2022- The hardest, worst, and best year of my life.

How the most challenging year of my life has set me up for the rest of my life.

Dec 30, 2022

Never in my life have I had 12 months like the last 12 months. I have never been so far removed from the person I was 12 months ago. I’m far from complete, far from finished, in fact, I’m choosing to believe that in a lot of ways I’m only just at the beginning of a new and better life.

I’m sitting in our second house, in a different city/town, on holidays from a different job to the job I had at the start of the year, my four-month-old son sitting in his pram next to me watching cartoons, and I’m over eight months into sobriety. The only thing I knew 12 months ago was that I was going to be a dad, hopefully. I found out 12 months and five days ago

I thought it would be simple to recap the last 12 months. A lot of shit has happened. There’s a lot of content there to speak on. I’ve been thinking about this blog for weeks now and I’m no closer to knowing how I’m going to write it. But, I think it’s really important to take time to reflect and consider all that we have achieved over periods. It’s an opportunity to be kind to ourselves, build our self-esteem and increase our self-worth. This is something that I have failed at miserably all my life. Not only do I have the desire to improve on this, but I believe it’s essential to the ongoing progress of this “journey” (god I hate that fucking word) of self-discovery I have found myself on.

But I have no idea where to start. How I should structure this? Should I break it down into time periods? Should I break it down into the hard, the bad, and the good? I don’t really know. So this one might be a bit all over the place. It might take a bit of proofreading, something that I struggle with as someone with ADHD. But please, bear with me, because I think there is a great message in this one.

Stress Inducing Stress Relief

12 months and a few days ago, on Christmas eve, my partner said she wanted to give me a small present, early. She didn’t want to wait. I hate surprises. I hate being caught off guard. On reflection, I think it’s because I have always been on edge. Always in fight or flight mode due to my ADHD. I have Asperger-like traits. I like things to be planned and forecasted. So typically I reacted grumpily. “Why do you have to be so impatient? Can’t we just wait until tomorrow? I don’t have a small gift I can give you tonight in return”.

I don’t like this about myself, in fact, I hate it. I wish I could be spontaneous. I wish I could “enjoy the moment” more. But when you have a constant hum of mild fear running through your body, you see everything as a threat. Everything. Whenever I miss a call from an unknown number I think it’s the police calling me to tell me I’ve done something wrong, or someone has died or something else just as unlikely. I think every dog I ever cross paths with wants to rip my throat out. It’s fucking exhausting being this level of paranoid all the time. I second-guess everything. So when she was extra insistent on me opening this present just before we went to sleep, instead of being curiously excited like I should have been, I was curiously anxious. Way to set the tone, dick head.

It was a small cardboard box wrapped in wrapping paper. It was light and felt mostly empty. I could tell there was something in there that was placed loosely. You know how you can just tell? Anyway, I opened the box, grumpy and wanting to sleep, god I was a dick, to see a positive pregnancy test. I looked at my partner who was looking at me excitedly, hoping for some kind of big emotional reaction. All she got from me was an emotionless “I already knew”. Neurodiverse people notice everything. After 12 months, I had a pretty good idea of how long it had been since the last time we got bad news. I knew it had been 6 weeks since the last time, I knew she had been feeling sick. It just made sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I was happy, but I was more relieved than happy. We had been trying for 12 months. Being the self-conscious person I am, I started to worry that maybe there was something wrong with me. Or her, or us? Even though we knew from a past incident that we were more than capable of reproducing. I had thought that maybe we were too old now. I’d thought a lot of things. negative things. As a lot of people trying for a baby could attest, it’s fucking stressful. You follow all of the advice you can find, but some of it is conflicting. It’s confusing. You think you are doing all the right things. Following all the right steps. We’d even booked to see an OBGYN to see if we had fertility issues and if so, we could discuss a plan moving forward.

Early in the piece, you can’t wait for “that time of the month” to see if you’ve been successful. Over time, the sea saw tips the other way and you start to dread that time of the month. Emotionally, it’s fucking exhausting. When you’ve spent your life feeling “less than” and you invest so much emotional energy into something only to continually fail, it can start to take a heavy toll on your mental health. I just felt, again, like I wasn’t good enough, or not as good as everyone else. I was having some mental health battles already at this point, so I won’t say that this was the catalyst for my spiral into a mental breakdown, but it certainly didn’t help and the back half of 2021 is probably when my drug and alcohol use spiked a little.

