Gravity

The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get.

Grumpy vs. grateful: the eternal dilemma

Occasionally when I am doggedly trying to stay empty and hollow, I find myself receiving regular and diverse bursts of encouragement from kind people who seem to be determined to lift me out of my misery. Today for example I started out nicely dug in for my quotidian sulk: Despite it being a work day, I lay in bed all morning, listening to the radio, hating myself and my life, and ignoring the phone, until well past noon.

But after I showered, shaved, dressed and left the apartment for the safety of my "third place" multinational coffee chain outlet, things started to get off track. Following up on my innocuous introduction, my seatmate struck up a conversation with me about her marriage, which led to her telling me that she knew a whole bunch of single women who would kill to meet an attractive and stable man like me, and then gave me her phone number as she was leaving and told me to call so we could pick up our conversation again.

A few minutes later, I got an unexpected text message from K., the vitality girl I met last week who runs the meditation seminars, who asked me out for a "spontaneous drink" tonight.

And then I got an elaborate email from A., offering me a choice of four activity "packages" for my birthday evening, with a diverse set of choices such as skating, dinner out, dinner at her place, movie, etc.

With all these women throwing themselves at me, I am finding it extremely difficult to focus on destructive thoughts about the past. I am of course open to any tips on how I could best ignore all this genuine affection I keep receiving and get back to ruminating about how I will never be able to replace the desperate and selfish neediness masquerading as attention I used to get from my ex.

Understanding vs. Memorizing

My sister tells me that learning life lessons is no different than learning things in school. Some things you need to get deep into and understand how it all works and why, and some things you just need to memorize for the inevitable test.
And according to her method, it is time for me to stop trying to understand why I made the choices I made in the past year. She gave me the following mantra of a helpful and frank title and a trio of aides-mémoires, with instructions to simply memorize it without going too deep:

Cut the crap: I'm over it, what's done is done, I'm moving on.

When things began to change

I guess things began to "change" in the spring of 2009, around when she moved in to the house, and before we went to Asia to collect V. in June. She had been staying over most of the time since Christmas, but still had her room in this professor's house in the west end. Around April or May we kind of decided she should move in. I say "kind of" because I remember particularly how unceremonious her moving in was. We never sat down and planned it at all or discussed the pros and cons or money or anything, it just kind of happened. I did not realise at the time that this type of approach would become the norm for the next two years. There was a vague sort of cloud of logistics which kind of coalesced around the idea, such as collecting her son, her furniture, evicting my tenant, saving the expense of her room, etc., but it was an unfamiliar feeling for me to embark on something so momentous without any concrete discussion about it. But I was surprisingly not bothered by this approach, I had this self-assurance where I just knew I loved her and she loved me and that things would work out and as a result I was immune to feelings of insecurity about it. I was grounded and plans were just something that insecure people fret over.

I felt it would be weak of me to try to include her in the "planning" talk that I felt compelled to have when she clearly did not want to be. And I was scared to push anything so I just kind of let things happen. Despite the fact that the financial arrangement was pretty tight - I was touching more money every month from the tenant I would be evicting than she was paying for her room -- we never discussed it in any detail and I never asked her to contribute any particular amount to the household. She settled into a pattern of signing over random paycheques to me, but it never amounted to much, certainly not even what she had been paying for her room, and we never talked about it - we did not need to, I was strong and capable and knew how to take care of my woman.

As random as it may have seemed to me at the time, it turned out this would be one of the better examples of coordinated planning on our part. Her distaste or even revulsion for "talking" about almost anything to do with our partnership or our home never wavered. I would not always be so stoic about it, and recall time and again being frustrated when trying to draw her into having a discussion of planning about our lives, finances, travel plans, plans for V. (school, cub scouts, heritage language lessons, even haircuts!), decorating  the house, renovating the house, career plans for me and for her, everything. She wanted nothing to do with it. She certainly had opinions about all of those things, but she had no interest in talking about them with me. It was as if every element of our collective lives, everything we did, every item in our house, every movie we watched was a discrete manifestation of an idea of hers, or mine, but never a mélange of the two, and she was allergic to discussing either one. She much preferred going with my idea even when she despised it (and she often did) than to spend time discussing it. Even more awkward was the violence and hatred she exhibited when I tried to insert myself into her own personal affairs, such as restructuring her debts or rehabilitating her suspended driver's license, or of course her son.

Eventually and perhaps inevitably, the source of my self-assurance was exhausted, and with nothing to draw on when I got scared I turned to her, and she had nothing for me either. I was empty, and she felt like the victim of a terrible bait-and-switch: I had sold myself as a superior man who knew how to forge ahead and slay dragons for her, and suddenly I was fallible and fragile and therefore pathetic.

Sh*t my ex did

Sh*t my ex did:

• We went to a wedding for a friend of hers and she failed to arrange for someone to pick up her son from camp at the ferry docks. She then blamed me for it when he sat there for over two hours with no one knowing what to do with him, until they somehow tracked down my mother who called me as she drove down from her place to get him.
• Told me I was "the most ridiculous thing ever" when I started doing a daily exercise ride on my bicycle.
• Preferred to spend time with my father than with me. She regularly invited my father over on the one night a week I had my trivia and then pushed me out the door ("why are you still here?") once he got there.
• Had a "secret friendship" with a guy she met at a political fundraiser which I brought her to. Suddenly put a password on her phone and her computer. Changed her Facebook status to "It's complicated". Came home on a Monday afternoon after inexplicably not picking up her son at school and went straight to the bath and then slept on the couch for two days and shrieked when I tried to touch her. Inexplicably went to an STD clinic for an HIV test after two years of being together. Told me the birthday dinner she was organizing for me and my family was her way of bidding me a final fuck you.
• Drank by herself in the kitchen and even directly out of the bottle - I saw her doing it when she thought no one was watching.
• Yelled at her son 
• Failed to take her son to his Cub Scout meeting whenever I was not available to drive them. I would often return home to find her with booze on her breath and an explanation that he was too tired and did not want to go.

Having Someone In Your Corner

For my first birthday with S., she gave me a framed document which was like a personal love testament she had written for me in the form of an Advent calendar, with a different pledge or appreciation for each day of the month (my birthday is in late December). It brings tears to my eyes just to think about it, it was the most loving gesture anyone had ever done for me, ever. Line after line of carefully chosen items which touched me right to the core. I was floored. Here was this fantastic, wonderful, sexy, exciting, energetic amazing person, and she loved me, and not just frivolously -- she demonstrated that she had identified all the things which make me the wonderful person that I am, the things I am proud of, and she shared it all with me so openly and proudly that she framed it and put on the wall of my (soon to be our) home. One of them was something about what a wonderful father I would make -- V. was still with his grandmother at this point so it was just her and I. My gift to her was actually for him - I put together a box of toys and clothes and books and went with her to the post office where we sent it to her mother -- and she was openly moved. We were so in love.

I remember a conversation I had at a lunch with J., a VP at the company I was working for at the time, early the following year, sometime before S. and I had gone to central Asia to get V. in June. He was not a close friend but we had a definite connection and a taste for sharing with each other. I was working offsite at a hospital downtown at the time and one day he had a meeting with the client and afterwards he took me out for lunch. Like many similar peripheral figures in my life whose perspective of me was broadened by the relative infrequency of our encounters, he remarked on how radiant was my countenance and how stable and self-assured was my manner. He had met S. at the Christmas party and I shared with him how being part of a union with her had helped me to feel so strong and capable. He made an analogy which struck me as very accurate at the time and which stuck with me: there is something very powerful reassuring knowing that you have someone in your corner.

