Richard to Rick

 So anyone who knows me, knows I don't drive. I do have a license, I just got it recently (a few years ago)...I don't drive because I am extremely nervous driving which I am sure is just a lack of experience issue but knowing why doesn't change the fact that I am nervous. So anyhow I have a job interview on Wednesday in the city, I prefer public transit, which should be fine for the interview but if I get the job it may be an issue due to the fact I don't live in the city and there may be evening shift, there is intercity transit but it only runs for the 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the early evening...so that might be an issue..fuck my intent of moving here was to stay debt free but now I may have to buy a car and take on all the attached financial responsibility....fuck

 Man if I don't find a job fucking soon... On a positive note, spoke to my ex yesterday(through texts). She randomly messaged me to check how I was doing and such, I think she may have been a bit lonely as well considering the previous day had been valentines day. We had a nice civil adult conversation. I got a little emotional for a couple moments but I am resisting the urge to message her today and apologize for being emotional. She said I have to feel my feelings to be able to heal. It was nice to speak to her either way, I still hurt and miss her so knowing that she actually cares about my welfare means a lot. ..huh funny how that works, as I am writing this I get a message...I have a job interview next Wednesday. Funny how that works.

Yesterday was rough. Really down and blue, and still pretty depressed today as well. I just want my old life back. Do not get me wrong I am glad I had someplace to go and I can't thank my friend enough for giving me a place. ....but this is not my home, I want my home and my wife back. I miss her so much...I just want my life back.

 So it's been a few days since I posted anything. Really I don’t have a lot to say at the moment. ..really what can I say? The person I care/cared about the most said she didn’t want to be with me anymore so I packed up and left and every bit of it sucked. I miss her more than I have missed anything in my life, but I can’t even tell her that. So now I sit around being depressed and the last 3 or 4 days have been rough, and pretty fucking lonely. She wasn’t wrong we did need to be apart, we were too co-dependent I just wished I knew back when the cracks started to show that it was heading this way..maybe I could have done something. ..maybe it wouldn’t have been a complete separation...but maybe it would have been, maybe we were beyond saving. ....maybe this was always going to be our future. It still fucking sucks. It still hurts. I need a hug from my wife because she was the one who could always make me smile but now my smile is gone. Oh Jesus I sound like a poem written by a lo...

So its February 3 rd , and moving day was Jan 31 st . It is all done, the worst of it is over, saying goodbye to the cats really sucked, but I am here and I am all moved in, now just to unpack. I think today will probably be a little light on the unpacking and such, I need to give my back a break. I need to go out and pick up as few random odds and ends and then I will probably just pick at the unpacking. I don’t really have much to add today, I am just too tired and sore and the last few days have been pretty uneventful other than actually physically moving. I need to take a couple of me days..and then I will come back and see what I have to say.

Being an artist is funny and frustrating. I recently posted a bunch of pictures on Instagram and other social media sites of some of the work I have done. Everyone liked my work and were excited to see the progress on a painting I am currently working on. While I am sure they all meant all the kind comments and praise, it's funny how all that praise disappears when they ask how much a painting is, like they really intended to buy it. They ask the price and I tell them and then either the comments stop all together or I get a reply like “well I will get back to you” or “it's really too big/small for the room I was thinking about”. When I first started painting many of my paintings were given away, simply because in my mind they were not good enough to sell and I was painting as a hobby, not as a passion. However in recent years, I have stopped giving them away for a few reasons, I have moved on to higher-end canvas and paint, I also use much larger canvas and that gets expens...

