Six-blade knife

Yowch. Just got back from a rather analytical, painful session with the shrink.

I remember my Dad warning me a year or two ago that such detailed, uncompromising self-analysis was often a painful experience. But there I go...doing it again.

When my shrink asks me how my week was I usually break the answer up into thirds - work life, social life, and love life. Socially speaking my 'friend' relationships seem stable. I'm just about coping with the needy demands of the stalker next door, though I have had to acknowledge that dealing with him is physically and mentally exhausting me. Still, in eight days from now he'll be gone forever so I don't need to hold on much longer. At home my landlord/housemate's habits and patterns haven't changed at all but I've found somewhere else to live and handed in my notice. Thus the state of the house and the fact that I am not permitted to do what I want when I want are having less of an effect on me. Kudos to me: I have recognised that particular problem, taken action, and solved it. Now it is no longer a matter of chance, but simply a matter of time. The only thing I'm a little disappointed with is the lack of physical exercise I've been able to fit in. Then again, I did make a conscious decision to prioritise my new job and make sure I have it pinned down before I start to pack out my calendar any more. Besides, hunting for a new place to live took up a huge amount of time even though it has proven time to be well-spent. I suppose I should probably give myself a break considering everything I've had on my plate lately.

Work-wise things seem to be going better than they have in a long while. I'm a month into the Mac job and on the brink of soliciting some feedback on how I'm doing. Aside from the lateness, I'm hoping they've found me to be a breath of fresh air after the problems they've had with their staff earlier this year. I need to hear it though, and - more importantly - I know myself well enough to know that I need to hear positive feedback if positive feedback is due. I am always pleased to have concluded anything that's a direct result of me knowing me better than before, and knowing what I want and need. I'm not doing much writing at the moment but, then again, I do have two house-moves and a number of other things to get planned, organised, and executed upon.

The love life *sighs*. I can't remember the last time I had anything positive to say about this, and I can't tell you how that drains me, saps me, ensures that I won't ever quite feel content and secure. Two hours ago I was explaining to my shrink how bittersweet it is to hear from the invisible woman that she's doing well. I'm not lying when I say that it brings a smile to my face to read (we only ever correspond by e-mail these days) about how well she's doing and how good she feels. And that doesn't even include the positive conclusions I am able to make based on the way in which she is communicating, regardless of what she actually says or the specific words she uses.

However, as I say, the feeling is bittersweet, and that smile I mentioned is so fragile and short-lived. After all, whenever she tells me she's feeling better then it makes me want to ask just one question, "So, are you well enough for us to get together? If only for a coffee? A chat? A five-minute walk down the beach? A one-minute telephone conversation? Something? Anything?"

But I can't say that. I can't ask that. Whenever I have in the past it has led only to a disagreement or - worse - an argument.

So I recited all this to the shrink and she totally caught me with my pants down. I should have seen it coming. Whenever she starts a sentence with the words, "I think it's interesting that..." it usually means I'm about to have to admit something. On this occasion she reminded me of the day Nicole asked me for a divorce. I was very, very ill at the time, and I think I just said, "Wow, what a pisser". One of the tell-tale signs of depression is that one takes the path of least resistance, whatever it might be. So if someone asks you for a divorce, you just say, "Oh alright then," as long as it means you don't have to engage, converse, or commit. I was utterly poker-faced, logical, as cold and calculating as a psycopath. The only thought that kept bouncing around in my head was, "Well, what's the point in staying married to someone who's just told you they're not in love with you anymore? Who wants to be in a loveless marriage?" Basically, it really didn't matter what I felt or didn't feel. I couldn't make up the ground for what Nicole didn't feel anymore.

My shrink then reminded me of what I'd said about Nicole and my differences, that - at the time - I felt like I couldn't ask for what I wanted in life, but especially not in the bedroom. My shrink reminded me of how I'd felt outraged that, during the dying months of my marriage, I felt I was being judged or criticised for even hinting at anything that wasn't the missionary position or lying back and thinking of England. That because I was able to be more mature about it than my ex and attempt a frank, adult conversation I was made to feel that my meagre requests clearly classified me as a certifiable, drooling, kiddy-fiddling pervert.

And then my shrink delivered a thundering left hook: "So, if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that the relationship got to a point where you were afraid to ask for what you wanted because of the consequences you feared, and because you felt you would be judged by them?"

"Yes," I replied.

"So how does that situation differ from your current situation where, again, you are unable to ask this new woman for the things you need from a relationship?"

"Shit," I thought. "Shit shit shit. She's got me. How did I not see that one coming?"

But as much as I try to deny it, my shrink has a point. Am I just be repeating the same pattern of behaviour and the same mistakes as before? What is it with me? Do I only ever want and need those things I can never have? I can't even dismiss her question as irrelevant because it comes from someone who doesn't really know me, the same way I dismissed the criticisms of me made by the invisible woman's friends - that I've learned of slowly and only by piecing together mere scraps of information. Nope, if one thing's for sure it's that my shrink knows me - the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of me. Fuck. I feel hollow again. Transparent. Shallow. Weak. Listless. Haunted. Cursed.

I was stumbling, reeling, teetering backwards and unable to get the horizon to stay flat where it was supposed to be.

Her follow-up question came as the relief of the ringing bell to the bloodied boxer. "Why do you think you are suddenly thinking about this again?" At last, an easy question. "It's the holidays," I frowned. "Thanksgiving was horrible. I'm dreading xmas, just the thought of sitting down to an xmas dinner for one. And it'll be a year on the 28th November."

"A year?" My shrink looked perplexed, like I'd used one of those words commonplace in the UK but unheard of here in the great white North.

"A year since I first started corresponding with her. Our first anniversary," I half-laughed, half-groaned.

"And how do you feel about that?" Ah yes, the 'old chestnut' of psychoanalytic questions.

"Well..." I paused. "On the positive side I feel that this situation, this person requires a certain kind of guy. Not anyone would have the patience or the understanding for this kind of, uh, scenario. It feels like it only reinforces what I always suspected about this - I mean that we're so well-matched for each other."

"And the other side?"

It's a year...a year!" I felt like the butt of everyone's jokes. The fool. The sap. I don't mean to sound pompous when I say I've seen a lot. The birth of the microchip. The collapse of the Berlin Wall. The Rubik's Cube. The sea bed 50 feet below the bay waters of Curacao. The internet. And I've worked in technology for the majority of my tenure in the PR industry. I've seen how much the world can change in a day, even an hour.

Yet here I was again, trying to justify to myself why I couldn't stand my ground and list my demands, and more importantly walk away if I didn't get them...within a fucking year f'chrissakes! The eyes were fogging, the knees subsiding, the ropes to my left just out of reach of my left glove and thus unable to help steady me. I was already on an express train to the canvas, face-first, when she delivered the knockout blow.

"I don't understand why one year is so significant," the shrink persisted. "It's just a number, a quantity..."

"She doesn't give me hope," I blurted out. "She talks about feeling better but not about getting together. So every time she seems to be doing well, it's not a cause to celebrate...it just makes it harder to beat off the cognitive distortions."

"Are they cognitive distortions though? When was the last time she said something that gave you hope?"

I wanted it to end right there. My shrink had arrived at the same place I already was: wondering whether the invisible woman was waiting to get well enough to be with me, or waiting until I got bored and gave up.

As Thomas Edison observed, "Faith, as well-intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction. Faith in fiction is a damnable false hope".