…I Just Realized…

That I will have had this blog for 20 years as of this coming September…

I am finding that hard to believe, but the math does not lie.

I think I need to think about this for a while.

Here are my foster cats, just because.

The Daily Struggle

I want to talk a little bit about my life. I complain about it a lot and I know it. But I think this is a more pathological thing with me than just one of being disgruntled with the hand I’ve been dealt. Because I’ve been dealt a lot of hands, not just one, and I’ve landed on my feet, and I’ve grown and learned. I also fully recognize that I have a lot of great things going for me. Yay me. I don’t mean to minimize the positives, but the other side of the coin is not quite that simply summed up.

I have written before that I am not one of those people who wakes up in the morning and is all gung-ho and “yay life!” Every morning, I make a conscious decision to show up for myself and others through my work despite a strong urge to just pull the covers over my head and try to disappear. I am not exaggerating. If I could get up in the morning with a strong verve and some enthusiasm, I’d be thrilled to bits even though feeling those things at that time would be weird and foreign.

Since the age of 11, I have simply not enjoyed life. That was the year of the onset of menarche for me, and it was also, coincidentally but maybe not, the onset of depression symptoms. Two years later and no improvement, plus a new tendency to be slightly obsessed with death, suicide, and other morbid stuff, I was taken to my first shrink, who kind of insinuated there was nothing wrong with me. A year after that, my first hospitalization of many (about 11 in total) due to depression, suicidal threats and constant suicidal ideation.

I would continue to be a suicidal ideator until my 40s. In fact, it’s only recently that I have not had any suicidal ideation at all after decades of carrying that around with me.

Don’t worry – I’ve had therapy and more therapy, and DBT, and CBT, and psychiatric help, and a bunch of other stuff. I’ve spent more time in therapy than almost anyone else I know.

Throughout all this, I’ve lived a life blotched by depression, medication, multiple psychiatric diagnoses, and a bunch of misery. I have never enjoyed life, and never found a lot of joy in my life. I can barely experience joy, in fact, and when I do, it’s always fleeting and never stays long. I can experience pleasure, but much like joy, it’s usually temporary. I have spent a lot of my life, however, feeling numb, hurt, and traumatized. All stemming back to the age of 11.

I’ve never trusted happiness. I don’t even think I knew what it was until I left home and went to university. I didn’t know what it was like to have unbridled fun until then. I didn’t know what freedom was or what healthy relationships or attachments were. All I knew was survival, and in order to survive, I had to repress.

I would not come out of my shell until my mid-30s, post divorce and on the cusp of a career change. Throughout all my years until that point, I was lost and confused, and unsure of how to react, to be, to not wear a mask.

It all came together for me in my 40s, but even though I got a lot sorted out, and saw a new career developing, and therapy helping me process the past, I still carried with me the suicidal ideation. It was passive & fleeting, but it was always there.

At 45, I took a full time job in my new field. And within a couple of years of doing that, even with the pandemic, the thoughts somehow dissipated. Coincidentally, or maybe not, I started perimenopause at about this time. But if the hormones were purely a coincidence, I would say that having a full-time career gave me a purpose in life I never had before, it gave me a sense of acheivement and success, and I credit it with helping those thoughts go away.

As for enjoying life – I still struggle. While I have a sense of purpose, I don’t feel, honestly, that I have a ton of value as a human being. A bunch of other people could do my job. I feel invisible in other areas of my life, and quite frequently think that if I were to just disappear from this world, I might be missed for a bit, but people would move on, as they do, and that would be it. I don’t believe I am special in any way, I don’t believe I am anything other than just another body on this planet going through life and waiting for the inevitable end. I have nothing of use to pass on. I have no children. I have no art, or body of research or anything to mark my place on this planet as anything other than just a schmo trying to survive.

I would love to FEEL. I would love to have joy, and pleasure, and happiness. When I do have those things, I would love for the feeling to stick around so I could really experience it, instead of having it fade so quickly.

So yeah, I am not a lover of life. I would love a life transplant. I would like to feel more enthusiastic about living, but I just don’t, even though I get up and I show up every day. I have great friends, and I have had great life experiences, too. I have many things to be grateful for and I recognize that. I just can’t seem to find what I need to feel good about living. But I do it nonetheless.

And that is all I have to say about that. I’m now pretty exhausted from writing this.

Foster Kitties!

Look at these guys! This is Sesame (tabby) and Spice (black) and they are my two new foster kitties who have been with me a week now. They came from Straight Outta Rescue Society and were once feral. They are 10 months old now, and are very shy and skittish, but becoming more and more brave by the day. They are bonded brothers from the same litter and LOVE treats, food, toilets, and doing zoomies all over me at 4am! The first few nights were quite a challenge, but they have settled down the past couple of nights. My bed is on the floor so they zoom all over me when the urge strikes! This is them in a calmer moment, shortly after they came out of my walk-in closet, where they were hiding for the first couple of days. I hope they start to become more social and into affection soon, as right now they are not super fond of being petted or touched in any way. Well, Spice tolerates some gentle pets for a little while, but seems unsure of it and then bolts. Sesame is not into pets at all.

It’s been a nice addition to the house to have kitties in here again after 3 years of no cats at all after Juno’s death. The energy of the home has changed in a good way. I do hope they find a forever home before long, though, because they are both so sweet and both deserve a permanent place with a loving family.

2024

This month, I purchased wanderingcoyote.ca for three years. Stay tuned for some changes to the old blog!

Cultivating Self-Compassion

Although Christmas has not passed yet, I am looking toward the new year already because I prefer the new year as a holiday to yucky old Christmas, and I do like to start the year off with some intentions/areas of focus/whatever you want to call them as long as you don’t call them “resolutions.” I hate that word; it’s so legal-sounding, and does not have for me pleasant connotations. I also hate goal-setting, because my track record with setting goals and keeping to them is shit. I work with SMART goals in my job, and although I understand the purpose of keeping goals SMART, I have to grind my teeth sometimes when the term comes up for me in a professional setting. SMART goals are all well and good, but, like a lot of people, crap happens and life happens, and SMART goals can easily get derailed.

After a lot of consideration, I decided to not have “areas of focus” this year and boiled everything I want to work on (health, finances, having more fun/leisure time, and turning 50) down to one concept that I will try to cultivate for myself in 2024. And that is self-compassion.

What a lot of people don’t know about me is that I have incredibly negative self-talk, and my inner voice is a harsh & hostile critic. I am so judgemental of myself. My mindspace is frequently taken up berating myself for not being enough, not taking care of myself well enough, shoulding all over myself – and I generally am a mean girl to myself.

I am not this way with other people, and the contrast is sharp. I would never, ever speak to a friend – or even anyone, for that matter – the way I speak to myself. I would be a horrible person if I did so.

