Rock bottom

Yap. So that happened.

After months walking the thin line that determines the hard borders of my mental capacity I finally tipped. To the wrong side of the line.

I had a particularly troubling week out in the world and was looking forward to an early start of the weekend when I'd planned to go camping, hiking and kayaking in the Belgium Ardennes. I had booked off Friday and went on the Wednesday feeling positive, with two days to go. Until that one final straw that broke this camels back. It was close to 5pm and it was honestly the first in my career where I'd come across a problem for which I had no solution, workaround or mitigation. And I was fucked. Not fucked in the sense that I was going to get fired, I was fucked because yet again, 7 months in, the program I am working on lived up to its reputation of being the materialization of Murphy's Law, once again.
Needless to say, I didn't sleep that night and went in on Thursday feeling less than inspired. After discussing the issue with the leadership team and agreeing on a solution I felt something like I never felt before. My heart sank like a stone and desperation started to take over: if I had missed this, in a type of mistake I had never made before in a career of almost 15 years, what else did I miss? And so my brain started computing everything that I could have missed and like an old laptop when you try to run too much shit at the same time, it crashed. This being Thursday I thought maybe cutting the day short, taking some time to regroup with all the fun I was going to be up to at the weekend, I'd come back fresh as a cucumber the next Monday and just get shit done.
Weekend came. We did an awesome hike in a place that looked straight out of Jurassic Park (without the fucking dinosaurs), chilled in camp, had a couple of drinks, did an incredible 4 hour kayak trip and then we headed back. It was Sunday afternoon and I remember clearly the minute that I realized that it was Sunday and that, therefore, I'd have to go back in the next day and the sinking heart feeling returned. Tenfold.
A feeling of helplessness, borderline desperation, that made me think that if I had an accident at least I wouldn't have to go back in. And that shit scared me. There is something seriously wrong with you if you think getting hurt would be preferable to anything.
That's when I knew that I had to listen to the doctor and stop.
Now here's the thing: if you live or lived in The Netherlands, you know how doctors ALWAYS tend to minimize any pain or possible health issue, avoid prescribing antibiotics and have the tendency to believe that Paracetamol is like the blood of Christ himself that heals all wounds, so when I had my doctor telling me that I was at risk of mental exhaustion and telling me (not advising, actually telling me) to stop working (twice in two weeks) with a long face, a very deep voice and a look that made it seem like both his eyes were going to pop out of its sockets, I had to take notice and actually fucking listen!

That confrontation with the truth made me even more desperate at first. And I'm not gonna lie: I cried like a little baby. I was genuinely worried with the thoughts that were starting to pop into my head and I could clearly see that the doctor was too.

So, what happens now?

Fuck me if I know, but now that I started to feel a bit more like a normal* human being, I will try to detail my journey with smaller, more frequent posts. Not for whoever is reading this shit, but for myself - yeah, I'm a selfish prick, I know. On the other hand, my sense of humor seems to be making a return as well. Either that, or I still think I'm funny.


*Whatever the fuck that means.