Well friends, and I think I can make that reference now because if you have read far enough to get here and not become fed up with me you now know more about me than most of my friends, relatives and all past lovers except one, yes as suggested earlier the circle keeps turning.
At this point the plan was completed, the driving force in my life since Grade 6 was done, my parents were happy, the sun was shining and God was in the heavens.... but what the hell was I going to do now.
After some thought and alot of confusion I had various options to consider, the first being going to Singapore and work for the prosecutors office. I considered this suggestion because apparently the language of the court was English, they liked British Degrees, accepted Canadian qualifications and paid phenomenal money. However I also learned that prosecutors had an uncommon knack of being found floating in the harbour, thus given my history to date and the fact that I did not appear to have a great deal of luck going for me I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and passed on this idea. The next option involved going back to Ontario however this involved articling again given the various rules in respect to transferring between provinces and I was not prepared to go through that again.
The last option arose due to a chance meeting with a friend from law school who was now practicing law in a small interior tourist town, strangely similar to the town in Ontario in which I had spent so much time. Now Joe was a mountain of a man, about six foot four, and three hundred pounds. He had a good heart, a friendly disposition and had the soul of a party animal which not only made him very popular at the law school but the hub of the social scene. However, while being a great guy and a good friend to all Joe struggled at school and had to repeat various courses. He had been a year ahead of me and had now purchased a practice in this small town and had run into some problems and needed someone to come in and help him. After some discussions I agreed to come and help him out for one year, as I had no plans, needed some experience and really didn't want to commit to anything at this point. So I moved again, funnily enough to the same town in which I had received the speeding ticket while driving west, and set up practice with Joe.
I settled in, moved in to an apartment and started to practice law, and to my surprise and pleasure I was good at it. Not underachiever good, not average good, but really good if I do say so myself. This is not to say I was Perry Mason, or legendary, but rather I won my cases, was respected by my peers and feared by others, the police dreaded my cross examinations and husbands and wives would try to retain me before their spouse could in divorces. This big fish in small pond thing may not seem like much but it was satisfying.
After about eight months of this I was looking to move on when Joe advised that he was taking a job with the government and suddenly I was left with the practice and essentially trapped whether I wanted to be or not. After some thought and the fact that I had nowhere else to go I decided to stay and build my life there.
I have not spoken much about relationships for a while because essentially there hadn't been any, dates of course, short term dalliances but no relationships and as I settled into my new town this didn't really change although it was not for lack of trying. Then there was one of those little decisions again that comes back to bite you in the butt and change your life.
It was a Friday night, I was sitting at home minding my own business when a friend called and asked me to come meet his brother who had just gotten a job at a local bar as the DJ. Normally at about 10 at night I would not have gone out but I thought what the hell and off I went. After I arrived and was introduced to Bill I sat down and ordered a drink, shortly thereafter I was approached by a woman who walked off the dance floor. She asked me if I could act like her boyfriend as there was a guy hitting on her, I simply said she could sit at the table with us. Now Linda was about my age, attractive in a girl next store sort of way so we started to talk and made arrangements to meet for dinner the next evening. Again I did not hear what I now know in hindsight was a loud and definitive click as my life was changed forever.
Linda and I dated over a year, and things went well, she was loving, attentive, independent and eventually she said she loved me. Now dear reader if you have read my past entries you know I have always had a problem with these words, however at this point I was ready and I loved or thought I loved her too. This is not to say I did not have the feelings but as things develop the question will not be did I love but who did I love.
After this things moved on, we lived together for a few months and then got engaged, all during this period things went well, and she swore her undying love as engaged people are want to do. We planned a small wedding with family and friends and got married, other than the usual reasons this was a memorable day because it was literally the last day she said she loved me. Hard to believe I know but true just the same, in response to my saying that I loved her she would smile and say "you should". At this point you may recall me suggesting that "karma was a bitch", I was about to find out how much of a bitch it could be.
