months at least.
I think those three things were the major self esteem shredding moments in my life - the teasing, the suicide attempt, the truly madly deeply falling apart so spectacularly. Compared to those, even the arguments I had with K the last couple of months I was in Canada seem minor by comparison. Hindsight is always good for those comparisons.
And have been a bit down this week so far. Work is soul destroying, and even though I try to convince myself that these things go in cycles, the only way that I can see things improving is hiring more staff - though that hasn't happened in eighteen months, and the company is on a retrenchment drive for the forseeable future. And the targets they set, I have tried and tried and tried, but I don't know if I will ever reach them.
I do my best, but whether that is good enough or not, who knows? And I'm sure I am being harder on myself than my bosses ever would be, but eh, it's a down cycle, rather than straight out depression.
And I'm sure it is all part of the taking stock at my thirtieth birthday thing, which is in a couple of weeks - what have I done with my life, what direction is it going, what possible plans could I put into place. What's going on, perhaps, in three words.
More later
Paul
And I got to thinking, when did it all start going wrong, thinking self esteem wise. I was always a quietish child, and have been terrified of and subservient to authority ever since I got a talking to from the teacher about a fight I was involved in at age six, or maybe seven.
Apart from that I think I had a pretty quiet school life while still in New Zealand - I was short, and I had glasses, and I didn't play sports because of those glasses, but it wasn't until I got to Australia at age ten that I really remember any bullying happening. Short, glasses and, the most crucial part, an accent. You know that cliche about kids can be so cruel? Well, I found out it was true.
And, rather than wasting energy fighting it, because I was small and lightly built and I would have been pummelled if I ever tried to fight, I took all the teasing and bullying in - it was never physical bullying, don't want to give that impression, but words that cut deeply. So deeply in fact that I haven't been able to get the splinters out since.
It also went along with my submissive nature that, rather than trying to point out what was wrong with people's perceptions, I took all that they said on board, and refined it so that I would get the digs in before anyone else did. A habit that has stuck with me ever since, I always take on criticism much more easily than praise, no alpha male here.
And, something that I just thought of, even my group of friends in Oz first time around made fun of me. Now, I always thought that I had difficulty making good friends (I can make average friends with people at the drop of a hat) because I had three primary schools and two high schools, but the thought I just had was that if my friends teased me along with everyone else, maybe I am scared of getting close to anyone again because of that? Or perhaps a combination of the two reasons.
Running with the thought, thinking further, I think that I have made fun of myself in front of new groups of friends ever since I left high school - or have tried to melt into the walls so much that I may as well not been there.
The thing I had most pride in throughout my school life was my grades. I was an A to A minus student in primary school, and I started out an A to B student in high school. For some reason I was never able to really study for exams, I was always better at remembering something when first taught and keeping it in my brain. I am sure I have described elsewhere in this blog - I wrote together a good 'Depression' series sometime last year - how I became a lazy B student, and how I started stressing about assignments. Not so much exams, just assignments, but still that was bad enough.
For some reason, after I had discussed my options with my parents, I decided to go to high school for the final year, rather than go out on a technical college course, and that was another bad decision in my life. I can't remember exactly what made me crack, a perfect storm kind of thing, depression, school issues, my birth family doing an ambush phone call on my seventeenth birthday, but I cracked big time.
One suicide attempt, that I now look back on as 'just' self mutilation, where I shredded my wrists with scissors and knives and stuff. Six months later, an overdose of the antidepressant pills I was supposed to be getting better on. That was the real attempt, a death or glory attitude to completely tuning out.
Obviously I survived.
After a spot of recovery working for three years, and a boost to my spirits and my self sufficiency by travelling in Europe and working in London, the next knock to my self esteem came with H. Bloody computer, meeting H on the other side of the Pacific - but that raises another interesting question - why have I never been able to find a potential partner in the same city as I have been in, why have my relationships always started off by long distance?
Easy answer would be the self esteem and the usual pall of negativity around me, at least in the realm of meeting women, but it is a thought that I would like to dig at a bit more, get some sort of deeper meaning or explanation from it.
Vancouver Island and Victoria were brilliant, but Ireland was a nightmare. There were good spots in there, good in bitterweet ways, but why oh why did I have to spend three grand on the plane ticket in the first place - cost benefit analysis completely out the window.
I had work to throw myself into, on arrival back in New Zealand. Lucky that, otherwise I may have done something drastic. My personal life, not the greatest at the best of times back then, was completely shredded for the next six months at least.
I think those three things were the major self esteem shredding moments in my life - the teasing, the suicide attempt, the truly madly deeply falling apart so spectacularly. Compared to those, even the arguments I had with K the last couple of months I was in Canada seem minor by comparison. Hindsight is always good for those comparisons.
And have been a bit down this week so far. Work is soul destroying, and even though I try to convince myself that these things go in cycles, the only way that I can see things improving is hiring more staff - though that hasn't happened in eighteen months, and the company is on a retrenchment drive for the forseeable future. And the targets they set, I have tried and tried and tried, but I don't know if I will ever reach them.
I do my best, but whether that is good enough or not, who knows? And I'm sure I am being harder on myself than my bosses ever would be, but eh, it's a down cycle, rather than straight out depression.
And I'm sure it is all part of the taking stock at my thirtieth birthday thing, which is in a couple of weeks - what have I done with my life, what direction is it going, what possible plans could I put into place. What's going on, perhaps, in three words.
More later
Paul
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