It’s been two weeks since my last entry and the events that happened then that were causing me to do a deep inward soul search seemed to have run their course.  At a later time I’ll divulge what happened exactly but at this point and time I’m afraid I can’t go into detail about it as I don’t want to burn a bridge with the company I work for.  I’ll go so far as to say I was worried that my employment was in the balance and that if I would have lost my job it could have been by a decision by my company to let me go.  If that were to happen it would have put my family in jeopardy of losing our home as then we’d have no income to pay mortgage or any other bills for that matter.  My significant other was ready to also pull out if I were to lose my job and not find a way to provide for us quickly thereafter.  This was causing me to really evaluate my decision to use a form of what I call stress relief and it’s impact on my career.

If you haven’t read my bio, I’ll tell you that I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety for most of my adult life.  I’ve taken so many different medications prescribed by doctors that I’m not sure I can list them all.  At one particularly low point in my life I made an attempt at my life by overdosing.  The Lord was with me then and I spent 5 days in a coma but managed to pull out and be ok afterwards.  At one point I was prescribed an anti-anxiety, an anti-depression and an anti-psychotic at the same time after that incident.  I took those for almost 6 years until I moved from Chicago to Florida.  I was reevaluated by another doctor and was taken off the anti-psychotic.  I began to feel more like my regular self after getting off of that.  It really “zombified”me so much that I forgot what it was like to have strong emotions again.  I lost my connection with the spiritual world and was just existing going to work and coming home every day.  I had become complacent with life the way it was and didn’t have a desire to better myself at all.  That medication was Risperdone.

After being off Risperdone for a few months I was beginning to have emotions again.  I always had emotions while on the med but they  weren’t strong enough for me to act on.  I would get angry or sad but the emotions would quickly subside after awhile. But one thing I really noticed while taking the medication was even though my anger and depression was lessened, so was my feelings of joy and happiness.  It didn’t take long after I was off of the stuff that I really realized just how complacent I’d become.

Now we come to last summer when I was forced to take the job driving trucks over the road (OTR) to get more income because my significant other lost her job of twenty years.  The Department of transportation is very strict on what medications you can take and still legally drive a semi.  After talking with a doctor I was taken off all medications so I could pass a DOT medical exam to be able to drive trucks. So you can say for the first time in 10 years I’m living whole again. To deal with the strong emotions I’m feeling again I’ve turned to blogging and studying spirituality to help try and understand my emotions and how to deal with them.  I write on several different forums and read most daily about spirituality.  Unfortunately this job takes up so much of my daily time that I don’t get to spend as much time as I’d like doing the things that I feel are helping me deal with life.  I drive for up to 11 hours a day and spend another several hours and shippers or receivers and the rest of the time sleeping.  I use most of my downtime after driving or at shipper/receivers to talk to people on the phone so I can still try and maintain a sense of normalcy and have contact with the outside world.  I don’t talk to other truck drivers on the CB or at truck stops unless I absolutely have to.  OTR drivers in particular are a very negative bunch of folks.  They spew negative talk all day long and I can’t blame them with as much negative crap that happens to drivers on the road every day from other drivers, clients, dispatch and maybe from home as many relationships are hard to maintain a level of closeness if you spend a month on the road and only home a few days in between.

It’s a daily struggle to keep a positive outlook while doing this job. So I have to be extra vigilant in trying to change the way I think.  Because of the way my situation developed last week I have a new hard faith in God and the universe that I have someone or something looking out for me.  I was praying and asking the universe for guidance and a sign that someone is with me during my tribulations. While praying I said that “I don’t know who is watching me right now, if it’s God, an angel, my deceased Mom or higher self but I’d sure like to know that whomever may be is with me.”  Not more than 10 minutes later I open facebook and see a post by a friend that unfortunately the link for has been removed but was in essence saying that “Your mother is always looking out for you whether in this life or the next.”

But I forgot to mention that just before that comment, my ex father in law posted something that literally brought me to tears as I felt it was the answer to whether or not things were going to be ok. This was that message: (photo not available) The message was something like “God doesn’t care about your past mistakes.”

It was this night that truly gave me inspiration that I wasn’t alone in the world. At the time my significant other was not really talking to me and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about how I was feeling.  I have a best friend in California that I talk to alot but I don’t share feelings with him.  I don’t really share feelings with other men at all. I’m just not comfortable talking to men about feelings and emotions. I have talked with my sister in law about things and that has helped a great deal. She is also a wonderfully spiritual person and have learned to trust her insight into things.

So now I’m moving forward with pursuing my dream of writing for a living. I asked the universe to give me a sign and I feel this is how that question was answered in part.  There are other things I’m reading and studying that are adding to the feeling that I’m on  the right path but these were a couple of things that really stood out to me.

PS: Since I posted this the links to the photo’s that were originally posted have been removed. I’ve learned to copy and save photo’s from here on out to avoid having happen what happened here.