Depression was known to plague Koenig. He got off his anti-depressants sometime last year, and clearly the rest is a story still developing.

I’ve been depressed. Very, very, very badly depressed. And I hate that so many of you probably don’t understand fully what all that means.

Honestly? I am almost guaranteed to face periods of depression for the rest of my life, when situational life gives me reason to do so, and at a greater depth than the average person will face it.

Not just “huh, I feel sad today” kind of depression, but the kind that affects my relationships and the goings-on of my day-to-day and even my job, immensely.

Right now? No, not really. I have ups and downs like anyone.

I’m lucky. I’ve discovered that much of my extreme depression steams from woeful diet and lacking exercise. I’m able to correct my chemistry through pretty natural means.

But when you can’t? Thanks to chemically fucking myself up on birth control pills back in ‘06, I know what that’s like. And, oh, my god. Crippling. C-r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g.

It’s not like the “normal” depressions I’ve experienced. Normally I know, hey, if I’m pissed at the world, I can play any of a few songs and maybe remedy that, or I can ditch some plans and find some “me” time, or make a bike ride happen. Whatever. I know there’s a good chance one of those things will help me past the hump.

Chemical depression, when your body’s not on track?

Nothing helps. Nothing.

If you don’t know what it’s like to live under the darkness of an intense chemical depression, then pray you never learn.

William Styron probably wrote the single best reference about what depression feels like — and perhaps its links to artists & genius — and something I think anyone with a passing interest should definitely read. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness speaks to Styron’s experience descending into a suicidal depression as a result of the sleeping pill he was taking causing more intense depression and leading to his desire to end his life.

“In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying — or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity — but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience — one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devistation would by lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.”

-William Styron, Darkness Visible

The trouble with a chemical depression is the mental fog that comes with. The realization that something just isn’t right? Not necessarily even going to occur. It’s just utter hopelessness, like life has no point and every single fucking thing you do requires an effort similar to that dialed up by climbers at the Everest Base Camp the morning of making their daunting ascents.

Unfortunately for me, my chemical depression happened at a time when my relationship was crumbling, I was potentially about to lose my apartment, and pretty much zero areas of my life were going where I wanted them to go.

I had no reason to cheer up; with chemistry fucked, I had no hope of it, either.

For the second time in my life, after this breakdown, I went on anti-depressants.

That was August, 2006. By March, 2008, despite my DEEP depression lasting me 14 months straight, I had to get off the pills pronto — with diet and exercise I had regulated my chemistry and now the pills that had leveled my equilibrium were hurtling me BACK into depression.

I’m still a moody person. I’m very intelligent, acutely observant, perceptive, sensitive, and, as a writer, deeply introspective. These things make me prone to depression and moodiness. Fortunately, I’m nearly always funny, and I can think or act my way out of many of my moods. That’s “Normal” Steff.

Styron, in Darkness Visible, asserts that writers are probably the most prone group for when it comes to suicide and depression. Hemingway, Virginia Wolf, David Foster Wallace, Sylvia Plath, Spalding Gray, and the list goes on.

These aren’t stupid people.

They aren’t people who don’t understand society and the way we work within it.

They are brilliant writers most of us lowly bloggers would sell souls to acquire the skills of.

And yet. They left all too soon.

Suicide isn’t for the weak. Depression isn’t for losers.

I can probably mentally process just about any adversity that could befall me. I could tear it apart within the hour and tell you all the things I’ll learn from the troubles and whatever hurts it’ll cause, too. I’m a smart cookie. I accept adversity and trouble as a necessary ingredient to my life.

Yet I fell into a depression I couldn’t shake, then, as I was just beginning to emerge from it, I got a job working for the most negative and depressed person I’ve ever known.

And while my depression DID come back, this time it was situational. I was regulating my chemistry, you see, with pills.

So when the “natural” depression came on, I knew it wasn’t my chemistry. I began exercising and eating better. Next thing you know, I was down 30 pounds. I was still myself — funny, then intermittently Happy or Not — until one day my moods started going ENTIRELY wonky again. Speaking with my doctor, we chose to end the medication.

Poof. Normal Steff underwent life without Ze Meds.

Nowadays — like, say, now — I still volley with moods. Right now is a bad time — I need the Olympics to end because my ADHD self has never been so overwhelmed with the world around me. I can’t find the time to exercise or eat as well as I ought to be, and I know my chemistry and resiliency are on the downswing because of the neglect they’re receiving.

It’s not just the Olympics, it’s February, when 2 of the worst 3 Dead Mom Anniversaries fall. I expect yearly to hit a depression around this time. I don’t particularly sweat it. The Olympicky stuff is dealable and soon to end. The Dead Mom stuff passes too. It is what it is.

Long before my mother died, she attempted suicide with the same sleeping pills as William Styron. I walked in on the attempt.

I can’t explain to you what that’s like at 17, or how it affected me then. But I sure as shit learned about psychology and moods.

Even today, I’m stunned when I remember the days I spent under the black-as-fuck choke-hold of a full-on chemical depression. It culminated with a d-a-r-k full-on breakdown working alone in an office one day. I placed an emergency call to a shrink I’d seen once, and she called me back within the hour, me sitting on the middle of a big planked-wooden floor, tears rolling down my completely-unstrung face as I finalized the breakdown then and there, on that hour-long phonecall where she talked me back from the ledge and into hope.

I was a fucking nutcase that day. Inexplicably. If ever there was a day when I was close to suicide, it was that gorgeous sunny August afternoon.

Tonight, sitting here in my moody exhaustion, I can’t even fathom ever again being the woman I was that day. I can’t. So scared and hopeless and devastated and overcome with every physical manifestation of unease you could imagine — sweating, breathless, pain, tension, shaking.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND how someone as SMART as I am could become that lost! I don’t understand it at all.

Oh, sure, I can rattle off some science that sort of “explains” it. You can try, too. But I live in my head. I know how on top of it all I can be. I know how great I am at balancing perspective when it’s needed.

How could I have become that? So needy and lost, scared and shaken, hopeless and hurt?

Your science doesn’t mean fuck all to me. I know what I’ve overcome. There’s no reason aside from stupid hormone pills for birth control that I ever had to become that insanely depressed.

And yet I don’t doubt that it could, and might, happen to me again one day.

Still, I believe in medication.

I’m pretty sure it saved my life. So too with counselling on that fateful day.

In spite of all I am and what I bring to the world, I hate the stigma of admitting that I became that frayed and frazzled. But I think there’s nothing more important I can do tonight than announce it for you all to hear, if it means a discussion finally ensues.

