'Happy' birthday

Right now it feels as though the best thing I can do about my birthday is try to forget the date.

Like christmas and Thanksgiving, it would appear that such anniversaries force reflection. And I cannot help but feel morose-going-on-despondent if I foolishly stop distracting myself for a moment and, like a lemming on autopilot, look around my life.

I see only that which is missing.

The cuddle in bed in the morning from a partner whose love even I am sure of. The haphazard birthday card made from half-potato and poster paint or glued-on pasta shells from a young son or daughter. A family home. The things that - in my eyes - might make me feel like an accomplished man instead of a flippant child trapped inside a, now, 39 year-old pale, haggard, malnourished shell.

Somewhere along the line my life went very wrong, and I am so far away from where I want to be that I can't even see it on the horizon anymore. The elastic that joins me to it has not so much snapped as withered and perished with age, and feels all but gone.

Pride cometh before a kick in the crown jewels

An e-mail I sent to my ex-wife a moment ago. It's self-explanatory.

+++

Well, don't know about you but I'm still struggling to deal with the triple whammy of constructive dismissal, being stitched up at Interbrand, and being turfed out on the street.

Thanks to the more severe of my symptoms I still have great difficulty going out in public, in particular for groceries. I live on take-out, and am heavily in debt because I can't afford take-out. I need to convert my credit card debt into a line of credit.

But I cannot, because as of yesterday my bank will not believe that I do not already have a line of credit with a rival bank.

This is because you STILL have not removed my name from the TD joint accounts and/or line of credit.

I know it's difficult for you to focus on anything other than your job but will you PLEASE get your shit together and organise your finances. You've put me through enough already.

I hope I do not have to visit you face to face to remind you, in as public, loud, and embarrising a fashion to you as I can possibly muster.

My bank will be checking my credit status again during next week. I expect my fictional TD line of credit to be gone by then.

Excellent news

Just a quickie to say that I'm ecstatic to report that work has finally relented and reduced my hours. I reported for work this morning only to be told I wasn't expected until 1pm.

EXCELLENT!!!

Two of my days of the week are now half-days so it looks as if from the end of this week it may finally be worthwhile (a) building a weekly schedule, (b) building a proper recovery plan, and (c) organising my finances again.

I may just have to go out in public to an establishment selling alcoholic beverages, and celebrate. Wow. I haven't celebrated anything in a very, very log time...

Take THAT to the bank

Well, that was an experience.

I couldn't bear the thought of the CIBC financial advisor assuming I'm a reckless waster of money so I prepared an executive summary of everything that's happened to me, or more accurately has been done to me, since 2005 that has led inexorably to my current financial position.

I think she must have believed me because I've never met her before, but she cried when I got as far as the summer of 2008 when my ex-wife proverbially threw me out on the street in the middle of a financial and mental crisis.

Now I have to wait to see whether I can replace credit card debt with a line of credit/loan. Apparently my credit rating is still exceptional, which I am astonished to hear, but I now need to scramble to do two years' of tax returns because the bank needs those forms. I've been overtaxed halfway up my sphincter in every job I've taken since arriving in Canada, to the extent that when I eventually do my annual tax returns I usually receive back between $1,000 and $4,000.

Let's hope it happens again.

After the meeting at the bank and having to again relive the five-year horror story of betrayal and persecution (also known as 'my life') I felt relieved but drained, sorrowful, and tearful. I purposefully walked Eastwards along Queen Street to Parliament Street. It's one of the roughest areas of Toronto. For every spoilt rich brat and wanky jeweller's on Bloor Street West, there is an equivalent homeless person and Dollarama store on Queen Street East. On Bloor West the people are usually tanned, overdressed, and dripping in gold and diamonds. On Queen East they are usually barely clad, smoking, drunk, and rocking.

The purpose of this walk was to remind myself that whilst I feel like I am at rock-bottom in life, in love, and in mental health, I do actually still have further to fall. Even if I never committed suicide, I could still be homeless. Things could be worse. If a day came when I couldn't afford to buy my medication then I would be hospitalised within 72 hours. I wonder what my ex-wife would think if one day she found me panhandling around Queen Street & Jarvis Street where our (now her) apartment is.

I shouldn't speculate though, it'll make my mood worse.

Time, again, to look to the kittens for affection methinks.

What a relief...

...to wake up in the morning in a stronger mood than last night.

Thank fuck for small mercies! Nothing else has changed though.

Most times when I've been battered down to my knees by life it's taken a combination of several simultaneous attacks on me. Life is too cruel to leave things to chance so, yesterday, for example:

• My mind was buzzing with a comment a customer made about over-40 year-olds being technologically inept. At the time I replied, "Wow, I'd better make the most of the next two years then LOL" but it did nudge the Sword of Damocles a little closer to my head;
• I resented working on a public holiday (the entire public sector in Ontario had the entire weekend off);
• I'd worked several days in a row at The Beach which, thanks to my ill fortune with dating, is now a district of Toronto I regard as (sometimes nauseatingly) ostentatious, and sinister;
• I was one dose behind on my meds;
• I'd just arranged a chat with an advisor at my bank which, strictly speaking, should be a positive thing - especially if I manage to secure a line of credit. However, yesterday all I could foresee was being judged by her, scolded by her, and generally having to defend myself because she neither understands nor believes in mental illness...much like my ex-wife and her entire family;
• Yesterday was the first day of 2010 it's been warm enough for me to wear flip-flops. Naturally then, when I left work the streetcar was just ahead of me and I needed to run for it, but couldn't. I remember thinking, "Well, that's what you get for trying to enjoy life. You're gonna have to wear combat boots for 12 months of the year, even when it's 30+ degrees, because otherwise life will ensure that there will ALWAYS be a reason why I have to run."

