For years I have been living with a tamed beast of depression and have often found quiet solace in the control I have maintained both over myself and my immediate surroundings. But then I got a 3 month mining contract far from home, overpaid but with no comforts, no assurances and the expectation of great sacrifice upon my shoulders. The 10 hour shifts didn’t take long to get used to but the 10 day working roster I have yet to come to terms with. The 3 month contract turned into 6 and from this day there is only a single month left.

During this endurance I have made several significant relapses in my control of the beast and have allowed another monster into the cage that is my mind: anxiety. Looking back anxiety was always there but it was well camouflaged behind the depression. Now I feel it’s talon’s plunging deep.

I’m listening to the old music I used to listen to 5 years ago, the music that was a permanent accompaniment to my depression. I feel many of the old urges I felt mentally and physically of 5 years ago. I feel the insecurities that I thought I had long cast down, I feel a renewed conflict with my assigned gender and I feel a great yearning to express my identity to the world. Do I blame the resurrection of these torments on the dreadful conditions I have been subject to in working the mines or do I appreciate the renewed awareness of these concerns that I may now address.

My mind feels exactly as it did during high school and the first year of university and I am confident I will emotionally recover when this contract ends and I return home to rest my lithe body and to wash the grime and the stains of labor from it. What does not fill me with confidence is knowing what happened during those years when I did lose control of my emotional faculties. Will I be able to put back into their cages these beasts of depression, anxiety, gender identity and despondent loneliness.

I yearn for companionship and the reminder of my lacking experience haunts me. I’ve never been in a relationship and I don’t make myself particularly accessible. I cross dress, wear gothic clothes and have a gender identity complex with which I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I don’t drink, I don’t party and I don’t do casual encounters.

Statistically there is someone who can sum me up and I tick all of their boxes and they mine but in doing so they are more than likely sitting at home as I do with no way of knowing their existence.

For now I know I will be fine after this work ends and I return to a life of emotional and mental comforts and I will be spending a considerable sum of money on new goth clothes and will muster the courage enough to wear them and to fully express myself and how I feel. Now is the final stretch of endurance and I have endured so much. I just have to keep a lid on things for another month or so which at this time looks like a considerable challenge as my mood fouls evermore with each passing day. I’ve never been so tired.