I was married, I was a respected lawyer and life was good but that of course would be too easy. First Linda legally changed her named to Allison, something about lucky numbers and numerology, I thought it was a bit weird but supported her in her decision. Then after she found out she was pregnant with our daughter she announced that she was going close her shop and go to work in Calgary, staying at her brother's house and travelling home weekends. This decision I didn't approve of but she went anyway. Yes, I gave in, thinking maybe it was a baby thing, also as you may recall while I could fight tooth and nail in court I was never really much on personal confrontation.
Then in the fall of 1986 our daughter was born, a beautiful blonde blue eyed little girl that looked like me and was nothing but smiles and laughter. To anyone looking we had it all, a beautiful daughter, a great house, the nice cars, a boat and even a dog, something out of a Christmas card, life looked good. In reality it wasn't, as indicated she never said she loved me, went out with "girlfriends" far to much and started going to visit an old girlfriend in California far too often. This went on for a few years, did I think she was having affairs, yes probably, could I prove it no, I just watched and lived with it, and worked and worked hoping it would go away, of course it didn't. By the time my daughter was around three, Allison was going to California regularly, various excuses were given, courses, girlfriend's birthday anything and everything, she was gone so much we had to get a nanny to look after the baby while I worked.
It started to come to a head when I refused to allow her to go to California on one occasion and she left to stay at a local girlfriend's for a couple of weeks, leaving our daughter with me. After two weeks and a girls night out in another town, she suddenly came home, apologized and said she wanted to have another baby with me. Life was ok for a few months and she announced she was pregnant.....did I see the writing on the wall, no.
About this time the circle came around again, I was sitting home on a Saturday while Allision was out as usual and our daughter Mckenzie was sleeping and the phone rang. It was Robin calling to say hello and that she was thinking of moving back to Canada. She was just wondering how my life was going. Did I tell her it was miserable, did I tell her that I had one foot out the door, no, I told her everything was wonderful and life was good. As I said before it has only been recently that I realized that I had missed the signs again, I should have at least opened the door and told the truth, my life may have changed and my soul been saved.
We skip ahead to the birth of my son Connor, a beautiful blonde little boy, who not only didn't look like me, he didn't look like his mother. Now this is one of those moments, what do you do, rather what did I do. Well nothing, but I knew then deep down he wasn't my biological child but I could do nothing else but accept him as he needed me as much as I needed him, it was then that the boulder so delicately balanced on the top of the mountain started to tumble and the smile of Sisyphus started to turn into slightly hysterical laughter.
After a few months Allison was back to going out with the "girls" and travelling to California. This time I decided to check things out, she of course denied affairs etc and said I was just jealous and unreasonable. I traced some numbers, checked some addresses, made some calls and determined that she was actually living with some guy in California, when the nanny found this out she admitted that Allison had actually been seeing someone locally on and off for years and using the girls nights as an excuse.
The rock crashed down the mountain and Sisyphus's laughter was now reduced to an insane cackle.
To my credit I threw her out when she arrived back from California, she denies the affairs to this day and despite the paternity test states that Connor is mine, but I am getting ahead of myself. We separated, we shared custody of the kids, I paid the child support but I didn't mind, given her trips to California and her lifestyle I had the kidsalmost full time and I was at least happy with that. However the rest of my life was spiralling out of control and there was no plan to save me or at least keep me focused this time.
To say my work suffered does not even begin to describe the situation I found myself in, it seemed the more I worked the less I got done, things were left undone and nothing seemed right. I went to the doctor who suggested I was suffering from depression, a concept which at the time I disregarded, after all depression was just an excuse, if you felt bad all you had to do was pull your socks up and get to work. Funny how those commonly held myths and misconceptions are so easy to accept, how logical and reasonable they seem especially when they have to do with mental health and more importantly your own mental health. Despite this point of view I at least agreed to attend counselling with Allison for the sake of the children, I later learned that she arranged this counselling as part of a plan to reconcile after I was told by the doctor that the problems were mine not hers.