These factors don’t excuse my shitty, overtired, grumpy reaction. But writing this out sure helps me understand it. I was relieved. It’s a lot like seeing someone finish a marathon, they’re not jumping around fist-pumping, they’re just glad it’s finally over. There’s a bit of a joke around blokey blokes that taking a long time to get pregnant is great fun, and the blokes who succeed first try are unlucky. I get the joke, it’s funny, but I don’t agree. When you have low self-worth, constant reminders of failure are heartbreaking, especially when it affects someone you care about and you feel like it’s all your fault, even though there is no scientific evidence to back the thought.

My dad made me laugh though, “ya feel like a fuckin’ stud horse, don’t ya?”. I said, “yeah, I thought the cow was supposed to get milked, not the bull”.

Was I happy? Of course. Was I fucking relieved? absolutely. We’d finally done it. now we just had to make it through the next six weeks without anything happening to the baby, then the next six months after that.

Sea Change

In May 2020, we bought our first house. I was terrified at the time because reports suggested the COVID pandemic could see house prices fall significantly. We’d been house-sitting for 15 months and were sick of living out of suitcases. We’d spent the last eight weeks living in my childhood bedroom with my parents. We couldn’t wait any longer. I fucking love the house we bought. As soon as I walked in I knew I wanted it. We bought it before they put a for-sale sign-up. The news had me worried but we were just so sick of waiting. We’d worked too hard for too long.

That was the greatest risk we ever took. As we all know now the housing market went fucking stupid. At one point the place was worth 1.5x what we paid for it. We decided to speak to a builder mate of mine about doing some renovations. We got a quote, spoke to our broker, and had our house evaluated and we’re just about ready to pull the trigger.

We got the evaluation from the bank one afternoon in February. We had a quick look at it and I went out for a run with intention of discussing it in greater detail afterwards. While I was running I got a call. It was my old boss from our depot on the South Coast. “You wanna raise your kid on the coast?”. Not many people would get the shits about being offered an opportunity like this. But at the time it was so fucking inconvenient. We were literally about to pull the trigger on drawing equity and renovating our house. I’d just got back settled back into work after the Christmas holidays and we were starting to plan how we would get the house done before the baby arrived.

When I got home I spoke to my partner about it. We considered all options, hashed over the quote from the builder, and the paperwork from the bank, and then noticed the paperwork also included a rental appraisal for the house, which was significantly more than our mortgage repayment.

The situation was this, we had the opportunity to take that equity, use it as a deposit for a house at the coast, rent out the Canberra house for more than it was costing us, raise our kid on the coast, and never experience a fucking frost ever again. The job I was offered sounded better than the one I had. I felt like I was overworked and underappreciated in my role in Canberra. I later realised it was my fault because I didn’t know how to say no. That’s that traumatised ADHD kid who just wants to impress people and have people like him. The new role came with a slight pay rise, a less demanding role, a more experienced team, fewer bosses, and more autonomy, and I wasn’t needed down there until August, right when my partner would be starting maternity leave. My partner was keen too. She’s from North Queensland and loves the beach.

It’s a no-brainer, right? Potential to set ourselves up forever financially, and live a slower, easier life. But my partner was pregnant. We’d have to start all over again with the broker. We’d have to pack up the house, neaten it up to get it rented out, find a new house at the coast, dealing with fuckin’ brokers and real estate agents who talk in a way that makes my head spin and blood boil. Not because of who they are or whatever, I just don’t understand what they’re talking about, I get overwhelmed and then get the shits. This stuff is never simple and easy. We’d have to organise cleaners, removalists, and looooooong fucking day trips to the coast to inspect 10 houses in one day, eight of which would be shit one would be ok and one would be good but would sell that day.

But, the opportunity was too good to pass up. As I sit here now, obviously I’m glad we did it. It’s a shame we didn’t get to do the big flash reno in Canberra, but in hindsight, we probably would’ve over-capitalised and the massive interest rate rises would’ve made the mortgage hard to pay on 1.5 wages.

We knew it would be a big fucking challenge to pull it off in the circumstances, but we just knew it would be worth it if we could do it. This is where I fucked up. Work was busy, stupid busy. As we got the wheels in motion for the move, I started to get overwhelmed. I was a very different person “back then” even though it was only 10 months ago. I wasn’t able to identify the things that could potentially set me down the wrong path.

Dr Gabor Mate is a physician who wrote Scattered Minds, by far the most useful piece of literature I have ever read on ADHD. In it he talks about how when he was moving house, he would subconsciously take on more work at the hospital he worked at because we prefer to stress that we are familiar with to stress we are unfamiliar with.

