Still waters run deep

I think I can feel some semblance of a sense of humour returning, and that return is very welcome indeed. It's been a rough couple of weeks, and the fact that I didn't post my usual 'progress' report last Monday is telling of its own.

So, the bad stuff first.

I spent many days trying to break the elastic joining me - via cyberspace - to the invisible woman. Depending on the hour of the day, or more accurately the minute of the day, I'd be in one of two polar extremes mentally. One extreme was borderline anger mixed with frustration and a dash of suspicion. The other was concentrated longing, disillusionment, and powerlessness spiked with a good measure of emasculation.

Let's get things into perspective first though. I must admit that I do feel foolish when I say that I think I'm in love with a woman I've never met. There's just no way that that can be said out loud without incurring an incredulous response. I'm not going to dwell on all the details - as it is, I'm already bending the rules by even mentioning this woman on my blog (her rules, not mine - my mental health comes first from this point onwards though). However, even my shrink was forced to recognise and, indeed, said unsolicited that there was definitely some kind of strong emotional connection between us. We were both getting something out of the whole thing. There was something there. Being instinctually pessimistic I have a tendency to think the entire relationship through before I've even got to the first date, which is a feminine trait if I'm not mistaken (imagining how we might 'look' together as a couple, what our kids might be like, etc). Whilst speaking from the perspective of a divorcee, making all this uncomfortably ironic, I like to think that I'm cautious if not tentative to start something I don't think is ultimately going to lead to anything. The downside of course is that I probably could have been laid a lot more than I have if I were more able to put this aside. I'd probably be better in bed by now too - it just depends how much of my sexual prowess is technique, and how much is pure talent (if any). Suffice to say, I could see the potential of this relationship, and the life together we could have. In fact, there are precious few things that would have the power to persuade me otherwise. Finding out she's a "he" would do it, but despite my suspicions and the cognitive distortions beating a path to my brain even I know that's impossible...unless the guy I was talking to on the phone was so young his voice hadn't broken yet. What a horrible thought!

Anyway, I think power and control, or the 'lack of', were at the heart of it all. There I am, now stuck with this relationship I've been trying to make real for the last seven months, unable to let go because I've allowed myself to get emotionally involved, but unable to improve it because I don't have the power to do so. I think all this time I'd been kidding myself because I had a vague memory that one of our old MSN conversations held within it two possible addresses in Toronto for the invisible woman. Long story short, it stems back to a time when things were more cheerful and we were excitedly chatting online, trying to figure how close I lived to the houses she was - allegedly - looking at with a view to buy. That gave me one precise address and another street in The Beaches.

So, being a tenacious chap I took things into my own hands.

I was, and am, 99% sure that - ceteris paribus - if we were to meet then the invisible woman's reasons for fearing a face-to-face meeting would immediately dissipate. In order to put the seven months of, well, let's call it "experience" (which is what you get when you don't get what you want) behind us and start a new chapter I figured I'd use my initiative and go visit her. Further, I chose to do so on my way back from a mountainbike ride to ensure I looked - at best - dishevelled, and at worst pretty ridiculous. Stomping around in cycling shoes and lycra doesn't do much for one's manliness, but the intention was to ensure that if she happened to be similarly ruffled from a workout at the gym or similar, I would still be on the weaker ground looks-wise. Despite the careful thought that went into that, and what I'd say, and what I'd do, it still didn't work. I got neither my dream woman, nor closure.

At the precise address there were people home, even a brunette woman and a young daughter, but it wasn't them, or her. That said, the owner did confirm they'd only recently bought the house. February in fact, just after the MSN discussion.

On the other street I didn't have a specific house number, and the only clue I had to work with was the fact that she owned, or at least had owned a red Ford F-150. I didn't see one, and I already felt slightly sullied and stalker-ish for going as far as I had, so I had to call it a day.

I won't bother describing the hand-trembling, knee-knocking, bitter after-tasting anxiety that made simple movement seem like I was wading through rice pudding, nor the times when I got right in front of the house but then couldn't go through with it and rode away again, rife with self-loathing. The point, dear reader, is that I'd played my last card, used up my last of the nine lives, done everything I could. What the whole escapade meant was that I was, indeed, utterly powerless in the so-called relationship. Unable to see her, unable to talk to her unless she deemed it worthwhile, yet sufficiently committed to her emotionally for it to hurt. Physically hurt, that is.

So what followed was several days of angst bordering on panic - fearing the pain of unrequited love and then having that fear come true for every minute I was awake. Oh, and that combined with the frustration of wanting to mean more to her, knowing I could mean more to her, knowing deep down that I really do mean something to her, but being paralysed to progress things because I have no idea where she is or whether she exists in real life the same way she does in my mind. Oh yeah - all that plus a feeling of annoyance that, despite all that we'd shared, I really had absolutely no idea how she was doing, what she was up to, where she was, whether she felt even close to the same way as me, or whether her Adam's Apple was bigger than mine or not.