Projects: Dovetailing and Sinking In

I am starting to be able to identify what exactly it is about me that I am "working on" and where I want to go with it. I have a whole bunch of projects on the go, and they all kind of dovetail together. I feel like some of it is starting to sink in a bit.

The depression recovery project is called "I am not my Brain", and it is about learning to ignore the temptation to react poorly to deceptive messages my brain sends me which cause me to enter into and then get stuck in the familiar but self-destructive patterns of depression. It is a challenging one and I am kind of trying to do it myself with the help of a several books and blogs, but the main thing is to teach your brain to react differently than you are used to doing, with the idea that eventually it will stop automatically going to the familiar and unfortunately sad and lonely place, but to the new pattern I have established though conscious repetition.

The confidence and self-esteem project is called "Kicking the validation habit", and it is about becoming self-validating and removing my dependence on the validation of others. This is a very important one for me, and it took me a long time to recognize and understand what it meant to be a validation junkie and just how much of one I was. I have seen all too frequently first hand the unfortunate and inevitable result of what I become when I am unable to obtain someone's validation after having become dependant on it. I am consciously building my own self-validation by following three steps: identify and eliminate shameful behaviour and habits (habitual indulgences, deriding, denigrating, envying and/or disrespecting others, leering at women, swearing, aggressive driving), improve key areas of my life (career, living arrangements, wardrobe, health), engage in activities to fulfil my life (new friends, trips, big plans, goals, projects).

The spiritual one is called project "FSM" (aka Future Self Me) is what I call the one I am working on with old neighbour, friend and now life coach LD. Her approach is to help me envision who I am and where I want to be, and then help me identify what is obstructing my path and how I can overcome those obstacles while being true to my authentic values. I am greatly encouraged by what we have done so far, and feel like I am starting to be able to apply the lessons to aspects of my daily life as well. FSM is confident, grounded, and emotionally connected. FSM is also a Superior Man, who lives a life of integrity, authenticity and freedom.

Around the same time as I started with LD, I started seeing a shrink whose approach I am still fairly sceptical of. I have somewhat cynically entitled this classical psychological / psychoanalytical project Project Rear-view Mirror.  Despite my doubts, I continue to attend twice weekly for the time being, as I am hesitant to walk away from anything at this point unless I am sure it will not help. Shrinks are more mysterious and reticent by nature than life coaches or self help books, but their approach enjoys a record of some success as well and thus continues to enjoy the benefit of my doubt. He also talked at the beginning about the possibility of putting me back on happy pills and there have been times when I have been in so much pain that I gave serious consideration to trying that again. I have a very strong preference for not going down that road again except under extreme desperation, but should I choose pharmacology I would need an MD to supervise it. Nonetheless, the more I assemble the pieces of the big picture, the less footprint on the way forward map this project seems to enjoy. Frankly if he does not pull a rabbit out of a hat pretty soon I think I will cut him loose. I am just not sure I will benefit from any more digging and looking back, particularly if I am able to focus some serious energy on the road ahead.

The last project I want to mention is kind of just beginning but in a way it started the day I met LB. I am not sure what to call this one, maybe something like Project Rock Star, which is something I lifted from one of her messages to me. LB is putting together a plan for working with me from the standpoint of professional improvement but there is a huge overlap into the personal, as I am really looking at merging the two mes into one coherent entity. LB occupies a huge and unique place in my future vision, she is part eye-opener to me but also a mentor, a life coach and a wing girl. I am very excited about working with her, and have been for some time, but I knew I had to wait until I had a stable framework on which to build up and out. I worry that I may not even have that yet, but I cannot wait forever, things are starting to dovetail and I feel like I am ready identify my potential and start to realize it in the way that I know I am capable of.

Two steps forward, one step back

I continue to cycle very quickly and continuously from the glass being half-full to half-empty, to completely empty, and back.

On my good days, I believe what people tell me and what I read, that with enough work and determination I will be able to rebuild my life and emerge from this and start living the life of the man whom I want to be. On my bad days things look a lot more bleak, I spend far too much time staring in the rearview mirror, and I find myself paralysed with fear, shame, indecision and regret.

FSM

In addition to having face to face sessions once per week, LD has generously made herself available to me for support outside of those times, such as the following email I just received:
"Keep your vision firmly in your sights.  Future Self Me is confident, grounded and
emotionally connected.  So are you."

Living with uncertainty

I have, against the advice of my sister K. among others, resumed actively playing the dating game, oddly enough using the same online dating service which brought me the staggering highs and debilitating lows of the two-year rollercoaster known as S.

Today  I received a rather passive-aggressive note from one of my matches whom I had initially communicated punctually with, but whose most recent message had gone read but unreturned for a couple of days. She mentioned that she was reluctant to jump to conclusions, and then did just that by associating my tardiness with disinterest. As I racked my brain for what David Burns would call the cognitive distortion which had unfortunately trapped her, I found this good advice on the value of letting go:

"People often jump to conclusions because they have trouble living with uncertainty. Being content with not knowing what people are thinking, and not knowing what is going to happen in your future, is ultimately empowering, as this is the reality that you are living with most of the time: if you admit it, you will ultimately be better equipped to act effectively in different situations and ultimately get the most out of life."

Breathing Room

Yesterday was my second session with LD, and I spent a lot of time tearfully talking about S. and deconstructing the destruction of our relationship and my subsequent collapse. I seem to have this remarkable insight into that situation and my situation, LD even calls me a "great client" - cause I "get it" - so why do I still listen to what she calls my "saboteurs" - aka deceptive brain messages, aka cognitive distortions? I am glad that I can demonstrate such a wonderful talent for introspection, but I would also gladly trade some or all of it for a little bit of contentment.

Clearly I am not going about it the right way. Last week, like every week in recent memory, I spent a lot of time and energy seeking approval from the ongoing list of women I find in my life: E., T., Sh., S., LD, LB. It was a good week for it actually - i.e. the response was good - and I was juggling so many of them there that I even had enough breathing room to relax the strain I have been putting on my immediate family (J. and K.), and even call up my actual mother and invite her to lunch. I had enough oxygen to make the big decision to move into a new apartment. I even withstood a chance encounter with S.'s son V. on Wednesday and the fishing email which followed from S. on Thursday.

But like every junkie, no matter how great the score, no matter how big the fix, it is never enough. It wears off, and I am left feeling emptier, and more desperate than before.

Nothing in the bank

Whatever wellness I might have accumulated from my life-affirming Saturday has long since evaporated, and despite a Monday which included two hours of coaching, 40 minutes with my new shrink, Cantonese roast pork on rice and trivia club, I greet Tuesday with a familiar and profound dread. I am still able to elevate my mood in response to enjoyable or encouraging things, but I burn through it quickly, and once it is gone, as Dr. S. keenly observed, I have "nothing in the bank", and I crash.

A week in the life of a validation junkie

Tell me if you think this sounds like the week of someone who suffers from impenetrable loneliness and debilitatingly painful depression:

Sunday I decided at the last minute to go to a literary street festival, but more importantly I decided to invite E., a woman I had been chatting with online but had yet to meet, to come with me. She came, we had a good time, went for a quick spin on my motorcycle and then chatted over a frozen coffee treat in a park.

Monday I had my trivia league, and the opponents were one of my favourite teams, with whom it is always fun to catch up.

