I'm making friends with the monsters under my bed.

I wrote to my father yesterday who is wintering in Texas right now. I let him in on my dirty little secret... I'm in debt.

It's something that is not helping my depression; at least not in a healthy way. It's like carrying too much weight while standing in a tippy canoe.

The problem with this to date has been that I'm the only one who knows. So I wrote to my father and told him I didn't know what I wanted him to do with the information but that I needed to tell someone I'm in debt and listed what I owe.

I didn't know my father as a child, I've only come to know him as an adult.  And my sending him this information turned my mind to a few things.  The first thing was that when I broke down, after I left the hospital my father was in Arizona and he suggested I visit him.  I did.  And I have to say, seeing the Grand Canyon at a point in life when I knew life was changing was almost magic.

Well along the way my step-mother told me that if I just ask my father for help - he will help me.  That was three years ago.  In my fiercely independent way I thought I could pull myself together and couldn't see what I needed help with.   I've had struggles along the way that we've certainly talked about and I thought that was helpful.  But apart from going traveling with him that winter, I can't say I've really asked straight out for help.

In my letter to him, I explained that even though I grew up with a lot of people around me (my mother, her parents, my uncle and my cousin - all in the same house) I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.   I grew up feeling like the only one I could really count on was me.

I told Dad that something is just ocurring to me now and that is how I could just let him be my father and put my foolish pride aside for a change.

So I went all the way and also sent him all my passwords to all my accounts.   He answered me and asked if I wanted him to spare the rod or be brutally honest... such respect.   When I said be honest, he sent me a ten point suggestion plan.  And I just know that he's going through my records and figuring it out for me now.  Why didn't I do this sooner? I mean let my father be my father.   I feel so relieved.

And by the way, I have an appointment with a realtor on Tuesday at 4 pm.

Making friends with the monster under my bed is helping me sleep better.

So what the heck am I waiting for exactly?

In 2008 I asked my workplace if I could take an unpaid year off of work and go travel the world.  I felt I needed to go and find myself.

The deputy chief convinced me it might be a better idea to sign up for a peace-keeping mission and be paid while working abroad.   Seemed like a great idea!

I competed to go to Sudan for a year and won a spot. The perks were hard to resist.  I would receive my salary tax-free for the year.  I would be paid a very good U.S. tax-free per diem on top of my Canadian salary.  My family and I would be flown, all expenses paid, to two destinations anywhere in the world to holiday.  I'd come home twice; all expenses paid.  I'd work for a month and then have ten days off and would be entitled to a couple flights to travel.

So I spent most of 2009 in what I call a hamster wheel. I went through all sorts of medical, physical, and physiological tests.  And passed them all.

I was set to go in November 2009 when a week before in-house training was to start, I flunked the last physical test. For the life of me I couldn't do the obstacle course style test in four minutes. I got four minutes and twenty-one seconds. Longest twenty-one seconds of my life!!

I was dropped from the mission... And a whole pile of other crap hit at the same time, including but not limited to: My five-year seriously dysfunctional relationship finally fell apart - and horribly so. My mother and I became estranged. I also hadn't really worked out my grief for my late grandparents.

I felt orphaned and abandoned.

And on January 23, 2010 I checked into the hospital. I've mentioned this part before but I took most of 2010 off of work and returned full-time by December.  When I got back to work, I had one of my biggest cases go before a judge and jury in January 2011 - my first jury trial.

I got through it well enough but by March 2011 my time was up as a detective in the squad I was in. Rotation rules meant I had to go back to patrol for at least a year and I hadn't been on patrol since 1998 so I dreaded it. Patrol was never my favourite gig.  And at that point I wasn't prepared for what the majority of calls a patrol officer answers are. I didn't feel like I wanted to immerse myself in mediating other people's problems.

So I asked to go to the front desk. I stayed cool in the summer and warm in the winter and the people working the desk are great fun. Most are either walking wounded in some fashion or pregnant or on the shit list. Makes for an interesting bunch.

With time though, I got really, really bored of front desk work.  I felt like my brain was drying up and blowing away doing way too many accident reports. And in July 2012 I jumped when I was offered a temporary detective assignment in General Assignment.

I've been feeling like I'm back in my happy place. I have a few high profile cases and my learning curve is straight up as I like it!  But I'm different now. I can't handle stress the way I used to.