We went to the doctor and outlined our lives prior to the marriage, our parents and our general views on life. This took about 4 sessions at which time he wanted to see us individually which made Allison very happy in that she believed that I would be told the error of my ways, the folly of my unreasonable jealousy and that I needed help. Allison went first and after an hour stormed out of the doctor's office barely acknowledging me on her way out but stating in a very loud voice that she would never be back. Well dear reader, it was my turn, I thought given her reaction that things were not obviously all my fault and he had told her so, yet I still had to face the music. I sat quietly as the doctor reviewed his notes, he looked at me and said that I should not walk but run away from Allison and that if we did reconcile the consequences could or would be catastrophic. After seeing my puzzled look he went on to advise me that in his opinion and based on the tests we had done, she was suffering from a severe narcissistic personality disorder and could well be a sociopath. As an aside, alot of guys say thier ex wives are crazy, I on the other hand have a doctors letter to prove it.
The doctor then went on to say that his tests also showed that I was suffering from depression and if I did not accept treatment I could become dangerously clinically depressed. Given my opinions as to depression I did not take his advice and went back to my life determined to work things out, get my work done and essentially pull up my socks. This of course did not work, things got harder and harder, and my practice once so successful began to slide. I took on fewer clients, and my paperwork got so far behind that eventually the law society stepped in to review the practice. As previously stated to any lawyer involvement with the law society is the scariest thing there is because contrary to public opinion they are not there to side with or back lawyers, their mandate is to protect the public and to ensure that the public knows this. Thus when dealing with lawyer's problems they generally take a scorched earth approach. This means they assume the worst and act upon it in the hopes of obtaining the maximum penalty which is disbarment. If your actions do not warrant that penalty it is your responsibility to establish that, even though the process may bankrupt or kill you. A bit of an generalization but in truth not that much of an exageration. My problems were accounting, and delay, not dishonesty and misappropriation yet that is what they claimed at the beginning, after tens of thousands of dollars, for representation and accountants it was accepted that it was in fact an accounting problem and not dishonesty, but by that time the damage was done.
While I was fighting this fight a number of things were happening, my father was helping me financially without hesitation, however both he and my mother were becoming more and more emotionally distant, blaming all the problems including the marriage on me which of course wasn't true, he further held the opinion that depression was just an excuse and I had better buckle down. I at this point was falling further and further into the pit.
In hindsight I can tell you dear reader that depression is insidious, like a poison gas that sneaks up on you and then kills you over time in ways you don't even realize. It slowly changes your thought processes, attacking your judgment making what is illogical, logical, what is wrong seems right, what is ridiculous becomes reasonable and eventually it makes whatever takes the pain away the thing you need more than anything else in your life. I would like to say this is an over dramatic take on depression but unfortunately it probably isn't strong enough to get the message across.
To set the scene, while I was battling the law society in an attempt to clear my name at least from the things I had not done and limit the penalty to what I had done or failed to do, I was still looking after my children two to three weeks a month (to this day Connor does not know he is not biologically mine), I was still paying the full child support although my income was at best nominal, and I was dealing with or attempting to deal with the ongoing damage to my reputation. Most people seem to think that lawyers, like the law society are they to help each other or at the very least stick together. This unfortunately is not the case, when this kind of trouble hits a lawyer two things generally happen, one you are ostracized as if the trouble with the law society is contagious, like some sort of plague, the other is you are attacked or taken advantage of, quite frankly when the blood is in the water the sharks circle and anyone that can, will take advantage, from the flaky client trying to find away to get money back, to the colleague you had lunch with for years trying to get one over. I know this is a generalization and to be honest there were some very notable exceptions including some local lawyers that stood up for me both at the time and later, however there were many more that either came at me when I was down or crossed the street when they saw me coming.
I was essentially alone and all the while there was a mantra playing over and over in my head, "if this doesn't stop I am going to die", the scary part was that every now and then it changed to" if I die this will stop".
