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Hey there. Welcome to my new blog. And to my first post - a post about how I was supposed to get married, lost my mind because of that and woke up ultimately.
Firstly, for the blog name - why "big-big"? ... I will explain my "Think big-big" concept a bit later., so for now, let's simply say I've reached that phase of my life, when I want to do something big... And yes, this blog is going to be in English.
Well, where to start? To understand what will be happening, it's needed to understand what happened a bit. This post will explain what happened to me in 2014 - and it will also explain why...
This year I was supposed to get married. I didn't. The wedding was cancelled 14 days before it should have happened. "Oh my, what the hell..." you can say - as most of my/our friends did... or "what the hell happened to you?" when they knew that it was cancelled because of me. Well I wish I could say that I simply changed my mind...
My ex-girlfriend / ex-fiancée and I were together for almost 6 years. It was my first long term relationship. We had a little fight from time to time, but we always "made it" through somehow. We always said we are quite ok with each other and we can make it further. We didn't. I even cheated on Her. 3 times. In guy-eyes perspective not the "full-way" but it usually does not matter for girls at the end. Why did I do it? Because I was looking for something else, trying to compensate for something and also because I thought it was not such a big deal and most importantly, because I didn't have balls big enough to end the whole relationship. It's nice that I had this kind-of-excuse agreement with Her saying "Should anything like that happen, I don't wanna know unless it means something more." Well, it didn't mean something more, so she didn't know, but guess what - a lot of our common friends knew. And guess what once again, she found out just after we broke up... So my recommendation - should have anything like that happen to you, make sure that no-one knows about that - and right after that, question the whole relationship... (or be sure, that you have the kind of relationship which is open enough for this)
... but back to the story - in September 2013, I felt that we were "a long time" together and that something should happen... so I proposed to Her. As She wanted it quite a lot that time, the answer was quite obvious. But right after that I was like "Good, you've got it, I don't wanna hear about it for some time". At the same time, my boss changed for the fourth time in just a year and it wasn't exactly easy at work (I thought it wasn't). With Her, we made it quite peacefully to 2014, but then it started going the bad way.
We needed to start preparing the wedding and kind of dark thoughts started to sneak into my mind. Thoughts that I was not gonna make it. In January, on this party with our new marketing director, I was promoted. I felt like shit, thinking "why are you promoting me, you are going to fire me in few months anyway." There was still lots of stuff at work and the wedding was closer and closer. From the beginning of the year I started to be in constant stress. Things continued for few more more months and I found out, that I have serious trouble with sleeping, with my memory and decision-making ability... and also that I do not want to do anything and must force myself into everything.
First what came up to my mind was that it could be from the work. I came to this doctor which comes every week to our offices, asking "is that a burnout"? "Not sure, might be" was the answer... No, it was not, I wasn't working that hard for that long time... but I wasn't able to admit that it was the wedding. "We have this psychiatrist coming to our clinic every week, try to speak to him" was the final outcome from the doc. Good, I called the clinic and got a date... in one month. "I'm not gonna make it" was what I thought... In the meantime, She was my greatest support, taking care of me every damn single day, when I was coming home destroyed, although she had lots of troubles of her own and was planning the wedding.
... well, I had a date in one month at the psychiatrist at our clinic because of the May bank holidays and becuase I didn't know what was happening to me, never experienced this before, I started to be really desperate. I found, that this psychiatrist has a clinic of his own here on Zahradni mesto, 5 mins from my home, so I called him asking for immediate appointment. "We are full" was the answer, "try to call the crisis centers". I "thanks-god" told him my number and as I didn't know what to do, I went to this psychiatric ambulance near Karlovo namesti. I felt like shit, afraid of everything, looking at a man shouting something in the hospital gardens, thinking that I might end up the same way... I waited like 20 minutes and a young doc came to see me: "I cannot do anything for you, you do not seem to need immediate aid, find a standard psychiatrist."... fortunatelly, this "standard psychiatrist" from Zahradni mesto called back inviting me for the next day.
It is good to say, that everytime I talked about it, I felt much better... for a few hours. However... I said all what I wanted and was able to, we agreed that both, the relationship and the work could have a share on my state and... I got pills for sleeping - "Good, I am crazy"... I started to google it. When you google antidepressants, you will find a mixture of views, but as people are used to write almost only about things which do not work, you will find a lot of negative reactions... As I was hardly able to have my own opinion on anything at that moment, I was afraid to take the pills, but I did at least a third of a pill each evening, which made it possible for me to fall asleep. I was waking up sweating as hell each night.