The only way I could stop it was to comprehensively distract myself, but focus and concentration aren't easy at the best of times so the only things that worked were those things that occupied my body and mind. It would only take a few moments of doing nothing for my thoughts to return to her, and that's not including all the visual and aural stimuli in the world around me that reminded me of her: red trucks; yellow Hummers; brunette women; anything involving stationery (I'll tell you that one another time); working out; anything to do with the entire region of Toronto where she allegedly lives; chocolate buttons and jelly babies; anything related to parenthood; taking a shower. The list is endless.

The result was a very discernable peak in anxiety and a greater one in depression, illustrated in the graph above (click to enlarge). And, there wasn't much I could do about it except go to bed and hope it wasn't still there in the morning. That said, many nights I was still trying to get to sleep as the birds were singing outside but my sleep schedule at least has recovered. My fitness schedule hasn't, although that's as much to do with a week of bloody torrential rain as much as anything else.

All that and an entire case of beer brings us up to today. Lucky I had no weed or 'hard liqor' else my liver would have developed the same contempt for my body as the members of CUPE do for being told they won't get paid to slack off work like the self-centred wankers they all are. She is still on my mind though, and I think it'll be that way for a while. I still catch myself glancing North up the street as I walk out of the subway station exit, looking for a red truck that wasn't parked there before. Certain songs still turn my stomach. Walking past diapers/nappies in Price Chopper still makes my face fall. I have somehow developed a Spidey Sense that, no matter where I am in the house, tingles every time a vehicle slows down out front. Evidently it's not her, else this would be a rather different blog entry. I'd love it if that were so, to be empowered to write about a long-awaited get-together: the surprise; the shock; the sheer unadulterated glee I'd no doubt be overcome by if she were to just show up at my place without warning. But not today, and as I'm slowly beginning to realise, perhaps never. Regardless, it will probably be months before I'm able to consider dating again properly. As I discovered, the invisible woman has had a greater impact on me than I previously thought, to the extent that even wondering what that attractive woman passing on the street looks like in nothing but lingerie incurs guilty feelings. It feels like I'm betraying the invisible woman. As ridiculous as that sounds, I'm having to just learn to accept it because trying to fight against it with anger, indifference, or even dewey-eyed positivity is an exercise in futility. I just wasn't wired the right way to be a cad, and I have to let go of hope because it just prolongs the pain.

Onto the less bad stuff. Oh, alright then, the good stuff (he says grudgingly).

My shrink says I have to learn to relish the moment more. We discussed how on Earth I was going to remember to do that each day given how furiously my mind races, especially in the mornings. The best I could come up with was to dangle a large, concrete paving stone above my bed so I'd hit my head on it every time I sat up in bed. Upon the paving stone would be a brightly-coloured post-it note bearing the words "Relish the moment, idiot!" in big red letters. I don't think that's practical though.

However, right now, as I type, I've just eaten a piece of fruit for the first time in a fortnight becuse I managed to get my grocery shopping done. The sun is shining, making me squint and no doubt surreptitiously turning my shin bones a subtle shade of fluorescent crimson. The intermittent, cooling breeze is liberating the fluffy seed pods from the nipple-high thistles growing in the front lawn so that they fall on me like wizened snow. They're falling onto the laptop too, which has been outstanding thus far (thanks folks!). It's just sooooo fast. Even little things like opening Firefox happens in the blink of an eye so I'm trying to get into the habit of taking it and my camera wherever I go, lest I get the urge or the opportunity to write when away from the house.

I'm slowly building my portfolio of jobs too. After a slow start on the initial three stories I've been comissioned to write I've now completed two interviews and will hopefully complete another this afternoon or tomorrow. I also got a lead on another story from a fellow writer, and without thinking about it long enough to get anxious, asked at my local Apple store whether they were looking for staff. They are, and my resume has already gone to them. If I can get this, it'll be the "regular revenue stream" my parents perpetually talk about me needing. Not that I disagree with them - it'll be the foundation of a weekly routine that I can build my writing, and my recovery plan, around.

The bike is running better than ever too. I had to fork out another $200 on it though, which is still making me uncomfortable as it had to go straight onto the credit card. I actually needed the new bottom bracket/chainset more than I thought though. I'd decided the pepper mill-style grinding noise that came from my bike every time I pedalled was the old shoe cleats on the older pedals. Turns out it was actually the bottom bracket. Now my lil' baby runs quieter than Red October, feels a lot more solid, and doesn't keep changing gears on me when I least expect it. Turns out the chainrings on the old chainset were buckled too!