Tuesday I had a hockey game, but first went out with my friend Sh., who messaged me in the morning saying something like "I think you should take me out for a drink tonight, in my neighbourhood". She required consolation for having missed out on a job she really had her hopes up for, as well as the latest in her series of dating disasters. She had more or less predicted the rejection the week before and had joked that we ought to plan to console each other on the Thursday - as she (quite rightly it turns out) predicted that I would also be stood up by T. (see below).

Wednesday was hockey in the morning, my initial session of life coaching with LD in the afternoon, and in the evening I stayed home and answered some overdue emails. Late that evening I got an online call from E., who was treated to a webcam tour of my house, including, somewhat inexplicably, the contents of my refrigerator.

Thursday I was supposed to go out with T., who, to the surprise of no one, cancelled. And that morning, S. called me, although I did not answer the phone. I went shopping after work with J., and while we were out I got a call that I had been approved for an apartment I had applied for downtown. We went out to an Indian restaurant and I had lots of leftovers for lunch the following day.

Friday I went out with E. for our second date. We were supposed to go to a show of sorts at the french language institute, but she was not feeling well and/or tired and suggested we scale it back to me picking her up and taking her out for dinner, which I did and we did. It turned out to be a rather more cerebral evening than either of us would have planned I am sure, and I returned home somewhat discouraged.

But if Friday night ended on a discouraging note, Saturday morning started out even more bleakly. I woke up for the fourth day in a row dreaming about S. -- In this case I was hugging her as tightly as I could and bawling my eyes out, repeating over and over "I miss you so much". My mother came for lunch and then I went out for dinner and drinks with LB, my confidence mentor. We had, as we always do, a fantastic time, covering ground I just never seem to cover with anyone else I know, ground which I am not sure I even knew existed before I met her. We got a little bit carried away, even for us who have known a bit of excess in our limited relationship, but it was and is all good, and for the first morning in five days I awoke Sunday morning compleletely free of any thoughts of S., and devoid of her usual entourage of dread, regret, loneliness and shame. And I rested -- after retrieving my bicycle from the railway station, I did not again leave the house.

Two weddings and I'm funereal

Friday night I arranged to pick up J. at work and take her for her first motorcycle ride on the back of my new toy, as I had just last week obtained the next graduation in the motorcycle licensing scheme in my province, allowing me to ferry passengers (as well as ride after dark and on the highway, restrictions I had all but ignored). She was very excited about riding with me and had made a lot of noise about wanting to be the first passenger on "Jennifer" -- which she had Christened my bike, and I excitedly collected her at her workplace, helmeted and seated her, and drove off to our mutual delight.

Disaster struck when we arrived at her apartment and I realised that somewhere en route the ignition key, along with the keychain consisting of all my current keys, had in defiance of what many would have thought possible, fallen out of the ignition and become lost, with neither discernable effect on the running engine nor warning to the rider. I had a busy schedule for the rest of the weekend and this setback threatened to jeopardize part of it, as I realized that I had to be at my sister's very early the following two mornings, with my truck, and the only now remaining key to my truck was already at her house, in her town, without the truck, which was at my house, in my town, keyless.

So we made the night into an unplanned sleepover at J. and her husband's new place. We had a nice dinner at the pub downstairs and then went upstairs to their apartment and hung out and then when her husband D. came home we hung out some more and went to bed. I slept on the futon folded out in the living room, feeling oddly but appreciatively like the youthful party guest overstaying his welcome but instead of being the unwilling or unwitting host, I was the one "crashing" at my beloved daughter's house.

I called my sister and when I explained the whole debâcle, she marshalled her forces and the next thing I knew, not only was I talking to my nephew who was digging through my boxes looking for my spare key, but having found it, he was arranging to drive it out to me at my house first thing in the morning. Which he did, including picking me up at the subway station and taking me back to my place.

So thanks to my nephew D.'s selflessness, I made it to my sister's place Saturday afternoon, in time to help her with organising and setting up the crucial stuff for the charity run which would take place Sunday morning.

In the meantime, I was still feeling pretty much empty and zero and all those other lovely euphemisms for nothingness, and that night was LD's wedding, and despite my almost impenetrably depressed mood, I forced myself returned to my old street to attend. In fact I spent a lot of time trying to talk myself out of going and second guessing my plan for getting there and getting home, as complicated as it was considering where I suddenly found myself living and the still unresolved debâcle with my keys, misplaced motorcycle, et caetera. Nonetheless I went out the door, got on a local bus to the city line, another bus which I had thought would be a streetcar but there was reconstruction on the rails, another bus which was actually a change in plans, and then a subway train, to meet with J. near the centre of town, and took another bus because that section of the subway was closed up to collect my motorcycle, and with the spare key finally fired up my motorcycle and peeled/trundled off to LD's wedding -- on my old street. Every step of the way I wanted to die and hoped for a hole to open up in the earth into which I could safely crawl. But it was not to happen. I arrived, strolled in, saw a beautiful party, in celebration of a perfect couple, and all I wanted to do was weep.

I was greeted and very kindly acknowledged by LD and her new husband Ph, and I did my best to congratulate and thank but I was already practically trembling and fled the otherwise loving and celebratory event in a fit of anguish.

I did not know anyone at the party other than the blessed bride and groom, and as I drove away from the scene on my motorcycle I felt the tears running down my face before I even passed my old house, before I even got to the end of the street, before I realised how far I had to go to get home, to my so-called new home in a neighbouring town.

And I bawled my eyes out the whole way home. I remember pointing out to myself how incredibly isolated from the world I felt and from everyone. And I remember wanting to die. I remember just crying, uncontrollably, crying.

I am not my brain

It has been an arduous week. It is at the risk of spinning back into the various pits of depression and despair that I attempt to describe it here. I have visited, in these past seven or fourteen or twenty-one days, what I hope will be the darkest and deepest pits of my tortured soul. And it is not that I spotted anything particularly ugly in there: it is simply that I experienced for the first time the effects of being completely debilitated by ones thoughts.
And it has been particularly intense, and extremely debilitating.
I have been discouraged by a consistent stream of deceptive messages from my unfortunate brain.
I have been encouraged by the reassurance I have distilled particularly from my latest bible, You are not your brain. Indeed, I am not my brain, and I intend to prove it by overcoming the effects of believing that nonsense, and by demonstrating it.

Blue Monday

My sister K. asked me this morning how I was, where I was on the downer scale, from 1 to 10. I told her three, but subsequently I would estimate it more like a two.

Feelings are not reality. That has been my mantra since last week, courtesy of LD, who wrote that, and more, in a very helpful email to me in which she also invited me, when I am ready, to engage with her in a "visioning" exercise. Right now it is so hard to see the light. And yet even in these bleak days I have had occasional good ones, where my mood was completely the opposite. And it is just as hard when I am up like that to remember what it feels like to be down like this, as it is now to even imagine a future where I am happy.

Gratitude Lists

LD suggested that I start doing a daily gratitude list in order to remind myself of the things I should be thankful for and which ought to make me feel a bit more blessed and a little less cursed. This is the initial list I sent her yesterday.

• I am grateful for my God-given blessing of living in relative comfort in a technologically advanced society.
• I am grateful for my sister and her unconditional support for me whenever I need it.
• I am grateful for my many friends who selflessly and generously give me their time, their ears, and their shoulders.
• I am grateful for my innate talents of intelligence and introspection.
• I am grateful for my work, for the rewards and challenges it continually offers me.
• I am grateful for all the opportunities I have been given which have enabled me to achieve the successes I have.