No one should have to feel shame or alone because society doesn’t understand depression, they should never fail to seek help because they’re ashamed to do so.

If you’ve ever known a woman to go insane or horribly depressed from her period, then you know it’s possible that the body can become completely askew due to the simple problem of chemisty, and it doesn’t take either much or long for it to happen.

Read William Styron’s book. Listen to me — depression afflicts EVERYONE regardless of class, money, intelligence, or status.

The only way we’ll win the war against depression is by talking about the horrors it can weigh on us, because I KNOW I am NOT alone.

I am not my biochemistry. Neither are you.

So don’t be a victim.

Depression doesn’t end with the flick of a switch. Medication alone cannot, will not solve it. The successfully-fought battle involves diet, exercise, working on the self, dealing with emotions, setting goals, and valuing your desires, and not apologizing for feeling there’s urgency to improving your life.

Depression is easily the hardest war any person will ever have to wage, other than serious addictions — which one might argue also are commonly caused by depression — but at least addictions have a “real” cause. When it’s “all in your head,” there’s too little sympathy from others.

Here’s hoping we can make it so a few less parents have to find their suicided children’s bodies in parks.

We’re humans. Not machines. Let’s stop feeling like failures just because we feel.

RIP, Andrew Koenig, 2010.

Yesterday, I stood at the top of an 8-story-tall tower, strapped into a harness, hooked onto a steel cable, and ziplined 550 feet across Vancouver’s Robson Square.

Holy shit.

I’ve had to get the news my mother was going to die, I’ve had to amass the guts to get back on a scooter after I nearly died when I flew head-first off of one — after which long-time riding friends claimed they’d never seen a casual rider as hurt as I’d been get back on a bike — and I have NEVER been as scared as I was when I stepped off that platform.

My friends with me didn’t see it, but I was crying when I took that step.

What they did see, though, were my knees shaking violently, my face suddenly 15 years older looking as all the blood drained from it and my jaw dropped in terror.

I almost vomited, I never even breathed as I zipped at 50k an hour and crossed the square, but about 2/3s of the way in, I finally snapped and realized, “I’ve done it!”

Unfortunately, part of my fear was about getting back onto the other platform, even thought I knew how it was done. Part of that has to do with my weight issues. I’m heavier than I look, by far, and I know it. Sometimes defeating a fear means defeating ALL of it from start to finish, and it’s not until after that you realize It’s Over, I Did It.

You can’t just ignore those hang-ups, you kinda have to face ‘em down and beat the shit out of them.

I got back on that scooter years ago because I knew I’d never respect myself again if I didn’t. The scooter didn’t almost kill me. My driver error did. I simply had to be better, be more in the moment.

This zipline thing, though, was purely symbolic and something I really didn’t have to do, I had no control over where it went, how I did, my success, survival or my experience. I had to just have faith.

Why bother, though? I didn’t have to do the zipline at all.

Except that I did. I did have to do it. I did it. I did.

My form? Complete shit. I was not graceful, not cool. I held on for dear life. I was CLEARLY the person doing it to tackle fear. I was fully conscious of everyone staring up and empathizing as they snapped photos, probably a thousand onlookers on the streets below.

I was totally freaked out until I reached close to the end. I was in terror again as I was being hauled to the platform, wishing I had longer legs.

But I fucking did it.

Also: I brought along spare panties, in case the obvious happened. Never needed them. Fantastic.

Whew. I still find it hard to fathom that I did that. I don’t even like climbing on the fourth rung of a ladder, man, let alone an 8-storey-high tower I’m about to strap onto with a harness and a kinda dubious looking carabiner in order to hurtle myself at high speeds through open air over concrete, steel, and glass.

For others, it’s no big deal. For me, I was close to having a complete breakdown up there.

Right before me, though? A nine-year-old girl, seen in the photo I took before my horrifying descent. All I kept thinking was, “A nine-year-old just did this. Everyone has lived so far. I’ll never respect myself again if a nine-year-old made me look like a pussy.”

I still can’t really process the quantity of fear I felt.

When they say fear is “paralyzing,” well, I guess now I really get what they mean by that.

But it’s like I wrote on Twitter last night:

Tomorrow I get to wake up knowing I’m the kinda chick who rides a zipline. That’s better than waking up the kinda girl who’s scared of ‘em.

Now I’ve asked my best friend if we can change our plans for celebrating my birthday at a swank restaurant — which was last September; he loves me but has time commitment challenges — and instead go ziplining on a mountain.

The mountain zipline terrifies me too. It’s really high. And it’s not a 60-second experience that takes 5 hours of build-up. No, it’s an eco tour that takes two hours to complete.

Yikes.

But I meant it when I promised myself that 2010 would be about facing fears and winning.

Yesterday was just the first really scary, profound, and transformative step in Steff’s Fear-Facing Throwdown of 2010.

One by one, I’ll tear down all the insecurities that have ever made me think I was This Girl and not That Girl.

Because I was clearly way fucking wrong on that count.

I didn’t get it done pretty yesterday, but I got it done. I did it for no one but myself, and my self knows what I’ve accomplished. It’s a small yet monumental change in who I am.

Sometimes, we don’t know the impact of the changes we make until time starts to pass. It hasn’t even been 24 hours yet and the emotions that bubble beneath my surface are murky yet. I’m unclear where this leads.

But like I say:

Today, I awoke a different kind of girl than the one I woke up as yesterday.

My decades of trying to play it safe so I don’t get hurt, they’re suddenly coming to an end.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson in my life can be found somewhere in all of this… that playing it safe doesn’t mean you don’t get hurt; it just means you get hurt without payoff or getting a great story out of it.

“Hurt” is inevitable for us all. Sometimes playing it safe maybe hurts more than having risk go sideways ever could, because playing it safe always, always comes with that feeling of emptiness you get from knowing you’re selling yourself short. I have two decades that tells me this is true.

Knowing my potential for true awesomeness, that particular brand of selling myself short has become the bitterest pill I’ve had to swallow. Oh, how unlike myself I’ve felt for so long. I’m better than the body that imprisoned me for so many years.

With a bunch of tough choices, fears faced, pride swallowed, and risks calculated, I may never have to swallow that bitterly disappointing pill again.

2010. Vancouver. Citius, altius, fortius. Faster, higher, stronger. For all the Steffs, too.

I win.

Unfortunately, the discussion? It’s a joke. It’s always along the lines David Duchovny or Bill Clinton wisecracks. People fail to see that the nature of sex addiction is to destroy every relationship the addict has. It steals the addict from life, costs them friends and families, it shatters the respect others may have had for them, and instills a self-loathing of the lowest kind.