Self-compassion is not a new term or concept for me. It’s been bandied about in various settings I’ve been in, not the least of which was the medical weight clinic I attend, where I just did an evening workshop on self-compassion. It was a good reminder for me about how I can cultivate this in my own life, while incorporating skills I use and suggest using to people I work with.

One of the skills is thought-stopping, which I am a fan of because it worked for me, though it was a lot of work before it became effective, but I do credit using this skill for helping me through some very dark times. Thought-stopping and self-compassion are very compatible concepts; you have to stop the thought before you can replace it with a more positive/loving one.

If you don’t get it, you don’t get it, but this has been effective for me, and I like to pass it on because you never know what seeds you may plant when you mention it to a client. In fact, I used to poo-poo many skills taught to me in my 20s as stupid, useless, and a waste of energy. This was because I was 1) not open to learning skills at that time, and 2) I felt that the therapists pushing these skills on me did not get me at all and therefore I felt patronized by their recommendations. I didn’t feel the skills addressed my issues or pain, but at that young age, I also wanted to be fixed rather than do the work to fix myself. It wasn’t until I was in DBT therapy in my 30s that I realized that skills were probably going to be my best bet out of mental health hell because I was sick and tired of talking about what was going on with me. I had reached the point where talking was not helpful anymore, and that learning and applying new skills was a more productive route to take.

Anyway, self-compassion is something I need to purposely cultivate using techniques I already know. I have been told by various people along the way that self-compassion will change my life. While that is a pretty big claim, I can see the positives in it, though I am sure it’s not magic bullet because I am too experienced to believe that such a thing really exists.

So the first order of business is to try to combat the thoughts, and when I notice them, practice a bit of mindfulness, and then gently turn my mind to a more self-compassionate thought. Straighforward, yes. Easy, no. There is a lot to do here in these seemingly simple steps. Mindfulness, which I also used to poo-poo more than anything else, honestly, is a tough one and I still struggle with it. But the purpose of the mindfulness in this case it to be an observer of the thoughts rather than a participant in them. This makes the turning of the mind to a more positive thought easier because you are not hooked into the negative thought the way you might have been before.

I don’t really have much of a plan, but I think what I wrote above is a pretty good start. I also need to treat my body better. I need to nourish it and not punish it. I need to make it my ally and not my enemy. That’s going to involve quite a significant shift in thinking as well.

And that’s what I wanted to share today. I hope you all have a safe and wonderful Christmas if you celebrate it, and if not, I wish you all the best of the season. I am still unsure what I’m doing on the 25th apart from making breakfast for a couple of my coworkers and a friend. I’m trying not to think about it too much, honestly.

Project Me

To be honest, I am not doing that well these days – physically, mentally, emotionally. I think a lot of it has to do with being in perimenopause and the time of year, but there are things going on that are not necessarily related to those at all. 

2023 has been marked with some struggles that I have pretty much kept to myself because they are not struggles that make me feel particularly good about myself.

By Oct. I had some pretty serious health news that I knew was coming down the pipes but didn’t do enough to mitigate. I chose to put my head in the sand and not care, and now I am suffering the effects of that & I’m very angry with myself because I could have stopped this. I took a week off in Oct. to see my family and we had a great time together, but it also brought up for me how different my life was from that of my brothers, and how I wanted to improve things for myself because I am pretty convinced that I am going to die young and although I can make my peace with that, maybe, I also don’t want to die young. I have shit to do. But I am completely to blame for how badly my health as deteriorated this year, I know it, and now I’ve got to do something about it.

While with my family in Oct. I realized that I have an advantage that neither of my brothers have: I am single, dependent-free, and house-free. I have freedom at my age not many of my peers have, and I need use it while I have it. Hence the plan to take a TEFL course, teach English, and have that fund some travelling. I also realized that I needed a long-term project in my life, like a hobby or some such, to keep me engaged with my life and fill some of the big boring holes I have in my existence. 

Combining health & need for a project, I came up with the term “Project Me” to describe some undertakings I’m going to start in the new year. I have come up with some areas of focus.

1. Health
2. Leisure/Fun
3. Finances
4. Turning 50

I am generally unhappy and dissatisfied with life, and there is no one to blame here but me. I don’t feel I use my time well, so the TEFL course will help with that for a few months. I need to dedicate 8-10 hours/week to it for about 4 months. I also would like to have more fun. I would like more energy and not be tired so much. And, I’m turning 50 in July & would like to do something significant to celebrate that milestone.

I have been using a new notebook to brainstorm ideas for Project Me. I have made some small changes to my life this year that seem to be going well, and I need to add some more changes to my routine to feel like I’m accomplishing things.

I am kind of a visual person, so I had thought of doing a vision board, but in the end, what I have decided to do is re-do this blog site. I’m still going to call it Wandering Coyote, but I am going to revamp the site with the help of a friend, and combine it with my old food blog, ReTorte, so I can have everything in one place. I will have categories & posts will be published in pertaining to 5 different subject headings.

It’s like a project within a project!

I know I usually do a year-end round-up and a post about intentions for the new year, but I don’t know if I’ll do either of those this year. I’m not sure I feel up for it.

I just want to have a good year for once. I don’t feel I’ve ever had a really good year. Something always crops up to put a wrench in my plans. I have given up hoping that that won’t happen, because that’s just life. But I’d like to look back on 2024 at this time next year and report back that I’d had a great year instead of a blah one.

Grieving the Ghost Dumper

Last night I had a powerful dream in which I was very forgiving to someone in my life who had wronged me extremely painfully – twice. If you have been reading this blog a while, you might recall the Ghost Dumper. The dream was about him.

I met the Ghost Dumper (we’ll call him GD) on POF in early spring/late winter 2018. In his profile, he had a picture of Castlegar, which I recognized right away, and so I sent him a message and we chatted for a couple of days before meeting up the day after the big Nightwish show at the Queen Elizabeth Theater.

We hit it off. Very much so. He was intelligent, a good story-teller, had a big personality, was tall, and we had a lot in common. We saw each other regularly for 3 months, and he called me every day on his way home from work if we weren’t getting together. I always appreciated that and always thanked him for calling me on his commute home, which he always responded to with, “Of course! Why wouldn’t I call?”

We had epic conversations about all kinds of things. He was a talker. I enjoyed listening to him.

And then, in mid-May, at pretty much spot on the 3-month mark, he completely disappeared. He decided to ghost me. This was not my first ghosting experience, but it was my first after a period of dating someone more than a few times.

I won’t go into how disappointed I felt, how abandoned, and how unimportant I felt, and how confusing and painful this whole experience was for me. I went through a grieving process that included plenty of anger, but I did eventually move on, as I always do, and I put the experience in my bank of stories to be told one day when the time was right.

Almost two years later, in very early January 2020, I got a text after I’d gone to bed. It was from a strange number, but the sender identified himself right away. It was GD.

