Tag Archives: family

One of those weekends…

The PolyBlog
March 28 2016

Just under a year ago, I posted a message about feeling loss around the time of Easter (An emotionally difficult weekend). Basically, it’s a holiday that for me has always been associated with my mom. Not that she was a giant “Easter” person with egg hunts and stuff, maybe just because it is at heart a religious holiday and my mother symbolized my Catholic heritage. Since her passing, I’ve struggled with grief in varying forms.

For the first year, most of the time was taken up with logistics of her estate and the grief was kept at bay, at least in part. Then, as time passed after closing the estate, I noticed that I was run down. My normal psychological tools weren’t working either. Normally, if something is bothering me, I have three tools available to me.

First, self-reflection. If I think about things, try to quiet my mind, and simply reflect on the times when things are bothering me and what some of the triggers might be, I can often figure out pretty well who, what and sometimes why. Not always, but it works pretty well. This is a direct result of my tadpole years where I stripped my psyche bare and then rebuilt it by hand. I know the pieces pretty well, and while I can still fool myself, quiet self-reflection is often enough.

Second, I can just tune out completely. Separating myself from whatever is going on, at least mentally, and going to bed, often allows my subconscious to bring it to the surface first thing the next morning. It just pops up like my brain has been working on it all night and the computing is done, ready to spit out the answer card. Doesn’t always work, but sometimes it’s awesome.

Third, I have my “sore tooth” method. This is a bit more mechanical, more linear. Rather than using method one which is more intuitive (getting in touch with my psyche), or method two which is even more intuitive (letting my sub-conscious do it’s own thing), method three is very analytical. I call it the sore tooth method because it is like having a sore tooth — you aren’t exactly sure which of the teeth it is, so you gently probe the area with your tongue. Is it that one? No. Is it that one? No. Is it that…argghhh! Yep, found it.

I can do the same mentally when I’m having a problem. I run through a list of possible causes, test each of them. Is it a conflict with a family member? Is it lack of progress on that goal or any goal? Is it something with work? Sometimes I have to go a lot more granular but the sore tooth usually kicks back a response to guide my analysis.

Of course, I know myself well enough that I don’t have to be so detailed most of the time, but for deeper concerns, one of the three methods will reveal what’s niggling at my subconscious.

In Year Two after my mother died, I knew something was bothering me but I couldn’t figure it out. I tried quiet reflection, and I suspected there was grief mixed in, but nothing came out of my meditation. Sleeping on it didn’t help. When my tongue probed “grief”, no response. None of the my self-analysis was presenting any resonance with me at all. Through work, we have access to the Employee Assistance Program, and I called them for a therapy referral. I didn’t think I needed a psychiatrist, or psychologist, more someone to talk through what I was feeling. I ended up with a retired social worker who does some basic counselling, and I think she is mostly aimed at family practice. I had out-paced my own knowledge and options, and I needed that extra perspective.

We worked through a couple of scenarios, but it was grief that resonated the most strongly with me. Partly as it explained why none of my normal “receptors” were coming back “sore tooth” — since grief often acts like a wet blanket dampening down everything. Almost like an interference layer too. And knowing WHAT it was allowed me to push past some of it, and manage it a little better.

However, as I said last year at this time, I am feeling still the loss of my roots. Peterborough is very clearly part of my past, not my future, and I’ve almost reached the point where I will have lived in Ottawa longer than everywhere else combined. This is my home, my roots are (trans)planted here. Yet at Xmas, I was feeling run down. Not grief exactly, more the isolation factor that I had allowed to creep into my life unchecked and even unrecognized. I felt a distancing, but was in active denial to even probe it, let alone deal with it. Part of my new year’s goals has started to address it, but at Xmas, I was drained. I went to Peterborough for the holidays with my wife’s family, and don’t get me wrong, they’re awesome, but I couldn’t handle the social interaction. I had no energy for it. I’m not an extrovert by any stretch, but this time, I actively had to limit my exposure to groups and even had to spend some of the time in the bedroom reading.

In February, I took a mental health break from work to get my shit together, and I’m slowly rebuilding my energy levels, while also ticking off some goal boxes. Those are not separate things, actually — I re-energize myself with blue energy projects and I’ve been deep diving into book reviews, reading, organizing my website, etc. My energy levels are starting to return. I had enough energy to blast through a bunch of stuff for medical stuff this past month. New dentist, new hygienist, a few torture sessions in the chair to get me back on track for now with a plan for the future. I followed up with the sleep clinic, inspired by a friend’s success, and have my new sleep machine routine going. Not raging success or fully in my habit yet, but improving. Saw my regular doctor, had a checkup on a bunch of things, altered some of my blood pressure meds. Hearing test is next on my list probably, although I might have overdone it with visits this month (more red energy than blue, but came out a bit even I think overall, might need to pause for a week or two). I’ve called the social worker for another session, will set that up likely for next week or two. Kind of a mental tune-up, check in, nothing serious, but I am a bit harsher on a few things of late, adjusting my balance from previous years. I was feeling pretty good as the month wound down.

Which prepared me not at all for Easter. I was smart enough to realize that spending four days in Peterborough would wring me out like a wet towel, but I like the idea of Jacob getting the time to spend with his grandparents. So I convinced Andrea to go on without me, and her and the cub took the bus to Peterborough on Thursday night. In the snowstorm. Not ideal, but actually everything worked out fine for them. Leaving me Thursday night, Friday, and all day Saturday to hang out by myself in Ottawa. It was heaven. I did a deep dive into my computer on Thursday night and emerged sporadically throughout the weekend for food and daylight, and to talk to them on the phone, but not much else. I plowed through 5 years of old files, something I thought would likely take weeks to accomplish, and I did it in a single go on Friday morning. The mental boost was huge. Great plan.

