Monthly Archives: February 2010

Slow Down Honey

Thumbnail: Egg yolk

“Try to hold you in bed you shrug away instead oh I don’t know why.” I found this song dur­ing a recent tran­si­tion, and it’s stayed with me since. It fits so many moods — con­tent­ment, sad­ness, lon­li­ness, morn­ing, mourn­ing, and moult­ing.

Thumbnail: Bloody Mary

In a way, I’m forc­ing myself grow and improve, and this scares me. In the book my ther­a­pist rec­om­mend­ed, it explains “Change requires will­ing­ness to expe­ri­ence pain”, and I’m going through this exact­ly. I’m con­stant­ly step­ping out of my com­fort zone, and at this point, it’s much more trep­i­da­tion than excite­ment. It’d be so much eas­i­er to fall into old men­tal habits, as unhealthy as they are.

Thumbnail: Games night

On morn­ings like this, I sit in my liv­ing room with the cur­tains open. It makes me self-con­scious to be sit­ting there with hous­es across the street get­ting a clear view of me in my PJs and mussed up hair. But it reminds me that some­one else is out there. That the world is full of life, and vibran­cy, and peo­ple just like me.

Continue read­ing “Slow Down Honey”…

Cranium Party 02

Cranium Party invitation

The sec­ond Cranium Party went exceed­ing­ly well, even though not a sin­gle one of my core friends was there. In fact, aside from Jess, it was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent group from last time, and none of the four groups of peo­ple knew each oth­er, but that did­n’t stop it from being an awe­some par­ty and every­one got along famous­ly. Through the night, I heard peo­ple ask­ing each oth­er, “And how do you know Jeff?”

People brought all sorts of snacks, but more impor­tant­ly, they also helped me eat them. Of note was Audra bring­ing a tub of green tea and hon­ey vanil­la Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which I had nev­er even heard of before.

To make it inter­est­ing, I told every­one that the los­ing team would have to per­form a tal­ent. Some came pre­pared, oth­ers came with the atti­tude that they would­n’t lose.

Audra’s tal­ent is speech writ­ing, but since she could­n’t per­form that, she did a ren­di­tion of a song she wrote with Jesse three years ago about their cat Zoey. And the song was­n’t just a short jin­gle, it was a full piece with prop­er song struc­ture and clever rhymes. If only I was­n’t laugh­ing so hard that I kept shak­ing the cam­era.

Sergei did­n’t have a tal­ent pre­pared, but since I knew that he used to study mar­tial arts, I asked him if he could demon­strate what he knew. He sug­gest­ed that he could blow out a can­dle with a punch, and no one was left unmoved.

Shawn brought his beau­ti­ful­ly carved didgeri­doo to play as his tal­ent. Even though he did­n’t lose, peo­ple were still intrigued enough that they want­ed to try it. And, of course, Jesse added his own flavour at the end.

On The Mend

My ther­a­pist has the curi­ous habit of push­ing his low­er lip into his upper gums when think­ing. He also has a very par­tic­u­lar way of talk­ing, and some­times I won­der if I could imi­tate him.

I went into my ses­sion feel­ing great, and left with a lit­tle more mod­esty than when I start­ed. I may pride myself on my self-aware­ness, but he’s always there to remind me that some prob­lems are root­ed in my sub­con­scious. While my feel­ing of empti­ness has dis­ap­peared, there are still a few under­ly­ing issues, such as why I start­ed to feel that empti­ness in the first place. He said that when we meet again that it should be on a reg­u­lar basis, and I should­n’t wait for a cri­sis to begin fix­ing issues. I agreed, but want­ed to give things a chance on my own first, armed with this new-found enlight­en­ment.

He approach­es my sit­u­a­tion from such a per­pen­dic­u­lar per­spec­tive. It’s always a view I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered before. When I first went to see him, it was for my anx­i­ety attacks. Not for the oth­er deep-root­ed emo­tion­al prob­lems I had (and was unaware of). Sometimes, I won­der if we’ll ever get to the point where he’ll say to me, “You know what, Jeff, I don’t think you need to come here any­more.”

My Therapist is a Rockstar

As I was writ­ing notes for ther­a­py tomor­row1, I was doing some research on life­traps and came across a short para­graph that cleared up every­thing for me to the point where I did­n’t feel like I need­ed to keep my appoint­ment. It was the answer I did­n’t even know I was look­ing for.

Now the feel­ing of empti­ness that’s fol­lowed me for so long is gone, and every­thing makes sense. I feel sta­ble again, though there’s still a hint of doubt because I’ve been here before but it’s nev­er been any­thing per­ma­nent.

I’m still going tomor­row so I can solid­i­fy my new-found under­stand­ing. I don’t think it’s going to be a reg­u­lar thing again, I just need the bit of guid­ance he gives me that lets me fix myself. I can’t explain how good it felt to make the appoint­ment, know­ing I had some­one with a pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion and years of expe­ri­ence in this to give me an objec­tive view. My friends are always there to sup­port me, but they don’t make sense of the world for me the way my ther­a­pist does.

  1. This is the first time I’ll be bring­ing notes, only because I’m try­ing to cov­er such a com­plex top­ic that I want to be sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing. [↩]