I remember captioning a television show (my day job) about cybersex addiction, for instance, where they stated simple cybersex/porn addictions could be fatal — cases had occurred where an addict remained seated, wrapped up in the porn/cybersex before them, for so many hours, that blood clots and cardiac events killed them. I’d never even considered that possibility.

Or there’s the other side of the dangers — when cyber-addiction isn’t enough and the pursuit of the real deal takes the addict into physically dangerous situations, like illicit sex avenues — and the further the addiction goes, the more they need, so the more they have to spend, so the cheaper and seedier the purchased sex can be, thus the legal and health ramifications escalate. Or the majority get the more obvious, more likely consequence of living a highly-sexualized life: disease.

Nearly 70% of sex addicts get exposed to serious diseases like AIDS/HIV. A whopping 72% report suicidal tendencies. Almost 60% of addicts experience legal issues or face criminal charges, and nearly 30% report professional consequences for their actions. (Stats are from Love to Know.)

Me, I’ve never really liked porn. I’ve never watched any in my home. I’ve never surfed porn sites. I have erotica blogs I follow, photographic ones with really tasty, hot images, but I don’t go for actual “porn” porn.

Hot sex, however, I can dig. I’ve been a voyeur in the past, I like the realistic stuff on film, but porn proper as in seen-everywhere-today kind of more hardcore porn? Nah.

It’s not like I deny myself porn. Somewhere deep inside, though, there are sides of myself that I’d rather not put to the test. I’m happy with the visual fodder I currently indulge in, it does the trick for me, and I like looking at the human body like it’s art, not some side of beef –  a la “stick a fork in ‘er, she’s done.”

Paradoxically, because of this blog, I’m considered to run with the “sex-blogger” crowd, despite my contention, and the echoes I’ve heard from readers, that I have an awful lot more to offer than just smut on this bloggie de moi. I like to call myself a “sometimes-sex blogger”, personally.

Still, I don’t object to being considered a part of the sex blogger community. It’s certainly a part of who I am. I can confess, I do enjoy following a hundred or so really randy, pervy, dirty-minded sex-blogging type folk on Twitter.

They intrigue me to an extent. The range of they inhabit is a pretty fascinating thing — there are a lot who fall in my category, who simply have an appreciation of carnal matters, who could certainly be described as “enthusiasts”. [waves hand] And I like the quips or random comments about lusting after someone or a new toy they can’t wait to receive. It’s all good.

And then there are the people who speak about sex in such a raw, unyielding manner — always talking about the act in such a disconnected way — never referencing emotion or joy or longing. So devoid of heart or matter, passion or sensuality. And they’re pathologically sexually active too — frequent random encounters, daily experiences to report, et al.

It’s like hearing cyborgs talk about colonial duties or something. It’s a little harrowing, like they’re simply mechanically going through the routine of fucking like it’s going out of style, as if to be deprived of a fuck or four today would choke their oxygen supply off. It’s never about a kiss that kept on going through the final act of a movie, or post-sex banter, or fun and games, any of that.

It does nothing to turn me on. And I see it so often of these select people. I keep following them, wondering whether the drama will ever change, hoping they can remember how hot and fun a lower-key exchange — like mussin’ up your clothes with the hottest all-night horizontal makeout session on your sofa since you were 16.

Watching them speak of things so callously… the lack of emotion, the total machine-like execution of their sexual bravado, it hurts my soul a little.

I worry about the internet and its impact on us as a society as far as sex and relationships are concerned. I worry that this endless crass chase of tits, ass, hardbodies, hardcore porn, and the ever-present accessibility of cybersex, that the soul of what makes romance and love and passion so great is going to just… POOF. Vanish.

I worry that kids in the next generation are pushing to experience more sexually at a younger age, and not leaving anything for the journey down the road.

Thanks to my moralistic upbringing, yeah, I was indoctrinated against porn and random sex. I probably hold true to those principals more than I’d like to admit, but for very different reasons than those I was raised under, as I’ve already listed. I don’t do random sex, as I’ve written before, because I can’t do it — emotionally, I just can’t. I’m not that person. I don’t care if others are, but I’m not. And it’s also because I’d just rather not take more chances with disease than necessary. You wanna? Goferit.

Flat-out hardcore porn, though, I wish there were less of it. I wish we were a less vapidly sexual society. I wish we could remember passion, too; the art of longing and the deliciousness of lust. Tawdry dirty on-the-floor sex sure as hell has its place, man. I ain’t saying it doesn’t, but that there SHOULD be an emotional quality behind that dirty-on-the-floor sex.

I believe that the quality of porn out there,  it’s mostly shit. It’s degrading. It’s desensitizing us. It’s not “porn” itself — I think erotica, even full-on filmed sex, is a very different beast than hardcore porn. But I don’t even want to ban it. I just wish the demand didn’t exist, and that it wasn’t as prevalent. I wish people wanted better.

I don’t have a solution. I can’t even begin to offer one.

It’s the problem of our time.

We’re losing our soul and we’re losing our passion. North America’s attitudes about sex — usually either completely anti-sex or totally hardcore about fucking to orgasm — just frustrates the hell out of me. There’s got to be more than this.

What’s left for good old-fashioned dirty-minded keener enthusiast-romantics like me? Geez.

________________________

Are you curious if you’re a sex addict? Want to see the questions that decide such criteria? Some great tests are here. It’s worth noting that estimates say 3-6% of the population are sex addicts. That’s probably on the low side, as many of these stats often tend to be.

I’ve been getting increasingly stressed out about several areas of my life, just because it’s coming down to the crunch and probably also because I’m incredibly skilled at making things more difficult than they need to be.

As a result, I’ve had sort of the perfect emotional storm that every recovering fatty wants to avoid. I know, all too well, that I’m an Emotional Eater. I nearly got to 300 pounds because I can be a very emotional girl, apparently.

I lost 70 pounds by proving I could overcome that. And then life just kept on coming and slowly I stopped overcoming and just coping.

But the last thing I needed last weekend was the Dad-has-cancer thing. Then I probably didn’t need to distract myself by being The Ultimate Hostess for a chicken pot pie extravaganza a few days ago. I also didn’t need my guests to be the incredibly awesomely generous people they are, and feed me BadnessThatTastesSuchGoodness. Because god knows I’m far fatter this weekend after everything that’s happened this week.

Now I’m taking stock. I’ve been avoiding my emotions, avoiding writing, avoiding people, avoiding honesty.

Shit happens.