Gradually expanding your comfort zone

The secret to building confidence is to repeatedly take action that gradually expands your comfort zone. Over time, your nerves settle and feelings of self-confidence develop.
That is what it says here!

Awakening

I find it hard to settle on one particular metaphor to describe the process of awakening I have undergone since January, and continue to undergo as I transition (I think!) to a purposeful life. Even "awakening" is of course a metaphor -- an accurate but vague one, with many more colourful cousins. In the early days and weeks, when the fog had first lifted, I likened the feeling to rapture, and somewhat cheekily and rather crudely explained that it felt like I had unknowingly been walking around most of my life with my head up my ass. Such a posture would of course cultivate a sort of ignorance which would be invisible to the subject, until such time as he, as did I, manages to remove his head from the comforts of its prison and lifts it up to survey the view above the grass and take in the new, wider context. In some ways it is not so much a graduation from a pointless to a purposeful life, as it is an expansion of horizons, and of capacity, allowing a starved purpose finally to grow. In other words, ignorant life was not purposeless, it was simply governed by a purpose whose scope was in fact well-suited to the restricted perspective.

And peeking above the grass is really just the first glimpse of the bigger world out there. Even from way down here I can see that there are a whole series of higher perches with even broader perspectives up there from which to view the world around me. The sky's the limit!

External validation vs. self-validation

When things went south for me and S., we tried to get help. We asked my (now our) GP and it turned out his office mate did couples therapy so we went to see him a few times, maybe four times in total. Her biggest beef as told to him was that I did not know when to leave her alone, that she was prone to being overwhelmed by her own internal emotional tsunamis, and that I needed to learn to just get out of the way and let it pass. My biggest beef with her was that I was hurt by her capricious behaviour, I saw it as disrespectful and could not understand why she thought it was acceptable to treat me the way she did.
When we first started dating, when I was still walking on air, she really did behave like someone who genuinely cared about me. But the shine quickly wore off, and we entered a co-dependency spiral. I fell into the worst kind of validation trap, increasingly desperately seeking (and being denied) external validation from what ought to have obviously been such an unlikely, dysfunctional source. What I did not realise then was that my dependency on external validation is inherently destructive, and no amount of approval from S. would ever have been enough for me anyway. I have to learn to self-validate.

Brick Therapy

I am very fortunate to have my sister K. during times in my life when I am struggling. Not only is she an inspirational role model for me, but she is also a valuable advisor with keen insight. She has long been my one of my closest confidantes, and my only confidante in my family really. She is very charitable with her time when I need her, despite being the focal point of a busy family of her own, and regardless of how monotonous my lunacy must seem at times. Her attitude is very down-to-earth towards most situations, and she has little trouble seeing and cutting through crap to get to the heart of most things. Her advice to me thus tends to be of the "give your head a shake" variety. One of the things she has recommended for me several times in our recent conversations has been something she calls Brick Therapy. Curious enough about what that might entail, I googled it and indeed it looks intriguing from what I can understand. Even if I never have to resort to such radical therapy, it is reassuring to know there are always a few more arrows in the quiver.

Crowded

Yesterday was the national holiday, and I went with my friends PM and SC to a huge concert to see a big band at a former air base at the edge of the city. It was a whole-day holiday affair, being a Friday, and we did it up nicely with beers and an all-afternoon barbequeue on PM's deck before jumping on the subway and heading up to the show. And it was chaos by the time we got there -- we got split up when we exited the subway and headed for the shuttle buses, which were packed to the roof like everything else but which nonetheless got us to the show. Once we got there we were tied down in the beer lineups, waiting for the main act to come on, which they eventually did, and eventually SC and I were able to worm our way up to the absolute front of the crowd where we partied like we had no idea because essentially we had no idea.
It was probably the largest crowd I have ever been in, and an homogeneous one at that composed almost entirely of 20something working class and small town hosers. I was overcome by a similar feeling as had almost felled me the previous evening of being an ill-fitting outsider with no connection to the group, even though the group was so different. It is as if no matter the nature of the group, I want to belong, and I do not fit in.

Branding, part I: Future Ghosts

I mentioned that my friend LB, who coördinated the renovation and staging of my house for the sale, had started a couple of businesses -- in fact each time I see her she seems to have branched out into something new. When we first met she was beginning the home staging but by the time we reconnected in the spring and I hired her to stage the house, she had launched her "personal branding" business. I am possibly more of a candidate for a "life coach" than a brand consultant, but close enough, and her track record was unassailable, so once the dust had settled from the sale, both in my house and in my head, and I felt like I was ready for the next step, I asked her what she thought she could do for me. She arranged for me to meet her last Thursday for a drink after work at a fancy, members-only club in a trendy part of town near her apartment.

I arrived early, in my new suit, chosen by P. and test-driven a few weeks previously at the national policy convention, and found myself nervously and self-consciously nursing a pint and waiting for her on the sunny rooftop patio, feeling for all the world like the ultimate outsider among a tightly-knit clique. But before I could twist such superficial alienation into full-blown loners, LB arrived and I was back at ease, safe in the warm envelope of our the profound connection I find I share with her.

And with that simple blueprint unfolded a delicious and unforgettable evening, all within the tiny radius of a few hundred square metres, as we carved a path from roof, to patio, to bar, and briefly to her apartment, riding the intoxicating highs of her unarrestable and almost unlimited ambition for herself, and her genuine, infectious enthusiasm for me and my incredible potential. She laid bare for me the absurdity of my insecurity considering my advantages and my talents, and made such a simple, indisputable case for recognising that my only obstacle is myself. At one point she led me on a Dickensian tour of the ghosts of my past, present, and future, whereupon she walked me around the bar and contrasted me with the local barflies, whose refinement compared extremely unfavourably with mine, but whose confidence and thus track record nonetheless dwarfed mine. I was close, she took me right to the edge of the water and I could see the entire picture, but I was still frozen on the shore, on the sidelines.

Lesson 2: Self-love

The second lesson is another one which I mistakenly (and arrogantly) thought I had learned without doing any real work - the importance of self-love. This one I have been kicked with a few times - I have to learn it in stages. The first error was thinking that since I was happy, and everything seemed to be going my way, that I must have learned to love myself. Wrong! When I met S., I was riding a wave of mania: my reserves of self-esteem seemed boundless, my insecurities completely inevident. I felt neither lonely nor desperate, and as a result I did not notice when I committed to an inappropriate relationship with someone who was so obviously selfish and dysfunctional. My need for external validation trumped my instincts which told me that her love for me was disingenuous. I ignored the warning signs, even when others pointed them out to me, and I clearly still did not like myself enough at the time to permit myself to let that train go past and wait for the next one. The results were disastrous: a slow, steady, relentless, unwavering, inexorable and unarrestable descent back into self-loathing and depression, from which there was no escape for either of us other than painful separation.

But even after all that, when I first broke up with S., I was going around telling people that I felt like I finally understood the importance of loving oneself and the danger of looking outside oneself for the solution to loneliness -- but I still did not actually get it!