I'd dread to think what might've happened had I continued to ride the bike as it was. I've had various components fail while I'm mid-ride, but nothing that couldn't be repaired for long enough to get me home. If the bottom bracket had've seized while I was thundering down a muddy hill, or the cranks both unwound themselves and fallen off while I was trying to navigate a narrow path or plank, it could have made for a rather interesting and acrobatic situation.

Ahhhhh...zen and the art of bicycle maintenance. It's one of the few things in life I still enjoy. It's nice to know that there's something positive in me that runs as deep as all the character flaws and emotional disorders.

A different kind of anxiety

All that has been experienced up to this point has now been dumped into a large mental bin labelled, "Non-writing anxiety". What I'm feeling right now is the ever-increasing pressure of my FIRST EVER real editorial deadline - cool eh?!

Gonna be busy up to the end of this week. PR contacts seemed to provide a big fat zero leads so I'm having to do all the research myself. More at the weekend probably...

Dead in the water

Bloody hell. Half-past-four and I'm not even dressed.

Managed to make and eat an omelette but that's all I've consumed today other than coffee and cigarettes. Meanwhile, thoughts of the invisible woman are still consuming me, entirely. I'm miserable. This is horrible...the pain is almost physical. The only thing I've done all day other than blog is nap over lunchtime.

I know this feeling can't last forever but, shit, how long?

Sifting the bullshit

It's trite to say that social networking is all the rage.

Facebook, Bebo, classmates.com, friendsreunited.co.uk, Picasa, Snapfish, LinkedIn, bla bla bla. Everybody's doing it and every marketing or PR consultant is proclaiming an aptitude for using it as a communication channel.

Point is, how many people are left now who aren't on a social networking site of some sort?

When it comes to dating, it's commonplace now to 'Google' the name of the person you're interested in to see what they're about. Most recently I've heard friends use Facebook as a verb rather than a noun, to check out the friends and background of an actual or potential suitor.

I didn't do that the first time she told me her name. I was in the back of my parents' car at the time I think, travelling somewhere or other in Norfolk circa December 2008 when that text message arrived. Her name seemed familiar to me somehow, but I couldn't figure out why.

Later, in our so-called 'relationship' I was planning to visit her in the town she was in at the time, because she'd - allegedly - been admitted to hospital. I was concerned. She seemed in a bad way, and I thought it would be a noble, romantic, and well-received gesture by me to surprise her with a visit. However, when I called the hospital, they'd never heard of her. "Well, internal communication within hospital sites probably isn't that great," I thought. Perhaps she was in a different building.

Nope. No trace of her name anywhere, on any list, or within any of the recently admitted patients.

Fast forward to this month. I'm jobhunting on the web when I remember that she told me she works for the organisation I'm already searching for jobs at. I get curious, and - sure enough - there's a gigantic directory of each and every individual working for that organisation on the site. Searchable by first name, last name, phone number and allsorts.

I search using her name first. Nothing. I double-check, first using her surname alone, then her first name alone in case I'd spelt it phonetically. Still nothing. Lots of people with matching first or last names, but nobody matching both. Finally I tried her phone number. Again, zero matches. My suspicion was aroused so I Google'd her. I get 50,000+ results, because she apparently shares a name with the star of one of the biggest news stories coming out of the UK in 2008.

Suddenly, her 'story' seems to be unravelling.

The last time I spoke to her she was returning to work so I know that she should still have a record with that employer. From the way she described it, I'm pretty sure I could hit the right department of that organisation within two or three guesses. Yet I can find no trace of her.

So, into the mind of Spock. What are the possible explanations?

1. That she isn't listed in the directory for some reason - but why? She did move locations, yes, but that wouldn't be a vaild reason for her to be removed - just for her details to have changed. Besides, even with a sloth-like IT team updating the directory and website, she's been in her new location for long enough for her new contact details to go live.
2. That she lied about where she worked. This would explain why she wouldn't be in the directory but - thinking back to some of the conversations we had - she described her work environment in great detail. Not just the physical space but the geography, the people she worked with, her role and responsibilities, the travel required, the meetings she took. Even if she was describing the job of someone she knew, she would have to know the details of their role pretty intimately to be able to talk so freely of them.
3. That she lied about her name. I'm trying my best to keep the cognitive distortions at arm's length here. I can understand why a woman on an internet dating site might want to use a pseudonym. That wouldn't surprise or bother me. But surely, by now, after nearly seven months, she'd have admitted it was her maiden/married name or a made-up name. Why wouldn't she, unless she had something (else) to hide?

There are 131 women in the organisation with the same first name as the person I've been communicating with. Of these, there are half a dozen or so whose job description seems to match what was described to me. But, at the end of the day, it's not close enough.