I bounce back better when I bottom out. I’m not sure what it is, maybe the riccochet of shitty from hitting bottom HARD gives me the jump I need to effect effective change in short order. When I’m just gradually sucking, I feel like I have time to sort it out. But when I bottom out with style like I feel I have this week, I take a couple days of really digging deep, then I spring into action.

My problem right now is fairly simple. It’s accountability. I lost 70 pounds by KNOWING that EVERY little thing counts — whether it’s another flight of stairs you chose to climb or another pat of butter you chose to eat.

My body — my gut, my ass, my blood pressure — doesn’t give a shit if I have a good excuse to find solace in a cookie. And find solace, I will. I am an emotional eater. I will always be an emotional eater. Any one who claims they can change that about me is lying. But if I eat that cookie, regardless what my heart or soul feels, my body’s going to own that cookie in all the ways I wish it wouldn’t.

I can justify that cookie six ways to Sunday on a shitty day, but it’s science and my body WILL NOT justify that cookie. That cookie WILL expand my ass. Especially when I have 6 of them.

There are times when I’m strong enough to realize that. But maybe sometimes life feels like such a fight that the little things like, say, an easily attainable cookie, a moment of chocolate happiness in the midst of it all, maybe they really do make the difference between the eternal slog sucking or not.

Maybe? Good luck with that. Cookie’s got nothing on real happiness.

I’ve been weak, in every way. I’ve been emotionally at the point where you really just want Mom to tuck you in and say it’ll be okay in the morning. Of course, Mom’s dead, so good luck with THAT, needy girl.

OH, DON’T WORRY. It’s the emotional equivalent of wanting your blankie and wishing life’s problems could be like they were when you were six and Joanna wouldn’t give you back your Smurf figurine, okay? This “grownup” thing wears thin, I’s still a toughie.

But when the cancer thing was thrown into the mix, then the stress of having to pull off a dinner party on a work night, and THEN I got handed tasty wonderful things, well, yes, it’s the Emotional Eating Perfect Storm.

As a result, I’ve eaten badly. I’ve eaten incredibly badly. Add to that the rather-failed-experiment of getting up at 5 to work at 7, for the last month, and how that’s cut into my ability to write, and my tendency to shirk my exercising of late… and, yeah, I’m not in my happy place tonight.

It’s good though. I’m glad I shook up the mix and honestly tried a different schedule to see if that would help things, but the reality is, no. It didn’t. There’s nothing WRONG with me going into work late if it means I work out and write every morning. I can’t AFFORD a life, so why work earlier so I have one? None of that computes.

Tomorrow, I’ll go back to The Way Things Worked. I’ll be up at 6. I’ll work out. I’ll eat. I’ll write. I’ll work later. All good.

I tried to solve my problems the wrong way a month ago — I shook up the mix so much that it shook me up too. Then life shook me up more. To cope, I ate.

And I’m glad. I’m glad it’s all come apart at the seams. I’m glad I’m paying the price. I’m glad there were consequences for going off the wagon. When there aren’t, I get lax and push boundaries further.

None of this scares me. I’m pissed off at myself and in touch with my insecurities all over again, sure, but I’m also angry because I KNOW I can kick this shit. This is exactly like last Christmas when I blew my success all to hell after the arrival of THE BEST FOOD BASKET EVER. (Hull-less caramel popcorn still makes me titter and moan.)

Then I lost 12 pounds in 3 weeks by channeling that anger.

The hardest part of this will be getting off the drinking. I’ve become an emotional drinker, too, and it daunts me. Too much. Far too much.

For me, though, will power is ultimately a switch that gets flicked on and then is very hard to flip off. And vice versa. But I do flip it.

So where am I tonight? Somewhere between pissed as hell at myself, disappointed that old patterns re-emerge in tough times, and exuberantly excited at the knowledge that I’m about to prove everything I know I can prove to myself.

You know what it is? It’s choosing differently. That’s all. All of this — every bit of what troubles me now — all of it, it’s my choice.

I can choose differently.

And I am.

I’m having a dislike-myself day. Or is it discontent with myself? ‘Cos I like myself way much and feel it’s worth taking action to end some of the feelings I’ve got today.

The content of my internal dialogue today is staying internal, I’m afraid. No nitty-gritty deets for you people.

But this sort of happens every time I approach a new era of change in my life. When I start it, it’s shaky and it’s more failure than it is success. I fall down. A lot. I fuck up. Constantly. And every time I fuck it up, I follow that up with beating myself up.

I’m gentle in the beating. I get moody and angry, though. Mostly because I know I’m better than this. I’m no stranger to accomplishing what I want. I’m also no stranger to not wanting things bad enough and walking away in frustration.

I know where my shortcomings lie, and it’s times like these that they mushroom.

The reason the loathing becomes so great, too, is that I know just how much restraint and dedication I’ve shown to things in the past, so I’m frustrated by HOW HARD it is to get back into a routine where I have more success on a weekly basis than I do failure. I miss that.

The reality is, I’m not even failing. I’m just sucking a bit.

There’s a big difference between sucking and failing, you know. One passes you on a “D” and the other keeps you in the grade again with a big, fat fuckin’ “F”. Also related: The likelihood of Moms and Pops kicking your ass. Justifiably.

So, I’m just sucking. I’m probably getting about a “C” right now, if I had to grade myself. And, you know, grading yourself? Awesome. Next time you feel like the world’s biggest asshole because something isn’t going your way, be objective and think “What if I were a teacher and this was someone else’s attempt I had to grade? What then?”

Because a little levity and objectivity goes a long ways. Me, I get WAY too tough on myself, but sooner or later I try to adopt an outsider’s point-of-view, take a breath, and try again.

All of my struggles right now happen to be with wanting to cut back on blowing money on things like wine and eating out — both of which I’ve failed at during my birthday week… in a BIG way — and I want to get my exercising, housecleaning, and writing onto a schedule.

Oh, no, I don’t ask too much at all, right? Holy shit. I know. It’s like:

Steff’s To-Do List: Become perfect. THIS WEEK. Do it, fucker.

So, yes, every now and then I have to give myself a headshake and remember these things don’t happen overnight.

The other day, a friend was telling me about this teakettle she bought, and how it’s been two weeks and she still keeps forgetting to flip the safety switch that prevents it from just turning on all willy-nilly. I say to her, “Two things, one, welcome to almost-30, and, two, it takes 21 days to form a new habit.”

I’m objective giving HER advice, right? But when it comes to me, it’s all “BE PERFECT. NOW.” Sieg heil. I’m only trying to change EVERYTHING.

I take comfort in that I’m probably not the only person out there who goes all “Jawohl, Mein Kommandant!” on themselves. There’s a reason the self-help section outsells sex at the bookstore by 3:1.