He sent me a paragraph about how sorry he was and how he knew he’d hurt me, and that he’d love to have a coffee to talk things over and give me a more detailed explanation for why he’d ghosted me.

Nearly two years had passed and I was over it all, but I had missed the guy despite his being a chicken shit ghoster, so I texted back and we met the next day for coffee at Starbucks.

The meeting, IMO, went pretty well. He explained his ghosting. He acknowledged that he was in fact a chicken shit, and he acknowledged that he had hurt me deeply. He apologized. We went for dinner & caught up. After some more talking, I agreed to give him another chance.

I was super happy. I had really, really liked GD, though, admittedly, he was neither hot, nor had any game, and was awkwardly shy at times. But we got on like a house on fire and we picked up right where we left off.

Then guess what happened? Yeah – the pandemic hit. We were OK for the first few weeks, but then, at the three month mark again, guess what happened?

Ghosted. Just like that. AGAIN.

This time I was more furious and less sad etc. In fact, I was livid – and I expressed several things along those lines via text message, but got no response. And I was angry with myself for trusting him and taking him back and allowing myself to feel things with him again.

It took me longer to get over this second ghosting than it did the first, probably because I beat myself up over it so much. I was also officially out of second chances. I decided then that I would no longer be giving any guy a second chance; if he messed it up once, that was it.

So last night, I have a dream about GD in which I was forgiving towards him and although we did not get back together in the dream, we parted on good terms. I woke up with a sore heart, however. And today I am feeling emotional and sad about the whole thing, and missing GD even though I think he is an asshole.

Grief and getting over things is never linear. Sometimes things pop up randomly, like dreams, and they remind us of losses, and maybe they indicate where we are in the process of letting go. Perhaps I am over the Ghost Dumper and I needed to be reminded of that.

I am still out of second chances, however, and I certainly am not into third chances, either.

I Hate F*cking Salad

I hate fucking salad.

I really don’t enjoy lettuce at all.  Of course there is baby spinach, micro-greens, etc., but they are all pretty similar in tase and texture and I am sick of them.

Most “healthy” diets seem to involve an awful lot of salad.  It’s an easy and “fun” way to get your veggies and fibre in without a lot of cals, and so salad has become the ultimate diet food.

But I hate it.  I hate everything about salad.  I hate putting them together, I hate the chopping, I hate figuring out the dressing, I hate composing a decent salad.  I find salad boring, pedestrian, and just so overdone. (I am referring to green salads, not salads like the potato or quinoa, or pasta varieties.)

I am in a quandary.  I need to improve my diet, reduce my caloric intake, up my fibre, and eat a more “healthy” diet.  That inevitably involves salad.  Which, as I have been quite clear, I loathe.

So what does one do?

One eats the fucking salad anyway.  One buys “baby greens” in a clamshell package at the store, with some “fun” toppings (chevre, Craisins, some crunchy thingies), and one makes a simple dressing. And away one goes.

But I am not enjoying this one bit.  I acknowledge I need to do this for my health, but I am hating every bite.

I am eating the salad because I hurt.

I am eating the salad because life is awkward for me.

I am eating the salad because of my heart. My swollen ankles.

I am eating the salad for my blood pressure. Because of all the pills I have to take.

I am eating the salad because I might die young-ish.

I am eating the salad so I can be ambulatory in my golden years.

I am eating the salad so I can achieve my goals and dreams.

But I resent every mouthful.

I did this to myself, I have to remind myself.  There is no one to blame for this other than me.  I let things go to a point where my health is poor and I am in an overwhelming situation that I am unsure I can resolve for myself because it’s just so big. 

I feel shame.  A lot.

I feel like I’m drowning, sinking beneath the surface, and all that’s visible above that surface is my frantically waving hand, hoping someone will throw me a life preserver.  Only, no one is there to do that, and I have to fight in order to not die.

So I’m eating the fucking salad. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

Bored, Boredom, Boring

I once had a psychiatrist tell me that my boredom was not pathological. I thought he was nuts because I do believe there is a pathology to my boredom. This was the same guy who diagnosed me with BPD back in 2006, and although I never fully bought into that diagnosis, I think my chronic and, quite honestly, long-standing and severe boredom is definitely related to my anxiety and depressive disorders. And, boredom used to be a trait associated with BPD until the 90s when the diagnosic criteria for BPD changed.

I am bored a lot. I am extremely bored frequently. I think this has been something I’ve struggled with since my late twenties and it continues to be something I struggle with now. What changed in my life? Well, I graduated from university at the age of 24 in 1998, and a few months later came down with a debilitating depression that landed me on the local psych ward for 13 weeks and involved 12 rounds of ECT, more drugs and drug combinations than I could keep track of, and kept me in recovery mode for the next four years. I would never be the same again.

The long recovery from that depression was just as difficult as the acute phase was, and I think it changed me. It definitely changed my world view, partially but indirectly let to the end of my marriage a few years later, and started me on a course of self-discovery, thanks again, indirectly, to a therapist I connected with after my hospitalization.

I don’t remember being bored a lot before graduating from university. I remember boredom as a child, but I don’t recall it be problematic. Once uni was over, I lacked structure in my life. Also, my social life changed drastically because my friends all graduated, too, and we dispersed all over the place. It was a time of huge transition for me and I was lost. Hence, I guess, the depression.

When I re-engaged with the world around me after I made it through that depression & recovery, I found myself bored a lot more. I went to work at a low-paying retail job, and found it boring after the novely of it wore off. My boredom manifested as crankiness, and I kind of developed a reputation for being mouthy and, looking back, I was pretty dysregulated. Eventually, seeing no future for myself in retail (can you blame me?) I went and retrained since my degree was considered “soft” and pretty useless in the job market of the time.

While back in a school setting, I thrived. The structure was great, and it was a homework-heavy program so I had lots to do in my down time. When I had nothing to do I found things to entertain me. I graduated top of my class.

I currently have a highly structured life, working full time at a job I generally enjoy. But I am bored. In my downtime these days, I struggle to find activities that stimulate me or engage me. I am sick of my usual hobbies and interests, and I don’t feel motivated that much to go in search of more things to do.

Because my work can be draining, I need to rest, but I have a hard time doing that, too, because I get bored quickly. On my weekend, I always strive to balance rest with some kind of activity to fill my time, but it’s so hard for me to do.

Although I am bored a lot, I am not a stimulation junkie. I am not a hedonist. I am not tempted to use substances, but I have engaged in some risky behaviours from time to time. I assumed I engaged in those things due to my also chronic loneliness, but am now questioning whether or not I was actually bored instead of lonely. I don’t do those risky things anymore, but sometimes the temptation is there.

Nowadays, I live with my boredom. It frustrates me, though. I find life highly dissatisfying. It’s missing a huge piece and I don’t know what that piece is or where to get it from.