The only thing that can possible be surmised is that something is not right here. Besides, choosing a name that will always deliver so many search results in Google suggests some form of premeditation - what better way to ensure anonimity. Now I find myself doubting everything she said. How can I possibly tell what's truth and what isn't?

The plot thickens...

Shit. Only...

...four beers into the evening and I already feel like crying. It's not even 9pm.

Even iTunes is not without its intuitive irony. Despite having in excess of 10,000 individual songs in my iTunes library, the songs it picks at random include something-or-other from Siansperic's "Somnium" album (it doesn't matter which track - they're all fucking depressing) and Harry Connick Jnr's rendition of, "Where Or When". The former is all the more ironic than the melancholy melody and downbeat lyric of the latter. Why? Because not only is the sound of the album and perhaps the band distinctly funerial, it was also described by my ex-wife as, "...the music everyone was shagging to at uni". And they're from Hamilton, the fuckers. What kind of music would one expect from the Ontarian 'fires of Mordor' I suppose...?

I should be happy, or at least at ease. Typing on my new laptop, ensconced in a camp chair on the porch, sipping cold beer and smoking cigarettes. Staring down the reps from the church of latter-day saints as they prowl the sidewalk opposite. I am actually cogniscant of the good things in life, but unable to relish them. It's as if the drugs I take to inhibit my mood only work on the emphatic ones. I don't remember the last time I felt anything as strong as joy, as euphoria, as glee. Even as relief. Perhaps the BBQ the other week included some of these.

I've barely eaten today so I should probably cook dinner, but I can't be bothered. I know I have no clean cycling kit for tomorrow, but the washer/dryer may as well be on Jupiter. Drinking myself into sleep seems much more an attractive proposition. I haven't yet decided about my next-door neighbour's offer to go and play 'Mario Kart' on the Nintendo Wii. It requires interaction, speech, approachability, and close proximity to other people.

It might be asking too much.

I have to say, I do wonder when things might pick up again. I'm tired of such woeful writing content. Maybe I should can it until I feel better, or have something positive to write about. But then it either wouldn't be useful content for the medical community to use as a case study, or might be a fucking long time without any entries at all.

Wow. Even if I listed out all the nastiest things I've ever done to anyone or anything in my entire lifetime, I still think the bad karma of how I feel now and have felt for the last year or so would be unbalanced. I guess if nothing else, people can read this and feel relieved that they're not me.

All the wrong emotions

Well, thank heaven for small mercies.

I think I managed to hold it together for the duration of my chat with my new editor. Alas, the one detail that escaped me about my fabulous, new, first ever paid writing job is that the magazine I'm writing for is an annual i.e. it has just one issue per year. So, not only will the $500 or so that I'll get for the five articles I write be delayed until October of this year when the issue hits the streets, it'll be the only income I get from this commission until this time next year.

Shit.

How the mighty are fallen.

I did my best to emphasise with her that, should one of her writers get squished by a bus or let her down in some way, she could call on me. Even if at short notice. But, with only two other magazines in the stable and a full compliment of existing staff writers, it's not something I should keep my fingers crossed about. What more can I do? I'll send the other story ideas I had anyway just to curry favour, but the fact is that from the end of next week I won't have a single ongoing job to my name. Again.

So thanks to that and my failed online romance/stitch-up job my anger has subsided into sorrow. Once again I feel like I'm barely clinging on to solvency, and splitting my time between being a bum and a head-case. Relationship-wise I feel rejected, humiliated, unloved, and incapable of loving. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone - it's not a great place be or an enviable way to feel. Everywhere I look I seem to see happy families - cute couples and cuter kids. Ironically a palm-reader told me during the last fortnight that I'd have my first kid within the next two years. It doesn't seem likely though, unless I maintain my penchant for splitting condoms mid-coitus. Hopefully the famed Trojan 'Magnum' will put an end to that. Right now though I don't even have the impetus to use one, unless for secreting heroin about my person for travel through an airport somewhere. There doesn't seem to be many other uses for condoms aside from the obvious. Maybe I can blow a few up, sculpt them, and sell them as art indicative of a barren lovelife.

I long for security. I want it, crave it, despair that it seems so unattainable. Security in a job where I have a boss who's available enough to maintain a good working relationship with. Security in a tangible, physical, mature, inspiring relationship where I'm never given cause to wonder whether my love is unrequited or not. Where being me is a plus, not a minus. Where I don't have to be on my best behaviour all the time and, in fact, impromptu, romantic, gleeful mischief is actively provoked and encouraged.

It all seems so far away though. I can barely muster the effort to put on a cheerful 'mask' at the moment. The thought of a job interview doesn't fill me with hope, only terror. In terms of romance, I can barely be bothered to maintain conversation. It's not laziness, but reluctance in its purest form.