I was doing the same thing. I was getting cold feet, and having second thoughts. All the what if’s started to present themselves. Most of them were ridiculous, but by this point I was unwell. I was still doing my job, and still very functional, but I was drinking a lot and my drug intake started to ramp up. I think it was because the task seemed too big for me and at the time, I wasn’t able to break it down into smaller, achievable pieces. It’s also common for people with ADHD to procrastinate until they don’t have enough time to get what they need to get done, and then somehow pull it off like some kind of fucking hero. The reality is, you’re an idiot who made this hard on yourself.

It was around this time I got sober. It’s all a bit of a blur. There was so much going on. But with a massive dig from my partner and the help of our families, we managed to get everything sorted and move to the coast a month before our son was born.

It took some time to settle in. There were a lot of up-and-back Canberra trips for midwife appointments, it took me longer than I expected to settle into work, and we had dramas with the dogs. Slowly but surely though things settled. Our son arrived in late August, healthy and happy. We have great tenants in our Canberra house. We have the unit downstairs up and running as an Airbnb and it’s firing on all cylinders. And although we still have a couple of unpacked boxes, that probably won’t get unpacked, after a 10-month process it’s finally starting to feel like the move is complete and that this is our new home.

Especially now I’m growing veggies again!

Sobriety

I don’t need to go into this one too much. I talk about sobriety every week. Most of you know my story. It’s strange, in one sense if you had of told me at the start of the year, or even in February part of me would have said “no fucking way”. Another part of me would have said “about fucking time”.

I’d been in denial about my drinking and drug use for a long time. I had all the typical excuses. I was functional. Good at my job. The bills were paid. On average I was spending $500 a week on drugs and alcohol and we were still saving money. We’d managed to finally get pregnant. We were moving to the coast. Had savings. I had all these reasons why my substance use wasn’t a problem.

The thing is, it’s either a problem or it isn’t and none of the above factors into it at all. It all boils down to how you feel about it. Deep down, I hated myself for what I was doing. I was doing what I was doing because I hated myself. A good ol’ fashion negative feedback loop.

Getting sober has been easy, and hard. The not drinking part has been easier than I expected. The part where you can no longer drown out all the negative self-talk, negative feelings and emotions, that part fucking sucks.

I have already learned so much from sobriety. The biggest and most generalised takeaway of all though is that it’s worth it. All of it. It’s taught me to be patient. It’s taught me the true value of consistent, incremental change. Something that is really fucking hard for someone with ADHD to accept and put into practice. I’ve taken these key takeaways and implemented them into other areas of my life, and whaddaya know, those other areas have improved too.

Sobriety has opened so many doors for me. Either directly or indirectly, it has led me to meet some amazing people. People who have changed my life forever. People who even if they stopped talking to me today, the impact they have had on my life will last forever.

Sobriety, and even mental health of self-development, is very much an interpersonal thing, but it’s made so much easier by a good support network. I’ve said it a million times, but I knew drugs and alcohol weren’t my problems. They were a really fucking shitty solution to my problem that made my problem worse in the long run. I’ll never say that I’ll never drink again. I don’t like that kind of pressure. I am choosing not to drink, and while ever I am choosing not to, it means I have the power of it. People in AA won’t like that, but horses for courses, eh? I know that I did say I would consider drinking if and when I was able to sort all my mental health issues out, but as I move further and further into sobriety, I just kinda, don’t want to. My life is better without alcohol. I’d like to think that the people around me are better off for my sobriety too. And as hard as it’s been to do this work on my mental health, it’s so fucking enlightening. It’s exciting. I’m looking forward to learning more and more about myself through sobriety.

If you, like me, have been considering the idea of sobriety, give it a crack. relapsing after a fortnight isn’t a failure. It’s a fucking fortnight of sobriety. It’s also a period of time loaded with lessons and knowledge you can take away and apply to the next attempt.

Sobriety is amazing. It’s given me back control of myself and my life. I feel like life is happening for me and not to me now. I get to choose the direction my life is headed and it’s fucking exciting. I have the confidence to pursue things that I would have talked myself out of in the past. I’m finally learning to accept, be at peace with, and love who I am. I’m really starting to love it. If anyone wants to talk about sobriety in greater detail, please contact me. I’d love to help, and what better time to start than in a brand new year?

Sonny Robert Wilson

I don’t believe in god. I believe in science. I am as sceptical as I come. I guess if I was forced to believe in anything, I would say I believe in the universe when it suits me. I find that when people say “everything happens for a reason”, they only believe it when it suits them.