So, tonight I’m trying again to tackle a gameplan that will allow me to have health, money, and time ALL in check for the whole week, if I just get it right — I’m spending tonight and tomorrow cooking a bunch of stuff (my brother’s coming to help tomorrow) that will be a healthy, cheap menu plan for a whole week of lunches and dinners. Then I can work, work out, and write every day without having to worry about the food/spending thing getting out of whack.

It’s funny how some life changes come with a lynchpin, if you look hard enough for the commonalities in what you’re trying to accomplish.

And that’s why the self-loathing I was beginning to feel (but now that I realize I’m getting a solid “C” and the folks won’t kick my ass, just frown a little, I’m feeling MUCH better) always comes up — because I know exactly what I need to do to be more successful, and I know I have it in me to be it.

But instead of sitting around and feeling like an asshat, I’m opting instead to get this shit done. Get a plan, make it happen, right? Simple. And if you fuck it up, regroup and do it again, but better. Suck a little less, and it means you’ve made progress. That’s the part to focus on. The p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s, not how much of the mountain’s left to climb; that’s your reality, live it, don’t dwell on it, you know?

And I’ve been making progress. But then I had a birthday and went a little wild. The last time I went this far off-track leading up to my birthday, it was 2007 and it set the pace for losing 50 pounds in a year, starting the week before Thanskgiving — which is next Monday, here in Canuckistan.

So my outlook could be worse. ;)

Jawohl, mein Kommandant, I know; there’s work to be done. I’m on it.

I hadn’t given the idea that much thought until the recent days.

See, the thing about legacies is, they don’t just happen. They take years — often, decades — to carve out. Who we are, who we were, isn’t just some momentary snapshot — it’s a grainy 8mm movie that never stops playing.

Every day we have opportunity to contribute more to  our lives. Every day is another stroke on the canvas of our legacy, another swath of colour or texture that contributes to the work of art that is our life.

These days, I’m caught in a nasty swirlie of knowing the choices I need to make in order to realize the legacy I want to leave behind. Books don’t write themselves, words don’t land on your screen like fruitflies in your wineglass. Isolation is needed. Sometimes that isolation turns into hours spent writing, sometimes it’s a wasted opportunity. Much like life.

And I don’t like that I need to make those choices. I don’t like that I somehow lost my whole social summer because I couldn’t balance what I had going on and incorporate socializing into it as well. It pisses me off that I can’t manage to be more social yet accomplish everything I want to accomplish. I’m angry that I have to be torn between these things.

Yes, I like my alone times. But I also enjoy having my cake and eating it too. I’m a greedy sensualist; not only do I want it all, but I can taste it all in anticipation.

But I can’t do it all. Not anymore. Choices have to be made, or I’m spread far too thin. Girl can’t be everything to all people, and often barely can be enough for herself. Shouldn’t I have more energy than I do? But I guess my days and weeks are as heady and hard as they sometimes feel. Life feels like an unending obligation, sometimes.

It just can’t remain this way, not indefinitely. I need to find it in me to do the work that needs doing. Most of that means just finding time.

I’ll be undertaking a drastic schedule change this week, as I start early-morning shifts that will leave me free after 3pm a few times a week. It’s all in the guise of attempting to manage my time better.

“Time management.” It’s the laughable modern Holy Grail. A myth. Everything is geared toward it now. “30-minute meals”, smart phones, fast food, TiVo — everything is supposed to help contribute to “convenience” in our lives. Instead, we all get busier, busier, and busier, and life slips away ever faster. None of us gets done in a day what needs to be done. Why? Because a world of distraction was built around us, obligations layered upon obligations.

Last year I read a fantastic novella by the much under-appreciated British writer Jim Crace, A Gift of Stones, about life at the end of the Stone Age. What did people do then? They caught and raised their food, prepared it, they practiced their livelihood, and they talked to people around them. That was the human condition, that’s all there was. They all had the same obligations every day: Sustain thyselves, sustain thy livelihood, know thy fellow man.

A part of me longs for that. An old rickety home in the country filled with lush comfortable belongings, where I spend my nights writing, listening to the wind playing tricks with trees and dogs yapping in the distance. A place where life can stand still and one day bleeds into the next, where lazy mornings aren’t filled with a feeling of torn lack and longing, where the urban world doesn’t speed at me day in and day out.

I like my sheltered life sometimes, but because of my ADD tendencies and my proximity to Just About Everything In The City, I’m constantly left feeling torn, like so much is happening that I’m missing out on — movies and concerts and coffeeshops. “What am I missing tonight?” is something I’ll often find myself wondering on writing nights.

Yet I’ll have these phases where I experience so much, am out so often, that I get burnt out and long for the quietude of my little home again.

Then along comes some conversation where I’m enlightened about the Buddhist eulogy-of-a-life-lived exercise, the questions rear up and I find myself wondering how unsatisfied I’ll be with myself and the life lived if this — quiet mornings, wind whipping through my apartment, typing in my bare feet, as the last days of summer slip away — represents the status quo for too much of that life.

Balance is always the conundrum. How does one find it? Does one ever? For me, I probably never will. I’ll always feel torn by the duality of who I am — good with people but ultimately comfortable being left in solitary thought, too.

I suppose it’s ultimately like chocolate and a diet. Cutting back is essential to your success, but enjoying it is essential to your soul. Never exclude anything entirely, and never overdose on it, either. Too much all the time means you never appreciate it when you have it; you take it for granted. But occasionally enjoying it, when it’s quality over quantity, fills the soul a little and makes the lonely hours in wait that much more worthwhile.

How much will others contribute to the life I will have lived? How much will I let them in, over the years to come? How much will I give to them, be with them, and appreciate them? And vice versa?

I turn 36 this week. If statistics are to believed, my life isn’t even half-over. Yet I’m in that week-before-my-birthday midlife crisis that always come my way. So few of us lead the lives we’ve imagined for ourselves, but is it a life we’re happy to be living?

My complaints are small, typical, and nothing worth breaking a dream over. I used to say I had no regrets, but the older I get, the more the small and infrequent regrets seem to snowball and crash into the reality of my life. Sure, I have regrets. I have a lot of the regrets had by many people who get stuck on the financial tightrope of lower-middleclass life. I wish I could travel more. I wish I could dine out more. I wish I could know what a real spending spree felt like. Most of my regrets have dollar-signs attached, which is to say, they’re regrets that won’t break my heart anytime soon.

I commented to a friend once that I’d love to have the trappings of success, but could never live in the trap of success.