If you've been reading, paying attention, or caring at all then by now you'll recognise that 'all the above' is riddled with cognitive distortions. But, at the time, it was just too strong, and there were too many yesterday for me to be able to fight. They crushed me, dissuaded me, demotivated me, drained me. By 8.30pm I was in tears on the sofa, kittens in my arms. By 9.30pm I was in bed, crying myself to sleep, and rocking side-to-side the same way I used to before I hit my teens.

I just need a break. Just one break. In general, I feel like I have earned the right to sit back a bit, to cruise, to smell the roses. I'm 38 for fuck's sake! I went to uni late and had to fight to get in. I had to fight to change careers and get into PR. I had to fight to further my career vs people younger than me, with degrees from fancier universities than me. I had to fight the bureacratic inadequacies of both British AND Canadian governments in order to fight my way 3,500 miles across the Atlantic to Toronto. I had to fight for my reputation when I got here when employers bullshitted me, "Well, you won't be as effective as a Canadian PR professional because you don't know the Canadian media."

What rubbish.

In 1994, when I was 23 years old, I was afraid of scrapping my retail career and going back to university. I would have to start all over again. Circa 2006, 12 years later, I had just started to feel like I was getting somewhere in life - married, a homeowner, and successful at work with savings in the bank. My next steps were to become a father, diversify my financial portfolio, and change down a few gears from the breakneck speed my career development had been going at for the preceding decade. Then it all went to shit.

So yesterday I was feeling old. I felt as if my ex-wife had stolen away ten years of my life. Here I was, at 38, worse off, iller, and lonlier than I was 20 years before that. The ex got the house and the car because at the time of the divorce I was too ill to work and couldn't afford to buy her out of her share. I lost everything and barely made it out alive. I was at the point in my life when I SHOULD have been a Dad. I SHOULD have been settled. I SHOULD, finally, have become one of those nine-to-five people I used to hate at work, who always arrived no earlier than 9am and always left on the dot of five because their kids need collecting/dropping/taking to hockey/ballet/football/whatever. I've earned that right but it has ALL been taken away from me.

Life, sometimes, is like picking peanuts out of poo.

Back to square one...yet again...

It's not fair

Saying that I'm a man of principle is the nice way of describing it. Describing me as idealistic helps to explain why I have so little patience for malpractice - such as that incurred by some companies on a near-daily basis. When put under intense pressure though, or treated badly, that idealism quickly morphs into defiance.

Then I become a peculiar combination of things. The voice of everyone's conscience. Defender of the defenceless or downtrodden. Empowered by my perception of right and wrong to do whatever it takes to ensure the right result, regardless of whether it also happens to be the most profitable one or not.

My concept of "right" is a bit old-fashioned and eccentric. To me, "right" means that I actually BELIEVE AND UPHOLD the line, "In sickness and in health, until death do us part." Right does not include employees in the organisation I work for being reduced to tears or - worse - a hospital bed. "Right" is like communism but amongst a species that isn't too selfish to actually make it work - unlike humans. "Right" means that when I'm incapacitated through illness, my government says, "How can we help?", not, "You're not eligible." (Fuck me, even Americans get that now thanks to Obama). "Right" is when someone who tells you they love you isn't lying about their name, town, marital status, intentions, emotions, and pretty much everything else.

Now I hear the next-door neighbours will be gutting and rebuilding their house over the entire fucking summer of this year. The noise and mess will be so bad that the neighbours are actually moving into the apartment above the coffee shop around the corner until their new home is complete. My upstairs neighbours already gave their notice and will be in Thunder Bay by the time the work begins.

They didn't want to leave either.

So now, on top of everything else, that single scrap of stability in my life that I've fought for more than a year to get might be evaporated overnight with the signing of a single planning permit. If I have to move house, then I am seriously considering moving countries. I was willing to stick around when things looked like they might work out with Sarah but now I have no reason to stay. I have no property here, no family I haven't adopted, no career anymore thanks to a string of piss-poor employers, and no money of speak of. In fact the five biggest things Canada has given me are mountainbiking, exacerbated mental illness, divorce, near-bankruptcy, and near-death.

This weekend's been tough on me. And I can mountainbike anywhere on the planet.

I should probably sleep before I make a decision.

The internal struggle

I missed a dose yesterday morning and even that's enough to jangle my nerves, so strong are the meds. So this morning, Easter Monday 2010, I am having to try very hard indeed not to freely communicate to all and sundry how cheesed off I am to be at work on a public holiday.

