Feb.2/12

Good Evening All...
   How are you all this evening, afternoon or morning? I am very good. Thank you all for reading this blog and giving me a reason to keep writing. It has been therapeutic in a way. Not that I need therapy, okay I do, but that is not why I am writing this. But it has helped me none the less. So...where were we? Oh yes, I got fired. I think that that was THE biggest slap in the face I have ever received. I really thought that they were a different company. I was really pissed off too. Really pissed!! I got cleared because I WANTED to go to work, not because I was ready to go. Obviously if I had the smallest of inklings that I was going to get fired, I wouldn't have went in. I did get a small measure of revenge out of the deal. Real small mind you. Krystle came down to Calgary with me right? So they want me to hand in the keys to the truck and ask them how am I supposed to get home? Get a ticket for the bus they say. What about my wife? Well, we didn't ask you to bring her. No, you didn't ask me to bring anything. When we went down to turn over the truck to my good boss, he suggested that we rent a car. So I got the most expensive one I could within reason and drove us home. Plus they had to pay for the vehicle to be returned to Calgary. lol
   Anyways, I tried my hardest to look into suing them. Every lawyer I spoke to really didn't reccomend it. They had covered their proverbial butts of course. I talked to human rights, Red Deer Mental Health, another advocate group here in RD and no one was willing to take on a giant. I think that that is one of the reasons I chose to write about this and tell you all about it. What would have happened if I had cancer? Would I have been fired? How about if I developed Parkinson's Disease? Would I have been fired? HOW ABOUT if I developed Diabetes? What then? Why is there such a "look down the nose" at people with a mental issue? Why? Why are they/we shunned? I don't have Leprosy or Aids for pete's sake!! And even then, why should they be shunned? I tried my best to beat them, but I had been beaten again. I hate to lose!
   Another part of this is a little funny here too. About 10 days before I was fired, I had a guy call me asking if I was looking for work. I had had his business card from a whole lotta years earlier and had sent him a resume the spring before of 2010. Of course, I told him that I was employed but he told me to let him know if anything changed. So around the first week of April, I called to tell him that things had changed. At the time, they weren't hiring but that they were going to bring a few guys on around the beginning of May. So I had a whole month of doing nothing but building birdhouses and getting ready for the summer. During this time, I was still doing my counselling classes, still working through my workbooks and reading my books and still trying to kill those guys that fired me. Not literally of course, but end their company. I started my new job around the 3rd or 4th of May.
   One of my first days there, I was informed that I was to go down to Calgary and do some in house/computer training. I was really hoping that it was on the ground floor of some warehouse, but I knew in my heart that it was not going to be that way. Sure enough, it wasn't. When I got to the building that day, I was told that they were up on the 16th floor. My heart sank. Now, I had gotten into the habit recently of putting wash cloth's in the freezer to have for my head/armpits/groin, wherever on my body that would cool me down. Needless to say, I had a taken a cloth that day with me along with a 500ml bottle of half frozen water. I was supposed to be in my "class" at 08:00 that morning. I sat down in the lobby with a frozen cloth on my forehead, sipping half frozen water and talking to Krystle on the phone all the while sobbing a little bit. I couldn't seem to get onto the elevator. My mind was winning again. I was scared of going up, I was scared of being trapped in the elevator, I was scared of going up there and being around guys who didn't know what was wrong with me. In the end, with all the encouragement in the world from my wife and talking to here while doing it...I beat that friggin elevator!! I also beat the classroom up on the 16th floor. Of course, I didn't tell anyone that I had an anxiety disorder, I told them all that I was afraid of heights and tights spaces.
   I wish that I could have told them the truth, but I just wasn't at that point in my life yet where I didn't and don't care anymore what people think of me or my "disease". I am here now, but I wasn't then. I worked through quite a bit of stuff with that elevator/classroom. I didn't conquer everything there, but I could feel that things were starting to change for me for the good. Yes, I was still learning my new toolbox and yes, I was still a lot more anxious than I ever wanted to be or even needed to be; but things were coming along. Funny how I lost that job NOT because of my mental illness, but for something else that inflicted me. And it was on the day that they were preparing me for surgery because they didn't know what was wrong.
   Have a good evening and love your family.
Shawn