MONTH #4 - MARKING IT DOWN TO LEARNING

Wow!!!  4 months down, 8 to go!  I thought it was noteworthy that today is the 333 day of the year and it also marks the 33.3% point in this process.

The past few weeks have been centred on the idea of moving forward from past heartache in my life and fully accepting this new world of alone.  I wrote in “Facing the Void” about saying goodbye to The Ex in a letter and honestly facing life after that relationship… well, that was all well and good, but it didn’t stop me from obsessing about it.  This past weekend it dawned on me why.  I wrote a letter saying goodbye, read it into the air and burned it.  Yes, a ritual, like my therapist recommends, but the wrong ritual.  I spent years writing letters to him that he never read (at least not until we broke up).  This wasn’t really any different and did not offer the closure that I sorely needed.  But there was one thing that could…

THIS WEEK IN THERAPY - BABY TALK

You might be saying, “Ah, yes, of course – exactly what a woman in her early 30s would be talking to her therapist about: babies.”  Wrong!  This “baby talk” was something completely different.  As an abused child, I was forced to care for myself from a very early age.  I was essentially an adult since the day I was born.  This meant that I didn’t go through many of the developmental steps that children typically experience.

As we progress through the healing process, I am moving through variety of stages.  Recently, I have been discussing my existential awakening and exploring my anger towards the shittiness of life (at least up until recently).  (Yay!  Happy fun times! – not!)  So this week, we began discussing how this process is like being reborn as a complete person, which means going back and trying to correct the damage done through the first half of life by redeveloping.  Right now, apparently, I am in my “baby stage” where all I want to do is eat, shit and sleep – which pretty much describes my last week.  It’s been a tough fight to even get out of bed long enough to eat.  You might say this sounds like depression, which it kind of is, but not in the same way that I’ve felt depression before (which I have – a lot!).  I’m calling this “progressive depression”.  It is a necessary side-effect of the therapeutic process.

THIS WEEK IN THERAPY - FACING THE VOID

Well… it’s been a rough week.  This week my lovely, wonderful therapist continued her pursuit in making my life better by charging me with facing my demons which are so neatly and carefully arranged in my subconscious.  Bullshit!  At least that’s how I feel at this particular moment.  For anyone seeking a quick and easy fix through therapy, it doesn’t exist.  It is a long hard process where half the time you want to tell your therapist to F-off and then are forced to do all those things that make you scream and shout and cry and bawl.  YAY!  But, as I’ve been promised, the world on the other side will be wonderful (and trust me, the little glimpses I’ve had of the peace of spirit that comes with conquering this territory have been enough to keep me trudging forward).  But, is it fun? No. Is it easy? Hell no.  Do you want to quit and go back to your ignorant stasis? All the freakin’ time!  Is it worth it? Completely.

Anyhoo, that’s how I’m feeling about therapy at this moment.  Mainly because, despite my best efforts, life continues to kick my ass (you can tell I’m writing from a very visceral place this week because of all the swears).  The real problem right now is that I have the false expectation that just because I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to do to become open and vulnerable to the world, crappy things still happen.  I’m really just whining, but hey, that’s part of the process too.

Back to the heart of the matter, this week in therapy we are dealing with “facing the void”.  This could mean different things to different people, for me it means looking at life alone.  Alone – a scary word, though it doesn’t have to be (which is what my therapist is hoping I’ll see – not quite there yet).  In my last post, I discussed that The Ex had begun dating again.  Liberating, but also the cause of a whole bunch of other emotions.  For the past 3 years he has been committed to the idea that we could still work things out and had yet to start moving on.  For me, there was comfort as well as frustration in this thought.  Though we weren’t together anymore, I could still find solace in the idea that somewhere out there someone wanted to be with me.  It wasn’t fully over.  I didn’t need to engage in this new world I built because there was always the option to go back to the one I left.  It was kind of like a video game, I had reached a point where I could move forward in the story, but if I continued to the next chapter, I wouldn’t be able to go back, so I spent time exploring every crevasse to make sure I didn’t forget something that I might need in the future.  I’ve spent enough time in that level and now that The Ex is dating, it’s time for me to close that chapter and move forward.  Easier said than done.

TMI MOMENT #2

This was a completely unconscious decision to begin with, but has developed into one of my favourite ideas in this experiment thus far.  I am working from home for the month of November and therefore have spent most of my days in pajamas or the equivalent.  This also means that shaving has gone out the window.  I live in Canada and it is starting to get cold.  I no longer wear any piece of clothing that shows my bare legs (except for my 3/4 length track pants that I wear to bed), so I stopped shaving about the time that I last had to go into the office (which was over a week ago).

Frankly, I am of the opinion that shaving while you are single in the winter is one of the most futile activities in which a woman can participate.  What's the point?!  It makes you colder and it is a pain in the butt (or in the leg, in cases of razor burn - ouch!).  The only reason to do it is if you have some event where you have to wear a dress or you are going to some sunny destination.  Luckily, no such event exists for me in November.  So, I'm on a shaving strike.  I'm thinking of it as my own form of Mo-vember - Grow-vember.

I fully support the Movember cause, we should definitely support men's health and health awareness, but by the time the end of the month rolls around, I start to wonder what happened to all the good looking men in the city - they all seem to be replaced by trolls with dead animals on their face.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a lover of facial hair!!  A beard is almost a mandatory pre-requisite for dating me.  But... so many guys have no business rockin' a moustache and Movember forces the rest of us to spend our days staring at these unfortunate gentlemen.  Good times were had by none (well, except for those guys that think it's super cool to flaunt their gross handlebar 'stache - ick!).

So, to show my solidarity (and because no one will be taking my pants off during this month), I am growing my leg hair!    And don't think for a second that I'm one of those lucky fair-haired girls that can let it grow for a month and still be barely visible - oh no, I am a coarse, thick, shave-every-2-days girl!  Yuppers!  Here we go!  Once it starts to get really gross, I'll post some pictures...

Happy Grow-vember!!

MONTH #3 - AND COUNTING... LOOPHOLES & NEW GOALS

I am officially ¼ or 25% of my way through this year.  Let’s do a general check-in!

My feelings thus far are still really positive.  Overall, I would say I have avoided more disastrous relationships than I have missed had I been dating during this time.  Not dating has also given me the mental freedom to perform better at my job and focus on my other creative pursuits (like writing this blog).  Not having sex has been a trickier time; during periods of high stress, I miss having the option of a “stress-relief” session with a close friend or acquaintance – or what the rest of the world would call a “booty call”.  Although, the whole point of this year is to move away from these random encounters and focus on finding something with depth and staying power.  (Note: in no way am I knocking, judging or discouraging “friends with benefits” or similar type situations – they have given me great pleasure in the past and I’m not saying I won’t experience them ever again, but for me for now, they are not right.)

It has been an action packed few months though.  Most recently, I met a wonderful guy at a wedding a few weeks ago.  WHAT?!  You met a guy!  NO DATING! … Relax – A. not dating him.  B. It ended before it started.  It was quite the fairy tale story, so I will call this guy, Prince Charming.