It's blazing sunshine outside and - not surprisingly - the rate of traffic in the store equates to approximately 1.1 person per hour. It's deserted. I had to wait half an hour to get an Eastbound streetcar this morning, and yesterday morning half of Queen Street East was closed anyway! What a waste of time and money. We could have had a much needed team meeting. We could have closed and spring-cleaned both stores. We could have brainstormed the problems both stores face. We could have built a 2010-2015 business plan. We could, at least, have planned window displays for the next year but, instead, we're open.

And alas, as they say in the SAS, only proper planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance.

Being an idealist makes me a great leader (when I'm not petrified) but also means that I live in a constant state of disappointment and frustration. This is one of those classic situations - when I have to try to care less about something. I also have to remember I took a part-time retail role so that I wouldn't be responsible for such things. My role here is just to show up, serve as best I can, and go home again. But I can't switch off my personality to the extent that I don't get frustrated when things are managed differently to the way I'd do it.

Another five-and-a-half hours to go. :o(

What iceberg?

Things are steady-as-she-goes right now. I haven't done a general update in a while because I'm so enamoured with my kittens that I've been blogging about them instead! Plus my retail hours are still full-time and thus allow for little else.

Kittens - what a brilliant...brilliant...idea that was. They chase after me when I leave and try to get out the door with me. When I get home from work and unlock the door, they are both already sat right behind it, waiting for me. F**k knows how they do that because I never really know in advance what my hours are going to be, let alone what time I'll get home! They give their love quite unconditionally, and sometimes are pretty insistent about it too. Five minutes before the alarm goes off in the morning, either Luna, Pinball, or both of them are in bed with me. Pinball will stand on my face, whereas Luna has a tendency to nibble on anything soft and pink sticking out from beneath the duvet.

Thankfully, up until now it's just been my fingers and toes! LOL

I haven't done my spreadsheet in ages but I don't need it anymore because I am now better-able to tell how well I'm feeling each day. I am more in touch with myself. Plus, the kittens (if nobody else) are quite frank in needing me, and are fulfilling my need to love, to support, and to parent while I wait to see what the next Canadian woman who comes along has in store for me. Hopefully it'll be an improvement on betrayal, constructive dismissal, or divorce.

Gotta go - I'm in my lunch hour. Yep, that's right, I had to f**king work on Easter Saturday AND Sunday.

Go Canada! (Not).

Yet another epiphany

I react with most hostility and aggression to those who threaten my sources of security.

When I was completing my BA (Hons) in Business Communication, I was taught a great deal about organisational behaviour. One of the earliest and easiest theories I picked up was the 'staple' from Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist who died the year before I was born. It's pretty simple - he found out from doing studies on rhesus monkeys that the things any sentient being needs in its life in order to be well, stable, and satisfied, always fall into a hierarchy of importance (see right).

If someone (a boss, a partner, a friend) does something to threaten my sense of security then I react more strongly the lower down the hierarchy of needs one travels.

For example, the quickest way an employer can get his or head bitten off by me is to make me work such long hours that my sleep becomes deprived. This is why I've been suffering so much over the last three months, and why I have had to fight every day to keep my temper and not lose my job by 'exploding' at someone.

Similarly, in the case of Sarah, what she offered/promised me (without dwelling on details) was the completion of all my psychological needs, all my safety needs, all my belongingness/love needs, and a short-cut to many of the things further up the hierarchy than that.

In short, that's why she fucked me up so badly, and why she's still on my mind now.

Afeared and self-loathing near lax Degas

"Great. Another Sunday working at the Beach. Another journey Eastwards with my stomach churning gradually with more intensity. Another reminder of bad memories. It's not fair that an entire fucking district of Toronto, the town where I live, should cause such a profound and nauseating physical reaction in my body..."

I literally twitch and flinch. The acid from my stomach slops so far up against gravity that it's practically corroding my vocal chords. It's still thirty minutes away, but I already dread the point in time when I will have to unlock the door and face the public. Engage with people. Have them judge me. Risk them taking advantage of me. Worst of all, risk running into her. Suffer her and/or her friends mocking me.

Every noise on the streetcar within six feet of me makes me jump. I shrink into the chair, invisibly cowering away from everyone and everything: "Shit!" I mutter in my mind, "I forgot to put my sunglasses on, and it's too late now." In my mind, I fast-forward the act of me trying to retrieve my shades from my rucksack and put them on. My warping perception pictures me fumbling the shades, smearing my fingerprints all over the lenses as I struggle not to drop them. In the meantime I drop the Diesel case they live in and the momentum of the streetcar sends it clattering under the seats somewhere behind me, so loudly that there's no chance I can pretend it doesn't belong to me and slope off the streetcar without it. I feel the crimson filling my cheeks as if someone were pouring a jug of grape juice into my skull from the top.

As if that's not enough to get me fretting, the woman across the aisle is staring at me.

It might be that she thinks I'm attractive. That could be why she's looking at me, but I just can't believe that in my current state of mind. "Stop fucking looking at me!" my sub-conscious screams at her. Are my flies undone? Are my boxers showing? Did I miss a patch when I shaved my head this morning? Whatever the reason for her looking, it can't be good. Outside it's a grim, grey afternoon but the sky is still bright enough to force me to squint, and I'd rather do that than risk actually meeting gaze with another sentient being. By the time I get off the streetcar in The Beach my hands are almost trembling.

And that, dear reader, is what it's like to have GAD in public.

