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.
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