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.