The truth is, when I do look back at the choices I’ve made — the ones that have left me happier in my off-hours and more broke because I’ve chosen a low-paying low-stress low-demand job, so I can enjoy my day-to-day, despite the ways it causes me to cut back and miss out on the perceived things we’re supposed to live for, well… I’m pretty comfortable living with those regrets.

We all pay prices for the choices we make. At least I know, and can live with, the prices I’ve paid.

Because, if nothing else, at this point in my unorthodox life, I really have managed to do it my way. Broke, not far from home, but my way. And if I can pull a Sinatra and make that claim when I’m in my 80s and gumming my food, then all the regrets in the world won’t mean fuck all against the quiet satisfaction I’ll feel if I go to my grave singing Frank’s brassy classic under my last raspy breaths.

Luckily, I tend to pay attention.

Tuesday has been “headtrip day” for two weeks now. Yesterday was jam-packed — a night of chatting with one of my best friends immediately after another trip to the headshrink, and then this morning I got to watch last night’s The Biggest Loser.

And I’m not sure where to start, so let’s do the Tarantino end-middle-beginning-takes-you-to-a-new-ending thing, shall we?

Shay, of The Biggest Loser, is the biggest player in the show’s history, beginning at some 470 pounds or so. She’s trying to heal after being raised by a heroin addict mom who died young and left her in foster care, shopped around for the rest of her life. She’s 30 now, and realizing her life can start over. Knowing her weight is ENTIRELY about her level of fuctedness, she commented, “Each of these pounds is a wound.”

…Which turned the lightswitch on and I remembered my conversation with JT last night, about how I’m having a really hard time getting my game back on with the weightloss thing because of everything that’s been coming at me — what a time of chaos. Also, summer has made a valiant return, and knowing how seasonally depressed I get in the winter, I’m trying to seize the end of the sunshine, hamstrung by the shorter days, but also trying to get everything done I feel burdened to get done. Oh, and I’ve begun writing again. It’s just so hard for me to get everything settled enough to find a routine that works.

Now, keep in mind, I get my 3-4 hours minimum of activity per week, which is classified as a “healthy” lifestyle. I eat better than I ever have, but still have further to go, right? But I’m still better than most — just with too big of portions for me to lose weight. I’m maintaining my weightloss and living a tasty and literally “full” life.

But, as I was telling JT, I’m 5 pounds from breaking the weight I became around 18 years old — and when I do that, I undo ALL the physical harm that has happened since my life went from averagely-sucky to “You’re gonna need therapy for ALL this shit” when I hit 18, after my mom’s attempted suicide, stupid love, and all the drama and near-death events, etc,  that would follow for years.

Every one of these pounds is a wound.

And when I get past that emotional boundary, past the 200-pound mark, back into the territory of “normal” people, I prove to myself that I have literally overcome all that came at me in all those years.

Deep down inside, I don’t feel I have, and I wonder now if it’s part of why I’ve been stagnating at this weight for so long.

I don’t remember who I was before my life railroaded with my mother’s suicide attempt and the years of depression and self-hate that it’d spur for me. I don’t remember the girl I was in my teens… not really. I remember the insecurity was there even then, because I was still “heavy” fat, I just wasn’t “fatty-fat-fat” fat.

Every one of those pounds was a wound.

Every candy bar was a hug. Every sugary tasty drink was a soft sigh. Every extra helping was a wink and a hug. Every layer of fat was a blanket to wrap myself in against the harsh coldness of a big, bad world.

I’m realizing now that I haven’t been ready to heal all those wounds. Not yet.

This therapy I’ve begun is dredging up issues that are making me realize, I guess, just how much my eating really was a response to serious emotional challenges that just NEVER FUCKING STOPPED for 16 or 17 years. When there were lulls, I was so depressed* that it didn’t matter that the barrage had stopped, because the wounds had begun to fester and puss.

The walls I put up, man. Oh, the walls. When your method of coping is one that produces shame, you need to hide yourself. You need the walls. You need to be stoic in public, and beneath contempt in private. Because that’s how shame rolls. Trust me. I know.

I know far more about myself now than I care to share with the likes of you in a place like this. This is what I know.

But I don’t know everything, not about myself, not even close. The amount I’ve learned in the last year — since the one-year anniversary of blowing my back out and the biggest personal learning curve in my life — makes me shake my head in wonder.

I just don’t know how one person can absorb all that in a year. You know how you put a sponge in water, it soaks up everything it can, you pull it out, the gravity sucks half the water back out? For a moment, the sponge absorbed it all, and then it washed away. I kind of feel like that. I’m an overloaded sponge. Knowing this, I sometimes wonder what has washed away, what I’ve forgotten that I swore I’d remember, that I’d learn from.

So when my therapist asked me last night what I hoped to gain from my sessions with him, I just didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t really thought of a specific goal. What do I want to be? I want to be better. I want to be better at being comfortable with myself. I want to feel better about myself, not be so aware of the insecurities and fears I’ve been long trying to overcome. (And have made incredible strides with, really. Incredible.)

But, most of all, I guess I just want some guidance making it through the last of my journey.

It’s not 5 pounds I need to lose. It’s not 50 pounds I need to lose. It’s many years of wounds. That’s what I need to lose.

At this point, it’s proving harder than just getting on a bike. Yet, at the same time, it’s not harder than that. THAT is all I need to do. Work. It’s inarguable, it’s science. That’s weightloss; work more, eat less.

But right now? It’s about the wounds. I’ve proven I can melt my ass. I know I will do every bit I’m of mind to do. I’ve not known why NOW wasn’t the time for me to do so… until now. Knowing? Priceless. I’ve long known I was scared to break that boundary, because once I’m not so obviously damaged with that big “200-something” weight, then who will I be?I just haven’t been willing to admit it, not really.

You don’t have a fucking clue who I’ll be, nor do I. And I can pretend to be as excited as I want to be, but deep down inside, I’m still scared. You don’t realize the foggy, hazy dream we lifelong fat people have of our thin selves — it doesn’t exist because we can’t imagine how we’ll look. We don’t know what our bone structure looks like, or what’s possible for our features when all that fat vanishes.

Doesn’t change the fact that I *will* make the weightloss happen in entirety, it just acknowledges that I finally maybe understand why it might not happen right now.

And I’m okay with that.

*Incidentally, probably 70% of my depression, I now realize, was made far worse by bad diet and no exercise. As soon as I was exercising three times a week and eating less sugar, taking vitamins, I had to go OFF my anti-depressants within three months, because I’d regulated my chemistry myself. I still have ups and downs, but they’re natural ups and downs.