That's not my point though. At the beginning of the cognitive distortion there is a 'tell' that - if spotted - empowers me to restore confidence and avoid myself devolving into a full anxiety attack. It's egotism. Actually, it's the same tremor in my perception that many people who don't know me mistake for overconfidence. It's the belief that everything is me-centric. That the woman on the streetcar must be thinking about ME more than anything else. That members of the public are laughing at ME because it doesn't occur to me that they might have something better to do.

So despite the discomfort, the reaction, and the struggle to manage it in a way that my fellow TTC riders are none the wiser, at least it's given me an early-warning symptom to look out for.

I foolishly brought this scenario up in group a few days later, and regretted it almost immediately. The mere mention of the name, "Sarah" induced strong emotional reactions in all group members. The women in the group make me blush with their, "Why does this woman still even exist to a catch like you?" looks and comments. The guys just want to grab me and shake me. Collectively they force me to admit that she's still on my mind whenever I travel into The Beach - that I still can't quite be over it yet. Then we have a round of, "Well, what's the worst thing that could happen if you did run into her?"

Group is just two hours long so this is a bad question to ask an intelligent, creative guy with an anxiety disorder.

"Well," I begin, "I imagine her, her friends, her daughter, her gay ex-husband - who turns out to really be straight and not 'ex' at all - coming into the store and laughing at me." My face is deadpan. A couple of people look incredulous for a moment, and then remember they're sat on the 17th floor of St. Michael's Hospital. Just two pairs of double-doors separate our little throng from the people in straight jackets in the other wing. I tell them that it makes me feel like Sissy Spacek in Stephen King's "Carrie". That every time I go near The Beach I feel like - at any moment - I might be proverbially doused in a bucket of pig's blood.

"Here's that guy I was telling you about! Can you believe I managed to string him along for a WHOLE YEAR!!! WHAT A DORK! As if I'd ever date him. As if I was ever going to date him. As if I ever meant it when I told him I was buying a big house with lots of bedrooms for all the kids we were gonna have. Let's come back and harangue him again tomorrow - he can't get away, he works here..."

It seems peculiar to me how surprised they are. "But how likely is that?!" they exclaim. "If I were her I'd be way too embarrassed about how I'd behaved to even make eye contact with you," one woman says. Another chimes in: "She's probably avoiding you...hiding at home..."

Embarrassed? That hadn't occurred to me. Any time I'd stood my ground during the 12-month farce she'd seemed utterly unrepentant, often answering with a stunted, "Well then this is over," quasi-staple response. And it's difficult to tell if the sender was blushing as they hit "send". Besides, she lied so pathologically, and did such an exceptional job of triggering my GAD that it's difficult even now to believe any of it was accidental.

But something still nagged me: that I feel just as bad leaving The Beach as I do arriving in it. Run-down, lonely, tired, and a different postcode altogether to 'upbeat'. Right now, I still haven't figured it out. Perhaps that definitely knowing what happened is better than not knowing - even if it is bad news. Perhaps it's that - secretly - my sub-conscious still hopes I'll run into her and all this will have a definite resolution, one way or the other. Or maybe it's that this particular part of town reminds me of a bad experience so strongly that I just feel as sad as I did when it was still happening.

I don't know.

I do loathe myself though, for being a 38 year-old with what turned out to be nothing more than a schoolboy crush. Back at the group meeting though, the members are still pushing me to divulge.

"I guess I feel that I will never find another woman who is such a good match for me," I grudgingly admit.

"BUT SHE'S NOT REAL!" they chorus in reply.

"She IS real," I argue. "I think I saw her one time at The Beach, sat on one of the benches. But I didn't talk to her because I couldn't be one hundred per cent sure it was her...and my anxiety got the better of me. At that split-second in time, I couldn't bear the potential embarrassment of her turning to me and commenting, "I'm sorry - do I know you?" And that wasnt even the worst thing I could think of - I had no way of knowing how she'd react."

There was no guarantee she'd be as pleased to see me as I her. She could've clammed up, tried to slam-dunk me, made things worse, called the cops, burst into tears, or just run off...with or without the optional screaming and/or wringing of hands...

Perhaps this is it. Perhaps my 'dark passenger' (as one of my friends nicknames his anxiety-induced alter-ego) is blaming me: "YOU IDIOT! That was your one and only chance to meet her! Why didn't you talk to her, you pussy?!" And this is why such contemplation and self-analysis is so time-consuming, and potentially so depressing.

But then again, she didn't say hello to me either. I didn't even know she was going to be there - I just caught sight of her as I was riding by. I wasn't prepared, I wasn't expecting it, and one thing's for sure - she had ample opportunity to acknowledge me and make it easier for me, but she didn't.

And I still feel that we are both losers as a result.

So it would seem this feeling will accompany me for a while longer yet. The only real action I can take is to purposefully do something fun (or at least funny) in The Beach so I have a stronger, more recent, and more positive memory to associate the place with. In the meantime, even if there are no more blog entries like this, there will continue to be feelings like this for a while yet. Hopefully less of the fear, hopefully less of the self-loathing. And as for the lax Degas? Well, the art shop next-door to where I work will have different artists soon, I'm sure.

Roll on summer though.

