Remembrance of Pain's Past (My History of Living With Chronic Pain & Depression)

It All Started When I Was Born

As a teenager in the early '10s, I already had back problems. I was diagnosed with scoliosis around the age of 16. I lived in Trinidad at the time. Back then, all I cared about was spending as much time as I could in Runescape and playing COD with my friends. Because of this, I was very much scrawny and unathletic (I was 6'2, 128lbs at 19 when I started university). I remember always having to put a pillow behind my back or use one of those standalone back massagers just to alleviate as much pain as possible. Sitting was always uncomfortable, but as I didn't know much else, it was normal for the time and I simply dealt with it. I started going to the gym around 17 with my Godbrother, Kern, and that helped immensely to strengthen my body and gain some much needed confidence. Good times I suppose.

Enter: University of Guelph

I was so happy to escape my life in Trinidad and go off to a foreign country. I started off pursuing a BSc. in Chemistry with a minor in German. I have very fond memories of first year university in Canada (2014-2015), but one of my earliest pain memories was during our orientation. We were sitting in a giant building (auditorium?) in this session about consent and probably some other relevant issues that university students face. Thing is, we weren't sitting in chairs, and instead we were just on the ground. Now for most teenagers, I imagine this is a fine arrangement but for me, I could barely sit cross-legged without being extremely uncomfortable. Stretching out my legs was a better alternative, but my back pain would never let up and so for what felt like hours (it was probably only about an hour), I got to sit in an extremely uncomfortable position with my new friends. Fun stuff.

Now I was still regularly working out and trying to strengthen my body, which was great. I spent way too much money out of my meal plan on various protein shakes trying to gain weigh. It pains me how much money that was, but whatever. You live, you learn. Unfortunately there was an incident that promoted my chronic pain from my back, which was manageable at the time, to elsewhere. I was running to go eat with my friends in the Lennox & Addington cafeteria. I was either racing my friend Anny, or I was trying to catch up with her, I don't remember. But what I do remember was as I was running up the staircase from Lambton Hall to L&A Hall, I felt this extremely sharp painful sensation shoot up from my right knee into the rest of my leg. I then had to pretend to not limp the rest of the way. From that point on, I always had problems with my knees. They'd hurt when running, when walking for any long period of time, and sometimes, just randomly. I know at some point I went to a chiropractor for my back and knee pain but I can't recall what else I did to address it.

In Summer 2016, I went to work at the Cargill beef factory tending to a machine that turned flatpacked cardboard into boxes. Since I didn't have a car, and the Guelph busses couldn't get me to work in time (6:30am start, I think?), I'd ride my bike to work. One of the major issues caused by my knee pain around this time was that just peddling my bike would get uncomfortable and painful very quickly, but since I had no other easy way to get there, I just made do and got my ass to work.

In Winter 2017, I went through some serious depression. This was precipitated by some bad interactions with this girl I had way too much of a crush on (sigh), but it wasn't entirely based on just her. It was from that point on that I began seeing the therapist that to this day I continue to see as needed, and who is a major factor in me being alive today. I also had an extremely bad reaction to the antidepressant I was taking at the time (iirc, it was Sertraline). I was bedridden for ~2 weeks with this piercing headache that I hope no one ever experiences because it was hellish. Oh also, I played a lot of Stardew Valley during this time which helped me keep my sanity.

In Summer 2017, once I got over the debilitating side effects of whatever antidepressant I was on at the time, I went on to work cleaning windows on campus. It was actually quite a nice job just being able to do my own thing while listening to music/podcasts. But of course, drugs aren't magic and within a few weeks of starting, I quit my job and decided to sit in my cold dark basement room watching Netflix for days straight. I can't really remember if there was a definitive cause at the time for my depression, but it was very much there and it cost me weeks of life and weeks of paycheques as well. All this time I had my chronic back pain going on in the background, just part of life I grew to accept.

