I have to admit it was good being away from here and not needing to visit for so long. However, we can't always escape our problems and recently mine came screaming back with vengeance. I was going so well until a medical problem required some treatment and unfortunately for me the doctors were treating the symptoms and not the cause.

In this case the cause was an impinged nerve in my back which was creating nerve pain in my leg, and the way the doctors chose to treat it was via a medication which contains Lyrica. I had read up on it with the paperwork the doctor had given me. It did outline the fact it can impact mental health and to keep an eye on things. Well, I was going well apart from the nerve pain getting stronger, this resulted in an increase in medication. Suddenly I had gone from 1 tablet a day to 2 at 75mg and the pain was masked. Unfortunately for me the problem was it was also slowly impacting my mental health.

Since getting off the drug I have found a few other things that it had an impact on which I experienced but didn't know until recently.

I have not been here for some time and I really feel that I need to express a few things.. It can be tough dealing with things... I have a father who has a wide array of issues medically he suffers with diabetes, a plate in his right wrist and also he has a bad shoulder as well as issues with his knees. Add to these the underlying mental issues that he does not in fact acknowledge and it can be like living beside a ticking bomb - never knowing when it will go off.

Add to this issues with a mother who has become lazy and uses a current medical issue to further pull back from doing things. I honestly believe her issue is more than that as she has had 2 bouts of cancer in the last couple years and these have had a massive mental toll on her. However with all this she still has failed to quit smoking and I think some days she tends to smoke even more than normal.

I also have a sister who has medical issues and an inane inability to manage her finances, there have been multiple times where family members have in fact had to financially bail her out. Much of this I believe is caused by the inability of both parents to also save. They for years wasted their money on alcohol and cigarettes but of course they did also provide us with food and looked after us to a certain degree.

By the age of 21 I had to financially assist my own parents because they had failed to make savings or plan for any long term future this of course has placed additional pressures on me and caused me to have to continually sacrifice many things. They fail to understand and comprehend the life I have been left with for their focus has always remained on themselves... I do wish that things could be different however I have been dealt my cards and I need to play with the hand I have got. Lately I have been playing 'Poker" and tending to bluff my way around things but of course the problem is that my life has become so twisted and lost and I am in need of more direction and focus.

I have recently been trying to contact some old friends who know about my situation and unfortunately they are unable to be contacted and this doesn't help the issue. I am starting to feel a little abandoned and neglected but I also know that my friend suffers their own issues.

They were prone to eating disorders and self harm and I was one person who she could talk to (or so it seemed) She would get in touch with me and talk to me at random times and I would do the same but the last couple weeks it has been worse and not only am I battling my own demons a little - I am now also very concerned for her well being.

She is a friend whom I have known for years and the problem is she lives out of driving range - it would be easier to fly there but of course I can't afford to do that even if it was for a day or so. My work and other situations presently don't enable me to do that!

I was chatting on a social media with an old friend who I hadn't spoken with for many years, and we were talking about a lot of random thing and naturally started to talk about school because we have a High School reunion later this year.

As we were talking we began to discuss older and older things and suddenly I found myself remembering an event from very early in High School (here we tend to do High School from around 12 to 18 years of age depending on when you start school) It was a school camp early in the first year designed to help us bond as people because we came from a variety of schools and some travel up to 2 hours just to get to school each day.

It was an evening on camp and we had small cabins which were set up with bunk beds. It was midway thru the week long camp and several of the boys were being silly and started playing a game (I was quietly resting on my bed not even involved) The next thing I know I am involuntarily involved in the game which has suddenly become somewhat sexual and rather uncomfortable. Having my own issues relating to this matter further made the situation worse for me as these were young boys experimenting and learning for the first time in some cases. Little did they know that some have experienced the unpleasant side of the subject.

I fought as best I could but it was difficult when you had 5 boys against you and as it turned out you happened to be the smallest physically. I was smallest because when I was 3 I had been very ill and had to be hospitalized multiple times so my mother keeps reminding me. The boys forced me to partake in their unpleasant acts and it was a local boy whom I went to school with that stopped the event going further when he knocked on the door.

The boys all stopped and quickly got themselves respectable before letting him in. He knew something was up and told a teacher after he left (naturally the other boys were all in bed when the teacher arrived and the ring leader was removed from the cabin and forced to sleep in another which also had a teacher.

The event was the only one that happened on camp and it brought back so very many memories of other events, even now remembering them it is hard to not get oneself down and feeling badly.

Currently I am sitting in my office at work and have been having an ok day so far although I do feel a bit tired, not because I didn't sleep well in fact I think it's the opposite... my body was so relaxed that it's struggling to start up once more.

The weekend was productive in patches, with cleaning and organisational things done quite regularly - especially yesterday when for some reason the night before I had a triggering dream which I don't remember but I know it was a triggering dream because of the way I woke up in the morning - I hate those dreams because they can be so unpredictable to say the least and their result is always a negative one.

Thankfully I didn't have one last night so I guess it was just a one off, but even so it was rather unsettling especially when the last couple weeks had been so comfortable and refreshingly good. I guess not all roads are smooth and easily travelled, if they were we wouldn't have any problems in life.