Her name is Luna, she doesn't live on the second floor

A quick note to introduce Luna to y'all. This is the best picture I've been able to get thus far - kittens don't sit well for portraits, as I'm learning!

Luna is one of three kittens from Mingy, a feral cat found almost dead in a friend's back yard last September. Mingy was also pregnant, and on 4th October gave birth to Buddy, Oscar, and Luna.

So Luna spent the first night at my place mewing under the bed a lot because she misses her brothers, but I'm going to hit the Humane Society the day after tomorrow to see if I can find her a playmate. I have to get her spayed too. Aside from that she seems to be settling in OK. I woke up in bed this morning with her standing on my face so I guess it's safe to say that she feels secure around me now LOL. She nearly got in the shower with me too, finding contentment sitting on the bathtub-edge between the clear plastic shower curtain and the fabric one. I did warn her that she wouldn't like water but clearly my feline linguistic skills are lacking somewhat. She still seems curious so sooner or later she'll probably end up in the sink or bathtub by accident, and that'll be that!

Aside from taking a quick whizz on my bed just as I was leaving the house, she's been pretty well-behaved thus far too. I guess she's still a little excited/nervous, bless her. I feel bad leaving her alone all day, but I suppose she'll be as glad to see me tonight as I will her. :o)

Must go - work to do...

Femininity versus felinimity

OK, so there may not actually be such a word as "felinimity". The point I'm making though, is about the choice between getting a partner and getting a pet.

It's a big decision to adopt something living and breathing that's 100% dependent on you. It'll be a big step for me, that's for sure. But the sad fact is that I'm in dire need of love and affection, and I'm currently getting fuck-all of either. There's only so much that friends can do, and I can't really plan and implement a dial-a-hug service so a pet seems like a logical step.

I'd like a feisty, character-ful dog but dogs are too much responsibility and require a quantity of time that I just cannot give right now. But I want something with personality, something that'll have ups and downs like me, need love and attention like me, and reciprocate like me. I'm sorry to say that I can't seem to find these qualities in a woman so after months of consideration I'm gonna get two kittens.

And I'm really excited about it too *grins*. My place would be a proverbial adventure playground for a kitten or two.

I'll be collecting Luna (picture coming soon) this Sunday, and visiting the Toronto Humane Society ASAP afterwards to get Luna a playmate (research has taught me that cats like company). Some of the cats there actually get put down if an owner cannot be found to adopt them, and some of the stories regarding how the cats or kittens had to be rescued are pretty eye-watering. The one above was found in an industrial park in December, along with one brother and one sister...who unfortunately didn't make it through the seasonal cold. I'm not fussy, but I am compassionate so I'm planning to ask for the ugliest, most war-torn kitten that won't get adopted by anyone else 'cos he or she is a little too scruffy. That's the kitten I want to adopt.

I just hope I don't have to potty-train kittens via leading by example. It'd be just my luck to have to neighbours show up just as I'm squatting over the litter tray trousers-down, showing Luna how it's done LMAO!

Happy happy joy joy

(Well, in relative terms anyway).

The furniture is here!!!! Woot!

Not only is it as luvverly as it was when I saw it in-store, but also they patched the scratch in the bottom drawer! Sweet. Every time I put one more thing in a drawer, there's one less thing on the floor....

[Brief pause as I consider the possibility of finally having an apartment I won't have to introduce with a caveat].

Gotta go. So many things to put in drawers, so little time...

Another epiphany

I have a tendency to use my sense of humour to fill uncomfortable silences, or at inappropriate times when it can undermine how seriously I am being taken.

An epiphany

I have more of an issue accepting praise than I do giving it. Indeed my state of mind determines whether or not I feel I deserve the praise that I do get.

Any Given Sunday

It's a gorgeous sunny Sunday in The Beaches and I'm observing how the other half lives, from inside the goldfish bowl of the store. Kids are walking around eating ice cream with their gloves on and, when I'm not serving or answering the phone, I train my eyes on the street.

I still can't come down here without thinking of her. Half of me hopes we'll run into each other, and the other half winces at the thought of it...the awkwardness. The fact that I wouldn't get chance to think of what to say in advance. The possibility that she wouldn't be half as pleased to see me as I her. I still can't help but look though. I often find myself straining to see through car windscreens from the streetcar, checking the faces of every person on the sidewalk as best I can as it rattles and lolls onwards. But I never see her.

I've been feeling pretty broody lately. Customers seem to be going out of their way to bring cuter and cuter kids into the store and each time they do it just makes me sigh. But at least I'm aware of how I feel on the subject, which is a vast improvement to 12 months ago.

In the meantime life lurches on. I'm keeping hold of the job and having to resort to fewer 'emergency' taxis than before. It feels as if I'm coming out of a post-cigarette-smoking lull during which I've smoked much more weed than usual just in order to have something to smoke at all. I don't miss the cigarettes though.

I picked up the last two items of furniture I need yesterday. The sideboard I really wanted was $1,900 but it was a little extravagant! In the end I managed to get both a chest of drawers for the bedroom and a sideboard for the dining room for $590. Finally I will be able to put EVERYTHING away, and will be able to get everything off the floor. I'll probaby donate the two TV screens to the school opposite. Hopefully they can use them.

That's all for now.