Lesson 1: Boundaries

My first important lesson in the immediate aftermath of my breakup with S. was the importance of establishing and maintaining interpersonal boundaries between myself and those around me. I learned and understood right away the boundaries I needed to start enforcing to keep me from owning part of her dysfunction -- in fact that was really a prerequisite for breaking up in the first place. Without that framework to lean on, I could not have carried through with it as I did during the crucial initial days.
The biggest surprise for me though was not learning the utility of a well-situated boundary with S., but realising how universally applicable the concept of personal boundaries was, and that more of my current boundaries were either grossly misplaced or glaringly absent. I was a bit stunned to discover that despite my having cut contact with S., my father was not only in touch with her, but visiting her regularly, driving her places, and even babysitting V. for her. I made an interesting decision in how I chose to respond to that: rather than angrily lecturing him about loyalty or the inappropriateness of his behaviour, I calmly told him about the boundary I had established between me and S., explained to him my determination not to violate it, and suggested to him that he therefore be deliberate in deciding which side of that boundary he chose to spend his time on.
As difficult as maintaining such separation is, it is at least a simple and elegant script to follow, and I did an excellent job of it at first. But after she moved out -- around the corner -- I perhaps became a bit cocky or complacent. As I sifted through the shards of my half of our broken life together, I incautiously dabbled in a sort of casual contact regimen with my now-neighbour S.: offering to return things of hers I had discovered, answering her calls, texts and emails, installing, replacing and then removing a sign on her house for the federal election, going out of my way to bike or drive past her house to get to mine, even accepting and eating food (a well-chosen favourite selection from her enviable repertoire) which she made for and offered to me one day. Boundary breaches can go either way, and one can invite the other: I allowed her in, but I also failed to prevent myself from crossing the line as I reached out. She very quickly managed to sneak back underneath my skin: just an inch or two, but far enough to undo a lot of work which had only recently been done. She is a resourceful woman and has a tremendous ability to effect a remarkable amount of emotional leverage with even the tiniest purchase.
I was much better at maintaining an appropriate boundary with my father, although that was quite painful for him at first, and there is a real risk of more pain for both of us down the road. And my boundary with S. is more or less back in place: I have been very disciplined about not letting her in, but boundaries work both ways, and the part I still struggle with is preventing myself from straying out across the line -- I still catch myself walking down to the corner hoping to see her, or reaching for the phone to call and hear her voice. Clearly some of the damage that was done turned out to be far more difficult to repair after the breach than it had been to establish in the first place.

Father's Day (S., part II)

After what I wrote earlier about looking forward and not backward, it makes very little sense for me to be writing once more about S., but bear with me.
Last Sunday -- father's day -- I went to my sister K.'s for a barbecue with my stepdaughter J. Remarkably it was the first time I had introduced J. to K., which is kind of strange considering what focal points the two of them have been in my life. It was a nondescript dinner with her family but it was still like some kind of big step as it felt like I was introducing a new girlfriend or something but even more important than that as J. has really become like a daughter and not a transient part of my life. Girlfriends come and go, unfortunately, but J. is family and our relationship feels somehow permanent, even more so than that I share with some of my actual family.
I dropped J. off at her place and came home and as I was getting out of the truck I bumped into my neighbour LD. and her fiancé. LD is someone I have such a tremendous amount of respect and affection for, she is one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met. She invited me to join them on the patio at the end of my street for a "father's day" dinner which for them would have been a bit of a break considering they have six children between them. I actually turned them down initially and said something like "if I get lonely I might join you" which of course is exactly what happened the second I stepped in the house and in fact I was so quick to change my mind that when I got there I could not find them as they had not even settled in to the pub yet, with he going home for a sweater and she down the street for some money or something.
We were joined by another neighbour, and we talked about all kinds of stuff, we talked about a lot but of course we talked about S., and then suddenly there she was, with V., walking along the sidewalk beside the patio. And then V. said hello to me, and I said hello back, and just when we all thought the awkward moment had passed, she appeared, at our table, asking me why I had not returned her call from that morning, and when I planned on doing so. I was a bit stunned and unable to respond coherently at first and I think she sensed my discomfort and kept pushing me for an answer, which she never got. She was quite aggressive, quite rude and quite possibly drunk, and I was quite shaken. And of course I am quite curious about what she wants to talk about, but so far have resisted the temptation to find out.

Squishing Thoughts Like Bugs

I read on site somewhere about a cognitive technique where the guy said he dealt with bad thoughts by squishing them like bugs, grabbing them right out of the air like flies and crushing them in his hands or even hurling them to the ground and stomping on them. This has probably been the most effective technique for me of the ones I have tried through the course of my recent slump. The problems are all upstairs, in your own head, and if the thought is distorted, it can be dangerous and should be stopped in its tracks. What have I gained from years of wallowing in pain? Nothing. Worse than nothing, I have made it a habit, with a perverse reward structure of some kind, like the almost-good part of the ache from listening to nostalgic music. Remember kids, the "alg" part of that word is the word for pain in Greek.

Full Houses

One piece of advice I keep hearing from various quarters, but especially and particularly from my sister K., is that I am always trying to hard, and thinking, analysing and worrying too much. Relax, she says, keep doing the things you like to do, focus on things you can control and the things you do well, and things will fall into place. Her favourite way of illustrating this phenomenon is a phrase she picked up from her husband while playing poker: "Full houses just happen". Stay in the game and eventually you are going to be dealt a winning hand.

It follows from this that one should avoid worrying about the poor hands one gets along the way. It is easy to get distracted, to lose perspective and dedicate an inordinate amount of time and energy to causes which demonstrably do not merit the effort. One must recognise the futility in such a course and also the dangers of becoming thus sidetracked: the time it consumes takes one away from the table and out of the game for longer than it is worth. And the resultant frustration from the inevitable failure saps ones confidence precisely when it is most needed, as it is the essential ingredient to success.

This approach dovetails with another ubiquitous nugget of wisdom: the path to happiness and the solution to loneliness lie within oneself and cannot, no matter what, be achieved through others. Stated another way: you cannot love another until you truly love yourself.
Solution? Work on yourself, make yourself the best person you can be, and your ship (i.e. full house) will come in.

Fellow Travellers

I went to the nation's capital this past weekend to attend a national political convention. I am a member of the executive on the board of my local riding association, a position which really sounds more prestigious than it is -- while our party is competitive nationally, we have very little support in my riding and our group is very small.
I started to get involved in politics a couple of years ago as part of an ongoing effort to meet new and perhaps more like-minded people after realising that I found myself increasingly ideologically at odds with most of the people I identified as my friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

I was quite excited in the months leading up to the convention, especially after we won an election a month beforehand, meaning we would be gathering not only as comrades but as celebrants of a great victory. And as I said, the local pool where I am from is very small, so there I would have the opportunity to meet and share my enthusiasm with hundreds of fellow party members from across the country. I made the weekend a focal point of my entire spring: I put myself on the wagon and on a diet for the entire month of May, I had my friend P. take me shopping and choose an entire wardrobe for the trip, I booked a room in a beautiful, old, railway-built hotel.

As it turned out, I enjoyed myself at the convention and managed to avoid succumbing to any acute attacks of loners and/or sadders. Despite meeting lots of people and having a great night hopping from party to party in my new suit on Friday night, I was still somewhat disappointed that I did not make any solid connections and had to content myself with what was otherwise a very satisfying, outgoing experience. My confidence was not bulletproof, but it was nonetheless pretty solid, and thankfully I held it pretty level for most of the trip.

The next night I was unexpectedly back home and was thus able to attend a birthday party for my friend N.'s brother. He was turning 30, and N., who is the girlfriend of a good friend of mine closer to my age, is even younger than that, as are most of her friends. I still had some shiny new clothes left over from my shopping spree with P., and I showed up in good spirits and looking sharp. I have long teased N. that she really should make more of an effort to set me up with one of her many friends, and she has long responded back that for the most part her friends find me to be creepy. But a funny thing happened that night: I managed to make a whole new impression on several of N.'s friends who had been repeatedly put off by me in the past, to the point where more than one of them made a point of telling her the next day how surprised and impressed they were with me that night. And all I did was take a minute to refine my grooming, stay reasonably sober, and maintain that confidence, with a dash perhaps of nonchalance to remind myself not to take myself so seriously and just enjoy the ride.