There are parts of what has happened this year, some pretty fuckin’ major parts, that make it hard for me to dispute that the universe sometimes pushes us into situations that we have to go through. It also rewards us for going through them.

We wanted Sonny to arrive 9 months earlier than he did. That would have been perfect. Yeah mate, just lob up around Christmas time if ya could? Mum can work until the end of the year and just go Chrissy holidays straight into maternity leave, it’ll be fuckin’ perfect.

Life isn’t perfect though, and on reflection, if he came when we initially wanted him to, that wouldn’t have been perfect. Moving cities, starting a new job and having your first baby all in four weeks four months after a mental breakdown and getting sober is no one’s idea of perfect. But Sonny, Sonny is perfect.

I’m grateful that you get 8-9 months’ notice when you have a baby. It gave me just enough time to freak the fuck out, bite off way more than we could chew in terms of moving, stress myself the fuck out, handle it the completely wrong way, hit rock bottom, sort myself out and gradually come out the other side.

Of all the things I was stressed about this year, I was never really scared of Sonny arriving. Not in terms of being a dad anyway. I was afraid that he might have something wrong with him, I was afraid of the length of the commitment I would have to make to him and to be completely honest, I’d even mentally prepared as much as I could for if something were to go horribly wrong. But I was never afraid of being a dad. I was never afraid of not being able to take care of him.

I didn’t know how I would feel when he arrived, I was surprised at how calm I was. Once we were done crying and wiping all the gunk off of him, I was surprised at how calm I was. Not to be too dramatic, but it was as though a switch flicked in my head. All my life I felt like I didn’t matter. That I wasn’t as important as anyone else, or that I wasn’t enough for anyone. I felt similar when Sonny arrived, but I was at peace with it. For the first time ever, it was me who decided and accepted that someone else mattered more than I did. It wasn’t an external source and I didn’t feel belittled by it. It was just a no-bullshit, goes without saying, “he matters more than you” moment. And I loved it.

It was freeing. Like the attention was taken away from me. No one actually cares about me or what I do anymore. It’s all about him. I don’t need to be self-conscious anymore, because I care more about him than what other people think of me. I needed Sonny, more than he needed me. I was feeling a little stagnant without him. We had ticked all the boxes, house, second house, promotions, whatever, but none of that shit gave me any purpose or meaning. In the past, I had been too afraid of whatever others thought of me and too afraid of failure to ever pursue anything I was passionate about. I’d pigeon-holed myself into feeling this way and thinking doing grown-up shit would make me feel better. it doesn’t. It just stresses me out.

He doesn’t realise it, but Sonny has taught me so much already. He’s taught me that it’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to reveal a soft, compassionate side. He’s taught me that ultimately, not much of what we think matters, matters. He’s taught me that life is really fuckin’ simple (his words). We are in control of how simple or complex our lives are. He has taught me about presence, something I have struggled with for a long time. I used to doom scroll through my phone or drink to avoid my own thoughts, but now I don’t need to do that because if I’m at home, I’m investing my time and energy into him. He has taught me that we don’t need any of the bullshit I thought we did. Sonny has taught me what matters and what doesn’t and it’s been the most valuable lesson of my life so far. Most of all though, Sonny has taught me how to be happy and content with the little things.

He has motivated me to be my true self. I want him to see me doing what I care about and what I’m passionate about so that he feels comfortable doing the same. I want him to know that it’s not okay to do what you love or what you’re passionate about, it’s fucking imperative. Life is was too fucking short to do a degree because your dad wants you to. It’s too short to play a sport you hate but your parents love it and now they want you to make it because they didn’t. Fuck, all that.

By simply asking myself, “does this set the right example for Sonny?” before I do something, I’m already more aligned with the person I want to be and I’m getting closer each day.

Having a kid is the most extraordinary and ordinary thing you can do. I know that. I’m just another new dad with rose-tinted glasses. I can’t say that Sonny saved my life, not sure. I can say with certainty that Sonny saved me from myself. When he is 14 and I catch him pinching money out of my wallet or see him sneaking out at night to pash chicks or see his mates, I’ll do my best to always remember all that he has done for me at a time that I needed it the most.

Can’t wait to make crass jokes about milking bulls with you in 30 years, mate.

I love you, Wah Wah.

Some woo-woo shit to bring it home

You know how when a sports team is having a cracker of a season and then late in the year lost to a side somewhere near the bottom of the table and all the commentators say “it’s the loss they had to have”? That’s kind of how I view 2022. Some fucking amazing things have happened for me this year. I sound like an entitled asshole, sitting in my house at the coast, with my partner and healthy, chubby, cheeky four-month-old squirming around working on a special present for Dad. I get that.