So, gearing up for Sunday morning, I felt like I was going to be good to go. Nope. I slept like crap on Saturday night. Tossed, turned, couldn’t get comfortable at all. Stressed I think about going to Peterborough. Not the family side. I wasn’t even sure what. Until I got in the car and started driving.

It took me forever to even get in the car, hoping to have left by 8:30 and I didn’t leave until just after 11:00. Turned on the radio, listened to some tunes, and every song was unacceptable. I didn’t want to listen to anything. I wanted something to totally distract me, and it wasn’t working. My brain was going 200 miles per hour and my car was doing 60, but I couldn’t distract myself. I hid it from my brain for almost 90 minutes, but as I reached the half-way part of the trip, the music stations start to die, and the landscape changes to farmer’s fields. Just like the landscape out by the lake where we camped when I was growing up. I came around a bend and it was like hitting a wall.

I didn’t want to go just because it was Easter Sunday. I could lie to myself when I was in Ottawa, I could ignore my mother’s absence when I’m there, but Easter Sunday in the town where she lived her whole life? Not a flipping chance in hell of avoiding that hit. There’s nothing to do about it, really, it’s just the nature of the situation. Going to Peterborough is different now. We used to have to adjust our schedule to go see Nan for part of it, do the balancing act of who is having dinner when, maybe cover one year with the inlaws and one year with her, etc. But that is gone now. As annoying as it was, I feel it’s loss.

Don’t get me wrong, I was not a blubbering idiot all day. I just noticed it, that it was weighing me down. Kind of like the lyric, “Hello darkness, my old friend”. And I know that the only way out is through. But yesterday I didn’t really want out. I wanted to feel the grief in part because it is a connection to her. To feel the link that is mostly gone. To feel the place where the sore tooth used to be, I guess.

Dinner was nice, as it always is. There is little drama in my wife’s family, and little tolerance where there might be any. And I suppose in part because I didn’t grow up with all of them, there is no history to get in the way either, no old slights that might trigger drama. At least not for me, nor apparently for anyone else. It’s just easy. Relaxing almost. I love that Jacob not only gets to spend time with his grandparents but also his great grandfather Doug. I never knew my grandparents so it is doubly special for me to see him have the opportunity.

I really had only one particularly painful moment. Bittersweet perhaps. This morning as we were getting ready to go, Jacob was playing on the piano. Nana and Andrea had taught him some of the Sound of Music, since they’re going to the NAC in a few weeks as a big family outing. Jacob loved the movie, likes the music, and he likes playing on the piano. Today, he was actually playing something. Just the Do-Re-Mi song, but he was quietly doing it by himself, practicing and singing, everyone else was gone to other parts of the house and I was sitting back away in the room. He wasn’t playing for ME, he was just playing for himself.

And I felt the stab that I would love to be able to show that to my mom. She would have loved it. So innocent, so pure, so perfect. And that is the greatest source of grief for me I think. That she doesn’t get to share in these moments, except in a metaphysical sense. She loved Jacob, maybe even in part because she knew it was the golden baby of the golden child, the last of her children to have children, her last grandchild. I weep for the fact that Jacob doesn’t get to see or feel her love and pride in his accomplishments. He’s my awesome possum, but she didn’t get to share it enough.

Then the day ends, the weekend ends, and life returns to normal. Another Easter survived. Life continues.

I miss you Mom. Happy Easter.

A day out with Jacob

The PolyBlog
March 16 2016

It’s March Break! Time for all those extra wonderful experiences, memories, etc. as you try to jam every ounce of fun you can into a short week-long break from school! Except, well, we didn’t really have anything planned for Jacob’s week. Andrea used up all her vacation leave finishing her M.Ed., I had some leave left but not as much fun just the two of us for going anywhere, and we didn’t set him up for any camps. So five days at the daycare. Now, don’t get me wrong, he loves the daycare and the woman who runs it, Ana. But, nevertheless, it wasn’t anything particularly “special” or “unique” for the week. Jacob doesn’t really know any better but he is beginning to notice when kids come back from trips to Disney, China, Vietnam, etc. and tell the class what they did over the holidays and he doesn’t have grand stories to share. We weren’t taking a trip, but I did plan to take today off for a special day with Jacob, and to cram as much as I could into one day! 🙂

The morning started a bit slower than I wanted it to, and first up on the list was me putting in Jacob’s lenses. There are lots of reasons why Andrea puts them in, partly as a downstream result of her having inserted them when she was off with Jacob multiple times over the last six years, she tends to handle most of the morning routine, and I’m out of practice. Some of it is I’m sure just laziness on my part, but there is also a practical element. Andrea can put them in his eyes in 30 seconds, it can take me up to 10 minutes to get them in. Separate from the frustration level for me, I’m more concerned with the temporary torture of Jacob. This morning, he wanted to try putting them in. Andrea learned when she was about 7, and Jacob already takes them out himself. So we tried briefly, and then we tried with me doing it. In the past, I’ve never had any luck with Jacob being in any position except lying down, but Andrea does them with him standing up, so I went for it. Jacob wanted to help, so for the first time, we had him hold his eye open, and I just focused on inserting the lens. In like Flynn, 10 seconds. Second eye was a bit trickier as his hand was in the way, but about 20 seconds in total. First time, each side. Today was obviously going to be an awesome day! Yay Jacob, yay Daddy!

