Dick is BACK!

Hey guys did you miss me?

Yeah I took a break, but had to... Over the course of the last month pretty much exactly day for day, I was dealing with a major mental breakdown caused by my P.T.S.D. Symptoms. It was not good at all!
Anyhow I'm back to normal, and trust my thinking enough again to come back on the board.

If you are on my FB, you know a lot of what has been going on, but for those who aren't I'll tell the tale. (If you don't want to hear it, the back button is ^^^ that way!)

Anyhow, October started off great, I had friends I was regularly hanging out with, I had more work coming into the paint shop than I knew what to do with, and it was like I had my old life back...
Then one night the nightmares started. I knew something was off, but was having too much fun to worry about it, so I hid that from everyone including Erin. After the nightmares started keeping me awake at night, the flash backs came and I knew what was about to happen, and that there was no way to stop it.

I still tried to keep everything hidden from everyone, because I didn't want my friends to know the full effects of what this disease is actually capable of doing. That turned out to be a big mistake! After maybe getting a couple hours TOTAL of sleep in a week, I went into total mental shutdown mode. I wouldn't eat, I would sit and shake, the constant ringing in my ears got louder, I went pale, and my veins swelled up like garden hoses. I would talk in circles, and say and post things I really shouldn't have, and everything really freaked out my friends, so for a little while I cut myself off from everyone and everything.
The last part of that week, a few friends in MINI-COW, made me get out and go with them up to a little hot springs resort in Wyoming. That was a trip I needed! To be honest, I don't know how I made the 6+ hour drive up there, let alone my 15 minute drive to work every day! It was anxiety attack after anxiety attack, and constant small panic attacks, and they continued throughout the trip.
After one of the panic attacks that came on in the pool, my closest friends decided it was time to go and have a talk, where initially I almost went into a full on blackout, but they kept me out of that by getting me away from everyone as fast as they could. Later on that night though we got back to the conversation we started, and got a lot of stuff out of my head.
When we got back to Colorado, I went into an odd form of depression, and was still having minor anxiety attacks for a week or so. I thought I was about out of it until some more personal stuff happened that I don't want to really touch on, then I was almost thrown right back into the bad stuff.
Recently though, the depression finally broke, I am sleeping again, and all that bad carp upstairs has finally settled. Now I'm back to good, and as of today actually things are starting to look up again.

Just some things you need to know:

I have come to the conclusion that all the stress involved with trying to start the paint shop is what brought on this PTSD episode, and I was going to totally give up on the idea. But, I came up with a plan so that I can keep doing the painting I love to do, and cut 90% of the stress out of the equation...
I'm going to just do my own stuff mainly, and offer pre painted stuff for sale with no interaction with people. I am still going to take custom requests on projects, or if somebody has a plan of what they want and understands the amount of time everything could take I might still take on that project. But thats if I can get into what they want done. I will also be doing my own rust sculptures on the side of everything but at a very slow pace of maybe one or two per year, they will be expensive to buy, but with the amount of time each one will take, the price is justified.

Also right now due to everything, I'm not even certain I will be able to make it to the Dragon this year, but I'm going to give it my best shot. Financially I might not be able to make that happen, but we'll see, heck it wouldn't be the first time I camped the Dragon!

Thats all I've got, and if you have any questions feel free to ask! I realized that talking about everything with my friends has really helped, and you guys here if you're still reading this are my friends.

Missed you all, sorry for the sudden absence.

 

Thanks guys, I shouldn't be disappearing again any time soon.

 

Thanks, yeah keeping people in the loop and talking to me really helped this time around. It sucked losing the few friends that decided to walk out during this episode, but if they couldn't handle it that's their problem!
Already working on a new girlfriend too, which seems to be going well so far. This is Katey, she will probably be brought up in new posts from time to time.