I also don’t feel like I’m a very exciting person to be around. I feel I am boring. Not a surprising extension of having a boring life, I guess. I know that only I can fix this for myself, but I have no idea how.

And I’m pretty sure this is a boring, rambling piece of writing, too, so I’m going to end it here.

What Will It Take?

I am not seeking any advice so please refrain from giving me any. Thanks!

This is the question of the day, as I continue to ponder my future, my options, my plans. A lot of things hinge on my health, and as a big girl with some health issues, my mind today has been buzzing with that question, and I don’t know the answer. If I move to a foreign country to teach English, which is my plan for my 50s, I am not sure I’d pass the requisite health check most countries require of people applying to stay long term. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’d fail at this moment in time.

While I’m not brave enough – nor does it really matter, in the end – to list my various health concerns here, let us say they are kind significant. In fact, I’d say my health and my weight is the #1 thing that takes up mind space for me on a daily basis. I spend a lot of time worrying about my future: will I be ambulatory in my middle ages? Will I die young?

Will I die young??

You’d think having that heavy question weighing on my mind so regularly would be motivation enough for me to make the changes necessary so that I might live as long as possible, right?

Apparently not.

I am proceeding with the status quo.

And I don’t know why.

I don’t particularly want to die young, and I do want to be ambuatory in my middle ages, and I do want to do all these exciting things I envision for myself. I really do.

I don’t know what my mental block is. Well, other than I am overwhelmed by all I have to and/or should be doing to lose the weight and attain decent physical health & wellbeing. I have been pretty well-informed by more than one doctor about potential issues and risks and things that are or could be on my horizon (none of them pretty), and yet, I do nothing.

And you’d think that having “will I die young?” on my brain, that would be a pretty big motivator. But it’s not turning out to be.

So what will it take? Will it take a catastrophic health event (that I probably could prevent) that puts me in the hospital? Surgeries? Heart attacks/strokes? More doctors than I already have, more pills than I already take? Seeing my hopes and dreams die before me because I am too stubborn and lost and uncaring to get myself to where I need to be?

I should be scared. I am not. I am…numbed. I am indifferent.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

Couples Therapy

You know something’s wrong in your marriage when your fantasies change from fun things you’d like to do or try together to your husband coming down with a fatal illness he’ll never live through – and you get to start all over again once he’s gone.

And this was less than a year into the marriage, too.

I felt sick to my stomach that I was fantasizing about this, and confused as to why. Ostensibly, what was wrong with my marriage? To the observer, nothing looked or seemed wrong, but I was miserable, and something was gnawing away at my gut, telling me that something was very wrong.

I remember a distinct feeling of being trapped. I remember feeling the then unnamed quivering of anxiety in my body that became not only chronic but grew from a shake to a near earthquake the longer it went unacknowledged.

Living within this relationship became unbearable. I started to detach from him physically, although I had noticed that with the fantasies I mentioned above, I had begun to feel nothing toward him anymore – certainly not attraction, and certainly not affection.

When it came to physical intimacy, I felt nothing; I had no feelings or sensations around him or when he touched me. It was a complete numbing.

I was about 28 at this time. Yet, there was something childlike about my lack of words to describe how I felt, and my lack of skills to deal with how I felt effectively. I didn’t know what to say, or what to do.

I also thought it was all my fault, since I was the one with the problem. But something about that didn’t feel right, either.

But I knew it couldn’t continue, so I brought up couples therapy with my husband, because it seemed the obvious route to me.

At first, he did not want to go. He said it was because all marriage counseling seemed to do for people was “bring them down to the lowest common denominator.” No one would get what he/she wanted, so what was the point? I pointed out that he had not even tried it so how could he possibly know, and that seemed to make some kind of impact because the next thing I knew, I was getting a recommendation for couples therapists from my therapist at the time, and off we went together for a meet and greet.

It was a couple we were referred to for couples therapy, our parents’ age or thereabouts, and kind of New Age-y in approach. I will never forget the first thing they said to us at the beginning of our first session.

“We’re not at all invested in keeping you together or anything – we are just here to see you through a process.”

This made me feel a whole lot better, and I think my husband respected this as well and trusted them because of this very statement.

We had therapy from this couple for nearly 2.5 years, and it was some of the most important therapy I would ever have in my life. They were expensive but we gladly paid them, and they even made themselves available to me when I went away to culinary school in Vancouver for 6 months. They provided a very safe place for for self-exploration, and I learned more about myself during that 2.5 years than I would until I took a different kind of therapy a few years later. I think this was the very beginning of my journey into self-reflection, because I was questioning things going on in my life already, and they encouraged me to question even more, and to reflect even more.

I learned that there was nothing wrong with me. I was not the problem in the marriage. My numbness and lack of feeling was a result of some very serious underlying issues. I learned that I did not need to be fixed – even though that is what I was being told and what I believed. I was completely blind, and through this therapy, I learned to see things for myself, and not through the lense of someone else’s agenda.

During that 2.5 years, I changed immensely, and it paved my way towards independence, and it would be the space in which I took the ultimate step towards self-determination when I told my husband I was leaving him. And the therapists did not see that as a failure on anyone’s part. This decision was just part of the process they had facilitated for us.

I left him May 17, 2005, and to this day has been the most terrifying decision I’ve ever made, though not the most tragic. I’ve gotten what I wanted: independence and self-determination, empowerment and strength and opened eyes and a host of crazy, amazing experiences I’d never otherwise have had, and I regret none of it.

**NB: This was a really hard post to write, and I almost gave up and deleted it. I know I left a lot of things out, but it was triggering me, so I did what I could that felt safe for me. Other details might come later.**

I Am Not That Interesting

N.B. I wrote this post nearly a year ago and many things have changed since then. I’m in a bit of a different space now, but I wanted to keep this piece of writing so I am putting it here.

Before delving into stories from the past, I’d like to take a bit of time to talk about my present. 

There seems to be this perception out there that many have – like my mom, some of my friends, some co-workers, etc. – that I have an interesting life.  I cannot figure out where this perception comes from at all, because I simply do not see it myself.  I do not try very hard to have a social media persona; I try to be as authentic as I dare be because that’s the place I operate best from.  Where the idea that my life is interesting comes from is a complete mystery to me.

Let’s break this down a little bit.

I work.

I go to bed early because my work is draining and at the end of the day I feel “done.” 

And repeat.

In the cracks in between, I manage to write a bit, date a bit, and gain weight.

And that is basically it.

I seldom exercise.

I don’t have any attention span for reading or binge-watching Netflix. 

On my weekends, I see friends and we go for coffee (mostly iced coffees for me) and do something social. 

Hobbies?  What are those?  Like I said, I do a bit of writing in my downtime, but I have fallen out of love with the activities I previously spent a lot of time doing.  Things like weightlifting, and baking/cooking.  I literally – and I am not exaggerating – hate food, food shopping, meal planning, and meal prep.  I haven’t lifted a weight in I don’t know how long and it shows.  I am weak and at my heaviest – and I am short on caring much about it.