We did have to have a serious chat first. Lately, Jacob has been complaining about stuff and to be honest, sounding a lot like Dudley from Harry Potter. Not quite that bad, but he was definitely of the “glass is not full” mentality. Hard to give an accurate example, so I’ll make one up…imagine him going on the bumper cars at the fair for an hour, repeatedly going, having a blast, but then we have to go. And he’d say with a heavy sigh, like he was so hard done by, “I wish I could have gone one more time.” Never “I’m glad I got to go” etc., never expressions of appreciation for what he did get to do, it was starting to be every time we did something, a lament that it wasn’t perfect. Time to nip that one a little more squarely in the bud. So we chatted a bit about it this morning, and stressed that it would be better if he thought more about what he DID enjoy than the one little thing he didn’t get to do perfectly. I confess too that part of my desire to have the conversation calmly is so that I don’t have it later in an aggrieved ticked off fashion that my little snowflake is basically crapping on some gift/experience that I expect him to enjoy and be grateful for, not greedy and selfish about some small aspect. He understood, and I made sure he knew he wasn’t in trouble, just something I’d like him to work on a bit more.

Then the FUN began. We went to Funhaven today, for the first time. It’s an indoor play centre for kids of multiple ages. Not like Cosmic Adventure that is more physical, this is a combination of indoor gym and games, games, games. Got him an all-access bracelet, loaded up the swipe card, and we were off. Played a racing game and he could actually PLAY it. Most of the stuff is normally beyond his abilities, but he’s been playing the PS1 of late with multiple racing games, and he “got it” right away. Even the foot pedals, which were hard for him to reach. A good start.

After that, we were on to the bumper cars. Yep, they have indoor electric bumper cars. More like bumper tubes, it’s a seat in a round tube with two levers — one on the left, one on the right, and they go backward and forward. Put them both forward and you go forward, both back and you go backward, one forward and one back and you spin in a circle. Takes a bit of work to get a good rhythm of forward all the way on the right and forward most of the way on the right to go left as you move forward, but doesn’t take long. Jacob had unlimited use for the day but we were there early so there was only one other kid at the time, so straight on to the game. I joined, and unlike the fair, Jacob got to drive all by himself (actually there’s no other choice). So both of us did it, mostly so that he would feel comfortable. But I was surprised — I liked it too! Sort of. The guy ran us for about 5 minutes, and then it shut off. Then he told us to stay put, go again, and about 4 other kids came on. Me, and six kids. The attendant was probably supposed to charge me, but he didn’t, I just went on. During the second round, the 8 or 9 year old kid from the first round must have decided he now “knew” me and so I swear, the little brat did nothing but bump me the whole time. Nobody else, just me. Little brat. 🙂 Jacob kept coming to my rescue to knock him off my butt, otherwise the kid just sat there with the gears meshing pushing against my tube. Weird little kid, or a jerk, not sure which. Finished that round, and with some kids now starting to wait, they had us all exit; while Jacob and I moved on, a couple of the other kids ran to the back of the line and still got on the very next ride. Not too busy yet.

Jacob wanted to play Connect Four, we tried a motorcycle game but Jacob wasn’t in to it (too much leaning, he couldn’t touch with his toes), a few other games. Then he wanted to go to the Jungle Gym area. Again, all access pass, off he went, although I don’t think anyone was manning the entrance to the zone anyway. By this time it was starting to get busy. A group of 30 arrived with the City of Ottawa day campers, a couple of other groups arrived, and then the place exploded. If you buy your pass before 10:30, it’s cheaper by about 15% so there was a huge uptick just before 10:30. Jacob didn’t care, he was lost in the Jungle Gym. I read on my phone for about 20 minutes and then went to check out how he was doing — not a care in the world, he was shooting balls out of a cannon. He accidentally almost hit me in the head with one, but he didn’t even see me, honestly. Just having a blast. Went back to sitting down. A guy next to me nudged me and said, “Is that one yours?” A little girl was up on top screaming for her Daddy to look, but no, not mine! Another kid lost his father and was a bit upset — turned out Dad was sitting on his butt about 50 feet away, one of the few adult sitting areas open, and the kid had walked right by him, out the zone exit and got hysterical. Fun for the workers, I’m sure, and hardly likely a unique experience. I do think that place should institute the same protocols as Cosmic Adventure though — sign ’em in, get a bracelet, sign ’em out, check the bracelet. The kids are a bit older here, but the place was an absolute zoo. Easy to lose a kid, I’m sure. I set up a “lost check-in” point right at the start with Jacob — we get separated, we will meet at the Connect Four game. You can’t miss it, it takes up a 20′ by 20′ section of wall! We played it twice too, so Jacob would definitely know where it was.

After 30-40 minutes in the gym, Jacob was tired. We did mini-bowling (five pin sized balls, small alley, 10 small pins), tried a basketball game, couple of other smaller games, all working well with the swipe card. Reloaded it, kept going. Jacob tried skee-ball, and I was pleasantly surprised. He plays it on the tablet all the time, but when we’ ve played at the fair, it’s too hard for him — he can’t roll the ball well enough to get it to go up the little jump, most of the time it comes back down. This one had lighter balls — no problem! I won’t say he was amazing at it, but he could do it! So he played two or three games of that. We tried a game where you knock down clowns, another where you drop balls in a hole, another where you put balls into fish tanks. Every game you play, you get “tickets” for how well you do and you can redeem them at the end for cheaper-than-dollar-store fare, but all in fun, and nicely, all on the swipe card. They don’t expire either so you could save up — we had about 350 points at the end of the day and they have some hockey jerseys that are about 3000 points, so if you were a regular goer, you might get something good eventually.