It would be nice, once, to have something good to write about. It would be nice to be able to compose something that leaves any unfortunate reader with a feeling of well-being. Of hope. Of enthusiasm. Just once it would be good to have something to be grateful for that wasn't charity or the sun. One day, maybe.

But not today it would seem.

Who DOES that?

What kind of a person invests in a relationship, albeit an online one, strings someone along who has depression and an anxiety disorder, for SEVEN MONTHS, talks about living together, having kids, and basically living happily ever after...and then disappears off the face of the planet? How does someone like that live with themself? How do they look themselves in the mirror? How do they sleep at night?

Showered, drank a bottle of beer, bought some smokes, walked around the block...and I'm still fuming. If I knew where 'she' lived I'd be banging on the front door by now.

Fuck. FUUUCK! I'm fuckin' livid. But I like it. There's a lot more self-worth in anger than there is in depression or anxiety. That's the whole point for me - that it's so hard for someone like me to trust people in a relationship that sometimes my trust can swing from one extreme to another like a pendulum. I'm trying to take things at face value. I'm trying to ignore the demons. I'm trying not to be so affective. I'm trying to believe that the majority of people are good, and then somebody comes along and does this to me. People like this give humans a bad name.

Well I hope she/he/they're happy with their work. I hope they're satisfied with what they've done to me. I feel like I've been set back months. I can't even imagine being in a relationship now, I can't imagine a time when I will be able to trust someone enough to allow myself to depend on them, no matter how superficially. I feel nobody can be relied upon. Nobody can be trusted. Nobody can be given any margin of error, and if anyone gives me even the slightest cause to doubt them then I'm just going to drop them like a hot potato and walk away.

Now I will have to fight tooth and nail to keep myself from slipping into the train of thought that says that I just don't deserve happiness. That I don't ever deserve to feel content with my life. That I will never love or be loved again. That it's my fault. That I'm being punished for something. That it "serves me right". It must be true - after all, I only ever approach one woman at a time, and I hand-picked this particular woman out of hundreds. It's as if I was destined to be toyed with, frustrated, abused, tormented, pissed about.

That I will die alone.

Great. Fantastic. Now I somehow have to get my shit together, go downtown, and meet my editor. Brilliant. It's either that or I cower here and attempt to reschedule the meeting. But I need to get out...away from my Mac so I'm not clicking my Gmail 'refresh' button relentlessly in case she's e-mailed. So I'm not staring at the driver of every car that slows down as it approaches the house, in case it's her. So I'm not picking my cellphone up every five minutes in case she's called and I missed it.

I don't think I'll ever use a dating website again. Ever. I can't go through this again.

1.21pm and...

...still angry.

It's good that I have stuff to do this afternoon. It's probably also good that the strongest booze in the whole house is 5% beer.

Of all the women on the planet I manage to hand-pick the one that's fictional.

I feel like such a sap...that I want to knock somebody the fuck out. Let's hope the Jehova's Witnesses swing by again...

Harder to close than a box of muffins

Yuk...two really shit days spent pining for the invisible woman. I was climbing the walls last night. Thankfully I have friends who'll come to my aid, and it's a good distraction but like the cartoon (right) says, closure is probably going to be something I will have to find for myself.

That said, I still haven't figured out a way to get around the fact that I don't know whether she was ever 'for real' or not. Normally in such conditions I'd take things into my own hands, force the issue, tackle it head-on but I can't in this case.

Perhaps that's it - the lack of autonomy. The fact that I am genuinely powerless to do anything. It certainly annoys me - the huge amount of time I spend thinking about her. In fact, I'm having difficulty thinking about anything else right now.

Anyway, it's been sunny for two days so I'm gonna go exert some rage on the trails. Knowing my luck, this will all have been a cognitive distortion, and on my way back through the Beaches I'll end up running her seven year-old daughter over by accident. She'll be fine, my bike will be wrecked, and it'll take me two hours to walk home with it slung over my shoulder.

How the f**k do I manage it? I sure do pick 'em.

Thicker than treacle

Urrrgh....

I feel like I'm coming out of the tunnel of a rough week again. Things seemed to slip a little since my folks went home, although the effect their visit had on my moods is quite apparent (click to enlarge the image right).

I guess birthdays are just as good when you approach your forties, though you don't get as many toys as before. My folks would probably say the toys are more expensive though! *smiles*

So I still have to write about the trip to Montreal, and still have a couple of other blog entries backed up in the pipe. This is a quickie though. There's a brand spankin' new laptop with my name on it waiting for me that is good incentive to get out of the house. This has been hard to do during the last seven days or so. It's been raining torrentially so bike rides are a no-no in the Don Valley. It's funny, there are signs all over the valley saying how bad it is for the trails if you ride them in the wet - erosion and deposition an' all that. No glacial striation though geography-fans...guess you'll have to keep pumping out the carbon monoxide if you still want that too. Point is, none of the signs say, "WARNING! These trails are a total bloody death-trap when wet!"