“Motion is lotion” and “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Maybe now I’ll forget the love affair I’ve recently ignited with my sofa.

It’s the season premiere of The Biggest Loser tonight, and it’s proving to be a bit of an emotional experience. A seriously emotional one, really.

This comes after a rather wound-picking-ish therapy session after work. [insert heavy sigh here]

The show’s reminding me of how far I’ve come, yet how far left I have to go.

I’ve been exhausted now for a long time. I’m starting to hit my stride again, but not really. Not full-on. It’s been tough, and now it’s a little emotionally turbulent, too.

People don’t get it, sometimes. I don’t think people realize how hard and long it is that one needs to work to take off 70 pounds, or what 9 months consecutive of 6-day-a-week intense back-rehab is like in the midst of all that. This has been my last TWO YEARS. I have been just… whew, going at it, I guess, for almost all that time.

And I trick myself, right? I’ve been very antisocial, so hanging out at home makes me think I’m not doing anything, but all those nights I used to stay at home, I’d be writing then working out while watching television.  Two years of pretty much 5-8, sometimes 10+ hours of working out a week.

Though I’ve allowed myself to go off-program,  I knew the day was coming I’d get my shit back together and get the game on. (A gradual occurrence over the last week, I’m happy to report.)

But this show, man… these contestants are at their worst right now. I’m remembering how I felt and who I was those 70 pounds ago. A little too raw-like. My god, how I hated being that. And lord knows I tried to pretend I didn’t. But I did. You know what? I really don’t want to help you understand what that felt like. Or why I still feel that ringing in my ears sometimes.

Something that sort of irks me but I highly doubt I’ll stop doing, is that I’m really quick to volunteer the info that I’ve lost a whole shitload of weight. In some ways, it must seem arrogant or needy to others, but it’s not like that. Sometimes I feel like, if I don’t say it out loud, it’s not real. I technically know what I’ve done, but I somehow still feel much the same inside some days. Not the loathing or anything, but I can go days where I don’t physically feel that much thinner… not went-from-size-22-to-a-14 thinner.  Maybe that’s mostly because I’ve slipped into a mindset of forgetting. All I really need to do is, go to a movie and consciously think of how I feel in that seat,with  room enough to drop arms down by my side, no chair digging into my pudgy ribs. Sure, I’ve weight to lose, but I don’t have THAT anymore.

But I have to consciously be aware of that newness-of-me in each moment. These lack-of-Steff happenings, ie: no thigh-rubbing, are recent phenomena in ‘09, after 20+ years of the opposite.

Seriously, when the average woman has a “fat day”, she’s feeling maybe 5 or 10 pounds heavier. _I_ have a fat day, I’m feeling like I’m literally pushing 300 pounds, nearly 100 pounds heavier, okay? Why? Because I KNOW what it’s like to LIVE in that body, and most of YOU probably will never have the foggiest fucking notion.

And then when I _do_ have that moment of remembering “Yes, I did that”, I remember specific moments in sports and activities where I thought I was gonna die — like that July day where the “oh, 10 or 12k in the mountains” bike ride turned out to be a 19km one that ended with a stunning 6km ascent up the side of a motherfucking mountain with a vicious 50km wind heading straight at me. That SUCKED. And I did it.

Oh, my god, has this all sucked the marrow from me. Now I pay. It’s coming back, though. Lifeblood returns.

As I ready myself for what I know is the next long, hard, but ultimately BEYOND-worth-it next leg of the journey, I’m finding myself caught in an emotional swirlie that’s getting hard to let go of this evening.

Still, here are three things I know tonight: 1) What success takes, 2) that I’ve already had MUCH success, and that 3) I can fucking rock this bitch.

But I’d be a liar and a fool if I said I’m not hurting a little as I muster the courage to go there, that I’m not scared of the obstacles that lay before me, or that there isn’t a niggling of doubt that this is the time I get exposed for the fraud my insecure inner-self thinks I am, or flat-out fear that failure awaits or I’ll return to the flabby Steff of old.

That’s why, in some ways, this weightloss I’ve accomplished so far, and the rest I know will happen over the next year or so, is my existential scaling of Mount Everest. This is as big as it will ever get for me. I’ve spent two years hammering at myself emotionally and physically, and it’s gotten me to here. So far to go.

Dude… it’s gonna be a long year. But: 3) I can fucking rock this bitch.

For all its lack of imposing, stacked up against the major metropolitan downtown that’s only a few kilometres from here, it’s amazing how little I’ve met the people I’ve lived around for a decade. Maybe a third of those in my alleyway have lived here for the decade I have. Of them, I know perhaps five.

For three months now, I’ve wondered where one of them, the neighbour I overlook from my kitchen, was. I assumed some big trip around the world, since more than a few people around here have turned out to be travellers.

But then I saw her Friday for the first time in three months — more than 100 pounds heavier, looking 15 years older, tired, worn, and just about to quit — life, not just her job. My heart went through the floor. Has she been really, really sick? Obviously. Away at hospital? What’s wrong with her? This is why her blinds have never opened or moved? Now it looks like she has friends helping her to move — they’re all too cheerful but head-down-and-diligent, as if this is an event that needs to happen but bodes badly for times to come. She’s not staying at home as that work is completed, either.

Across the other way is another apartment I’ve also become invested in this summer — where Hippy Man lived with his cool wife and very, very hot two 18-20-year-old sons. Hippy Man cut his hair all off about four months ago, maybe longer. By then, they’d begun buying new furniture to replace their secondhand crap, and repainting — new leather couch, barbecue, nice table set. But now Hippy Man and Older Hottie Son have been gone since before summer kicked in. She’s cut her hair and dyed it, bought a puppy, has started attending church on Sundays (because where else is she going, dressed up on Sundays, at 10am?), and has started an interest in photography with a shiny new SLR.

Have they separated? Did he die? Is he working somewhere far away? I don’t know.

Why? Because there are walls. A lot of them. Everywhere. We all have them. People see snippets of our lives and reach conclusions as to where we’re at. When the windows are open and curtains pulled back, we behave a little differently, because “they” might be watching, and those boundaries drop when walls and blinds appear.

It’s like that line in the Breakfast Club opening voiceover — “You see us how you want to see us.” If we let you.

We look at others and we assume because we’ve had a casual conversation or see them in passing that we’re anywhere in the know about what they’re going through. We forget that so much of our world is about surfacing and appearances, and secrets and lies. When we ask how others are doing, the truth is, we’d rather hear “Fine”, because anything else but means Things Are Gonna Get Complicated. And, sure, we care, but who has time? Right?