By this time, the lineups were getting near ridiculous. Bumper cars probably had about 50 kids waiting, call it maybe a 30 minute wait. Another thing, a laser maze (which Jacob seemed to think was like one-person laser tag based on things his friend has told him) was limited to one person at a time, and there were probably 50 kids in line for that too. Looked like a slow wait. Kids were lined up (well, sitting) for laser tag, and they appeared to be older. Kids were running around in groups of 5, looking a lot like birds returning to Capistrano, they go in waves!

But we did go back and do a bunch more car racing games. It’s really Jacob’s favorite, and I would be tempted to go over some morning first thing, just do the swipe card and the racing game with him before the lineups start. When we first got there, we could have raced a dozen times before we would have had to let someone else have a turn. There were a few other racing games I’d love to try with him too, but the wait was too long, he was tired, and we had a lunch date. We grabbed loot from the ticket redemption area, left some money on the swipe card for next time, and headed for lunch.

We had arranged to pop by work today — Jacob has wanted to see our office again for awhile now, he doesn’t really remember the last time he was there (probably 16 months ago, I think?), and we agreed to have lunch with Mom. Met up, had the Tim Horton’s experience with extra timbits, and Jacob regaled Mom with his stories of the morning. Oh, I almost forgot. Remember that little speech I gave the cub first thing? As were leaving Funhaven, and again with Mom, he said, “I am *so* happy I got to do all these things today.” In fact, he stopped me to tell me he had something important to tell me, and then told me that sentence. He’s such a cutey. Sure, he’s doing it because I told him it’s important, but I didn’t prompt him, he remembered on his own.

We did the tour, and then off we went in the car. We stopped at Chapters to pick up a stuffed toy he wanted — he saw it yesterday when he was out with the daycare woman and I had forgotten to give him some money to buy something if he wanted. He fell in love with the BB8 toy, but didn’t have any money to buy it. Mom wanted him to use his money (he has a small amount saved at home), but I felt this was one I was willing to get him for a March break treat, so I picked it up on the way home. After we stopped at DQ for ice cream, of course.

I got home and took a small break while he played on my tablet. Then we sorted his hockey cards from his latest series, figured out what he was missing, and then headed off with duplicates to the card store. They have a deal whereby they do 2:1 trades (you need card #22? you can give them two cards from your duplicates for it). We were down to needing about 15 cards, and we got them all. I even picked up a couple of other “specialty” cards too. I didn’t splurge though for the Connor McDavid rookie card for $300. We did however get the free McDavid card that completes another small set we have. Jacob was pretty happy, but that might have been partly the location — it’s right next to Lone Star, which is where we had dinner.

Finished dinner and headed home, two tired boys. Best line of the day from Jacob though? When asked by me, Mom, friends at work, if he had fun this morning, he responded repeatedly the same way:

“Of course. That’s why it’s called FUNhaven.” Duh, adults are so silly.

And, I really enjoyed today too, even as a blue.

To quote Bill Watterson, “The Days Are Just Packed.” It may not have been Disney, but he was a pretty happy little boy tonight. Tired, but happy. Mission accomplished.

My interest in psychology…

The PolyBlog
October 22 2015

Way back in the dark ages of high school, I took a course that was an introduction to psychology and sociology. I don’t remember what it was called, and I seem to think it was supposed to be one or the other, but ended up being done as a combination when enrolment was low. I don’t remember that much from the course. It was okay, semi-interesting, but it didn’t compel me to want to do a degree in it or anything. Later, when I had electives available in university, it didn’t make my list. Mind you, that was some 30 years ago, when I think they still lobotomized people to let their demons out, so probably not all that useful to me even if I had taken it. 🙂

But as I got older and went through difficult periods in my life, or even just large periods of change and self-reflection, I started to think more and more about how the brain works, how personalities develop, how people misuse their brain to trick themselves into ways of thinking that are not optimal, efficient or even helpful. Self-sabotaging behaviour that your brain either hides or actively encourages vs. ways it helps itself heal. Some moments in my life stand out.

First and foremost was my change in “who I was” going from high school to university to law school to working stiff, through my “tadpole years” of self-reflection and change, and who I became. What pieces were engrained, immutable, part of my bedrock personality and how did they become so? Nature vs. nurture, on a micro-level.

Second, there was the loss of my parents. Similarities in experience yet vast differences too. Was it my age? Change in my support network? Had I just grown more?

Third, the elements of family. I was the youngest of six kids. I discount most of the pop psych about birth order, mostly because I think psych is about individuals, not statistics about groups, but I find one area intriguing. Growing up, I didn’t know my one brother very well. He moved out of the house when I was 5 or 6, and I didn’t interact with him a lot in the next 20 years. It wasn’t like we didn’t see each other, but we were never “close”. In fact, of my five siblings, I would say he was the farthest away in relations. Yet, when we reconnected when I was 30 and he was 40, we experienced a natural bond we had never felt before. It happened over dinner one night — a dinner that almost didn’t happen. He was in town for work, and it wasn’t like “Oh, obviously we’ll do this or that together.” It was more like, “Hey, so, he’s in town. We should probably see each other. Maybe dinner or something?”. Very tentative, like, we *should* do something, shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t most siblings see each other if they were in town? Yeah, we agreed on dinner. And part of the night was like we were finishing each other’s sentences. Even though we have led very different lives — he had been married, had six kids, was very independent early in life, and had been in the military for 20 years; I was the pampered youngest child, not married, no kids, lived at home up until law school — there was an immediate real connection, way beyond friendship, beyond just family. Like somehow our souls knew each other from some other time and place and met up for a beer. Now, I consider him one of my closest siblings and friends. How do our different yet similar beginnings produce vastly different lives and outcomes yet our psyches retain some common elements that look like genetics? Again, nurture vs. nature. Equally, I’ve heard lots of people talk about how they’ve always been close to a sibling, while I’ve been close to different siblings at different parts of my life — close to my next-oldest sibling, a brother, when I was young, say up to age 14; close to my second-oldest sibling in my late teen years; close to my oldest sister and her son when I came back from university and up until my Dad died, and then again more recently; close to my other sister, third oldest, after my dad died and for a number of years afterwards; and closest to my “middle” brother (fourth-oldest) as mentioned above. A wax-and-wane type experience.