I am not impressed, not even slightly. I spent an hour last night deleting profiles from singles websites. I personally did not sign up for them, but they were profiles with my name, my picture and some of my interests. They all used Richard as my name instead of Rick, all the pictures were pictures that could have been “borrowed” from my Facebook page and all the profile information was common knowledge information like my favorite band and favorite pastimes. I have my suspicions on who it may have been, but I am not going to pursue it as I am sure they thought they were doing something good, I don’t think it was meant as a joke. Either way, it is way too soon for me to be thinking about something like that, I need to be single for a while...and no G.H. I don’t think it was you. So I am 99% done packing, I have to spend a couple hours downstairs in the basement today then later on I have to spend a couple hours sorting comic books. After that, probably Sunday night or Monday I will b...

First off I apologize for my last couple of posts, I just reread them and they are full of punctuation mistakes and a few spelling/grammar mistakes. My writing is done pretty quick, pretty off the cuff and not a lot of time is spent editing. I will try to do better for all my readers...well reader. So in less than a week, I will no longer be a resident of Moncton, having some really mixed emotions about it. The move doesn't really scare me anymore, honestly, I am kind of excited to get out of Moncton but I wish I was moving with T. Leaving her behind is going to be so hard, I know it is the right thing to do, but it still hurts like hell. ..not looking forward to moving day one bit. The packing is going well...I think. I went out and just purchased boxes from the place I am renting the moving truck from. That was painful, spending $50 on empty boxes, but they are nice sturdy big boxes and I just didn't have the time to be running around the city looking for boxes. Most of ...

Still sick. but I am on the mend, I feel better than I did yesterday, so I will take that as a good sign. I know I haven’t really been posting all that frequently, so I will touch on a couple things, but honestly, I haven't had anything to say because other than being sick all I have been doing is sorting my crap and packing my crap. It's kind of a rush job, with lots of boxes labeled like “Random shit I found on my bedside table”. I don’t really have the time to sort shit and say OK well you are going to belong in the box marked “Living room accessories” I am gone in just over a week so shit just needs to get roughly sorted and packed and I can figure out it all out on the other end. It just needs to be packed well enough for me to throw it in the back of a moving truck. I am leaving a lot of things behind, not that I don’t want them its more that I am trying to thin out my belongings. I want to live a life of purpose, of direction but also a life free of constraints...and wh...

 I would rather look back on my life and say "I cannot believe I did that!" Instead of looking back and saying "I wish I had." Love fully and completely. R-

 No post. sick as a dog.

So the time has arrived for me to start packing. The next couple of weeks are going to suck, I still have a week left at work so that's going to take up the majority of my time this week. In the basement there are multiple boxes and bins of random crap to sort through, not to mention all the tools. Upstairs there are 20 years of collecting books to deal with...fuck I am not looking to moving those books, why couldn't I be an illiterate moron...my back already hurts thinking about it. It's OK it will get done, it has to get done. Getting packed is only part of the equation...I still have to get to my new destination which is about 150km(93 miles) or and a half away. Like I can rent a truck easily enough, but no one(me included) wants me driving a big-ass moving truck...especially in the middle of winter. So I need to get someone to drive the truck..sounds simple right, well everyone I know who can help me, either lives there or lives here. So if someone drives a truck f...

 Not going to post anything probably until Sunday....my brain needs a break. I need to spend a couple days not thinking...and just relaxing. Don't worry G.H. I am ok. R-

So my thought process is all over the board today, I am jumping from topic to topic and back again...so this post is probably just going to be a bunch of random thoughts, but that is all I have to give. So I am still alive, I just feel like crap. Depression will do that to you. I haven't been eating properly at all for the last couple of weeks and its starting to catch up with me...on the plus side I am down like 5 pounds(2.7kg) So a good friend told me I should talk to my shrink before packing up and leaving. Honestly, he is probably correct, I don’t think it is going to change anything, I can't stay here in this house much longer as it is just too hard. I can't move on if I am still under the same roof as her and I have no place to stay in my current city if I am not living with her so what choice do I have but to move cities? He is right in the fact that I should probably talk to my shrink before I make any serious life choices and changes... so I have an appointme...

