Still Nuts

Steel nuts (get it?)

When most of us talk about our Dream Job, we're expressing an ideal. It is the thing that we would most want to do if we had the opportunity, the training, and the choice. My dream job is exactly what its name implies - it comes to me in my sleep, and it's visiting me more and more frequently of late.

I am alone outside a building that I've never seen before. When I enter, there is no one to meet me; the place, its purpose and its equipment are completely unfamiliar. As I wander from room to room to room, I am joined by little groups of anxious strangers, who speak in whispers to each other, but never to me. Finally, we arrive at a locked steel door. The reason we are here is behind that door, but I can't open it. And apparently, I'm the one in charge.

Gee, I wonder what THAT could mean...

Somebody mistook me for a psychologist yesterday. It was an error that I was quick to correct, but for a moment or two, I let myself enjoy it. A number of my friends tell me that they think that mental illness is a gift. Perhaps it is. If so, I wish I'd kept the receipt. But I'm also aware that I'm lucky. I'm blessed with resources that many of my peers don't have, and I know of many that they don't.

Through the classes, workshops and support groups I've become involved with, I have found that there are tools to help me recover, techniques to help me stay healthy and people who want to see me do that. I've been given the help, I've taken advantage of the facilities, I learned the landmarks, and now it's time for me to pay some of that back.

My regular readers may (I hope) have noticed that there has been a absence of posts to Limited Vision lately. I have been fine, I have been busy, and I have been (mostly) content. My problem is that I've been composing a (just one?) post on the subject of my depression and anxiety, and I've been beating about this particular bush for the past two weeks.

It's one thing to sit in front of an empty textbox and key in a few random observations, when the height of your aspirations is just the odd clever phrase. It's quite another altogether to expose your naked viscera to the idle inspection of curious strangers, and that's what some of this has felt like. But here is the door, and maybe this is why we're here today:

If you feel that you're lost, ask for directions. If you think there's no hope, ask for help - it is there. If you think you're at the end of your rope, there are thousands of people at the other end who will be grateful for the opportunity to help pull you back up. If you think you're alone, guess again. There is a chance for all of us, and with the right help, you'll find yours.

Here endeth the lesson - go in peace.

Be very, very well.