Fourth, I became an aspiring writer. I need to know how to access the psyche of a fictional character, how to get into their head and write what THEY would do, not what I would do if I was pretending to be them. To figure out how to flesh the character out fully — the role of hero, villain, mistress, husband — and how to make them real, not names or formulaic archetypes.

Lastly, I became a husband and a father within the same year. Huge changes in my life and in my roles as a person. What role does my behaviour play in my son’s development? He has had some physical challenges, and almost everything he has faced, regardless of what we have done to help him, it really is just him overcoming them on his own. Outgrowing some stuff, ignoring others, figuring out the rest. We help, but the biggest difference over time is just him being awesome. Is it just nature?

All of which has led to a renewed interest in psychology. I don’t want to do a full degree, with electives, exams, papers, etc. I just want the knowledge, not a piece of paper to certify it. And while I can find it just about anywhere (library, internet, Amazon, etc.), what I really wanted is what I always want when looking at a new area — curated content. The fruits of the labour of someone who has already trod the same path before me, who says, “Here is a good framework to understand an issue” and “Here’s some stuff you should read”. I may develop strong interest in certain areas of psychology like child development, but to start, I really wanted a good overview to show me the whole canvas, not the exciting brush strokes in one corner.

Instead of just buying a textbook and reading it, I found a free online psych course, with credentials behind it to reassure me it’s not some quack throwing stuff up on a blog (hey, wait a minute, says my id, but we’ll ignore him for now).

Enter the MOOC…stay tuned.

Grief is a fickle mistress

The PolyBlog
September 29 2015

Grief is one of the strangest emotional processes that I have ever experienced. I never knew my grandparents really, so their loss was quite minor to me. Equally, I wasn’t super close with aunts and uncles, so when they passed, it was relatively unaffecting. My first brush with death was when I was in about grade 3 and one of the kids in our school drowned in a winter creek. I wasn’t close to him, didn’t know him that well, but kind of in line with some of the emotions you see in the movie Stand By Me, there was some sort of effect.

Fast-forward to age 28, and I lost my father. The exact cause wasn’t determined, we didn’t do an autopsy, but he had been a heavy smoker and he had had several heart attacks over the years. In the end, he was having blood clots and the bypasses were only partial remedies. He deteriorated over the course of a year, always bouncing back but never quite as high. So, while it was to be “expected”, it was a shock when he was gone. The big strong man in my life suddenly felled by time and nature. I went through most of my grief alone. It wasn’t something I talked about with people, and for most of the first six months, I shunted it aside to help my mother. But you can only push that aside for so long before it no longer budges.

Looking back, I know I was depressed around age 29 to about age 31, although I didn’t recognize it as such at the time, and am frequently curious looking back to see if it was general depression or simply unaddressed grief, or a combination of the two. I wasn’t happy with my life, and it eventually catapulted me into a difficult five years of self-reflection — what I call my tadpole years — and allowed me to come out the other side with a re-integrated psyche, for the most part at least, and a much greater acceptance of who I am and what I wanted out of life.

Fast-forward again to age 44, and my mother’s passing. She too deteriorated over the course of a year, and very obviously downward in the last 8 weeks as ring-cell cancer ravaged her body. The blessing was that she was without pain throughout that time; the hell was that she was in palliative care and basically not eating anything so that her body would eventually fail. Almost 7 weeks in palliative care. Which gave us time to mentally prepare. Except there is no real preparation I suppose. We talk about it like it will be easier, but who knows? She was 83 years old, she died relatively at peace with her life, loved ones by her side. There are worse ways to go.

Yet the grief hit me far more profoundly and more visibly than it did with my father. I have a better support network now — including my wife, son, my wife’s family, some of my siblings. It’s a different world that I live in now than when I was 27. Yet the grief knocked me on my ass for almost 2 years. The first year was dealing with all the estate stuff. The second year was dealing with emotional stuff.

For me, grief was like a heavy blanket thrown over everything. I was sluggish in all things. My normal senses for detecting problems were dulled, my reasoning flawed. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite tell what. I am pretty good at figuring out what’s bothering me…I call it the “sore tooth approach”. Kind of like touching your tongue on various teeth, probing to see which one is sore, I do the same thing with emotional issues. I “probe” my psyche…am I worried about money? No. Is it an issue with work? No. Is it this, is it that? And usually I can gauge my response to see if I get a disproportionate level of feedback from my psyche to tell me, “Ah-hah, you’re upset with x or y”. But with grief, I probed my senses to see if it was grief, and got no feedback. Which I interrupted as being “Okay, so it’s not grief.” Yet I kept probing and couldn’t figure it out. I went to see a social worker / therapist through a referral from our work’s Employee Assistance Program, and working through some of the classic signs, we were able to narrow it down from depression or a specific cause to more general dampening from grief.