I had an acting sergeant sit me down and lecture me on how I'm disrespectful because I forgot the company car keys in plain sight on my desk and forgot to return them to the hook. He was also lecturing me about being late several times recently (I get that). I sat across the table watching him take notes about this, like he's building a case against me. A very insecure acting sergeant trying to make a name for himself and get promoted. And I have more time on the job than him...

The day before I went to a meeting to send someone to jail for up to 12 years (big sentence in Canada) and this day I was listening to this blowfish about being ten minutes late one too many times and frigging car keys.

I'm nearly 50 years old and have no more patience for crap anymore. This little meeting was a trigger for me. I've been the subject of a slander campaign before and it started in the same style as the blowfish meeting with an insecure sergeant. Maybe I'll tell that story another time.

So I'm back to where I started from! I took a mental health day today and made the decision. I'm going to see the chief again and renew my interest in a timeout. And I'll be calling the real estate agent very soon.

I know, I know big changes during depression are not recommended.... but I need a leap of faith. I just cannot keep doing what I'm doing. I'm thinking six months in Asia.... and then see what happens!

I'm having trouble with balance lately.

I go to work and I'm fully on.  I come home and do little more than sleep.

I hate winter.

Mother may I let you go?

My estranged relationship with my mother is painful.  And of course there are all sorts of reasons for arriving at being estranged and a lot of our troubles began when I was very young.

What I've found hardest is that it has taken until my mid life to figure it out.  To figure out that my mother just isn't capable of truly loving me.  Not in a way that's healthy for me anyway.  And the key is - it's not her fault.  It's who she is.  It's not my fault either.

Letting go and forgiveness is a major ordeal and I think I've been learning lately that the two have to happen in order for peace to come.

Exactly what forgiveness is is something I've had trouble with.  I was raised that forgiveness is something you give to someone else.  That you forgive someone for doing wrong by you.  You let that person know that you accept what they've done wrong and that you are letting it go.  With that you are allowing you and the other person to move past the indiscretion.

The trouble is that there has to be acknowledgement by both parties.  It seems to rely on the other person being able to both admit and take responsibility for their action.  If not then forgiveness just doesn't seem possible.

What I've learned is that forgiveness is actually something to do for myself and not necessarily for the other person.  My being able to forgive my mother is an act for myself and it really doesn't even matter if she knows I forgive her.

It sounds like simple thinking but there is a tweak in point of view there that made a huge difference for me.

When the weight really lifted for me was in July 2013.  For reasons I still can not figure out, my mother showed up at my house unannounced to hand deliver a letter.  She didn't stay, she just gave me the letter and said she had to go.

My mother's letter was to tell me that she was angry with me for not coming to Christmas dinner some seven months earlier.  We hadn't even spoken for well over a year and I actually hadn't been to Christmas dinner for two years.

I broke down and cried.

The last I had communicated with her was that nearly a year and a half earlier I sent her two cards a few weeks apart.  In them I wrote, "I love you and I hope we can work things out someday."  She never answered.

And now her letter she brought me was accusing me of lying and that if this was the way I really felt, I would have just shown up for Christmas.  The cards I sent were in February and March... and without a word of acknowledgement to me, she expected me to show up in December.  After not answering that I love her.

This is stuff I don't get about my mother - everything is my fault.  She simply can not take any responsibility for her own actions or inaction.

So I wrote her a very short letter back.  I wrote that dropping off an angry letter to me after not speaking for so long simply is not love.  I also wrote "I can't make you love me if you won't but I can forgive you if you don't.  And I do."

Those were very liberating words for me and the moment I put that letter in the mail, the weight of the world seemed to lift off of me.

Well about a week later, she did it again.  What's weird is I heard my dog bark, I went to see what it was and I saw my mother running down my lane way to my stepfather waiting for her in the car on the street.  He hadn't even pulled into my lane way... the plan, it appears, was not to see me.

I remember the letter being more anger, that I read it two or three times and threw it in the garbage.  I remember thinking it what much to say about nothing.  On top of it, it was a photocopy as though she's keeping evidence of something.

I got in my car (she lives an hour away) and brought her some flowers.  I looked like shit  when I arrived because I cried the whole drive, but once I got there she acted like nothing was wrong.  We have barely spoken more than about a half dozen times since 2009 and we have essentially been on shaky terms since 2007.  I just can't handle the charade that nothing is wrong.  I've tried to play along, but I just can't do it.