Dizzying Heights & the Midas Touch

While the dizzying heights I reached during the months following the breakup were exhilarating, they were also, naturally, dizzying, and it was thus perhaps inevitable that I would find myself stalling and falling back to earth. The big danger is of course a total crash, and while I seem frequently to have come frighteningly close to one of those, I have thankfully always managed to avoid it. I read something recently - I think it was in a New Yorker story - where the person remarks how easy it is when one is finally happy after a long period of sadness to fall into the trap of thinking that one has found the answer and that one will never be sad again. Well I fell for it, again. I tell myself that each time I am better equipped at dealing with the darkness, but I am never sure about that really, and in any case it is too early too tell - the proof is in the pudding, and right now it is more like morass than dessert.
Focus on the future and going forward, and do not dwell on the past.
I undertook to consciously rebuild myself in preparation for the new life - the purposeful life. I made an appointment with my GP, thinking a physical would be a sensible component of a fresh start. I readily agreed to the request to wait a few weeks rather than be squeezed in as I felt no rush. Of course by the time I got in to see him on Wednesday, I had started to wobble and in the end our meeting was devoted almost exclusively to discussing my psychological health. This was not extraordinary as he has always functioned as my first line mental health care worker, meeting with me before recommending some of the other people and places I have visited on my bumpy road. He now had the added insight of having S. and V. as patients, not to mention having the file his partner kept for the handful of couples counselling sessions S. and I had attended when I still hoped to find a "together" solution to our pain.
I told Dr. R. about how I had soared so high like an eagle in the initial days and weeks, how I felt like I had the Midas Touch, and how somehow I had slipped and how suddenly everything seemed to be turning to lead instead of gold. I explained that I was feeling more comfortable with and even confident in using cognitive techniques à la Dr. Burns, such as identifying cognitive distortions in my thinking. He was very positive and made me feel like I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, that I might have finally lassoed the black dogs and all that was left to do was learn the final delicate tricks of keeping them thus at bay.

Back to Earth

So I hired LB to stage the house. She brought in a contractor to do the serious preparation required to get the skeleton in good enough shape to hang her baubles on. It took a good month and during that time I shuffled from one bedroom to another and back, watched as all my crap was packed up and shipped to my sister K.'s garage, and tried to stay out of the way of the ever-present contractors who miraculously transformed my whimsical and amateurish renovation into one with broad appeal and a professional finish, without tossing all the character out the window. By most measures the project was a great success: the house was sold for an astonishing price, and I was roundly congratulated for making a good decision and following it up with decisive action and resolution. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle of the transformation of the house, I lost the wind which had propelled me for the first few months post-S., and I stalled and fell very heavily and very quickly back to earth.

Repopulating vs. Unencumbering

My house was in some ways an experiment which was past its wind-down time. It was a serious fix-er-uppper when I bought it, and I had done most of the renovation myself, with little experience at either the planning or the execution of the work. Before S. moved in, it was partitioned into two units and I lived downstairs and rented the upstairs out to a series of tenants. When she first moved in, we were initially still just downstairs but when we decided to retrieve her son from her mother and bring him back to live with us, I evicted the tenant and demolished the upstairs kitchen, turning it into a bedroom for V. Not long after we got back with him, we got S.'s furniture out of storage and moved it into the house, displacing most of what passed for furniture of mine. And the next year, her ex decided that he did not want to keep paying to store what had been his half of their stuff, so we returned to the same storage place and loaded up all his things and brought them back as well. The house was not big enough to accommodate all of it, so much of it went to the building where S. worked, which was to be demolished to make way for a condo tower. At that point, most of what little remained in the house of mine did not make the grade and was disposed of as well.
The result of this was that when I kicked her out, she took almost all of the furniture, leaving me with nothing but the voluminous clutter I had accumulated during the seven plus years I had been in the house. The idea of starting again to repopulate that house, first with furniture and then with a family, seemed quite infeasible. With that persuasive thought in hand, it was easy enough to go hunting for additional ammunition to back my decision. For one thing, I feel like I have never really been a good fit in my neighbourhood, which of course is only partially truth and partially cognitive distortion.
Back in March I wrote about talking with LB, and how remarkable it was that she seemed to read me and my situation so accurately and effortlessly. LB has a couple of interesting businesses she works in, including the one which she had been starting up when I met her, which was a house staging thing. I had been thinking about it and decided for a number of reasons that it was an appropriate time to move on from my house, so I engaged her to take on the project of buffing my dusty mess into something I could put on the market.

Making things worse by helping (S.)

S. was (and is) a very troubled and selfish person, and I was a very lonesome fool trapped in an unhealthy dependancy cycle. By some miracle of effort I wrenched myself out of it and one Saturday morning after dropping her son off at school I came home, sat down opposite her on the couch and told her she had to leave. I had tried this once before the previous summer, at which time I even itemised my grievances which I only realised later meant I was inviting a discussion about our relationship rather than ending it. I remember when I went to umpire school in junior high the instructor taught us when you called a pitch a ball not to add "low" or "inside" or whatever, as it was extra information which only invited argument about what is fundamentally an arbitrary decision. She did not and likely still does not understand what happened and why, and it was of course difficult for me to resist the temptation to try to explain it to her, especially seeing her in such pain as I did during the ensuing weeks it took for her to get organised and get out. It was a startling and humbling revelation for me to realise that my trying to help someone, which I had been doing for years, was not only not helping, but making it worse.

Loneliness, within and without

I had a chat today with G. about loneliness. I should say I was talking and he was mostly just nodding. He was needling me about sitting in one of the customer chairs at his coffee shop without having actually bought a coffee, and I was defending myself as a regular customer who ought to be entitled to squatter's rights or something considering how often I am there. He said I must have been lonely, which prompted me to explain my recent learning about how the solution to loneliness is within, not without. G. just nodded, patiently, as I spelled out how it took me 40 years to learn that lesson. He reminded me that I need to be patient, not to try to find someone but to let someone find me. He is right.

Family, part III: neighbour's kitten (prospective) - narcissism and hyperextended adolescence

I had arranged to attend the Sunday morning service with my friend S. at his Evangelical Church. I have probably sat through no more than a dozen or two church services in my life, and almost exclusively for either a marriage ceremony or a funeral service. In fact when S. asked me when was the last time I attended one without pretence, I realised after reflection that I probably never had done so. And I had never been to an Evangelical church for any reason before.

I was impressed with the stripped-down parsimony of the service and of the message, and how much simpler it was to comprehend compared to that with which I am much more familiar such as the Catholic service and its elaborate, inscrutable ceremony and symbolism. The worship parts were focussed on a few songs, with simple, familiar arrangements, presented by a three piece band (drums, bass and guitar) with a male and two female singers, and simple, straightforward, modern lyrics projected onto a screen above the performers suggesting the audience to sing along, which they did. And between songs the main performer expressed his thanks and love to the divine with a refreshing and unambiguous candour. No obtuse or obscure hymns in 15th-century English, no lofty organ or rehearsed choir, more like families with parents and children sitting around the campfire.