Mwa ha ha

I have a weekend *grins*

Tonight is my Friday night so I'm treating myself to a Martini and the special edition of Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, "JFK". It stimulates both my nerd gland AND my idealistic gland. Mood-wise...I feel pretty good actually. Suffice to say that when a two-day break came, I rather bobbed up for air than floated.

Ahh...I love that line:

[In a Southern, Noowarlins (New Orleans) accent] "Yeah, I got nothin' but time Mr. Garrison. Minutes, hours, days...years of it. Time just stands still here, like a snake...sunnin' itself on the road."

Work...sleep...

...work...sleep...work...sleep...work...sleep...

Still...

...exhausted and hanging on for grim death. Still at 40 hours/week. Still no weekends. Couldn't make it to work yesterday morning and went back to bed circa 9am, and didn't wake up again until 8.15pm.

Moods so-so.

Stamina at an all-time low.

I look a mess right now, but am just about presentable enough for work, where I've received another two commendations from customers.

I must be doing a fucking brilliant job papering over the cracks.

Strewth

I'm being run a little ragged by work at the moment.

I've been on full-time (40 hours/week) since December. I usually get Thursdays off but my other day off floats. So right now, not only do I not get a weekend per se, but also if I'm really unlucky then I have to go six or seven days between days off....groan!

I'm exhausted in the evenings and usually later than I'd like in the mornings, and having to work really hard to avoid any resentment or injustice-based cognitive distortions. That said, I have passed onto my boss the feedback I'm getting from my various doctors that I should lessen my hours. Unfortunately we need to recruit one more person so I just have to hang on for grim death in the meantime.

SO, if you're wondering why you haven't seen me or had your call(s) returned, that's why. I'm trying, and will catch up eventually...

Home life '09 review: Lustful in Leslieville

I think I lucked out with my new place. I'm pretty enamoured with it, and with myself for finding it LOL.

The access wasn't brilliant but the movers managed to get everything down the stairs and through the door without anything getting wrecked, and my new bachelor pad is slowly but surely taking shape.

The bathroom is set in Paris (France, not Texas) circa 1925. I managed to find some black decals of the Paris skyline that now adorn the bathroom window. Once the inside window panes steam up when I'm in the shower then I can pretend I'm in Paris 'cos it's just about believable if I look out the window through the condensation *smiles*. I've stripped out the yucky plastic towel rails and lime-ridden shower head in there and replaced them with a curvy S-shaped heated towel rail that has aspects of art deco form to it, and one of those giant 'sunflower' shower heads. I've also added a General Electric art deco standing clock which might be from as far back as the late 1930s. Not bad for $35.

I didn't want to have to paint the entire room so I chose a shower curtain and bathmat that pick up the accent colours already in the room. I have a bunch of art deco style prints to hang once I get the frames for them, and I just need some kind of fixture with shelves to go around the cistern so I have somewhere to stack all the clean bath towels. Being creative, devious, and pressed for cash I decided against buying any serious art deco furniture. Instead, I found a piece of furniture in an art deco book that is encrusted with mirrored glass that I can copy the design of. I can get a similar-shaped item from Canadian Tire for a couple of bucks, and I've ordered a small roll of self-adhesive mirrored vinyl that I can cut to shape and stick all over it. All this and looks too LOL ;o)

Then it's just a case of painting one wall to cover all the holes and 'missed' patches on it (I think the painters must've done the entire room in under ten minutes). This is the most fun/creative part for me - leafing through art deco books with a sketch pad and pencils handy to draft anything that looks as if it might work as a mural. I think I'm gonna be pretty chuffed with it when it's all done.

I'm still short of one or two pieces of furniture for the rest of the place. There's currently a pile of 'stuff' on the floor that doesn't yet have a home. A lot of it is stationery - I seem to accumulate it every minute longer that I live. I have writing paper and envelopes to rival Staples Business Depot, a sufficient quantity of staples to fashion a 38" regular chain-mail tunic (in case I'm ever taken with the notion of playing Dungeons & Dragons), and enough post-it notes to wallpaper the entire apartment if I ever wanted to.

...but sunflower yellow and fluorescent pink wouldn't work with the colour scheme.

For me the little details are the most satisfying. On one bookshelf there's a spotlit set of design tools that doesn't look like much, but it's actually an homage to my Grandfather. He was a surveyor back in the UK in the 1950s and the tools were his. In the kitchen I'll be sticking a small decal that depicts humankind's evolution from ape to homo-sapiens. It's an innocuous nod to my religious beliefs, or lack thereof. All in all, the apartment, its furnishings, and the little details with hidden meanings become a little more personal to me the further into the apartment one moves, and it's good fun putting it all together.

The neighbourhood rocks too. My upstairs neighbours were totally gob-smacked when I showed up at their front door with a couple of bottles of wine to introduce myself. Don't Canadians talk to their neighbours? But, they're nice people and both restaurant managers so their work schedule is at the opposite end of the clock to mine. This is important because it means they're not home when I am, and allows me to DJ as loud as I want to without having to worry abut upsetting anyone *grins hedonistically*

At one end of my street there's a Loblaws, a Price Chopper, and a Canadian Tire. Sweet: all my groceries, and home improvement projects taken care of. At the other end there's (a) an ATM from the bank that I have an account with, (b) a 7-11 for emergency milk and other things, plus (c) a huge selection of restaurants and coffee shops. I've tried one restaurant and one diner thus far (both good), but there's a cool looking Thai place and a Vietnamese restaurant a little further along.

