Excciting Stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Long

[The People]

This is a copy from an email as I cannot contain myself enough to write it twice. I think people here will get it more than some of the email recipients!
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Well I find them to be exciting! It is 8 years and a few days since I pulled into this city expecting to find answers for some of my issues that would lead to a life beyond my imagination. Instead all I found were more questions as well as brick walls so high and wide an Olympic Pole Vaulter could not get over them. In my frustration I started rattling cages via email with nothing in return besides the proverbial pat on the head.

Today that has changed with two new opportunities coming to me. The first one was not so hard. I found an ad on Facebook wanting people to get involved in new awareness campaigns that are being run across the country. One is for youth and the other is on mental illness in the workplace. I just got off the phone with a woman who described what will be happening at some length. This will be followed up with an email package and I get to decide how much effort I put into this.

The other is an email I received today in response to one I sent out months ago. It was from a woman at U of A. (University of Alberta) I had written the nursing/psych departments about the lack of information that is out there on DID and my frustration with that. I invited myself to speak to the students to show them what someone with DID looks like. Not the psychopathic killers as shown on Criminal Minds and other shows like it. You folks all know me. This is being done in a part of BC although I had written my letter before the magazine article that talked about that process went to print. While I have my quirks I am not someone that people who cross the street in order to avoid – well not most people anyway. I ‘do normal’ pretty well. People who spend a lot of time around me note that I am “moody” (shifts in self) but so are many former coworkers and friends who do not have my diagnosis. On a good day I love to laugh and have fun... and laugh! (People send me jokes that I open late at night and with my huge belly laugh I am going to get myself evicted from my new abode before I even find a spot for everything)

I don’t know what I shall be doing exactly with either of these new developments. They are just coming to light but I am soooo excited. When I was working I always felt that I helped my clients because I understood what they were going through. And I know I was good at it. Not just because supervisors told me but because clients did. They always knew that I had their back as long as they did their share of the work. And they were successful, partly because I believed in them and understood that fear that put up so many road blocks. I did drop the ball on occasion but I think that, percentage wise, we did well together. Some people don’t get that believing in someone, even if you don’t get what they are dealing with, is a very strong medicine. I do suck badly at paperwork so I will ensure that I am not responsible for any of that with the cross Canada project but I have other things to bring to the table. At least one person reading this email will applaud this decision.

Wow! I cannot convey how exciting this is for me. Perhaps it is not something that many of you can grasp fully as I have not won the lottery or a new house or anything material. That has never been a big thing for me although I would not turn it down if offered. I am giving birth to the next chapter in my life. These new opportunities just give me a chance to use skills that are getting rusty in an area that is so important to me. I think that after being off work for 4 years I am finding a purpose. And part of it is because I am now healthy enough to take something new on. Will keep you posted. And you folks on the east coast, send me a ticket and I will come and speak at your schools! Gotta get back there somehow!