My cat died.  My roommates are not social people and spend most of their time here in their rooms.

I hate to say this to all of you who believe that dating must make my life interesting, but it does not.  It’s a terrible rabbit hole and a waste of otherwise valuable time.  I promise to get into this more later, but dating has been a complete flop for me as an endeavour and I am not planning on doing any more of the online variety any time soon because all I did was spend hours upon hours nearly giving myself a repetitive stress injury from swiping left all the time.  If somehow some guy shows up in my life randomly in person and by some utter miracle he wants to date, then I’d consider it, but otherwise I just can’t bring myself to go back on a dating app at this point.  Yes, I have a ton of stories, and yes, I love that I have those stories, but enough is enough and it’s no longer worth the effort.

It seems to me that my life was far more interesting when I was on disability and only working part time.  Probably because I had more down-time then and thus more energy and brain power to devote to the activities I enjoyed.  Now those activities seem like chores on top of working full time and trying to keep my sense of balance and equilibrium.  But, as a result, I think the balance has gone in the complete opposite way, and 40-hour work weeks sucks the get up and go out of me, leaving little energy for much else in my life.

All this being said, I enjoy my job.  It gives me a lot: purpose, a sense of success, an income that I can actually do things with, and I make a difference in people’s lives. I am not suffering from a chronic existential crisis as I did when I had more time on my hands to ponder and agonize over my place in the world.  So there are lots of positives.

But, when people ask me what’s new and exciting in my life, I have to roll my eyes, because nothing is exciting whatsoever.  Life is stable and settled.

In short, I think I have a boring life.

As such, I often have feelings of needing to “inject” some excitement into my life. And I then make bad decisions. I have done some really stupid and even dangerous things to bring some excitement into my life.

Some of these things I will share here with my readership. Some of them are better left alone in the corners of my mind.

POF#1: The Guy from Nelson

We all have to start somewhere, and for me the start of using online dating using sites like Plenty of Fish was in the summer of 2010. I had zero experience with dating sites, but had heard through friends and acquaintances that they could be successful. Or not. But as I was willing to put myself out there, I decided to go with what was popular – and cheap. OK, free. I had friends on Lava Life but I was living below the poverty line on disability at this time and didn’t want to fork over the monthly fee for a paid site. So PoF it was.

And let me tell you, if I had known this first experience would be indicative of what I’d go through on PoF and similar sites in the future, I would have given up then and there.

My first impression of just the site was not altogether positive. It looked like a cheaply built site full of mug shots of men that you’d sometimes see characters flipping through on your favourite iteration of the Law & Order franchise. Add to that the fact that I was living in a rural area and so the pickings were a bit slimmer than they would have been had I been situated in a bigger centre.

I spent quite a bit of time formulating a profile for myself, and included some photos I had taken with my digital camera (this was before the smartphone craze and ubiquitous selfie craze). I thought I looked pretty good, and I got quite a bit of attention.

However, it wasn’t the attention I was quite hoping for, and I wound up becoming very discouraged very quickly with a series of interactions online with probably drooling neanderthals hoping to get laid easily and not much else, whereas I was looking for more connection and relationship potential. Perhaps I should have known better. Small towns out in the boonies are not necessarily rife with available men, and while I’m not exactly a meat market lookie-lou, I should have guessed that the local pond would be rather small and not contain many fish at all.

But I did manage to connect with one guy, who seemed normal according to his communication style and he didn’t say anything too red flaggy. I decided to meet him. He was from a city about an hour’s drive away called Nelson, and since I can’t remember his name, we’ll just call him Nelson Guy.

Nelson Guy purported to be in his early 40s, had a decent profile that listed hobbies and interests that I thought were compatible with mine, and so after chatting a bit over the dating site, we set a date for one evening in my hometown at a local coffee spot I knew would be open into the evening. We settled on 6pm, and then I proceeded to have a pretty serious amount of self-doubt and anxiety about meeting someone off the internet. But I pulled it together and went to the appointed venue, and decided to sit outside on the sidewalk, where the coffee shop had some tables and chairs.

And I waited.

And I waited.

In fact, I waited for an entire hour. During that hour, all kinds of people were passing me by on the sidewalk, some of whom I knew. And they would ask me, “what are you doing sitting here all alone?”

I really did not want to answer this, so I vaguely said something to the effect of, “Oh, I’m waiting for someone.”

But after an hour, I got ticked off and walked the 15 minutes back home. This was, again, before I had a cell phone. As I walked in my front door, my landline rang, and guess who it was?

“Where are you?” he asked, in a tone that suggested I was somehow the one who was late.

“I’m at home. We were supposed to meet at 6:00. It’s like quarter after seven now.”

“Yeah, but I’m here now. I came all this way.”

I did not like the hurt tone in his voice. But, because I was a dating newb and didn’t know any better, I put my shoes back on, and walked back downtown to the coffee shop.

Only to find him sitting on a bar stool at the counter, chatting up the cute barista (who was the daughter of the owner of the town’s gym that I went to regularly). But the kicker was, he was the only patron in the coffee shop, so it had to be him – and he looked nothing like he did in his pictures.

I felt confused.

I walked through the door and he continued to chat up the barista as I went over to the counter and introduced myself. Once we had shaken hands and gotten salutations out of the way, he didn’t move. He continued to talk to the barista, and I for a panicky moment thought he was going to include her in our date somehow.

But he managed to drag himself away and we went and sat down. I kept looking him over because I was really unsure of where I had gone wrong on the whole photo/reality piece. I asked him why he was an hour late, and he made some excuse that made no sense to me at all, knowing what I knew about the drive between Nelson and Rossland.

And it got worse.

He was a good, engaging story-teller, but in the middle of him telling me about a tryst he had at my alma mater, UVic, with a girlfriend there, he let slip the year this happened, and, although I am not mathematically inclined, I can add 10 to anything and be pretty accurate. He had lied about his age.

“Wait,” I said, “that happened in what year?”

He repeated himself, but I could see his face fall and he knew he’d been caught.

He was actually 52, not 42.

“Why would you lie about that?” I asked him.

And he said, “Women aren’t interested in men in their 50s.”

“I see,” I said, but I did not.

I should have made some excuse there and then and left. But then he decided to show me some photos of his children, and this is when things got downright weird.

His son and daugher were seven and nine, or thereabouts. He showed me photos of them on his phone – and they were in the bathtub. They were covered in bubbles, but nonetheless, they were in the bath, and I thought this was really inappropriate. And a little bit creepy.

After this, he continued to dominate the conversation, telling me about past relationships and how he found it so difficult to find someone who appreciated his sweetness, attentiveness, and thoughtfulness. He looked at me with a calculating glance, and said, “I can tell you’re not interested by your body language.”