  I am really on edge today, very jumpy and anxious also super depressed. Being bipolar is not fun. I think a lot of it is that I am nervous about starting over. I don’t want to start over, I want my wife back I want my life back...I want to try and fix this, from her perspective she has been trying for a long time. I didn’t know it was this bad...I never thought after 20 years it would just end...my world is crumbling around me and there is nothing I can do to shore it up. I have to watch it crumble. I have tried too hard all my life and it was always a fight..tried too hard just to function ..not to prosper, just function. I am so tired of fighting. I am so tired of losing. I am so tired of the struggle. I am so tired... I am just so done with it all... fuck R-

Struggle verb make  forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint or constriction.  It seems to me I have always struggled. I am sure I am not unique in this, but this is my story. All my life everything I wanted to do I struggled to try and get there and more often than not, even before I met T ..long before I struggled. I struggled to fit in, I struggled to concentrate, I struggled in school(because it bored me immensely), and I rode a skateboard. I struggled to learn any tricks. I finished high school and I tried to get into college, I got into a bunch of schools but I struggled to find a way to pay for it so I didn’t go. I struggled to find a job I didn’t hate doing. I eventually went back to school...for marketing...yuck. I actually did really good in the course...but I hated it. I met a girl, we moved in and I struggled to be happy in life. I was happy with her...just not for the rest of my life. I have always felt held back..as hard a...

...back to work today. Really not looking forward to this, because I am sure by this point everyone at work knows about the divorce. I imagine a lot of them will have comments or opinions..which right now I don’t need. The only thing I need from my friends and/or co-workers is support. I need to move forward and stop thinking about the future. Rehashing the hows and whys this is happening or talking about whose fault it is or isnt with them will not help me. I love her and wish this was fixable but it takes two to rebuild and she tried to keep it together for 20 years. I wish I knew what she was going through, what I put her through..but I was too tied up in being a bi polar mess so, my marriage is over. I never get to hold my wife again and that is ripping me apart, however I cannot focus on that, if I keep thinking about it I am going to spin myself out and end up in the hospital in a padded room. Forward to the Camino people...let me move on. R-

For the next little while my posts are going to be shorter and/or not as often. I took a few days off after the divorce talk to get my head right, and I go back to work tomorrow.  Also over the next 2 or 3 weeks, I need to pack and move..so my ass is going to be busy. I will still try and give SOME updates..but no promises. Cheers R-

 Today might be a bit of a boring read, but I need to start thinking of the logistics of it all. If any readers have any thoughts or tips please comment below at the bottom of the post. Actually please comment regardless as I am going through a very hard and shitty time and could use the moral support. I am experiencing a lot of self-doubt at the moment, like can I actually do this? Can I move out, be single again, train, save a bunch of money and walk the Camino? I asked my ex. “Am I crazy to think I can do this? Maybe it's just my bi-polar brain saying I should and can do this when in actuality it's a bad idea.” to which she replied “I don’t think it’s your bi-polar brain telling you, you can do this, I think it’s your bipolar brain telling you, you can't do this! ” Which helped a lot. She may be my ex, but it doesn't mean we don’t want the best for each other. Anyhow back to the task at hand. I know what my end goal is....the Camino. So now how do I make that ...

If I break everything down to the simplest terms. The reason my marriage failed....my mental health. (not the only reason but  a big one) The reason I am doing this blog...my mental health. The reason I plan to hike the Camino...my mental health. Starting to see the pattern? What exactly is wrong with my mental health?  Well first off you should know that both my parents had/have poor mental health. My father was VERY bipolar (self-medicated with Alcohol most of his life) and my mother has d ysthymia which is a  long-lasting form of depression. It’s also called a persistent depressive disorder. People with this condition may also have bouts of major depression at times. That's where my genetics come from so you can only imagine how screwy my mental health is. Growing up in that house was...interesting, not overly fun...but interesting.  I do have an older sister but I haven't discussed this blog with her yet and until I do I won't be talking about her because I love ...