At this stage of my journey through life I have come to a place where I have started to really observe how people are treating one another. And I am not sure if I like what I see. I think we all need to initiate change.
Several years ago I was in a very good place in life. I had a loving relationship and great friends. Basically life was grand. At that time I was working in the bar industry and in my free time I would make some general comments on the dating world. These comments turned into Relationship Theories. One of my dear friends suggested that I should start recording these theories. I did. In a short time I had created about 40 pages with the said theories being somewhat controversial, always edgy, with a touch of twisted humor thrown in for flavor. However, since I was content with life the drive to complete more was missing.
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Next - I made what one might call a monumental mistake. I commented to another friend that I had never been so incredibly ‘happy’. Despite some of life’s challenges the future never looked brighter. If I could go back in time I would have certainly retracted that statement, or at least broke a finger or sprained an ankle on the way home that night. I think it may be imperative to at least have a touch of turmoil in life. Turmoil has a way to ground us. Make us appreciate the journey more. The reason why this was such a significant mistake was within days a series of events started to unravel that I would not want anyone to ever have to experience.
In the short form version, in less than 2 months, starting almost immediately, my relationship ground to a halt. No warning signs. No confrontations. In an instant it ended like a confusing unexplainable bad dream. Before I could even grasp what had happened in my own world, I ran into a young friend at Choices Market on a sunny Friday afternoon. He expressed to me how much his life sucked. I hugged him. He went home and took his own life.
His last words to me were, “My Life Sucks.”
Less than a week had passed when another friend, 28 years old took me aside to tell me he was dying of cancer. I was struggling with my own heartbreak and yet for some reason was still having to dig deep and remain compassionate.
Four more days passed. My phone rang. I had become afraid of the phone during this time, it was not a purveyor of good news. On this particular day the voice on the other end was my closest relative an aunt. I am the youngest of seven, with three older brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, some 17 odd years ago I had actually witnessed, one year apart, both of my parents taking their last breathes of life. I was the only one of the siblings present to experience these traumatic events. I couldn’t understand why the youngest had to experience this trauma alone. I just new it was for some reason my responsibility.
Now on this particular day my aunt had called to tell me she was changing her will. She was cutting my evil sisters out. I was not enjoying this conversation. I was struggling in my own world, the happiness of the past was quickly changing into the despair of the present. Next she told me the real reason for the call. She told me she was dying. I could barely handle the news. What was happening to my world. I was witnessing death after death, yet at the same time I was being asked to be compassionate. I wanted to become self-absorbed, unfortunately it was not being allowed.
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My aunt had accepted her mortality. She was at ease with it. The problem for me was, I wasn’t. She quickly deteriorated. My family started to alienate me because I would not drop everything and leave Vancouver to watch my aunt die in Edmonton. At the same time some of my supposed friends turned their backs on me as well.
They said that, “I had seemed to have changed.”
Needless to say friendships came to an end.
Within a month she passed away. Three days after her funeral one of my evil sisters called. I was prepared for the guilt. Instead she informed me that my last remaining uncle died unexpectedly in his sleep the night before.
At that exact moment, I realized I was in trouble. I was devoid of emotion. Unless numbness is considered an emotion. By this time I had cried on 67 consecutive days. I was never entirely certain which event prompted the waterfalls. I guess I didn’t need to associate them with any one in particular. They were a cumulative creation.
At this point of time I had lost my ‘happy’ and I wasn’t sure if it would ever be found again.
I decided I needed to leave my environment. Europe seemed to be the answer. I had never been, nor did I ever have the desire to go. For some reason these events sparked something in me, Europe now seemed to make perfect sense.
A great friend asked if he could come with me. He was wise enough to ask. I think he wanted to chaperone me on my journey to make sure I was Ok. The only thing holding me back was the need to renew my passport. I put a rush order in. I needed however, to first get a new birth certificate. I was informed the process would only take a couple of days to complete.
Two weeks later and still no birth certificate. My friend had quit his job so he was becoming anxious. I phoned the vital statistics department in Alberta to inquire about the delay. I was told they couldn’t issue me a new birth certificate because some of the information I gave them did not match their records. I asked them what they needed. To which the civil servant matter-of-factly replied:
“Could you phone your parents and ask them:
Who your real parents are?”
I ended up going to Europe. It may have saved my life.
I found out the identity of my real parents. Not great news, quite disturbing actually.
During my journey I really took notice of what is going on in our world. It is not necessarily good. Somehow I managed to take my observations and I wrote 340 more pages on my theories. I think we need to encourage positive change now more than ever before. In fact I think it is our responsibility. Amazingly I managed to write a book that is not only controversial, challenging the state of relationships and the world today, but also, despite the traumatic events I had experienced, the book has a very strong positive message. It is also filled with twisted humor. The book is called Seed’s Sketchy Relationship Theories - A Guide to the Perils of Dating (How not to become a bar regular). To me it represents my greatest accomplishment. It also represents that if you dig deep inside and try to look at things in a positive light regardless of circumstance, we are all capable of great things.
Finally the moral of this story is: If you ever find yourself in a place where you are the happiest you have ever been.
Sprain something.
That in a nutshell is how this book came to be.
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These events lead me and my great friend known as Euro Seed to complete and release Seed's Sketchy Relationship Theories - A Guide to the Perils of Dating (How not to become a bar regular).
Seed's Sketchy Relationship Theories is available at www.seedenterprises.com where you can follow your links to your favorite bookseller.
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