In Winter 2018, I managed to put on quite a lot of muscle and weight. I was probably around 185 lbs, and quite happy with how my workouts were progressing. Thing is, I wasn't even lifting that heavy, e.g. I got up to ~150lbs on the backsquat, which isn't that heavy, but it hurt my knees all the same. As I got into my mid-20s, I had to start cutting out exercises such as the box jump, as it was too hard on my knees. Same thing goes for the incline leg press, which I used to really enjoy...

Post-Uni Era

Anyways, we're now in 2019. I had some self-inflicted issues with converting my student visa to a Post-Graduate Work Permit (PGWP), and so I ended up on implied status in Canada, eventually culminating in having to leave the country for a few months while these fantastic immigration consultants helped me get my life in Canada back. Seriously, thank you to Canadian House Consulting. Once I got back in April 2019, I proceeded to struggle in finding a job in my field of chemistry while I worked at my previous summer job as a Sales Consultant at this family owned appliance store. I didn't mind too much as it was a friendly and relaxed environment, and in my downtime I got to focus on learning software development, which my friend Madison had inadvertently introduced me to when she showed me her Engineering Capstone project a few months earlier. I'd be reading A Tour of C++ in between customers, and that helped immensely with just getting acquainted with the language. Turns out chronic depression is chronic, and I did not get to escape it like I hoped. At some point I remember walking along a busy road to work, and having this strong feeling of needing to throw myself into traffic. Not really sure why I didn't, but I did reach out to my therapist about it, as much as I hated doing that. It's weird being able to look back on these times years later, because there are many with similar sensations that didn't make it, and I can't really say what separates me from them. Also during this period, I got to the point of tying a belt around my neck and having a mental breakdown in my room. For whatever reason I decided to call my father, with whom I don't even talk to often, instead of hanging myself. I suppose having people to reach out to makes a big difference, to some.

At the beginning of Fall 2019, I managed to get an analytical chemistry job working at this pharmaceutical company in the middle of nowhere. And so, I moved from Guelph to Stratford, ON, where I continue to live at the time of writing this. At first, I was quite happy just to have a job and a place to live, and so for some months, I was "content" working and programming on the side. At the beginning of 2020, my grandfather passed, and I coudn't afford to to fly back to Trinidad to visit him before he died, nor could I go to his funeral. I was sad, but this is a great example of the difference between sadness and depression. Despite being sad for a while, I continued to go to work, except taking a day off to grieve. One thing that quickly started becoming excrutiating however, was my back pain. The lab I worked in had the worst bullshit barstool chairs for us to sit in. Coupled with being far too tall to comfortably work at the lab benches we had, I'd often get home in severe pain. Now because this was just my life, I put up with it. We would eventually get slightly better chairs, but the problem remained. It's funny, looking back on this, as you do really slowly get driven up a fucking wall by chronic pain. And it's the sort of thing that you just try to manage because ultimately, you kinda just need to live life.

At the end of March 2020, I ended up having to go to the hospital for a severe migraine. I got those from time to time, and they weren't usually that big of a deal, just very irritating and inconvenient. This was the beginning of the COVID era so everywhere was completely empty and shit got weird, but the nurses there injected me with some steriod I don't remember the name of, and it helped a lot. I then proceeded to drive myself back to work for some damn reason, which is kind of insane when I think about it today. I should have never been driving given my condition. But anyways, I had what was basically a performance review that day, so I got to sit in that meeting with my supervisor Darlene (lovely lady), and our lab manager. For context, I was very high on whatever they injected me with, to the point I was slurring my words and nowhere near as coherent as I needed to be. The meeting went fine, so whatever. From this point on, I went from having normally having at least having one migraine a month, to going months without any migraines whatsoever. Small miracles.