During that visit, she offered that she wanted to give me all the birthday and Christmas gifts she'd been collecting for me.  I found the guts to tell her no, that I didn't want them.  For me it's more pretending there is nothing wrong.  And frankly I've needed her love, not her trinkets.

Well that was July and we didn't talk again at all until November.  She showed up once again, announced at my door, a week before my birthday with a big smile and pretended everything is fine.  And she brought her box of gifts to me.

I get it.  I tried to accept that in  her mixed up way this is some way of making a peace offering.  An olive branch maybe.  The trouble is this is always the way.  That in order for us to move on I have to make all the concessions.

Meanwhile, I sat there on the couch looking at her and that box of gifts was like looking at my pain wrapped in pretty little boxes with bright paper and sparkling bows.  I had to remind myself a few times to breathe.

I opened my birthday gift and it was a decorative plate that I didn't like.  But I told her it was pretty and thanked her for it.  She told me I didn't have to unwrap the rest and that if I found there were things I didn't like, I could re-gift or throw them away.

... that so doesn't make sense to me.

I sat there and all I could think about was a phone call I made on January 23, 2010.... the day I had my breakdown.  The hardest call of my life.

You see, I'm a police officer and I've been helping other people for nearly 20 years now.  For me to put my hand up and say I needed help was really hard.

"Mother, I think I'm in trouble here and I need to go to the hospital."

"I suppose this is my fault.  Well what do you want me to do? "   She actually had an angry tone without even a hint of concern.

I just didn't have the energy for her but felt I had to explain I thought that because she's my mother, and I'm checking into the hospital feeling suicidal, that my family should know.

I get it.  I know a lot of people in my life were stunned by the news that I fell apart.  So I get that I may have caught her by surprise... but we talked a few more moments and I had to hang up on her.  She was that awful.

I went to the after hours clinic as referred to on the voicemail of my doctor's office and once I was there, the doctor called my sergeant.  I also called my mother back.

This time, she told me it was a good thing I called back.  She and my step father were going to call the police and they thought they couldn't because I might loose my job and I would blame them for it.

She didn't hear me say my sergeant was coming to arrest me under the mental health act and take me to the hospital.  She didn't hear any of that, instead she told me what was wrong with me and said, "Brenda, you don't see things right."

I can't forget that.  "Brenda you don't see things right."

I'm 49 years old and no one has ever talked to me the way my mother does.

My sergeant arrived and took me to the hospital.  He has known me well for 20 years and he was my rock.  Once at the hospital, I asked him to call my mother and let her know I was being admitted.

When he came to my room, I asked what she said and he wouldn't tell me.   All he said was, "Your mother has issues."

I stayed in the hospital for five days and was off work for a year.

My mother never even called her only child.  Not once.

"Brenda, you don't see things right."

That box of gifts is in my furnace room and for the life of me I don't know what to do with it.

This depression stuff flips me out often.  I find it odd, weird and even at times scary how I can feel so well and then at times feel so badly.

I found Christmas really hard this year.  I spent it totally alone.... I mean totally.  I didn't give a gift and I didn't receive one either.

I was under a lot of stress at work.  I have a huge case on the go that for awhile there, it was consuming most of my thinking time.  It started on October 22 and only really started to settle down on December 13.

By then, I had spent a two-week period of going to work everyday... and I was pooped.  So much so that I cancelled going to Texas to see my father for the holidays.

By the time it was time for me to recharge I was running on fumes.  And of course being that tired triggered thinking errors and a spin with depression.  When I get to that point, I'm not sure which is harder - the complete brain exhaustion plagued with fears, insecurity and self-deprecation or the complete body exhaustion that hurts everywhere so badly I can not sleep and don't want to move.

I had some worry for a bit there because I even had thoughts about how dying would be easier than pushing through the way I do.

I haven't been that low for a long time and now that I feel so very much better, I'm grateful for the visit from the black dog.  I find it so weird that I can say that and mean it.  It seems now depression strikes long enough and deep enough to really push me to what I have to work on next.  It's taken me awhile but I think I'm finally working with depression and not just trying to fight against it.

Being alone this Christmas made me angry, sad and lonely.  It also made me realize I still haven't come to terms with being estranged from my mother and her side of the family.

I'm going to start writing about mother next and get it out of me while I feel well with it.

The hard part is figuring out where to start, so I thought I'd start with a promise to express it.  This blogging stuff is kinda great!