That'd work better for me.

So the bike is still polished and gleaming in the garage. I haven't worked out as much as usual because it took me a few days to get everything re-organised post-birthday barbecue. Stuff in the garage needed to get back to the house and vice versa. My little workout area needed to be reorganised. Oh yes, and I now need to fashion a new chin-up bar. During the BBQ, and after a few beers it must be admitted, I decided to show off the home-made chin-up bar to a friend. I did the ten-foot leap to the bar (in flip-flops too), managed a whole chin-up (that's actually one third of my personal best where chin-ups are concerned), and then felt my world slipping slowly downwards...as the bar buckled under my weight. And I was so proud of it too - what else can you make from a broken broom handle other than a big stick to hit people with? I don't fish after all, certainly not Huck Finn style anyway.

Who knew I was that heavy?

Someone said at the BBQ, "Oh, don't worry, you can pick up a new broom handle from Canadian Tire for a couple of bucks..." but that's not the point - I was trying to recycle and turn a useless object into a useful one. I may have to go foraging through my neighbour's back yard. The grass is so high it comes up to my nipples, so there's gotta be all sorts of good stuff hidden in there along with all the junk piled high in her back yard.

Point is, little physical exercise of late.

Work news is better. After the coup d'etat at my friend's magazine launch of landing my first paid writing position, I received the commission letter this week. Nothing un-do-able in terms of the actual stories, although the deadlines are pretty tight on the first two or three. I guess I must be doing that "soaking up pressure like a sponge" thing again. My boss is a bit difficult to figure out too - I can't be sure which way to read her e-mail communications because I just don't know her yet. Fortunately I've invited myself into the editorial office on Monday so hopefully I'll get some face-time that'll assuage the usual work demons.

Still looking for the "regular income stream" my parents were suggesting, though I've reconfigured all my web searches, RSS feeds, and auto-e-mails to pick up anything that's local to me instead of the usual writing, marketing, branding, or PR stuff. MEC isn't recruiting, and Apple's based miles and miles away...boo. My folks picked me up a Tim Horton's application form while they were here - see where my sense of humour comes from?!

So that's work and health covered. Home life is okay, though I've found myself hankering more and more to have my own little den somewhere. Probably a studio apartment for $600 or $700 per month, a potential saving of $3,000 per annum if I can find somewhere, though I'll have to get movers so I may lose up to $1,000 of that upfront.

The love life is a mess, frankly. I started chatting to a woman on a dating website late November and things all seemed to be going terribly well. On paper she was the perfect match. We often finished each other's sentences, made each other laugh, turned each other on, and see many important things in life the same way. However, after seven months now we still haven't met despite various requests and attempts on my part. It really hurts, but the worst of it is the ambiguity - I don't know whether she's actually who she says she is and we've just had an extraordinary run of bad luck, or whether she's been duping me from the get go. 'She' might actually be a 'he'. She might actually be a gaggle of high school students having a bloody good laugh in a computer lab somewhere. She might have only ever intended the e-mail and phone stuff, and never really wanted to get together. She might not even be divorced. I just don't know. But, there's nothing I can do. I don't know her address so I can't even resort to a surprise visit. I'm completely powerless in the 'relationship' which is bad.

My shrink set me the homework of trying to discern my instincts, which are often correct, from my cognitive distortions, which are usually wrong. Ironically, in this case my instincts tell me she's for real, but all the facts undermine that suspicion. Why can't she meet me? It's tough, and not what I need to help me get well right now so I've had to put a lid on it all. In my last correspondence with her I basically said, "Don't get in touch with me again until you're ready to meet me"...and I've heard nothing since. That was ten days ago. The promise and the potential of a relationship with her still haunts me every day though, and it definitely still makes me feel sad - it's just a question of whether I can prevent it from making me depressed. The whole experience makes me wonder whether I can actually deal with a proper relationship right now. I'm pretty scared to feel anything strong for anyone - I feel I don't want anyone to have that much power over me whether it's for good or otherwise.

One thing at a time I guess.