2 weeks later I came back to the doc, saying that it is not better, maybe even worse. I got another pill, this time a standard antidepressant and doc asking me "Take it, please." I stopped fighting it. Then it happened one more time, me ending with 1 pill in the evening and 2 in the morning, but nothing really fixing the cause. It wasn't good, it was bad. If you haven't experienced it, you cannot understand, how bad it can be. It feels like you lost your intelligence even if you know you were smart before... it feels like losing your hands, because you think, or at least don't know, whether it gets back and when. You can find out more about it an article here and in a book here (in CZ only) and the best description could be this:
It had also some funny parts (from today's perspective) - like when I went from work to the psychiatrist, having my car half a way there... when we finished our session (15 mins, no deep talk, he is a doctor, he makes a basic "screening" and writes prescriptions), I jumped back to my car and wanted to drive back to work - I had 2 options - to go back to half-way there, leave the car there and go by tram or to go home and go for tram from there. Well, I simply wasn't able to decide about that. I was sitting in the car like for 5 minutes, unable to go. When I somehow decided, I drove back to street from the parking spot and... didn't know again. I "decided" again and drove for the half-way variant. At the next crossing I changed my mind again and drove home... :-)
It's interesting, that when you want, for the mid-strenght depression, you are able to pretend everything is ok. You feel you have to pretend, because you think, that when your friends find out, they will abandon you. So I was sitting on a sofa at my friends', watching ice-hockey game, sometimes thinking who the hell are we playing with, having no idea what happened a few minutes ago and thinking just about that whether they find out or not... at the same time having Her as your biggest support, who knows, holds your hand and supports you whenever you need it... and wants to marry you... But not for long, when you are unable to give it back.
The wedding was closer and closer and a question came, whether to cancel it. I didn't know... or wasn't able to decide. Once we had this discussion with my boss - who by the way helped me a lot, managing admirably the team where I was for several months almost unable to write an e-mail; at the most demanding period of the year in our firm... I was asking him for everything (literally almost whether I may use the bathroom...). So we had this discussion and he opened to me with troubles of his past, giving me a piece of advice "Don't do anything you could be sorry about in the future. I am not telling you whether to marry her or not, but you need to decide and go for it." Well, I "decided" and I will probably burn in hell for this once - on my way back home, I texted her that "we should cancel the wedding". When I got home, she was a bit upset at first, then we started to talk and cry. She was giving me the engagement ring back and... I asked her to keep it.
Then I went to my family, saying what is happening... my father let me sit in the garden to rest, watching trees and hearing birds... :-)
And my boss with our HR manager arranged 6 weeks of holidays for me to give me a chance to sort my stuff out... thanks once again, if you are reading this!
1 month before the planned wedding, the usual Festival fantazie, where we are used to going every year, came. I was literally escaping from the real world... still on the antidepressants I was drinking till the morning every single day (which went really good). I got some more advice whether to marry her or not and we went home again. I needed to escape again, so I packed my stuff, leaving her at home alone, 3 weeks before the wedding (yes, I will burn twice). I went to my refuge I've used since I can remember - to my aunt in Germany. Four days later, we had a skype call, where we agreed to "postpone" the wedding. As I was feeling that it wasn't going to happen, my state started to go slowly up.
Few days after I came back home and we agreed that it is time to get separated. She packed some stuff, her cat (bye, man) and I drove her to a friend of hers (ours). As we felt this was the goodbye, we were sitting in my car, in the biggest rain of that summer, listening to Cruel Intentions soundtrack, for one hour, crying more than ever in my life.
And that was it, the bitter ending. And I am deeply sorry, Marketa, if you are reading this and I bet this will reach you, that I wasn't able to make it a better way. I won't forget what you did for me this year.
...
After that a lot of things happened, but I would like to mention that I visited a psychologist, I can recommend, her name is Ilona Voldrichova and more importantly, I decided not to let anything like that happen to me again. In this period I went through a lot of webpages looking for help. And I found this guy, Ales Kalina - a couch. I started to dig deeper to find out what was happening to me and why and I found out. If you want to move on with your life, watch a few of his videos on youtube - but do it with open ears and mind.
Well, well... and well again :-) ... what is the outcome of all of this? I found out that I was unhappy all my life, stressed from everything, all the time thinking what others think, allways putting others (unfortunatelly except Marketa, but besides her wedding wish) before myself. You want the ultimate advice for happiness? Place yourself to the first place, otherwise you cannot make others happy... but treat it carefully - give other people respect since your freedom ends where their begins (yes, how deep, I know, but it's truth :-)
And finally, I always knew that I would be able to do anything. Now, when I went through all of this (yes, I stopped using the pills in like 3 weeks when the standard period for this is about 6 months) and when I realized fully that I will be probably only once on this world (at least I won't remember next time), I also want to. And that is the best what happened to me ever.
So please fingers crossed for me and for Marketa to find our new own ways ;-)
EDIT: This could seem to be a bit pesimistic, so be aware, that I came out of this thing stronger than I was ever before. Now I believe I can do anything limited only by physical laws and I have hopefully like 50 years to prove I really can ;-)
... you've made it to this point? wow, thanks for reading :-) It's 7 AM, I have a meeting in 3 hours, well :-)
PS: Maybe a little hint on why I enjoyed the Interstellar movie so much this week - it is a scifi and it made me cry like hell - it was the first time I was able to cry in cinema in long time, so I let that happen... and it blowed my mind away ;-) ... I do not know what Captain America 2 and several other movies I watched in the first half of this year were about, I just fell asleep in the cinema :-) The only movie which caught my attention even in that state was Gravity.
PPS: Thanks a lot, everyone who supported me in that "grey" period of mine.
So cheers guys and don't let anything from my story happen to you. Place yourself to the first place, fight, live and do not ever give up :-)
