Candela Place 2

I began seeing a psychiatrist the same month I moved into Candela Place.  We had our first meeting in July before I moved, then again in early August just after I moved.  I was referred to him by my family doctor.  I knew there was something wrong with me.  The lady who helped me get affordable housing tried to convince me that I suffered from depression and was determined to persuade me to go on medication and apply for a disability pension.  I knew that whatever it was afflicting me it was not depression.  I was sure that I suffered from PTSD.  My first meeting with my new psychiatrist confirmed this for me.  He agreed to treat me without medication.  Thus began a journey of recovery and of new beginnings.

It was like a divine intervention that the three most significant areas of need in my life: decent housing, employment and psychiatric treatment/recovery, should happen simultaneously, in tandem.  So I began to stumble forward.  In early 2004 I lost my job at the emergency shelter, but with encouragement and help from my psychiatrist and my employment counsellor I bravely moved forward into my next and current career choice as a mental health peer support worker.  Living in a subsidized apartment where the rent was cheap enough not to be a worry to me was also a tremendous boon.

I entered my fifties feeling already well, and better than I had ever felt at any other time in my life.  Not even the minor inconveniences of living in a bad neighbourhood or of having to cope with difficult neighbours was enough to throw me off.  I was moving in a direction of recovery, and not simply recovery but the most profound sense of wellness ever in my life.

I gradually lost all my friends.  They were used to and still loved the wounded and dying bird I once was.  Now that I was a phoenix emerging from the ashes they no longer knew me.  I gathered courage, hope and strength to push bravely into this new and sometimes troubling solitude knowing that I was at least moving forward, and trusting God to chart my course and clear and open the way for me, despite the loneliness.   It was at times exhausting.  I refused this time to give up.