From the end of March 2020 to the end of June, our lab got split into two groups, where one group would work 12 hours Monday - Wednesday (my group), and the other Thursday to Saturday. This was to "limit exposure" between groups of people, and to keep COVID from spreading throughout the entire lab. Obviously, this was fucking stupid and made no sense considering people from one group would occasionally interact with the other because people have relationships outside of work. I however loved it because I had so much time work on my coding projects, exercise a ton, and play way too much Minecraft and Valorant. I took full advantage of this glorious period of 4 day weekends. I would sometimes go for two hour runs where the only reason I'd stop was because I figured I should probably go work on whatever project I was doing at the time. I did really love running. That's not to say I got a break from my various growing chronic pains. My knees would be burning once I got home, and my lower back did not enjoy me doing that amount of physical activity. But I did it anyways, because I could. Around this time I managed to achieve a 305lb deadlift for the first time as well, which I was very proud of even though it's not that much in the grand scheme of things.

I started dating my girlfriend to this day, Alysia, in October 2020, with whom I worked in the same lab together. I simply asked her on a date when I got a chance to be alone with her at one of our picnic tables. Highly recommended behaviour, I know. Life was good for a while, but at the end of March 2021, I started feeling depressed yet again. My supervisor Darlene recommended I seriously think about taking some time off, and I eventually did, for 2-3 months. During this time I continued to improve my software dev skills, if only to keep my sanity as I can't just sit playing games all day anymore. It becomes very dissatisfying, for whatever reason. Once I returned to work, I realized I needed to leave my chemistry job, as I started despising my work. The people I worked with were great. The company, specifically the upper management, was quite shit and there was quite a few meetings trying to "figure out" what could be done to improve employee morale and reduce turnover.

I'd eventually get my Canadian Permanent Residency in November 2021, which allowed me to apply at one of those companies that trains new developers and contracts them off to whatever corporations they have agreements with, usually banks. The pay wasn't that good, and we were "locked in" to a 2 year contract with the company we were assigned to. Being me, I just ignored that entirely and just did my best to learn and improve as much as I could. All this time, I continued to cope with decreasing tolerence for my back pain. I purchased a standing desk in hopes that I could alleviate the pain of sitting, which did help, however, even standing would slowly become more and more unbearable.

Christie Friends & The Ones We Made Along The Way

Eventually, in May 2022, someone I had contacted a year before about job openings messaged me asking if I was still looking for a job. His name is Tony Van Eerd, and he changed the course of my life for the better. After a series of interviews that were quite difficult, at least for me, I got hired as a software developer at Christie Digital! It's hard to express how happy I was at the time. I'm sure many people have been in a similar situation, and can relate. One thing I do remember, and I wish I had mentioned at the time, was my multiple occurrences of long periods of depression. Obviously, this would not have been a smart idea. At the time of writing this, I'm once again on leave for depression. I genuinely hate myself now for it. And I wish they had never hired me. But more on that later.

At the end of summer 2023, after coming back from a trip to Banff, Alberta, I once again felt depressive feelings that were too much to ignore. It had been months in the making. Overall, my life was going quite well at that point, but despite that fact, I still just couldn't help feeling the way I did. For me, depression always feels like the beginnings of a cold, where you can feel it coming on, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just one day, you wake up and you're sick. I stopped going in to work, and ended up having to take time off. Just to emphasize this, my software dev job at Christie is the best job I have ever had, and everyone is very friendly and helpful. I work with extremely intelligent and productive people. Which just makes it worse when I took time off. The level of guilt I feel for not being at work is something I think about every day, without fail, and it eats me up inside. I tried to go back to work in November, not wanting to be away for too long. I lasted a week before the sensation of wanting to commit suicide from just walking into our office was a bit too much, and I left again. For a while, I spent my days lying in bed until it became too uncomfortable, then I'd go play League of Legends or whatever I could to distract myself.