I had a lot of work I wanted to get done that afternoon so I got myself set up at my desk and went out to get a coffee at the neighbourhood coffee shop around the corner from my house. It was very busy and although I had planned to hole up at my desk for the day, it was turning out to be a very nice day and I was feeling a bit cut off, so I decided to hang around there for at least a little while and work on the Saturday cryptic crossword puzzle. As I looked around the shop I thought again of the crowd at the hockey game the night before, and the crowd at the church that morning, and then the crowd in the coffee shop. The people there were all "grown up", that is more or less my age: late 20s, 30s and 40s, single, and in pairs and threes and fours, but not a single child, no parents, no grandparents, no husbands, no wives. A whole crowded coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon in a trendy "up-and-coming" neighbourhood in a large city, and all of us living these sort of detached, urbane, sophisticated yet leisurely, empty lives. At the table next to me I overhead an obviously gay man telling his female interlocutor "Oh, let me show you this kitten I am thinking of getting", before showing her a series of photos on his iPhone. He went on to describe long lists of pros and cons he had already mapped out before soliciting his companion's opinion of the would-be adoptee. I felt that the inordinate importance that this man put on such a trivial decision as adopting a kitten somehow represented the narcissism of my entire hyperextended adolescence, my entire generation, my entire neighbourhood, my entire city and most of my acquaintances in it.

Family, part II: sister and weaving the strands of the family tapestry

On Saturday I went, with my mother, to my sister K.'s place in a nearby town to see her 13-year-old son (i.e. my nephew) play game four in his team's best-of-five Tri-county hockey finals. It was an exciting game, and my nephew C. scored the final two goals for his team, who won 4-3 to tie the series at 2 games apiece (they won game five yesterday to take the championship!).

K. lives in a smaller city/town about 40 kilometres west of my city, but the scene at the hockey rink might as well have been a different country from where I live. There was a big crowd of parents, grandparents, siblings and friends, all enthusiastic and out to cheer on the home team. My sister knew a lot of the other moms and dads and there was a real sense of community and family to the whole place. And over on the other side was the whole thing repeated for the visiting team, who were themselves from another town about 40 kilometres to the south.

I was struck by the vivid contrast between the scene before me and not only the scene I live in, but also the scene in which I myself grew up. There was a closeness and togetherness, within the families themselves and between the families, a wide, intergenerational community united with a common purpose and celebrating achievement. I longed to trade my solitary existence for such a sense of belonging.

I remember when I was an adolescent how completely disconnected I felt from my family, and how any sense of community I felt was with other dysfunctional teenagers. I recognised that not only did I as a teenager understandably fail to recognise the gravity of the antisocial behaviour choices I made at the time, but so did the rest of what little structure I had of my family, school, community and whatever other feeble forces were or ought to have been acting on me at the time. I played hockey but there was nothing there to weave it into part of the life of our family. There was nothing to weave at all really, just a few ambitious strings here and there, stretching out all alone from a single point to other tiny islands. No fabric. No tapestry.

Family: goddaughter and unconditional love

I had dinner tonight with J., my goddaughter, who got married two weeks ago. A few years ago we got in the habit of going out for dinner once a week, a habit which unfortunately did not survive very long into the S. zone. It looks like we might resume it, even with her now being married and all! I was at the wedding, in fact I walked the bride down the aisle and gave her away - a very proud moment for me. A few years before, J. came to me when she was struggling and needed help, with few places to turn. At the time I was no longer seeing her mother and was not really in touch with either of them, but nonetheless I stepped up and supported her with whatever naïve support skills I had at the time. Little did I know at the time not only how much I would come to cherish that girl, but how much she would come to support me when it was my turn to struggle. Little did I know that it was from this adopted family member that I would finally learn about unconditional love.
She has grown into such a fabulous, caring and insightful woman, while still maintaining the zaniness which makes her unique. I love you J.!

I remember

I remember the first time I felt this inspired was when I first started working at a successful but somewhat dysfunctional restaurant chain in 2005 and I suddenly felt like I understood shit and that with this understanding I could really contribute to turning around an organization which was otherwise very troubled and really could have used (and still could use) some serious, steady outside help.

I met a couple of people there, including L. (whom I had actually met before and who was to become a very close friend), whom I felt recognised the value of a fresh perspective, and hopes were raised, but not much came of it and within months they were both gone from the company, I had lost my inspiration and next thing I knew I had my head right back up my ass where it had been so comfortable for so long. And where it stayed for quite some time.

The next time I remember almost resurfacing was in late summer 2008 when I got a bunch of my ducks lined up and again felt like I got it. I hosted my usual summer BBQ and booked it around when L. could come from Calgary, which she did. Notwithstanding whatever forgettable things happened that night, firmly planted in my memory is a walk we took the next day on the beach. I am not even sure how to characterize that conversation but it was kind of like me telling L. that I felt like it was time to grow up now, and L. agreeing, encouraging and approving.

And it went very well for a while, I did a very good job of focussing on grownup things and I was just together enough for couple months and then I met S. I thought I had it figured out but the thing was, I was missing some crucial understanding and that doomed the whole thing to the disaster that it turned out to be.

But without that disaster where would I be?

Part three is now, when I have the mature perspective, and the mature reaction formations.

Fast Forward

Fast forward to today. I met LB for lunch at a trendy brewpub in the downtown west end, her pick, which happened to be one of my crowd's favourite watering holes back when we were still scheming how to get served without valid ID. I had chased her down and she is as busy as I am but I just knew there was something there from that one convo we had that day and I was not to be disappointed. Except for a quick hello at one campaign event I had not seen or spoken to her since that time we met and canvassed together last year. But she put me at ease right away. And she knew everything I was going to tell her before I could even annunciate it, it was uncanny. I even told her the ice cream story and it was not like I telegraphed it to her but she saw it coming when I started and what that made me realize, along with a few other clues I picked up on, was that this just gets better, because if I stick with this it will not be long before I am less fascinated by cheeky stories about buying ice cream for cashiers and more focussed on how I can grow into the next level that I know I am capable of.

Holding Pattern

One Saturday morning last September, I spent a few hours going door to door dropping off pamphlets for a municipal political candidate in my riding. This was not the only few hours I spent doing this kind of work, as I wound up being very involved with this campaign, but it was the first, so it was all new to me on that day. I was coming in pretty green, I had never met the candidate before that day, but I was happy to support her, and looked forward to doing my bit, mostly out of my revulsion for the sitting councillor against whom she was running. We were outfitted with buttons and T-shirts, armed with our stacks of material and sent out to hit the streets in pairs. I was teamed with LB, another woman I had never met who bore something of a resemblance to the candidate, and together we set off to our station which turned out to be a somewhat neglected part of the riding, including a large public housing project which we almost missed canvassing it was hidden so well.
Our conversation became very candid, very quickly, yet at the same time very casual. In short, we hit it off, but neither of us was shopping for a partner, so it was not hamstrung by that kind of tactical manoeuvring.
S. and I were going through the roughest bit we had been in, and in fact I had tried and failed to end it not long before. LB was single and seemingly happily so, and I somewhat teasingly suggested that she were somewhat deluded, what kind of a woman is happy alone, etc., all in good fun. I explained to her my situation with S. and that I was trying as hard as I could to make it work but that I felt like I (and my relationship) was in a holding pattern. Sometimes an airplane approaches its destination but it cannot land because something is not ready on the runway, and diverting to an alternative landing strip is inconvenient for the crew, the airline and the passengers, so the pilot elects to fly a holding pattern near the destination, hoping that the problematic weather or ground situation or whatever it is will clear before the airplane exhausts so much fuel that it can no longer afford the luxury of choosing a between a convenient landing site and an available one.
But as cynical as I was about my situation, as I explained it to this sudden, new friend on this unexpected and intimate level, I still felt like I was doing the right thing, and that LB's attitude was selfish: what kind of thirtysomthing woman could be happy alone, I mean come on? That is a thing about a holding pattern, it is an expression of hope that conditions will improve. But sometimes they do not, and you have to be ready to cut your losses and head to the alternative landing site, before you run out of fuel.

