I pack light. A single lens, and only carry-on baggage.
This plane takes me to a more central airport. Every seat has a USB plug, a power outlet, and a video screen that lets you choose what you want to watch. I make a note to fly Air Canada from now on.
In stark contrast, my connecting flight has two propellers.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”