The question now is how did I deal with this, did I go to the doctor, occasionally, did I accept his treatment, not really, did I crawl under my bed and hide, no, actually I did the opposite, all in the somewhat misguided attempt to portray that everything was fine, that I was ok and that I was a whole person. Thus like any responsible professional adult, I embarked on a course of partying and debauchery almost unheard of in that small community. It honestly seemed like a logical thing to do at the time to demonstrate that I was alright. The problem was that to do it I hung out with every low life in town, all those people that I had successfully defended in the past were now my friends, or I thought they were as I sunk deeper and deeper into the pit.
I partied, and partied, and to put it bluntly slept my way through every woman I could, single or married, 20 to 40, drunk or sober, anything to distract me from the pain of being me. Not right I know, not even decent but it happened, all the while the mantra pounding in my head, "if this doesn't stop I will die". Now dear reader as whatever opinion of me you have had has now undoubtedly dropped lower, I must tell you it gets worse.
I mentioned earlier in my teens that I was never into drugs over the years I had tried them and maintained my opinion that they were a waste of time, however, during this period of time I tried cocaine, and I liked it and the people I was now hanging out with had it and since I was the star, it was easy to get and more importantly it made the pain go away and that was essentially the focus of my life.
I keep referring to pain in terms of depression and this is hard to explain. Its not like a cut or a break, or a migraine, its is a constant agonizing ache in your soul, everything hurts, you do not want to get up, you don't want to go to bed, you don't want to think, you don't want to eat, (I lost 40 pounds during this period), you just want it to stop!
So there I was, fighting the law society, looking after my kids (I was home and good when I had the kids, perhaps my only redeeming behaviour), screwing my way through the female population, partying and taking coke like a rock star on a road trip all supposedly in support of my intention to show people that everything was alright with me.
And then the mantra changed and all I heard all the time, day in and day out, was "if I die this will stop"
I have always thought that suicide was one of the dumbest most illogical things anyone could do. I have known people that commited suicide, even a local lawyer I knew commited suicide, I never understood it untill I went through this depression.
As I have said depression is insidious, it changes the way you think making the unreasonable, right, and more than that it makes the unacceptable not only acceptable but necessary, not only for your own good but for everyone elses. Its funny once you decide to commit suicide life becomes very simple thats why I don't think its ever a spur of the moment decision, its something you decide and prepare for slowly and methodically. So as a point of warnng if you know someone that is depressed and they suddenly become calm and almost happy that is the time to worry and to act whether you are right or wrong, because to be right and do nothing is fatal.
I had decided, it was a logical, reasonable and financially sound decision, good for my kids, my parents and me. I know this seems strange but I remember giving this a great deal of thought, carefully considering all the factors. My kids would be better off without a failure as a father, my insurance would look after thier future and pay back my parents, it all made sense. Of course it did to someone with his head so far up his butt he couldn't see daylight, but nevertheless the decision was made and I set about getting ready.
I confirmed the suicide riders on my insurance policies had lapsed, made the appropriate changes to beneficiaries, and re-drafted my will, all I had to do was figure out a way to do it that wouldn't hurt too much and so I wouldn't be found by my kids. I dismissed guns, I didn't have drugs that would do it, hanging didn't appeal to me, so for some reason I decided on electricution, I would get drunk, sit in the hot tub and pull the TV in with me. I know dumb, but that was the plan and you know by now how committed to plans I can be.
Finally the night came, the kids would not be back for two weeks, I arranged for a friend that I thought could take it to come and see me the next day and I set about getting ready. Then my ex mother in law called and I spent the next twenty minutes trying to get her off the phone which I finally did, only to have the police at my door 5 minutes later because she thought something was up and I had a gun in the house. At the time a major pain in the butt but in hindsight she saved my life. The police came in, confescated my hunting rifle, found a bit of paper with some coke on it and arrested me.
By this time Sisyphus had just given up and was sitting on the boulder drooling.
I was taken to the police station and charged with possession despite the fact that it was only a trace amount, funny I knew that that thier case would be weak if not unsupportable, for all the good at did me at the time. I was released and the next day taken and checked into the hospital by a friend and immediately sedated, don't remember much for about three days untill I woke up to see my father standing at the end of my bed, at that point death still seemed like a good idea.