For me, as I said, it dampens everything. I feel listless. I lose interest in things I normally enjoy, I just don’t get the positive output / feelings from them. I distance myself from others. I feel even less extroverted than normal. The energy required for social settings is a greater tax than normal on my system. I need longer recovery time afterwards to want to be around people again.

So why am I writing about grief? Because it’s hitting me again this week, and from what I would have thought before was an unlikely cause.

A coworker at work lost her husband last week. He was 55, in good health, and the death was both sudden and unexpected. He has two daughters, was training for a marathon, etc. There is very little in his profile, or even my teammate’s, that I can identify with…I don’t know her well, although we work together regularly. We’re not social outside of work. I have a vague recollection of maybe meeting her husband in passing once, but that is all. There’s nothing in this relatively distant event that should trigger grief in me. Sympathy, sure. Compassion, sure. Empathy, maybe, although again, hard to draw a lot of links between loss of a parent and loss of a spouse, so more imagined than from experience.

Yet grief is kicking up its heels over the last week. I feel less patient with delays at work. Things that regularly wash over me with no effect are pissing me off with wild abandon. I feel the urge to tilt at windmills and say, “Seriously? This is your idea of a high-performing organization? THIS is what you waste your time on creating?”. I’m a corporate planner — I drink the kool-aid for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it goes with the job. Hell, I even have to make it and serve it regularly to others. But my tolerance level is down. I almost blew off dinner with Jacob and Andrea last night as I didn’t want to be around people. Or more specifically, around people I have to interact with. I’d prefer to be faceless in a small crowd, like at a sports bar for wings. I’ll likely go Thursday night.

But planning for the funeral this week has been odd. I often find the dance around visitations and funerals confusing. Generally, my view is that if you didn’t know the people socially, or didn’t work directly with them, your connection is too tenuous to attend the visitation or funeral. While the grieving might find it supportive, I find it too intrusive, almost like an imposition. Some people treat it like a social occasion, to catch up with old friends, but for me, funerals and visitations are about three things only:

  1. Saying goodbye to the deceased;
  2. Paying your respects to both the family and the deceased; and,
  3. Supporting the family through a difficult time.

Nowhere in there is there anything about socializing. If you are close to the family, the order probably reverses; if you are farther away, maybe that is the order. I also generally feel like visitations are for extended family and friends, whereas the funeral is more intimate, more personal, more for family and immediate friends.

So, like most coworkers, you do the dance. My parents would have never had to think about it…there were certain norms they were used to, it was obvious to them whether they went or not, and to which. I never cracked the code, but it was obvious to them. Not so obvious to me. So I debated whether or not to attend the visitation or the funeral, or both. “Neither” wasn’t an option, I obviously feel a strong enough connection to my teammate that I would go, but to what? Similarly at work. I did some in-person notifications, and sent out a nice note to the directorate with the details. We avoided the “group card” where everyone scribbles in corners with something that I thought was potentially weird and turned out quite well — I bought some simple blanks cards and envelopes, pretty much just folded construction paper really, and people are writing notes on them to put in a box for now. We’ll collect them at the end of the week and pass them along. I haven’t written mine yet, will do so likely tomorrow. But it’s going well and giving people an outlet to move forward.

It didn’t, however, solve my question about which event to go to. And then, my wife shared a little phrase that I am sure I heard my mother say a 1000 times and that never really registered with me. “Visitations are for people who can’t make it to the funeral.” Maybe it’s a Peterborough thing, but that resonated with me strongly. And I realized some of my hesitation.

At the visitation, I would feel incredibly awkward trying to comfort the daughters I have never met, or pay respects to the deceased who I also barely met. I would feel like I was intruding in what should be, if not private, at least reservedly intimate or personal. I would feel like a looky-loo at a traffic accident. Whereas the funeral, by contrast perhaps, is more manageable. Part of a large group, no need to intrude into their personal space, their personal grief, their experience of saying goodbye to their husband and father.

And with that decision, my body has released some of its tension. I have been close to tears several times in the last few days, with thoughts of my mom and dad, but never so close as right now writing this. If anyone asks, I’ll swear it’s allergies. 🙂 I found it difficult even talking to people last week — I told about 5 people and that was my limit. I was starting to lose it. Talking about the death of someone I barely knew.

Grief is a fickle mistress who comes into your life, uses you up, and discards you at her whim. But at least I have a way forward. I will attend the funeral. Odd that a simple cliche is what is comforting me today. I should ask my wife for her advice more often. 🙂 Just don’t tell her she sounded like my mom.

I am not a sociopath

The PolyBlog
January 23 2015

When I started writing my goals down for this year, the writing target of 500,000 words was a relatively early one. Not the quantity, but that I would set a word target. I have lots of things that I want to write about, even more than I think, “Hmm, I might have something worth saying about that”, and others that are more, “Well, it might be useful or interesting.”. But there is a small subset where I ask a different question, “Am I ready to write that post? Is my writing ability up to the challenge?” This is one of those posts.

A few people have said they would like to know more about my tadpole years, the five years that I was intentionally single where I played “deconstructing Paul’s brain” and then put it back together like Dr. Frankenstein’s creation and hoped for the best. Mostly they want to know why I think the types of questions or process I used was different from someone else’s “coming of age” experience. And they want examples.

Let me start by pointing out that much of the five years was boring. There were few “epiphanies”, few “eureka” moments where the universe suddenly opened its arms and embraced me in revealed wisdom. It was slow. It was methodical. It was boring. But progress, when it happened, was often driven by fear and my reaction to it more than by courage.