That receptionist’s quickened pace, the head down, the curt nod and furtive smile, it’s not shyness. It’s the end of a five-year relationship with little inkling it was coming, and the intellectual fall-out that comes with. The haircut and new wardrobe on the coffee shop girl you see every morning might not be a whimsy change of pace but rather a desperate search for self after being emotionally adrift at sea during a tough time, a physical turning of tides. But we might never know, because all we see is what they want us to see, or merely what we wish to see of them.

So thank god for the walls. The walls we all hide behind sometimes, the walls that give us existential freedoms that are the emotional and mental equivalent of going pants-free or seizing a pajamas-only-weekend with blinds drawn.

I sometimes wonder if marriages don’t fail more because of the lack of walls. Some people are good at tearing them all down. Some people are good at lowering them. But I suspect most of us would rather remain the secret hoarders of a wall or two. Like Grandma Death says in Donnie Darko, “In the end, every living creature dies alone.” No matter how much we share with others, we’ll always have those dark and insecure thoughts we never, ever plan to share.

I’m a fan of my own walls sometimes. I keep mine patched — shored up, strong, and permanent.

But then, when I see a neighbour like the one I saw this weekend, suddenly sick, suddenly drastically different and obviously needing help, I wish walls would come down more easily, be less impervious, because I know how hard asking for help can be when it turns out you really finally need it.

It’s an important reminder that we each have bigger issues going on. It’s not just about you and your tough week; you’ve no idea the adversities others are tackling behind their walls — money, domestic violence, disease, changing fortunes… we’ve no idea.

If only we’d remember that more often as we went about our days, and instead of getting angry at someone who’s distracted or appears inconsiderate, maybe a little benefit of the doubt can be extended.

It’s a walled, walled world.

*The photo is by me, shot near my home, and one that I think kind of speaks to how what things appear to be aren’t always what the reality is. You’d think you’d never see a beautiful sunset in that industrial wasteland area near my house… and thanks to the abundant rainfall and sunset after, you’d be wrong. Somehow, that reassures me about the world a little.

It’s a love/hate relationship. I can’t live without it. I wish I could.

It’s a near-pathological need to dig, writing. For some of us. For me. Dig, dig, dig. I feel like I’m taking a stab at digging my way to China in my back yard. I’ll never finish. I’ll never even get halfway where I’m going. I know this. Thank god it’s a free passage. Taxes would kill me. And, unlike digging to China, the scenery’s interesting.

Recently, I’ve found writing hard. I’m not feeling inspired to go there. Mostly I know this is because I’m mired in existential spelunking of late; splooshing through dimly lit recesses and passages, seeing only a fragment of what’s really there because that’s the nature of cavernous darkness… and the human mind.

Still, there’s only four places left for man to really explore; to the centre of the earth, the bottom of the ocean, the reaches of space, and the depths of the human mind. Of the mind, I’m endlessly fascinated.

I’ve begun to read The Brain that Changes Itself, to try to understand the mechanics of thought more, and how to heal the body’s most enigmatic organ — which I know I’ve damaged in my many accidents and mishaps over the years. Amazing what landing on one’s head will do. Don’t try that at home, kids.

It occurs to me now, though, that the book may have application creatively. What if I can tap into a greater wellspring from which all this comes? What if I can cut through the ideological and ever-present bullshit that comes with any day-to-day existence on this big ol’ ball in space? What if there’s a simple “on” switch for creativity, that folks like Stephen King and Paul Theroux have long since mastered, given their prolific careers?

What I really want to learn, though, is where the emotional-bypass switch is. Where I can turn off all the hurt and shame and regret and fear that precedes any real psychological foray. All those monsters of our psyche that rear up and roar at us when we start looking back into our past.

I can remember being a child in grade one, staring up at the Big Kids in Grade 7, and the giants they seemed then. Now, at 35, I feel like I can step on ‘em and squoosh ‘em like the bugs they are. Perspective is everything; so is growing 18 inches.

My experience with emptying a few boxes on the weekend, delving into my distant past in a hands-on way, makes me think perhaps it’s the reverse of Grade 7-biggies-awe. All the years that have passed between then and now, I look back upon my memories and remember the fear or hurt or pain I felt in my youth, and I magnify it, because that’s how we humans roll. But somewhere in the midst of all that, I forget the most important thing…

I’m older now, and what might have hurt me then is likely to roll off my back within a couple days now. With age comes experience, temperance. When you’re hurt enough by the realities of life being life, day after day, you start to learn which hurts cut deeply and which are superficial bleeders; temporary yet ultimately irrelevant, like paper cuts.

We don’t have those filters at the age of 13, or 18, when hurts seem indelible and life-altering. When, with every bend of misfortune, our soul seems it might just break.

Then, one day, it doesn’t break. We bounce back, like a willow that’s been staked and pulled over, protecting it for a windstorm. Untie the tether, and poof, back it comes. Not unlike us feeble humans. Next time, we remember that resilience. We traipse a little less defensively, venture a little further, trust a little more.

Yet, despite all the courage and adventurousness we might one day find, those fear-mongering giants of our youthful memories are still seen from the scared, childlike eyes that first experienced it all. That’s the frame of reference. Until we’ve screwed up the courage to face it and change the frame, that is. Then it occurs to me — maybe I don’t need an emotional bypass. Maybe I just need to grow a further 18 existential inches, maybe the camera angle just needs tilting, maybe… who knows.

It all comes back to Socrates, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Simply put, life’s not worth moving through if you don’t appreciate the magnitude of that from which you’ve just come.

As much as I sometimes loathe writing, this uncertain feeling of doom that bubbles up inside of me when I stare at an empty screen, wondering which words to impart it this time, I’d never give it up. When I go through my life avoiding examination and all that existential spelunking, I feel like a fraud. I feel unplugged and extraneous, as if I’m failing to give value to that which really deserves it. Life, for all its pains and heartbreaks and betrayals, is a magical thing, and I’m grateful I get a chance to experience a new surprise every day, and that I have the skill and ability to turn it on its head for a few readers.

As much as writing and its thought processes sometimes will consume me — because I’m not just writing about media or movies or whatever, I tend to write more about the marrow of life, so I’m lost in observation and ponderings much of time, when my craft is working for me — I almost always find the time to literally stop and smell a flower or search the night sky for a star.

Because, as a writer, one can’t help but realize the importance of all details. If the details, the little things, make a story richer, imagine their contribution to the repetition of life.

It’s finding meaning in my life’s happenings that allows me to create meaning in my writing, so that the cycle completes itself by my life actually having more meaning. Or at least it does to me.

I wonder if Socrates would approve.