Work and me are not friends.

My first work experience consisted of cleaning and oiling valves at the sugar mill in our village, one-month stints during the summer highschool holidays. I sort of enjoyed that, even if it meant getting up early in the morning and feeling intimidated by the leathery old geezer who taught clumsy me how to do stuff. After moving to Vienna for studying English and Czech, uni was blessedly work-free thanks to my parents' support (and free college education in this country) until I got drafted. I could have opted for substitute community service instead but was curious how I would make out; maybe I was also scared of having to drive an ambulance, or the more gross aspects of forced healthcare labor typically involved. So it was 8 months in an anti-aircraft unit which I survived with dignity, only to suffer a major depressive episode when The Man finally let us out of His clutches.

A karate buddy got me a part-time job at the airport, taking care of charter passengers for a major local tour operator. Reinforced by Maprotiline, I did ok most of the time. It was odd hours but nicely paid, with a small company car (we also had to ferry mail cases back & forth from company HQ to the airport and back) for unofficial private use. Simultaneously I tried to make my name as a self-employed translator, which was much harder going. There's feverish competition, with most of the freshly-baked college graduate giving up after a year or two. I made it though, mostly thanks to the dearth of Czech => German/English translator after 1989 when Czechoslavia peacefully overturned its Communist regime.

I finally gave up my airport job when there seemed to be enough translation work to sustain me. I still had major/clinical depression but muddled through somehow. That's why I was completely unprepared when mania hit sometime in November '93 - I thought I was suddenly cured, so I stopped seeing my doc & taking my meds, still working but spending way too much money, mostly in the cathouses of the Czech Republic and Hungary (the girls loved me and my manic charm); well, you all can imagine how things felt at that time... in March '94 or so, my mood became mostly hypomaniac, then somewhat more stable, then gloomy, then severely depressed. What saved me was a working girl I was living with at the time (no sexual relationship, just friends), a little firebrand Slovak & former certified nurse who one day took a look at my pathetic trembling form and said: "Go home to your parents, stay there, and see your doc, ASAP!". I somehow managed the 50 mile drive to my parents' house, then broke down.

Severe panic; shame; afraid even to leave my darkened room and go to the bathroom. My parents were supportive but scared, too. Each day they'd drive me to the neigboring village to my doc's surgery, for infusions of lithium plus Maprotiline, spiked with valium. The valium wore off in a couple of hours, the rest of the cocktail failed to take for six weeks or so. I begged my doc to give me something for that constant panic I was in. He gave me Buspar, which had no effect whatsoever. Reluctantly, he prescribed some valium, which frightend me even more because of its instant effectiveness. Fuck, I was so scared... I tried to keep off the valium so I wouldn't get hooked (big potential for addiction here), held off thoughts of suicide until I could stand it no longer, then took half a tablet. I was unable to read, unable to watch TV, just lying in my bed, trying to sleep as much as possible, hiding under the sheets whenever I heard a stranger enter the house.

(to be cont'd)