Oh, and where my street meets Queen Street East there's a streetcar stop too. Talk about 'landed on my feet'! This is all good news because it makes it all the more likely that I'll be able to stick around for longer without having to move house again. In the last decade I've moved house EIGHT TIMES! One of those moves was 3,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean too. No wonder its been such a long time since I felt settled anywhere.

I'm also particularly proud of the fact that I haven't smoked any cigarettes since I moved in. I'm not sure exactly how long it's been but I've stepped down from the 21mg nicotine patch to the 14mg one so it must be at least six weeks. This is notable because when I've tried to give up in the past I've often caved in, either at the one-month mark or at three-months. The only downside is that I haven't had the proportionate increase in appetite because I still have nicotine in my bloodstream. So, I still haven't found anything that makes my mouth water at breakfast-time. My virility has bounced back with a vengeance too, for which I currently have no outlet so to speak. Dating still seems a long way off, and there are still a few anxieties there that I'll have to deal with head-on before I feel comfortably confident. Anyway, cigarettes and all other Sarah-related sources of anxiety have all been eliminated from my home life save one - a travel-sized bottle of shower gel. Some months ago when Sarah proported to be in hospital I put together a care package I wanted to mail her. She alleged that she liked taking showers so amongst the items was a 'sampler' set of four wicked shower gels I brought back from the UK. It was all thoughtfully assembled with four matching, clear, travel-sized squeezy bottles in a clear Clarins cosmetics zip-bag.

Of course, neither that shower gel nor any of the other items made it out of the house, let alone anywhere near Sudbury. In order to mail them, I'd have had to have persuaded Sarah to tell me where the f**k she was, and it's taken until now to use the bloody shower gel up. However, once that's gone there will be no visible stimuli that'll remind me of her anywhere in my apartment.

Home improvement-wise there's still a lot to do though, and I've already overspent so the next homeware purchases will have larger periods of time in-between them. That said, I might post some 'before and after' photos once any of the major projects are complete. All in all though, I have travelled a long way from living in a home I never felt was mine with a woman who doesn't love or support me. The more I customise this place, the further away the divorce feels, and the less emotional impact it has on me.

Dodging wet noodles: Love Life '09 Review

I figured it out.

This site is about generalised anxiety disorder, clinical depression, co-morbid syndrome and what's like to experience them and live with them in society. Ergo, the only reason to mention any women who - hypothetically - I fall in love with, start looking forward to spending the rest of my life with, and then have to dump after a year of sacrificing my own mental health...is...if she or they relate to what the site is about. This is how I can better define what is or isn't relevant content. Thanks, Anon, for the prod. :o)

And now I feel sad. Why? Because aside from a few months at the start of our correspondence, anxiety has been the only link between this site and Sarah.

I never got to write about getting the first date confirmed in the diary. I never got to write about practically crushing the chrome handle on the back of the streetcar seat between my white-knuckled fingers, as the 5-0-whatever lolled and limped across town. By the time I'd have arrived at the date venue, my heart would've been pounding in my chest with apprehension, but sheer excitement would've made it feel like...like...well...I guess I'll never know what it would've felt like with 'Sarah'.

Equally I can't write about joy, about contentment, about security, about family. About she and I working together to support each other with combating our demons. About how she was everything I hoped for, and more.

Our first kiss? Jeez. I'd have written a fuckin' trilogy about that LOL.

And don't even get me started on the entire new blog I'd have to write about becoming a Dad. Maybe I should have just stuck with it anyway - just as a source of creative inspiration for topics to write about. Sheeeeeeeeeeeet - I could've turned the whole thing into a screenplay and become an overnight millionaire.

I still could.

But I have better things to apply my writing talents to in the meantime. It does piss me off though, that - because of her actions - all I can ever write about her is how she has disappointed, hurt, and endangered me. It would have been nice to write something positive...just once.

However, this train of thought led me to an interesting and ironic conclusion. As I muted the world and relived my way through 2009, shedding any emotional baggage I had about the divorce from the previous year, I was thinking about Sarah's intermittent dislike for my blog. And here's the irony.

Where love is concerned, leaving my wife enabled me to eliminate all the anxieties from my life that she was causing through her ignorance and/or disbelief of mental illness. Plus, not being in any kind of physical relationship meant that there was no potential new source of anxieties. Attempting a relationship with Sarah was thus a big step, a significant investment, a risk. By the time 2009 had finished emotionally beating and raping me every week up to December I'd eliminated most or all the major sources of anxiety from my life, except for Sarah. In fact, as I said to her in an e-mail towards the end of last year, "Please don't paint me into a corner - don't make me choose between you and my mental health."

Even that didn't get me the response I was hoping for.

The irony though, is that Sarah and her inexplicable behaviour WAS the last source of anxiety for me. If we'd have actually got together, then that last source of anxiety would have dissipated in a single moment. Thus, the last reason for me to write this blog would have dissipated with it. I'd probably have continued the blog until I'd come off medication but then that'd have been it.

What a shame eh?