Take my temper, for instance. I have a temper. Not like other people say, “Oh, his temper got the best of him.” More like, “he lost his temper with his brother/father, said something awful/unforgivable, and they’ve never spoken since”. I’m not violent, but I am potentially ruthless. Utterly, unforgivingly, mercilessly ruthless. It takes a lot for me to lose my temper…I don’t mean be irritated or impatient or speak a harsh word, I mean actually lose my sh** to the point where I go on the offensive.

Cognitive socio-psychopathy. Psychopath, meaning low impulse control and violent outbursts. Sociopath, meaning someone who knows right and wrong but manipulates around it. And cognitive, meaning it is an on-off switch that the person controls themself.

Am I a psychopath? No, of course not. Am I a sociopath? No, not that one either.

But if you attack me, push my buttons, hem me in until I pop, I will verbally go for the jugular. Let me give you an example. Back in high school, I had a best friend named Paul, nicknamed Ruf (like Rufus). Think Leonard and Sheldon, the younger years. He was dating this girl from another high school, never even mentioned her to me for about six months they’re dating. Very man-like conversations apparently. Anyway, they start having problems, she calls me one night at home and says, “Is there anything going on with him at school? Home? What burr is up his butt?”. I didn’t know, but she was pretty upset, needed someone to talk to, and I was it. No biggie, happy to listen/help. Except he was the paranoid type, and apparently he was worried that if we ever met, she’d leave him for me or something. I don’t get it, but whatever. Anyway she decided she didn’t want to tell him we’d talked. I didn’t care, really, so whatever. Flash forward a few days, she’s admitted we talked, and he gets really upset with me. Rags on me at school, goes in for all this stupid drama about how I’ve betrayed him, blah blah blah. I got pissed, and left. He called me later, went on and on, basically making me feel “trapped”, dumping on me continuously, and I lost my temper.

Now, for most people that would mean a shouting match. Yelling. Maybe just arguing back. Not me. I lose my temper, I go cold inside, and I find the worst possible thing to say to hurt you. In his case, there he was, looking for me to say basically “Sorry” and that “I care that he’s hurt”, etc. He wanted me to validate his feelings, to use the vernacular. And this is my best friend, one of only a few friends I have in total. The guy I hang out with EVERY. SINGLE. DAY at school. And I know what he wants, and I also know that he’s afraid that I don’t care. That I’m not sorry. That he feels betrayed and that he has no control. My best friend dumped it all at my feet, laid his heart upon his sleeve and said, “So what do you have to say?”.

I knew what he wanted, and I refused to do it. I went for the jugular. He wanted me to say something? I said, “Whoopee f***.” Now that may not sound like much. But it crushed him totally, as I knew it would. I invalidated everything he had said, everything he thought he knew about me, every aspect of our friendship that he relied upon. I was HIS best friend too. And here I was, blowing him off when he was at his most vulnerable. For me, it was the equivalent of the memes on FB that says “Share if you agree, only 1% of my friends will do it and I know which ones care”. A passive aggressive, let’s play my game approach to social interactions, and I don’t play that game on a good day, and that wasn’t a good day to test me. Did I feel bad about it? Nope. Did I feel guilty? Nope. It was strategic, not retaliatory. It pushed him away from me as if I’d smacked him with a baseball bat.

We “patched” things up a week or so later, more out of social need than compassion, but our relationship never really recovered from that point on either – the comment was too insidious for him to ever totally trust me again, or even himself in some ways. Am I overstating? A few months later, he was over at the house, and another friend and he were talking, with the subject coming around to me and my “cold heartless ways”, so to speak. They both said, quite openly, they had never ever seen anyone close a door mentally and emotionally as fast as I had with them in the past. One minute? Best friends. Next minute? I wouldn’t scrape you off my shoe.

Fast forward to 1998, and I had seen enough appearances of my evil side over the years that I wasn’t totally comfortable with it being part of me. It is a source of strength, it even has a name to me. Shiva, the Destroyer. It’s the core rock at the centre of my being, what’s left when I stripped everything else away. Except there was little I could do with that piece. Too hard to chip away at alone, and I had no professional therapist to hand me a pickaxe. And it protects me. It’s there if I ever need it. But like the “carry concealed” laws for guns, it is highly dangerous. I never ever want to use it against those I love. So I spent a LOT of time figuring out the triggers.

Since a lot of these defense mechanisms are learned, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what had been happening at the times I resorted to the mechanism.

First, I had resorted to it if I felt relatively attacked. It’s a defense mechanism, it’s triggered when I’m under attack. I don’t mean physically, I mean someone is coming at me generally head on.

Second, I had definitely resorted to it if I had no other option i.e. if I felt trapped, claustrophobic. So, for example, being around my family, with alcohol involved, and no way to just leave. Lack of a car, remote location, etc. Trap me? I bite.

Third, emotional drama. This isn’t quite the same as being attacked. If it is a highly emotional scene, maybe confrontational, maybe not, the energy charge in the situation is enough to heighten my sensitivity. If the other person is a drama queen? Really good chance of ticking me off to the point where I want to verbally hit back. Case in point. Argument with a girlfriend, I’m trying to defuse the situation, she’s just ramping up and up and up, she says something vicious and childish, and leaves. But as she goes, she slams the door. I lost my temper. I stormed out after her ready to tell her in no certain terms the wherefore and howto of certain physically impossible acts. But she saw my face, ready to tell her off and totally temper-fueled, and she thought I was going to kill her. I opened my mouth, and the look on her face made me stop and look behind me to see what was scaring her. I thought the hounds of hell were unleashed. Nothing there. The look on my face as I was about to tell her off was enough to scare the daylights out of her. Would I hurt her physically? Nope. But she di dn’t know that, and had a history that heightened her own fears. In the two years that followed, I made sure to always end the conversation before any drama could escalate to the point where my face alone would scare her, let alone what damage my words might do.

