Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Close to Home

Lately my mind and moods have been changing a bit too much for my liking and it seems to be getting worse, so while my mood was temporarily changed in a heretofore unknown way, I placed a call to our employee assistance line and talked to a counselor who asked me a series of questions, pronounced me severely depressed and said she'd set up an appointment for me as soon as possible. I found it funny that one of the questions was " how much time have you missed from work as a result?" , which amused me because I still have leftover vacation time from last year and haven't missed anytime to speak of . Hmmm. Maybe that's why I'm so blue...anyway, my insurance covers five visits, so I've nothing to lose. That old cliche about 'admitting you have a problem' is true. Once an initial wave of fear passed, I found myself feeling better just for taking the step. I half-joked with a friend that I was afraid they'd have people waiting at my door to lock me up in a padded cell, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen.

On the bus home, my passenger-pal Jean told me that there was a fire on the [xxxx] block of my street and asked me if I'd seen the news. I hadn't, so she pulled it up on her phone-gadget and we found a TV news picture of my block engulfed in smoke, fire trucks and firefighters everywhere. I looked around for orderlies from the psych ward , but didn't see any, which was a relief, but it was still pretty stressful to see that picture and wonder if it was my house that was burning.

The fire was pretty bad but I don't think anyone was injured and it was at the other end of the block, across the corner from me, so we didn't get smoke damage, just a lingering chemically smell in the air.

By the time I got home the fire had been extinguished and the smoke had cleared.




It was a reasonably warm night, so I sat on the stoop for a while, watching the lights and wondering what the future holds next.

4 comments:

billy pilgrim said...

if they give you happy pills and tell you to take one a day don't go for it.

take 4 on monday and 3 on wednesday.

Allan said...

Ha! Good thing I'm not into pills anymore.

yellowdoggranny said...

I hope you get the help you need my friend, I have been worried about you.

Craig D said...

This is a great first step. pal!

Just keep in mind that you may have to try more than one councellor. If you can work with somebody who is a good match, you will never regret this.