What a waste, a farce. And that's without getting into all the unanswered questions I still have. But, the only conclusions I can make about the year-long quasi-relationship where GAD is concerned are:

1. I never really got the response(s) from her I needed - even when I was blogging about how the situation she had created was so difficult for me to cope with, and despite the fact that she was reading the blog at the time!
2. If she can't tell me the truth then either she has something to hide, or she just doesn't trust me with the truth. Either way, this ensures that there is doubt, and - hey presto - instant anxiety;
3. At the end of the day, I have no power. I can't do anything to fix or improve the situation until she decides she's ready to meet. As Aesop would say, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

Sadly, a meeting would dissolve all my anxiety about the situation, and probably hers too. But for whatever reason, whether altruistic or not, she refuses to meet. And unfortunately that is really all I need to know about her. Its been my crutch, the fact that whenever I feel like I'm dwelling on her and all the 'what if's of the situation then I just remind myself that there is nothing I can do even if I wanted to.

My only regret is one of my parting comments. I think I told her that I felt the relationship was dead in the water and had been for months. It would have been more accurate, from my point of view, to say that the relationship had died a little each day that passed after 2nd January '09 or whenever it was that I got back to Toronto from the UK. Honestly, I'd date her tomorrow if she could give me what I need.

But she couldn't and cannot, or wouldn't and will not. And so for the entire 365 days of 2009 where love and anxiety is concerned, that was it.

Next up, home and work life.

Writer's blocked

I still haven't figured out how or what to write. It's just so quiet at work today that I thought I ought to make good use of the time in one way or another.

It's snowy in Toronto today. I'm sat, bored, in the store because it's overcast and deserted outside. I didn't get my first customer until I'd been open for 25 minutes, which is a stark contrast to the carnage of xmas week. For the majority of the time today it's been just me and my grumbling stomach, and there's still another turgid hour to go. I guess everyone in The Beaches is still feeling a little fat 'n' fuzzy after the festive season.

I still have that post-new year fuzziness too. There was so much Indian food left over that I've been eating it for breakfast, lunch and dinner since the 31st. Not without consequences either - which is why I make a Chicken Madras a rare rather than regular treat. I think I've just about managed to reset my digestive tract and my body clock to normality though, after being in a stay-up-to-2am phase.

Evidently I survived xmas and new year, peak anxiety-inducing periods of the year for me. Xmas ended up being a walk in the park because I'd been working so hard on the run-up to xmas that I was grateful to get a couple of days off to myself and just sleep in. New year started off bad. I worked 'til 6pm but as soon as I was out of the door and into the darkness it started to needle me: new year's eve 2008 was supposed to be my first date with Sarah, and ended up being the first of many no-shows throughout '08 and '09. It still gets me even now - even now I'd date her. Even now I'd leap in the air if she showed up, and even now I'm still thinking of her every day. The only difference is that it hurts less. That said, every now and then I'll get a sudden pang in my gut that'll stop me in my tracks or at least in my train of thought. I guess time heals all wounds eventually though. Fortunately for me on new year's eve '09 I'd made plans to host a few friends so once they showed up I was pleasantly distracted until I - apparently - fell asleep mid-sentence on the sofa. As far as my (non-) love life for 2009 is concerned, Sarah was it aside from a couple of one-nighters.

Home-wise the apartment is coming together slowly but surely. I've gone all art deco in the bathroom and 1970s everywhere else, and both themes are working well, other than someone buying the used 1970s sideboard I had my eye on. I'm still not exactly proud of the place yet but it'll come. The creative process is cool though - deciding colours, sketching and stuff. All good fun.

I'd better go...I have a customer with that, "I've got myself into trouble and I don't know how to get myself out..." look. More when I've figured out the deets...

2010: a spaced oddity

I woke up with two gay men in my bed this morning. I don't often get the opportunity to say that so I thought I'd better zip it into a blog entry. Currently, one of them is snoring so loudly that he's drowning out the tunes that are playing! *chuckles*

The other has his face firmly planted in the pillow, and his butt poking up in the air. I don't know what you call them but he's wearing those underpants that are kinda jockstrap-esque. That's right, he has ass-less chap-undies on. *trying not to laugh and wake 'em up* If I could be 100% sure he wouldn't wake up while I was doing it, I'd go find a marker pen and write something rude on his bum cheeks. I could just write a "W" on each cheek so it spells "WOW!"

I probably wouldn't reeeeeally do that though. I'm actually kinda chuffed with both of them at the moment, even though I've been up since 9am, showered, dressed, made a giant pot of coffee, and they're still both utterly comatose and it's nearly noon. *smiles* They got engaged a few days ago so I'm delighted for both of them. And considering the quantity of booze and weed we motored through last night, the wedding should be a blast.

We chowed down several kilos of Indian food last night too. All morning I've been entertaining myself by farting so loudly that the windows reverberate, and then laughing when neither of the chaps wake up. The fact that I can amuse myself in such a primal way is indicative of a steady improvement in my ability to appreciate the little things in life. It's a 'tell' that I'm getting better.

Anyway, a lot's happened since we last spoke. So much so that for the last few days I've been puzzling about how best to blog next. A 2009 review? Snapshot in time? List of learnings from last year's experiences?

When I've figured that out, there'll be more words.