The point is, as I'm learning in life, there are some things you just can't get closure on. For me, the ambiguity of not knowing whether I was a classic 'dating website guy duped' case study or not is far worse than actually being duped. If I knew that she'd lied on her profile as well as the other times, if I knew the pictures she'd sent weren't actually her, if I could figure out what it was that she'd actually been getting out of our so-called 'relationship' for the last 26 weeks or so then I'd feel more comfortable with the whole situation. Don't get me wrong - she had her reasons for not meeting up despite how well everything seemed to be going, and shared them with me in albeit a rudimentary way. But how well she said things were going from her point of view just didn't add up with the fact that she couldn't, apparently, bear to meet me. Not even for a few minutes. I cannot help but feel that that undermines all else. We are, after all, a tactile and emotional species. Me more than the average Joe. We have five senses yet I've barely used two. Most of all, as two mature adults it should have been possible for us to put our petty foibles aside - it's not as if I'm the most emotionally reliable person so my expectations of a relationship are thoroughly realistic. Plus, I know what I want more than ever before - I would never have contacted her otherwise.

My group therapy group is littered with similar litanies. The man who never got on with his Mum, but received a letter from her whilst she was in hospital amidst a heart attack saying, "We must talk..." or similar. By the time he got back to the hospital to have that conversation, she was already dead. He will never know whether she meant to continue her unrelenting verbal, physical, and psychological abuse of him...or intended to repent. If the former, then it would be easy for him to compartmentalise the experience using anger. If the latter, then it would - I suspect - have been his dream-come-true. He'll never know, although - as I think I mentioned at the time - the more important thing for him may well be whether or not she knew he still loved her despite everything she'd done to him. It struck me that this might be the more constructive thing to take away from it all, more calming, more satisfying, more important.

It's not easy to let go though. More so for me and my fellow 'nutters and cutters'. We don't see much light. We don't have much hope. We walk beneath the shroud of self-loathing, with the shackles of self-doubt tripping us as we try to take meagre steps forward. Little wonder that I can't get this woman (if she is a woman) out of my mind when it seemed to be such a good thing.

Gotta go - the laptop beckons...and then I have to hoover the downstairs. More later in the weekend I suspect.

Fighting back: progress to date

OK, so it's still a little blurry, but easier to read than the first one I uploaded. This is up to and including 1st June 2009, my 38th birthday in case you haven't bought me something shiny and lovely yet.

D'UH!!! I only just realised that if you click on the picture with your mouse, you get an expanded view. And there's me calling myself a blogger (insert "embarrassed" emoticon).

How to interpret (again):

• The most important lines are the thick red one (my average severity of anxiety over time) and the thick blue one (my average severity of depression over time). The colours seem apt since depression is often mistaken for a simple case of "the blues", and my anxiety usually makes me terrified or angry, thus red for rage or 'warning'. The other two lines are really just snapshots of my depression and anxiety severity at a particular moment in time. You can see how affective the disorders make me by the huge fluctuations in both scores from week to week. When I refer to reading this blog being akin to you "riding the roller-coaster with me" then this is exactly what I'm talking about.
• Don't forget that in most graphs, when the lines head upwards it's a good thing. Not in this case. The ideal result is both lines crossing the 'x' axis - which would mean I was cured, at least for the time being. In the case of clinical depression (blue line), the higher it goes, the closer I am to feeling suicidal. With GAD (red line), the higher the line goes, the more likely it is that I will be unable to leave the house unless for food or cigarettes, unable to answer the phone if it rings, unable to answer the door if someone knocks, or experience an anxiety attack for some reason, no matter how innocuous.
• GAD severity is scored on a scale of 1-21 with 21 being the most severe (see (2) above).
• Clinical depression severity is scored on a scale of 1-27, with 27 being the most severe (see (2) above). In hardcore medical terminology a score of 0-5 means depression is not reported. A score of 5-9 means minimal symptoms of depression are reported. 10-14 counts as, "Moderate symptoms of depression reported" and, if on a hard copy questionnaire or a web page, usually comes with the warning, "Seek medical attention". 15-19 is classified as, "Moderately severe symptoms of depression reported" and is usually accompanied with something along the lines of, "Seek medical attention urgently". Finally, anything between 20 and 27 is classified as, "Severe symptoms of depression reported". If you're in the doctor's office and get a score like this, chances are that they won't let you leave without stuffing a crisis line phone number into your hand, or hospitalising you.

Stimulating my nerd gland

There's nothing better than a quick dabble in Microsoft Excel for a geek like me. It's the same characteristic that makes me love stationery, filing, and organising stuff meticulously, though I've never been tested for obsessive-compulsive disorder. *smiles*

Anyway, a few weeks back I talked about the fact that I need some kind of assessment built into my recovery plan that'll tell me whether or not I'm making progress. I opted for a line graph.

So, where does the data come from? Well, as part of my recovery plan/disorder familiarity research I stumbled across questionnaires used by the medical profession to identify and diagnose the severity of both clinical depression and generalised anxiety disorder. I skipped all the consumer-friendly ones and went straight for the ones with the highest quality and accuracy. Hopefully this'll make the information more valid and the scoring more consistent.

