Chapter Thirty Six:
Words as Hard as CannonBalls
“Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. “Ah, then,” exclaim the aged ladies, “you shall be sure to be misunderstood.” Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 2
I continued to speak my mind and do what I thought was right. On my way to rock bottom, I, in my fury and contempt for certain individuals, told them precisely what I thought of them. I was even arrested one night, and yet,... still, I continued to become more angry,..! I continued to work at jobs that didn’t suit me and I continued to act out of fear of ridicule and stubbornness. I thought I should continue with my OCD management measures of ERP, because I hadn’t yet accepted that they didn’t work. I still thought there was merit in continuing on the construction path.
After a while I got laid off from the first company, and then I struggled to find work, so I decided to look at the job postings in Grand Prairie Alberta. I worked for a company based out of Grande Prairie. Sometimes I rented a room in a house and other times there were some jobs in “camp.” (“Camp” is when you work away from home, usually in a remote setting, and the employer provides you with accommodations, usually the camps where I stayed consisted of a bunch of trailers neatly placed together in a way that kind of resembled a motel. In camp you usually had your own room (trailer) which was a private room with a window in it and a desk to sit at, along with a toilet and shower and a sink, bed, and dresser….) I made a decent income but the living conditions were poor, and I was away from home all of the time.
In 2019, I was working as a welding apprentice in Alberta and British Columbia. My dad offered to help us buy a house. We accepted. We bought a house and it was nice to finally be putting money into our own pockets instead of paying for someone else’s house. The day that we signed the deal, I got Laid off! We had the house, but I worried about the mortgage! My life was still very difficult due to a nearly constant presence of anxiety. I struggled on,..., but I still found it necessary to find a solution to my dilemma that had now been constant since 1998….
One Sunday afternoon I was watching YouTube videos and I saw a video, a TED talk in which a man was speaking about a fellow named Gary Webber. Gary Webber was a person who had written books about his experiences with meditation. I started to dig deeper and I was intrigued by what I found! According to the TedX talk, Gary Webber had written some very informative books about meditation. According to Gary Webber, after meditating for 25 years, two hours a day, everyday without fail, one day while doing yoga, he witnessed his S.R.I.N, or in his words “Self referential informal narrative,” or, in plain language his thoughts, just simply ceased, and they didn’t ever come back!
I watched carefully, and then I watched it again. I immediately ordered Gary’s books and I began to read them. Soon I was trying meditation. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I tried…. At first It didn’t go very well.
At the same time, I couldn’t find any “camp work,” and I still detested confrontations. I was laid off of work and so I took a job on a pipeline as a member of the coating crew.
On that job, I was bombarded by obsessions, and it was a terrible time. I was so worried and sad! I would think about things from my past, and they would send me into a discombobulating tailspin! I would think of all-manner of imagined scenarios wherein I was “at fault” for some kind of disaster! It was so disturbing. At that time I was not meditating at all but I was still doing Exposure and Response Prevention. I wasn’t working, and it had never worked! I was so low and tired and really just worn out. Christmas holidays came and I seriously and painfully contemplated ending my life…. I didn’t know what to do,....
My wife suggested I go to the hospital. I also reached out to my mother. She listened to me and tried to comfort me. The doctors referred me to a specialist and I waited for my appointment. I was in terrible spirits. I couldn’t stop my mind from continuously worrying. It was the same old tune, and I was beyond tired of it.
The doctors had no solutions. They listened to me and they speculated, maybe I had ADHD— . They decided to try an ADHD medication, Vyvanse, and to try some different medications. All this time I had continued taking Paxil…, they had me try Vyvanse and it did calm me down markedly, but it must be noted that the Doctors really had no idea of what I was going through and even after all the years of my person researching Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and my reading of so many different articles and books on OCD, the Doctors didn’t automatically think that what I was describing was really indicative of OCD! Why was this? I think it was because we may think that doctors are super human individuals but this is simply not the case. When Doctors study to become doctors, in university, when they finish their last exams, they may choose to never read another word about any illness! It’s that simple,.... Some may read, voluntarily, but to think that they always do is simply cultural and social bias that doctors like doing work for nothing, and judging from my personal experience I can tell you that this is NOT the case. In short, they didn’t read the books and articles that I had read, and they had no plans on ever doing so. So they concocted their own theories on what my malady was according to their “expert” opinions,....
Around this time I had finished my final allotment of classes for the welding program. Even at trade school I had very disturbing obsessions and compulsions. While I was there I met a fellow and we got to talking. He said he knew of a shop in Calgary that he had worked at and he said that although the boss was a most unfriendly and difficult sort of person, that he could put a word in for me and I could likely procure employment from the disagreeable man,.... I did wish to work locally, because there were no jobs with Ipac, and so, I thought, since I was technically now a journeyman welder, that it would be silly not to work as one. And that it might be just what I needed, to go to work and finally really have an opportunity to build up my inner fortitude and perhaps discover that I actually loved constructing things while being timed, and watched very closely for any signs of ineptitude or errors in judgment,....
I went down to the welding shop and spoke to the owner. He was a European guy, very impatient, confrontational, and generally disagreeable. I took the job. I was going to change myself. I was working with people who could barely speak English and who were very knowledgeable and interested in building things. There was a big layout table there where you could lay out parts and draw lines for the layout and tack stuff together,…. I absolutely hated it. I wasn’t good at it, and I didn’t want to be! The guys there said to me, “like,... what are you doing here?” It was the third time I had been asked the question…, it was because people thought that my talents would be better served in a different occupation.
I quit that job after a couple of months, and I was at a terrible loss. Then, I spotted an ad for a labourer at an Earthworks company. I inquired and I got hired. I was a labourer. I was worried that I wasn’t using my welding ticket, I had spent a lot of money to become a welder but I thought at least I would have steady income for the winter. But everything was bad. I didn't get many shifts. I didn’t mesh with the guys. I felt out of place….
Throughout that time I went on Employment Insurance and I would sit at home and think and worry and sometimes weep,… because now I was at a total loss of what I was going to do to turn my life around….