Random act of chutzpah

The best thing that happened yesterday however was when I checked in to the a large bookstore downtown to pick up a Julius Knipl book which I had meticulously researched before heading out. When I went to check out, I found myself at the cash with about five idle, smiling, young, female cashiers and while I conducted my purchase with one I could not help but overhear one talking to another about ice cream. When I engaged her on it she explained that she was a bit of an aficionado, although her nut allergy got in the way and she in fact preferred to make her own which got us talking about that. In any case I left and unlocked my bike but then I remembered there was a fancy grocery store in the basement of the office/shopping complex across the street, and I got a funny idea. I crossed the road and locked up in front of the mall entrance and went down to the grocery store, which was open on a Sunday, and scanned the ice cream section. I inspected a few tubs and discovered that the majority of the dairies appeared to blanket label their products with "May Contain Nuts", regardless of the flavour. But then I spotted some kind of organic ice cream and picked up a small half litre tub of cappuccino which had no nuts and no mention of nuts and i grabbed five bowls and five spoons from some kind of soup thing they had, and I had to talk (and buy) my way through that one where the cashier suggested to me that the bowls were "very expensive". I suggested 20 cents a piece and she countered with 25, and I was not going to argue with that I mean this was a stunt but there was no going back. After all was said and done I actually asked for a bag - in a town where conventional wisdom has  equated the plastic bag with Satan's chariot - and while I was digging around in my pocket for the requisite nickel you need to dispel his wrath, she actually found a paper bag and handed it to me, gratis, hallelujah, into which I loaded the icy treat and bowls.

There is a prior version of me who would not have found the courage to carry out the final part of this story, but we are not talking about that me. I walked across the street, sober as a churchmouse, with a paper bag of organic ice cream and bowls and spoons, and walked into the store and put it on her counter. She was a bit stunned and shaking but in a good way, and opened the bag and announced "Oh my God, it's ice cream", and I just kind of looked left, looked right, a split second with one girl and then the other, looked her in the eyes and wished her well and instructed her to make sure she shared her gift with her friends, and then I left.

This is the part when I think maybe I was a bit weak. I fled the scene a bit too quickly, the young ladies were just gaggling over me, I might have stuck around, even if it did not mean it was going to make something big out of it, it still might have been worthwhile to see more of their smiles, they were really touched. I really wished I had had my business card with me I could have put it in the bag and then it is up to her and them if they want to thank me personally or whatever. I did not notice that I did not have my cards with me until after it was already over and I was on my way home and then I realised that I could not have put a card in the bag since I did not even have one with me, but whatever. I made their day, their whole weekend, a whole pack of pretty young friendly women, and all it took was chutzpah. I remember from the moment I thought of the idea until I delivered the gift, it was just balls, the whole way, it seemed so crazy but oh my god those happy young women were so bowled over it was amazing.

Another good night

I had another good night tonight, at a different east end Irish pub, this one just down the street from my house. I sat at the bar and wound up in a wide-ranging conversation with an interesting gentleman who himself was a lawyer, although the conversation actually started out being about ice sailing, and then sailing in general and went on from there. I equally enjoyed trading smiles with Brenley the charming barmaid.

Last night was more of the same, except you can't call it more if it predated the other more, at yet another Irish pub in my neighbourhood, this one with an alluring industrial vibe and oysters. I enjoyed a modest half dozen on the half shell with a couple of pints while watching my beloved (and decided underdog) hockey team defeat an ancient east coast rival.

Afraid

I am almost afraid to jinx it by saying that things are going so well, but nonetheless things are going so well. I almost feel like for the first time in my life I get it, I know how to deal with everything. My job is to work on myself and make myself the best man I can be, and to present and promote that man to the rest of the world. I am proud of the man that I have (finally) become, and am ready to make a difference for my family, my community and my country.

St. Patrick of Greektown

Last night was St. Patrick's Day - well I guess it was really all day. It turned out to be an unforgettable one. It started out normal enough, working from home and specifically trying to help out my new developer C. He suggested we meet for a beer in the Greek part of town and even though I knew I had to be at a board meeting at 7:30 at nearby community centre, I took him up on that. We had a blast and ended up downing a coupla heavier drinks, one round we bought and one foisted upon us by the congenial scottish-irish bartender. I was late leaving for my meeting and on the way out tipped a roond for the friendly aforementioned Anthony. and his attractive team of bartendresses Jasmine and her just as pretty colleague whose name now escapes me.
I hurried to my board meeting and arrived so late that they had actually filled out a delegate form for me which we were to submit for the national policy convention which I shall be attending in the capital in June. There was one slightly awkward bit at the end where our erstwhile candidate took the floor to elucidate his displeasure at feeling like he had been thrown under the bus not only by national but by the riding association as well, and he did so without looking me or the other member of the candidate committee in the eye. Awkward but over, and hopefully past us. Nothing to suggest that our recommendation was anything other than well thought out.
But the real fun started when I left there and got a call out of the blue from my friend M., calling from a lineup outside an Irish pub back in Greektown. This was doubly surprising but on one hand he had been out of town for several months on work, and in fact I had had no idea that he was even back in town, plus the fact that he and his girlfriend N. were anywhere in the east end of town, because he has always been strictly a west end boy. I did not have to be asked twice and headed straight there. When I got there I ended up in line behind a couple of nice ladies named Becky and Diane, and I chatted with them and the door man while we wiled away our wait. When our turn came, I made a spontaneous decision to spring for the cover for my new companions - a gesture which they accepted gratefully. They were both spoken for, but I did not care about that, I was just having a good time and wanted to share that feeling. When we got inside I found M and N in the dense crowd, and we mingled with our fellow honorary Irishmen and women, including I remember one Russian gentleman with whom I chatted in my badly broken Russian. While this was happening, suddenly a pint of beer arrived over the crowd from the other side of this little wall, being handed from hand to hand, with the message that it was for me. It came from one of the girls I had met in the line. A girl I did not know bought me a drink and sent it across half the bar. Welcome to my new life! I ended up talking to a whole bunch of men and women, and at some point I could not find M. or N. and just had to go home and did so, alone, but content that I had found my way out of the horrible forest that had kept me so lost for so long.

A Sense of Purpose

I was at an upscale coffee chain outlet in the financial district yesterday when this mind-blowing song came on the sound system. It is hard to believe that I had never heard it before, considering the genre is directly down the middle of my favourite 80s angst pop paradigm. The chain has been real good to me lately, playing a delicious mix of 80s indie gems, both known and unknown. Who knew I would be getting into more music from 1982 here in 2011, but it is what is.

Sense of purpose is maybe a tiny stretch, but I really feel like I finally understand something important that has been eluding me for so long. The dissolution of my most recent (and most significant) dysfunctional relationship somehow lifted the cloud that has been hanging over my head since who knows when, forever really. Best case I am dealing with a real sense of purpose. Worst case it is a sense of understanding, and accepting, myself.