|
First of all, I do not have any type of diagnosis. One reason I am posting here, is to get some feelings out, and be able to vent. Also, it's a place I feel doesn't have a ton of traffic, so it seems sort of discreet in the grand scheme of things. I'm not sure what I am looking for, advice, reassurance, validation, I don't know, but I guess we'll see.
Apologies in advance for the length of this post.
I have been dealing with a ton of anxiety lately. I mean enough that I have hard time getting to sleep. When I wake up on weekends, my mind floods with all these thoughts and again, no sleep. Enough that I feel that sometimes I can't breathe or catch my breathe.
We're in some pretty serious financial difficulty, and as much as I know a lot of people currently are, and probably more than us, I still feel very frightened for our future.
My wife and I are both extremely lucky to still have good, decent paying jobs. She's solidified herself at her law firm very nicely as a legal assistant. They recently laid off 7 people, and they didn't once look at my wife. She's very good at what she does. She's worth every penny and more, but because of the economy within the firm, there are no raises in the future. I have been at the same place for 3 years now and am 2nd in seniority. I do my job well. I work hard and I believe have solidified my positon there as good as anyone can nowadays. I may be lucky enough to see a whopping 2% raise this year. Make no mistake, it's better than nothing!
Anyway, for some reason the past few months my anxiety levels have been going up a lot. I couldn't really figure out why, besides the usual. Money troubles, kids, life, the normal stuff. We have a 17yr old son who has been diagnosed as Disorganised Schizophrenia(NOS) and have been dealing with him, all his life. Frankly, he's not the source of my anxiety. He's actually been doing extremely well and continues to do well. Kudos to him and if I may, my wife, daughter and I for all our collective hard work, therapy to get to this point. We bought him a set of drums for Christmas and he's been doing really well on them and continues to improve all the time. We also have a 13yr old daughter, nothing about her, other than a very stubborn, typical 13yr old girl. She's very creative, is an artist and a ravenous reader.
Back to my anxiety.
I think I figured it out yesterday.
I had taken the dog for a walk and it dawned on me what I was feeling. I want, I need to move back home. By back home, I mean to the area where my folks live. Ontario Canada. Currently we're in Washington state. It became very clear, and the reasons for it, I had not been seeing until just that moment. You see, I am an 8yr cancer survivor. My folks were here for me the whole way. They lived with us, they cooked, cleaned and bought groceries. Everything they could do to help me and my family. 5 years later, my only brother, younger, was also diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately he was not as lucky as I was and passed away 2 years ago. I realised yesterday that I was all my parents had. Yes they have brothers and sisters around Ontario and Quebec, but they are getting older as well and of course have their own families and lives. It dawned on me that I needed to get home. Home in time to help them if and when they might need it. They are only 69, both and are in good health, very active so there are no current worries.
So I talked to my loving wife and basically pitched a 5 year plan to move back to Canada. It felt good. It felt right. She was all for it. It would actually bring her closer to her family in northern Florida, Southern Georgia.
So that alleviated that stress, but then created new stress. We are toast economically, our home has lost value, we're upside down, we owe credit cards, bills, car payments, the usual stuff. I'm 45yrs old and having to move and start a new job might be a lot harder than I think. I don't know. Although it's been 20 years, I still have connections in Toronto, so I may be able to press them in the years to come and see what happens. I've begun a list of what we would need to do. How we could do it. Ideas of how to get out of our financial situation, drastic and otherwise. Job searches in the areas of our fields, rents, locations. Sponsoring my wife and kids, so they are legal and able to work when we hit the ground. Granted I have several ideas of where I might want to live, having grown up there.
Short of winning the lottery, or coming into some decent money, I know we will need to make some sacrifices, make cuts, but feel the task is quite daunting. I also feel like, if we work hard, and put our minds to it, we can do it.
This is the first day of starting to build a plan. I've begun a list with questions and goals. Everything from filing for bankruptcy, giving a lot up to free up money in order to start saving for the move. Bookmarking Job search websites.
As I mentioned above, I don't know what I am looking for here. Maybe it was just typing it out. Maybe it was to elicit ideas from some kind folks in our DU community.
|