This statement surprised me, and he was right, though I denied it. At this point, he said he needed to get on his way.

I walked him to his car, which was on my route home, and he asked for a hug, which I gave him. The car was a red sporty thing, low to the ground, and screamed “midlife crisis.” We parted ways, I walked home, and promptly thought what the fuck as I got in the door for the second time that night.

I never spoke to or saw him again.

And that was my first Plenty of Fish date.

In debriefing this experience with someone I was close to at the time, we lost count of the red flags from the hour-long meeting. I mean the whole thing was red flaggy from start to finish.

I didn’t do any more dating until after I’d moved to the west coast. I just couldn’t handle PoF and the smarminess I found there. I was also not confident and way too afraid of men still, and I know now that it wasn’t the right time for me. But it was a start.

I wouldn’t return to the online dating world until 2012.

Fear of Men

I used to be afraid of men.

Post divorce, I spent several years wanting to remain solo.  This was partly because I knew it would be a period of growth for me, and partly because I consciously chose to walk alone in life after being joined at the hip with a man since the age of about 21. When I separated at 31, I was tired of being in a couple.  I wanted self-determination, and I had goals and dreams I wanted to accomplish that were not marriage-friendly – at least not in my marriage where he got to make all the big decisions.  I wanted to plot my own course, and if that meant doing it solo, I was good with that.

What I hadn’t counted on was what I’d later refer to as the Great Depression of 2006 – 2010.  This was something at the time that was made even more devastating to me not just because of the disruption it meant for my life, but because I felt at the time that I should have been able to either avoid a major depressive episode based some beliefs I bought into during my marriage, and that by spiralling downwards as quickly and as thoroughly as I did, I was a therapy failure. And basically, just a failure in general. 

After all, I should have been on the top of the world.  I was doing shit – alone!  I was transitioning into singlehood quite well and was pretty content with where things were going for me, until boom – The Great Depression sucked me in.

Of course it wasn’t as simple as that, but I will get into specifics in the future.

It wasn’t until 2009, when I started to poke my head out from depression’s ditch for a bit, that I felt I wanted a man in my life.  I was 4 years out of my marriage and thought I had put in enough time solo that I’d like to give a relationship a go.

Well, as often is the case, you put something out to the universe and you get back something you hadn’t quite bargained for.  In my case, it was a realization that I had a fear of men.  I didn’t realize this till someone in my life pointed it out to me one day, but when she did, I knew she was right and I knew the misgivings I was having about men and dating were founded in fear.

In the summer of 2009, a good friend of mine from out of town called me up one night to tell me that she had a friend who had a friend who lived in Rossland, where I was living since 2006.  This friend of a friend was a single male with a career and a house and all these desirable things I don’t care about anymore.  He was single and willing to meet, and was I willing to meet him, too?  I said sure, and the guy and I chatted over the phone briefly to set up a date, and that was that.

I had not been on a date since 1996, when the Wasband and I got together. And, just to round out the picture here, the Wasband was my first ever boyfriend – and first everything, really, as I had never dated in high school or in the first two years of university.

I knew absolutely diddly squat about dating.  As in NOTHING.

I met this unsuspecting fellow one fair evening for drinks at a local night spot, and right away I was skeptical about the whole thing because, for whatever reason, he reminded me physically of the Wasband. Right off the bat, I got an unpleasant feeling crawl all over me and I began to feel uneasy. When he stood up to greet me and shake my hand, I saw that he had a similar stature that felt too familiar to me. I didn’t quite know what to do, other than be as gracious as I could.

Of course, awkwarness ensued.

The guy was quite gallant though not very chatty. I felt I had to keep the conversation going, and unfortunately, I found myself pretty much grilling him to suss out what his hobbies & interests were, what his long-term goals were… I am sad to say I think I turned him off by turning the date into a job interview. I didn’t understand that that’s what dating was actually about.  Later on, I would cringe at this memory. I don’t even remember what his answers to my questions were.

As this was a small town and a small town bar, someone I had to know walked by us as we sipped cocktails on the patio, and that someone happened to be my youngest brother.  We waved at each other as he went by.  At the next family gathering, when the topic of my date came up, I mentioned that I hadn’t been attracted to the guy because he shared several physical characteristics with the Wasband.  My brother, who had seen him and who had met the Wasband, quickly disagreed with my assessment, which kind of flabbergasted me because it seemed so obvious to me.

There was no second date.  Which I was absolutely fine with.  I realize now that I never really gave him a chance and that I wrote him off far too soon based on looks. 

What this experience taught me were three things.

Lesson #1 was: don’t grill a guy to death, for crying out loud.

Lesson #2: even if your date resembles a man you dislike and have bad memories of, you need to remind yourself that this man in front of you is not that bad guy. Give him a chance.

That being said, we all have our types and we all have our preferences.  At one time, the Wasband was “the type” for me. I realized on this date that I was no longer into that type, which, as I see it in retrospect, was good information to have.  People change, and with that can come a change in preferences.  So that was Lesson #3.

I was young and green then, but it wasn’t until I delved into the world of online dating that the lessons got more complicated and serious, and that my fear of men was so deep-seeded it nearly caused me to stop looking altogether.

Just Married

The most validating thing one can do in our culture is get married.

Think about it. Generally, weddings are huge public venues for showing off that someone loves you and wants you above anyone else. We spend billions of dollars every year on an event that celebrates the union of two people who seem to have waded through all the options out there and found “the one” – the one in 8 billion, I believe we are up to now on this planet.

Statistically, it looks miraculous. Here is one person in 8 billion that is willing to put up with your bad habits and idiosynchrasies and snoring and belching and whatever else you do that is gross, disturbing, and off-putting. But love, if that’s what drives marriage in our culture, overlooks all this. It doesn’t care about personal nastiness. It doesn’t care about snoring or leaving the seat up or nose hairs or icky bodily fluids. Love accepts.

But love is also confusing, and can be confused with other things. I thought, at the age of 27, that I knew the difference between wanting and needing. Turns out that I didn’t know jack shit about wants vs needs. I wanted what I wanted – and what your typical woman in her twenties wants. A man. A ring. A dress. A wedding.

Because look – here is a dude who wants to throw his lot in with yours, despite some iffy-assed relational patterns that were hastily brushed under the rug in favour of the hoopla of an engagement announcement and a whole lot of attention from all the people in your life who want the best for you.

The proposal, which happened one Sunday morning in our apartment’s hallway, outside of the bathroom, complete with a bouquet of roses procured from the local grocery store, meant life was all coming together for me. He wanted me, and only me. He wanted forever. I thought I wanted him. I thought I wanted forever. I thought I was mature and wise enough to know want from need.

Upon engagement, a whirlwind of activity ensued. There were plans to make, people to inform, details to iron out. There were engagement parties and gatherings and showers, and gown shopping and venue selecting – and God knows what else. I barely remember it all now.

