What to do in the event the aircraft arrives safely at its destination

Another cherished assignment, courtesy of LD! Make a list of at least ten things you could do, instead of going home, turning all the lights off, getting into your bathrobe, lying in bed and lulling yourself to sleep watching plane crash videos.

- Go to A's and have dinner & drinks with him, M and J. and whoever else turns up.
- Go to S's birthday party at the tavern and catch up with him, J., A., L., etc.
- Send SMS to K. (with whom I have plans tomorrow afternoon) and see if she is spontaneously free.
- Check the listings and go to a movie.
- Go for a walk.
- Call my father and go visit him.
- Call my mother and go visit her.
- Sit in the coffee shop until 11 pm.
- Work on my many outstanding tasks for work.
- Go for a motorcycle ride.
- Sort out my paperwork for year end bookkeeping, taxes, etc.
- Call up old friends and find someone who is free to meet for a beer.
- Clean my apartment in case I decide to invite K. over tomorrow after our hike.
- Go home, put on 80s music, drink a bottle of scotch, call up ex-girlfriend (note: this option should probably be considered hors concours due to its similarity to the precluded scenario contained in the instructions)
- Go to a neighbourhood pub and have a beer and chicken wings and strike up conversation with other lonely hearts at bar.

New Narrative

This was actually a homework assignment given to me by my life coach, LD, before the holiday season, after I shared with her my dread about the inevitable catching up with friends, family, colleagues and the like which accompanies the festive season.
I was horrified at the thought of having to account for my situation and how it is has changed in the past year. I feel like I have regressed so much in that time and my narrative was an accurate illustration of that sentiment: I am alone, cut off from my girlfriend, her son, her cat. I sold my house and moved somewhere I despise, and lost my cat. I am almost never seeing any friends, feeling either too depressed and ashamed to see people, or else deciding that they are not really good friends and are in fact toxic to my well-being. I am cut off from my father and the rest of my family, having actively chosen an agressively confrontational stance with him in the wake of my relationship collapse. I am not going out, not working, not enjoying anything, not going anywhere, not planning anything interesting, etc.

She instructed me to compose a new narrative to replace the shameful one I was hung up on, in order that I would be comfortable enough to attend and to converse with people and not be so afraid of them asking me how things were going for me.

In fact however I did not manage to get my homework done in time, and not only did I not hand it in, I also ducked out on attending all of the events and instead spent the holidays alone in my uncomfortable apartment, isolated, lost and despondent, lying in bed, eating frozen pizza and drinking can after can of diet cranberry soda. I missed the annual Xmas party at H's, which I have not missed in over 20 years and which is only a couple of blocks from my house. I skipped Xmas eve dinner at J's, which she was extremely upset about. I skipped Xmas day at LD's, despite her earnest attempts to convince me of the safety of attending. I carried that through to the next day when I again ignored her invitations to join her and her husband and friend at her place, and finished up by no-showing at my own family Xmas dinner at my mother's house.

The exercise was supposed to produce a set of positive and encouraging talking points for me to use in place of these negative ones:
- I am struggling
- This year has been an incredible challenge
- I have encountered and foundered upon significant obstacles
- I have been very depressed and unstable
- I am isolated from my friends and family and devoid of a support system.

Here is what I came up with:
- I am heading in a new direction with my life.
- I have a few projects on the go.
- I am refocussing on what is important
- I am getting in touch with my authentic self
- I am making a fresh start with a new beginning
- I have made some positive changes in my life and am continuing to make more
- I am optimistic about the future
- This is an exciting time for me.
- The possibilities are numerous if not endless
- I am getting to know myself in a profound way.

What a load of horseshit it reads like when I look at it now.

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.