In March 2024, I started streaming Palworld. I've always loved streaming and video making. I had tried it out for a while from the beginning of 2020, first streaming Half Life, until Mixer closed down in the summer. It was a bit sad as I was actually starting to get a bit of traction and returning viewers, but at that point I just decided to focus more on software dev. Regardless, once I got back to content creation, it gave me a reason to exist beyond the people I love, which I very much needed. Despite still being depressed, I managed to keep it going, even when I went back to work in April 2024. Life was good for a while and I was very happy to be back at work, even knowing that I was putting in a lot of effort ignore my depression. It worked, for a time.

Somewhere around September 2024, that tactic stopped working. I had to take leave yet again, which I currently still on as of writing this. Of course, my chronic pain had never gone away in the first place. By this point, I'd lost my ability to run or even walk/hike reasonable distances, without severe pain in my feet/knees/back. It was driving me mad. I couldn't even workout with a reasonable amount of weight anymore. I felt weak, and I hated myself. What's worse, is that my mother came to visit for a few weeks, so obviously I had to maintain appearances for her sake.

Today

I continue to try to live life as much as I can. My doctor did her best to get me the help I needed. I've been to a Rheumatologist, a Neurologist, and had an MRI scan which did end up finding a herniated disk in my back. I've kept trying out different antidepressants/pain meds to see if they'd actually help. They haven't. Not really. I don't have arthritis. There is nothing obviously wrong with my body beyond the herniated disc, and scoliosis. I did however get diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I despise hearing that word. It took me months, up until the point of writing this article, to even want to acknowledge that that condition could apply to me. I hate hearing about it.

As of today, 6th March, 2025, I am currently only on Pregabalin, a medication that can possibly help with chronic pain. I can't tell if it really does much, but it doesn't have any obvious side effects. Every antidepressant I took did not seem to do much for my depression, and the shitty side effects like the negative impacts on sexual activity, for example, were obviously not worth it given that. I've started learning the Godot Engine and playing around with a few game dev ideas. I very much need some level of productivity to not go crazy, and game dev is the perfect outlet for that. Having to delve into 3D modelling and animation, learning a good bit of linear algebra and game design patterns, and just having something to do besides waste away inside all day has played a big part in keeping me around. I had a few weeks of feeling quite happy and content. I'd wake up, go to the gym, then go to a cafe that's a 5 minute walk from my house, and sit there for as long as my back pain would let me. I even told the psychotherapist that my health insurance was "making me" see that I felt good, and not really depressed. But good things never last, and since my chronic pain randomly got significantly worse about 2 weeks ago, I've not been doing well. I have to force myself not to think about suicide. My girlfriend Aly asked me if I wanted to ice skating, something I really enjoy doing despite being really bad at it (I'm from the Caribbean, after all), and I broke down in tears for the first time in years. The ice skates that I bought and had adjusted hurt my feet far too much. Every ice skate I've worn has been the same.

I don't know how to cope anymore with constantly having pain from every activity. I don't get to run. Hiking become painful quite quickly. Everything I do hurts. Even just sitting/standing at my desk to play games hurts within an hour. The pain is in my back. It's in my feet. It's in my neck. My wrists and hands have started having this tingling sensation that becomes a somewhwat burning feeling. Our couch isn't that good, but it reclines, and yet even with trying to prop myself up appropriately and just relax, I am uncomfortable. As I sit here in this cafe writing, I can feel the pain in my lower back slowly increasing. I cannot escape these suicidal thoughts. Too often now, I imagine myself walking into our town's river, and just finally being at peace. I cannot kill myself, as it would fuck up the lives of people I love, and that love me. I'm not really sure what to do anymore. My next step is to try to contact this chronic pain specialist in Toronto, Dr. Andrea Furlan, to see if she can help me.

I suppose I wrote this so that there'd be something the people I care about can see. I would never commit suicide. Sometimes though, these thoughts become too much, and one can only push them away for so long. I will not let this chronic pain and depression hold me down forever. But I'm tired. Very tired. So tired that being at peace in that river feels nice sometimes.

I hope one day I can update this article and say that I've found the solution. That's really all I want. Maybe this post will help someone else stick around as well. Take care.