My temper, when released, doesn’t want to make a snide comment. It isn’t after a witty bon mot. It wants to devastate you from top to bottom. God forbid I know a fear you have. That’s what I’ll go for, every time. The type of comment that will stay with you in your psyche forever. Let me give you a simple, easy to understand example. I’ll attack myself. First though, some additional context.

During that same tadpole time, one thing that was haunting me was the question of whether or not I wanted kids. Lots of people think, “How stupid a question is that? Yes or no? Not that hard.” If so, I think you’re an idiot. Having kids isn’t like picking up a new handbag. You not only should know if you want them in general, but also if you want them if you had to do it alone, if you’ll be good at it, can you do it WELL, not just “muddle through” and count it as a win if they don’t end up in jail?

I had a close friend who decided that if she was single and of a certain age, she’d probably adopt on her own. That’s not that unusual in theory, but it isn’t a common situation in practice, truth be told. The numbers are quite low. It falls even farther down the probability scale when it is a potential single father rather than a potential single mother thinking about it. Very few males run off and adopt on their own. Societal bias, personal choice, stereotypes, whatever, it’s pretty rare. Less rare now, but pretty uncommon for 1998. So since I’m male, and I was single at the time, it was simple to say, “I don’t know”, since I didn’t have the option to either do it myself and I wasn’t with someone right then. But that wasn’t determinative.

I could have adopted. By myself. Not easily, but not impossibly either. So I poked my psyche to say, “Do you WANT kids bad enough that you would do it on your own?”. And I don’t mean brushing your teeth, daydreaming, thinking, “What if???”. I mean, deep in the night, lying awake, staring at the ceiling, deconstructing what it would mean, both for me and for the child. Could I handle it on my own? Would I be any good at it? Was I mentally, emotionally, physically capable of raising a child successfully, relatively on my own?

So, I asked myself, “Are you capable of being a good parent?”. Again, I don’t mean gently thinking about it. I mean grilling myself like a fish. What a friend called self-mutilation as I broke down different aspects of my self into things that would work or not as a parent. And here’s the conclusion.

I wouldn’t likely make a good single parent. Let’s look at the criteria related to triggering my temper. Attacked? Kids do like to push buttons. Trapped? Single parent, and lots of people have felt like their life is on a one-way street to nowhere for 18 years. Usually not those who made a choice or who have my level of income, both of which mitigate some of the trapped feeling, but not entirely. Emotional drama? Kids never do that, do they?

So what is my coping mechanism? Escape usually. I step back. I avoid situations where I am trapped, attacked or facing unbridled drama. Those three things do not happen with my wife. Not overtly usually, and never together. She’s the opposite of a drama queen. With Jacob, and her too, sometimes I need to withdraw. Not necessarily physically, I just need to take a small mental siesta to disengage. To focus on the process, not the outcome. Some of that is just living in the moment for some people, but it’s not really that for me — it’s almost, and this sounds terrible, like I decide for 2 or 3 minutes to just not care. I turn off my empathy, my caring, my feeling side. Cognitive control. I mastered the technique during my tadpole years, as I layered my new self back over the core rock that was Shiva.

But I came to the conclusion that while I wanted kids, I was not likely a good candidate to do it “alone”. Combine the fact that I’m an introverted analytical type, reserved in emotion, and that I have a temper, and even on my best days, I’m not a warm fuzzy Father of the Year type. Check out my goals for the year — I have actual goals about “doing more”, being “more” than I am currently. When Andrea and I decided to have kids, I had to confess up front that I was unlikely to ever be a 50/50 co-parent when it came to the basic routine, diaper changes, feedings, snuggling, etc. She would bear more of the load than I would if we had kids. I’m better than my Dad was, perhaps, I’m emotionally aware, I’m present, I’m trying, but I am NOT a natural at this stuff. I’ll likely do better when he’s older and wants to talk about stuff, or when he’s learning bigger things, not unlike “mentoring” experiences now (lots of people have suggested I should become a professor or something and teach because I’m good at explaining things in different ways, albeit it with too many words). But until then, I have to commit to the quest.

So, if I pissed myself off, that would be the area I would go to in attacking me. I would start with basic premise of loving my son, and drive the knife in that I’m not doing everything I can for him, so how can I say I truly love him? Do I even know what love is? It’s not like I had a father who was expressing it regularly. Blah blah blah. But if that’s the area, the attack vector has to be far more oblique. Like asking myself how I’m doing on my goals and bringing the conversation around to goals with Jacob and Andrea. Talking about them doubtfully, like it makes no sense to have “green goals”, and implying that it’s laughable how badly informed I am in that area. Not direct, subtle. Go for my worries, my doubts, and twist the knife so that I keep twisting it long after the conversation is over. THAT’S what my temper would do if I was ticked at myself.

And that’s the kind of issue I worked on during my tadpole years. Some would call it “managing my temper”, others would say “anger management”. But that isn’t what I did. I stripped everything away, and then locked my temper in a steel cage with myself having the only key. Others could get to it by blasting, but long before they could reach it, I will have already exited stage left. Remove the impetus, remove the threat. I can’t get rid of it, not even sure I would if I could. It’s part of who I am, a source of strength. But I don’t want to ever use it. It’s not who I became. It wasn’t an active part of PolyWogg 3.0.