Even with only two questionnaires' worth of data in the graph, the scores of both depression and GAD varied wildly from occasion to occasion. It wasn't terribly meaningful. So, I tracked back through every questionnaire I've even been given by a therapist and added that data in. It was still a bit spotty, especially on the GAD side of things, so I backtracked through every single thought record I've ever...er...recorded. Thought records are the main thrust of cognitive behavioural therapy and, in layman's terms, comprise jotting down every nasty or terrifying though one has, and then attempting to explain it rationally rather than allowing it to paralyse you, or lead to an anxiety attack.

So, the upside is that this allows the data to date back to around the time of my diagnosis rather than only the last two weeks. However, any budding statisticians reading this will no doubt be jumping up and down by now because the most recent data is evenly spaced at weekly intervals, whereas everything else seems to be all over the place. The fact is that one doesn't get anxious thoughts at regular weekly intervals. Equally, sometimes in the past I'd record the extent of my depression, sometimes just my anxiety, and sometimes both. This is as good as it gets.

So, whaddya need to know about this graph?

1. The most important lines are the thick red one (my average severity of anxiety over time) and the thick blue one (my average severity of depression over time). The colours seem apt since depression is often mistaken for a simple case of "the blues", and my anxiety usually makes me terrified or angry, thus red for rage or 'warning'. The other two lines are really just snapshots of my depression and anxiety severity at a particular moment in time. You can see how affective the disorders make me by the huge fluctuations in both scores from week to week. When I refer to reading this blog being akin to you "riding the roller-coaster with me" then this is exactly what I'm talking about.
2. Don't forget that in most graphs, when the lines head upwards it's a good thing. Not in this case. The ideal result is both lines crossing the 'x' axis - which would mean I was cured, at least for the time being. In the case of clinical depression (blue line), the higher it goes, the closer I am to feeling suicidal. With GAD (red line), the higher the line goes, the more likely it is that I will be unable to leave the house unless for food or cigarettes, unable to answer the phone if it rings, unable to answer the door if someone knocks, or experience an anxiety attack for some reason, no matter how innocuous.
3. GAD severity is scored on a scale of 1-21 with 21 being the most severe (see (2) above).
4. Clinical depression severity is scored on a scale of 1-27, with 27 being the most severe (see (2) above). In hardcore medical terminology a score of 0-5 means depression is not reported. A score of 5-9 means minimal symptoms of depression are reported. 10-14 counts as, "Moderate symptoms of depression reported" and, if on a hard copy questionnaire or a web page, usually comes with the warning, "Seek medical attention". 15-19 is classified as, "Moderately severe symptoms of depression reported" and is usually accompanied with something along the lines of, "Seek medical attention urgently". Finally, anything between 20 and 27 is classified as, "Severe symptoms of depression reported". If you're in the doctor's office and get a score like this, chances are that they won't let you leave without stuffing a crisis line phone number into your hand, or hospitalising you.
   

I'm disappointed I didn't record my feelings and emotions a little more studiously in the past because there are some obviously significant dates missing. The specific day I was diagnosed. The day my wife asked for a divorce. The day I got shafted by the HR woman and my boss at DDB PR. The day I got fired from Interbrand. The day I was closest to suicide. I'm not gonna beat myself up about that though, because to do so would be to ignore the very affects of my disorders on such punctuality and diligence - the same reason why I nearly walked out of group therapy forever.

That said, I can tell you this much:

• During the last three weeks of May 2007 I was obsessing about the state of my marriage. Around this time I had an anxiety attack On Queen Street West (not a pleasant experience) that followed an argument with my wife. I was also kept awake at night, deliberating about whether I could reveal the extent of my illness to my wife, and whether I should have her meet my therapist at the time so he could explain my disorders to her, make her understand them, and make her understand how serious they were and the impact she had on them. The most common thoughts recorded around this time were, "I have failed myself and Nicole", "If I lose Nicole then I will lose all my friends too and be totally alone in this country", "I am going to end up divorced", "I can't trust other people", and, "I can't trust my colleagues. Sad but true.
• 7th October 2007 was Thanksgiving weekend, which I spent with my in-laws at a cottage. You'd think I'd be feeling a bit better about this but the fact was that I was totally unable to relax because I was worried about work. At the time, my so-called "colleagues" in advertising were making my life very difficult on my favourite account, EnWise.
• 21st April 2008 was three weeks after my horrible experience at Interbrand, and I suffered an anxiety attack when trying to make chase calls to potential employers in order to secure a job. My financial worries were running pretty high around this time, and I was feeling very misunderstood and pressured by my wife.
• Christmas Eve 2008 was ruined for me because I felt like a total failure - in work, in marriage, and in life in general.

I will be adding a link to the right-hand-side of my blog under the "RESOURCES" section that will permanently guide readers to the graph - something along the lines of "How am I doing now?".