What I do remember, as the engagement proceeded towards The Big Day, was my anxiety, which had not really been specifically examined by a professional yet (depression was my main issue back then, but I would not get a diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder till several years later) began to increase. And then, once people starting booking flights and accommodation, I began to feel overwhelmed.

But I thought this was just a natural part of being the centre of a big life event. I distracted myself from my feelings with a bridal registry, with choosing a menu, selecting the right shoes, and systematically ticking off items on the huge list a small, intimate gathering of 37 people seemed to warrant.

And then the pre-marital counselling started.

It was a requirement of the woman, a friend of ours who was a United Church minister who was also a couples therapist, who was officiating our wedding.

I don’t remember exactly what happened during the sessions we had with her, but we did talk a lot about family dynamics on both our sides, and expectations, and a bunch of heavy stuff around my parents, his parents, and role modelling.

But it was during these sessions that I began to experience my first feelings of doubt. And these feelings grew very quickly into very chilly feet. I think back now, and I wonder if this is where my self-reflection was born, because I had not thought of half the things this counsellor was talking about. Children? Money? Priorities? What?

But what about love?

I admitted to having cold feet at one of the pre-marital sessions. This was greeted with great respect by the faciliator, as you’d expect from a couple’s therapist, but the groom remained quite quiet about the whole thing. The therapist and I explored my feelings a little bit, and I think I came to the conclusion that I was just nervous and feeling overwhelmed by all the attention.

But the feelings did not go away. At our last session, I was so overcome with doubt after talking about some of our extended families’ dynamics that I nearly blurted out at the end that I wanted to call it off.

But I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut, although I was suddenly very cold with fear. I remember walking home from that session and wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I was about to have it all, but my stomach had a knot in it and my mind was spinning. All these people…all these travel plans…all these gifts…all this money…all this planning. It was too big for me to put a stop to. And too late.

I self-talked my way back into the swing of things. For a while.

Then, just a couple of weeks before people starting arriving for the wedding, I found myself talking to a friend about my misgivings. Feeling panicky, I told her I didn’t think I could go through with it. I didn’t know why; I couldn’t pinpoint the reason. But I was not sure I wanted this. Something was very wrong about what I was embarking on. I was a little distraught.

And she was brilliant. She said, basically, that I didn’t have to go through with it if I didn’t want to, and that no matter what I decided, my friends would be there for me.

This was one of the most profound things a friend would say to me ever.

However, in the back of my head, I was wracked with guilt about all the stuff going on around me. And, I think, I didn’t know what I’d do if I did call it all off. What would happen? What would calling it off mean? What would we do? What would I do? There were simply too many questions – and too much fear of what might happen if the wedding didn’t go forward.

So the wedding went ahead, despite my cold feet and nearly cancelling it twice.

July 6, 2002

We’d wind up in couple’s therapy the following February.

I Am A Suicidal Ideation Survivor

I want to write about suicide because it was such a big issue for me until about a short few years ago. You see, I was a chronic suicidal ideator for most of my life until my mid 40s. One person I met on my mental health journey even called me a “suicidal ideation survivor” because I never succumbed to thoughts, urges, plans, and scenarios I had played out in my mind ever since I was a young teenager.

Combined with all these thought patterns and imagery, were my very frequent existential crises – as I referred to them. I constantly questioned my existence, my value, my purpose, and pretty much everything about living to the point where everything I was doing, feeling, and experiencing became an internal tornado of emotional instability. And that, along with the thoughts of “I don’t want to be here anymore” and “how can I off myself in the most efficient way that will traumatize the least number of people” is a particularly brutal place to be.

And I was there very often.

In fact, when I turned 40, and the lead-up to that birthday, I had a bit of a crisis because I quite honestly had not imagined I’d even make it to 40. As the date approached, I was full-on freaking out because I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Yet there I was. I began the useless and buzz-killing task of comparing myself to my peers, which, unsurprisingly, made me feel like I had fallen short in all areas of my life and only exacerbated my feelings of inadequacy. The questioning intensified, though I was able to put a lid on it and function well enough.

It’s very difficult to describe chronic suicidal ideation. Most of the thoughts were passive, but they were constantly present. I couldn’t go to the skytrain station without thinking about how easy it would be to just step out in front of that train… Or be at a crosswalk and visualize myself just putting my foot forward into the street in front of an oncoming bus… Or how easy and painless it would be to swallow all the pills I had secretly squirreled away in my medicine cabinet, chased by a bottle of vodka or tequila. And I could go on.

As my mood lowered, the thoughts became more intense and more urgent. But even at my baseline mood, I had theses thoughts daily, if not multiple times a day, and triggered by the smallest things. I basically couldn’t leave my house without these thoughts, and even at home, as I pondered my existence and questioned the point of being alive, I often would become overwhelmed with the temptation to somehow end my life.

My psychiatrist during this time was well aware of this. I didn’t keep it a secret from her, and at each appointment she asked me if I had any suicidal thoughts. I always said yes, and she asked if they were passive, to which I said yes, usually. She wasn’t worried about it, but I guess she had to ask just to cover her bases.

The one thing that most often saw me through these thoughts was my cat, Juno. When I was very ill with depression and the suicidal thoughts became urges and plans and reached a crisis level that would take me to the hospital, the one thing that stayed my hand on more than one occasion was Juno. I simply could not bear the thought of leaving Juno behind to some unknown fate. Even if I had had my act together and had a will, I still would not have trusted anyone to care for Juno or provide the kind of life I wanted her to have. The thought of her ending up God-knows-where was too much for me. I couldn’t take it.

Juno…my soulcat. RIP.

That cat saved my life.

But change was on the horizon, and it would come quite unexpectedly. I went back into the work force in 2015 as a part time peer support worker, something I had started training for in 2014. Officially hired in March of 2015, I found my stride with this work and also found that I was A) very good at it, and B) there was career potential in the field as well. After working part time and being quite successful with that, a full-time opportunity presented itself to me and I went for it, even though I was scared shitless of full-time work because I wasn’t sure I had the stamina or the patience. It was a hell of a risk, but I decided to give it a go and see how it turned out. This was June 2019.

My life changed drastically as a result of full-time work. Financially, I was in a way better position, and I was able to get off of both disability benefits I was on, and I was able to buy a car – something I had been convinced I’d never achieve. The job was hard, and so were the working conditions. It was a full-on mental health worker position, and it was difficult, draining work. I was exhausted and run off my feet.

Then COVID hit, and my job changed to adapt to the new reality of providing health care during a pandemic. I eventually moved on from that position and took up a new one, also full time, with the organization I had started peer support with back in 2015. This was a management position, with some hours of peer support as well.

And do you know what? I suddenly realized that I had not had any suicidal ideation – at all – since my foray into full-time work. It was like a switch had turned off and with it all the thoughts were gone. Totally disappeared.