I’m talking about the hard shit (very different to the shit Sonny is working on). My hitting rock bottom. The panic attacks. The early stages of sobriety, the milder yet ongoing challenges of sobriety. The challenges of the new job. Learning how to be a dad. The psychologist sessions. The crying sessions. The hard conversations with my partner, my family and my friends. Writing about 34 years’ worth of pent-up negative emotions and feelings. It’s been fucking hard. And it’s ok for me to recognise that. In fact, it’s important. It’s okay for me to recognise that although I have fucked up plenty, although it’s been a rocky path at times I’m allowed to be proud of how far I have come this year. (163 k’s)

I’m constantly reminding myself that you don’t lose if you learn. This year has taught me more than any other year, by far. It’s the year I think I had to have. I didn’t know who I was at the start of the year. Yeah, I was a vegan that ran a bit, who (thought he) liked to party. But that’s not who I am at my core. A year ago I was lost. I thought I was going to live in the house in Canberra for the rest of my life, stay in the same job, have a kid, and they’d live with us for 18 years then piss off and only talk to us when they wanted shit.

I was in a long-term, negative, defeated head space. I needed a shake-up, and the universe delivered that. The baby news on Christmas eve. The phone call about the job was on the same day we received the property evaluation.

The universe was sending me a message. It was telling me that I could have the meaning and purpose I so badly desired, but not for free. I could set my family up financially by renting my house out and moving to the coast, but you’re going to have to do it with a pregnant partner and there’s going to be a lot happening all at one time. If you want this shit as badly as you claim you do, you’re going to have to work for it. You’re going to have to make it happen. Here’s the key to the door, but only you can walk through it.

I hate to think about how many opportunities I have missed by not being present enough to see them, or being too scared to take them. This year has taught me that I am the biggest cause of friction between myself and my goals. Between me and who I want to be and what I want to achieve. Nothing holds us back more than ourselves and our lack of self-belief. Our fear of failure holds us back. We are too scared to try the things we want to try because we are scared of how failure will make us feel. I think we need to change our mindset. Failure is important and necessary. Life is too short not to at least try to do the things we want to do. It’s too short not to search for our purpose and meaning and then pursue them like fucking maniacs. If our first pursuit fails, we do lessons learned and find another way. Einstein, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, and Donald Bradman, not one of them gave up after they failed. They looked at why they failed, reassessed and went again. People change the world every day. Why can’t it be you? You don’t have to change everyone’s world, but you are responsible for changing your world.

I’m a better person now than I was at the start of the year. A much better person. That’s according to myself, and that’s all that matters. I’m the king of negative self-talk, I’m real fuckin’ good at it. But, I’m sick of it. In most instances, I’m a practical person, I don’t like doing things that don’t make sense or doing things the wrong way about. Being an asshole to yourself doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t achieve anything. If you fuck up, commend yourself for trying, figure out where you fucked up, and attack it from another angle. I’m not trying to be Tony Robbins here, I’m just giving myself a bit of a pep talk and hopefully, you take something away from it too.

I’m starting to organically feel like using words like “enlightened” and “enriched”. Might even buy meself some linen pants and grow out me hair. Meditate on the headland and shit. What I mean is, it’s true what they say. You have to hit your own version of rock bottom to come out the other side. The challenges this year has presented me with have set me on the path I’m on now. I don’t have a clue what the future holds, but with this last year under my belt, I’m no longer afraid of whatever shit it slings at me. I know I can handle it. I know it’s nowhere near as scary as I like to make things out to be. Because I have learned that I am in control of my own destiny. I get to choose how I respond to whatever happens and that is fucking amazing. I’ve never felt so confident and excited about the future.

Let’s fuckin’ stretch 2023’s ears.

Cheers Wankers

I wouldn’t be in the position I am if not for the incredible network of family and friends that I have. I’m going to list some people and I will definitely leave some out by accident. For that I’m sorry. My Son, Sonny. My partner, Thea. My immediate family, my coast family, the rest of my family, my mother-in-law Lex, my schoolmates, The

Writing 4 Resilience

crew,

Ben Alexander

Running for Resilience

. My internet mates Benny Sponge, Paul Whelan, Simon Guess, Shagger Lowe, Graham Dowie, Ian Mitchell and all the other twitter legends. The 2Zoners, Fear the Ant, TCH, Everyone I've met at R4R, Binh Dang and anyone else I might've forgotten. There'll be a few of ya's.

Cheers Wankers.

X.