Why? I think it’s a simple answer: I ain’t got time to think of that shit anymore! I was busy, and my mind was constantly occupied with other matters. If I wasn’t at work, I was trying to do things in my down time that needed my attention – you know, living stuff. Like laundry, and food prep, and and errands, and managing my social life…

Also, I had a sense of purpose, and I was fulfilling it. No more existential crises! What am I doing with my life? Well, I have a fucking career now! It only took me till my 40s, but hey, better late than not at all, right?

Now when my shink asks me if I have had any suicidal thoughts, I say, quite honestly, no, I don’t have any. I can stand on the skytrain platform and not think of stepping off of it into an oncoming train. I can cross the road and not think of being hit by a bus. I got rid of my stockpile of pills.

It feels like a miracle. I am not exaggerating. I feel like my brain has been somehow been reset or rehabilitated. I don’t think the way I used to anymore. Am I happier? Sure, I am. I still exist around my baseline mood, but without the ideation or the existential questions. That’s pretty good in my books.

So the risk I took going to work full time paid off in more than one way. A very unexpected, surprising way. But hey, I’ll take it. I miss my downtime for sure, but I don’t miss anything else about how I was living before it, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back.

I can’t go back, anyway. I have a car payment now!

Migrating

Just an FYI, I am going to start migrating some posts from my now defunct Substack over to here, because there are some good pieces I’d like to save for posterity’s sake. I apologize for the repetition.

Stuck

I haven’t written in a month, and I don’t really know why. But here I am. And today I’m feeling quite down and mopey. I was all right this morning but as the day has worn on, I keep feeling worse. I really don’t know what’s going on, except maybe it’s hormones.

I think I am feeling, once again, a general dissatisfaction with life, something I cycle in and out of periodically. I’m not exactly sure what causes it exactly, except I do theorize that I get bored with my life frequently and boredom for me is an absolute killer. A killer of joy, of gratitude, of all kinds of things.

I am writing this at work. My job is something I generally enjoy and feel good about, but I don’t know if I’m bored with it or if this is just part of a down phase. I like what I do and the people I work for and with. However, I can’t help but wonder if this is all I have going for me. And is it enough.

I’m conflicted. I don’t know why. I feel there has to be more for me in this life, but I have no idea what it is or how to find it. Or how to make it happen. But this is a very good job that makes me feel successful.

I don’t love life. I have always struggled with it. It’s a lot of effort for me most of the time. I don’t know how to change this or if that’s even possible. I don’t know what to do to keep this from happening to me.

I don’t know what to add or take away from my life to make it what I want it to be, which is fun, exciting, full of adventure and experiences (good and bad). I know something needs to change or else I will stay the same – stuck.

I also wonder, as an aside, if these feelings might be related to my dysthymia, because the feelings in my body are similar to those I experience with depression:a general heaviness, moodiness/sadness, weepiness, fatigue, apathy and anhedonia. Little slips below my baseline mood (which I generally describe as “OK”).

Whatever the case, I don’t like feeling this way at all, and I don’t know how unstuck myself. I wonder even if I had this all sorted out for myself that I’d take this with me wherever I go – which begs the question, “what’s the point?”

49

Feeling sassy.

(Don’t) Rescue Me!

When I look back on my life, I see times when I totally was not happy in whatever situation I was in and I wished to be rescued from that situation in some way because it seemed easy, and sometimes easy is very attractive. Especially when you’ve been through a lot, you’re feeling traumatized, or you’re completely fed up. As often happens, things are not as they seem in life, and a simple desire to be rescued can be fulfilled, but in that fulfillment perhaps one might find that the situation was not what was hoped for. Sometimes it can even seem like you’ve made a deal with the devil.

I was once desperate for rescue because I felt I had no other way out of a situation that wasn’t tenable for me. I allowed a lesbian couple, whom I thought were my friends, to rescue me – just as they rescued other people, and a whole bunch of pets. They knew they were rescuers, and “that’s just who they were”. I moved in with them in the fall of 2011, and immediately found out that life with them was not going to be the way they described it to me at all.

It was a sweet deal for someone on disability, $500 room and board, my own room, and Juno was welcome, too, since it was a very pet-friendly household. There was another rescued human there, a younger woman whom this couple had rescued when she was a teenager and just never left, probably because she got a sweet deal out of it too. They were all for coddling/enabling her, though when she did something they didn’t agree with, they’d almost get punative about it.

In my case, so many things happened that fall with these women that I can’t even remember it all, but it was bad. I was in another untenable situation, made more stressful by the fact that I had no job and I had Juno to consider as well. I wound up getting help from the local mental health centre and the rec therapist at the local rec centre, and I eventually moved out of that house and into a new place with a highschool friend & her young daughter.

This rescue mission put on by the lesbians that I willingly allowed myself to get caught up in was an unmitigated disaster, and after I moved out I fell into a deep depression. The stress and the anxiety of those 4 months with those women caught up with me fast and I was out of commission. I felt a certain sense of betrayal by them, but I also blamed myself for getting myself into the situation in the first place. I knew I was being rescued. And in February 2012, when I left them, I regretted everything including my desire to rescued.

The things is, when you’re in a vulnerable position like being on disability for a mental illness (they claimed they saw nothing wrong with me, BTW) and not working and in a bind, it’s so, so easy to fall into this trap. And being rescued is a trap. All of a sudden, someone comes along offering a sweet deal (the knight on the white horse comes to carry you away) and you’re like wow, this is pretty awesome! I am no longer in a bind anymore (the white knight takes you to his castle, you become his queen or whatever, and happily ever after ensues). Life is great.

But it’s not. The castle is a shit hole, the white knight is a philandering dickhead, you are an outsider treated with suspicion and disrespect. This is not what you signed up for!

Except it is. When you are rescued, you relinquish a certain amount of control. The million little factors that go along with this rescue operation are not yours to manage; they’re in someone else’s hands. But you have to deal with the outcomes, and this was also not what you thought you were signing up for.

I have had a rescue mentality before the lesbians and even after them, despite the harsh lessons that came with that situation. I still love the idea of being rescued because it’s romantic and it’s fun to fantasize about someone parachuting into your life and making the hard shit easeir.

It’s an illusion. The only person you can ever totally count on is yourself. Looking externally to other people for a way out is not a way out. At best, it’s a stopgap, a bandaid. At worse, it’s like signing your life away.

I have waited and bided my time. No one is coming for me, though, and even if someone did, I’m not sure I’d go for it. I need my own plan. I need to rescue myself. And if that looks crazy and too out of the box for you, that’s OK. It’s not your life anyway. But my time is now, and if I don’t get my own show on the road, I’m never going to get where I want to be. Which is somewhere with my independence intact, my plentiful resources available to me, and my mind at ease knowing that I have achieved this all on my own.