Chapter Seventeen:
Conflict
The Christmas season was near an end in 1999 and New Year’s eve rolled around. I was invited to another party at a friend's house in Saskatoon. I was excited,.... If I had to be going through these agonizing daily mental battles, any chance to change the scenery and go get drunk with other people, was a welcome change! Hopefully, I would be able to relax, and maybe meet a fantastic woman who would make wonderful, passionate, and copious love to me, healing me from my plight…! As unlikely as it was, I desperately hoped for it.
It’s important to note that at that time, I was still obsessing and performing compulsions, whether they were observable or taking place solely in my mind, all day long, every single day. I would awake, and begin to go over what it was that I was worrying about from the day before,....It was like having a tab, that you had to pay…. You kept getting new worries, and they automatically went on your tab! Except, when I would try to go on with my day, I would still sit and try to solve whatever mental question or worry that popped out at me from my tab. The topics were usually linked to being sure that no one could blame me for anything,.... But they ranged into the existential, ie) the existence of God or the concepts of fate, free will, and determinism, as well as the ideas of, as Aldous Huxley so memorably put it in his novel Brave New World, “Time, and Death, and God.”
So, my OCD was very demanding in its myriad forms and took up most of my mental bandwidth. Any party was a welcome diversion! I might have OCD at the party, but, better to obsess while drinking with others than obsessing while drinking alone. I went to the party.
The party was predictably uneventful, in that I didn’t meet the wonderful woman of my fantasies…. We ate magic mushrooms and smoked some weed. Of course, beer was the usual main course…. The party was significant, however, in that it was exceedingly terrifying. The mushrooms were the culprit. It was exactly the opposite experience that I had been hoping for. Alas, 1999, New Year’s Eve, was a complete bust. I sat and scanned through my thoughts and the statistics of my personal plight—. It is essential to this discussion to mention that as of this point in time, I was 23 years old, and I had never been to a doctor about any matter related to mental health. I kept thinking how silly it was that I hadn’t gone. I told myself I should go. My stomach and my bowel situation was still less than ideal,... and I was alarmed at the amounts of blood that I was passing in my stools. I grabbed another beer. The party died down, everyone got sleepy. I went home. Hopefully the year 2000 was going to be different.
As predicted, the year 2000 was not much different. I quit my job at a grocery store, after only 3 weeks…. I had been hired at a grocery chain to stock shelves on the night shift…. I couldn’t really work nights. After a couple of weeks on the job I decided I wouldn’t work nights. I found that job to be particularly hard, because it was the night shift and because the guys I worked with absolutely loathed their work. To them, Everything was bad,... all the time. They hated their lives, and they hated their jobs, and they spoke of it constantly, complaining the entire duration of each shift. I thought they were lucky because they hated their jobs but they didn’t feel like they were going to go insanely crazy and die of anxiety at any given second, but still, in any case, I decided to look for some other type of work. It was too depressing. It was actually fairly tough work. You had to work steadily and use two hands to stock the shelves! I was using one hand, one night, when at about 3 a.m., while I was half asleep, the boss came by and stopped near to where I stood working. He watched me for a minute or two and then he said in an annoyed and curt manner:
“Use two hands Jesse!” He startled me! I had no idea he had been watching me,....
I snapped to it. I guess he had a business to run….
After quitting, I was unemployed for at least a couple of weeks, which simply meant more stress, because everyone might be talking about me,... saying that I had not only dropped out of University, for the second time, but that I had also quit my job at the grocery store! I got stressed about that. What would people say? What would people think?
In late winter of the year 2000 my sister, Jennifer, suggested I apply at the Toyota dealership in Prince Albert, and I did. It was a good suggestion. I worked there until the fall of 2001. From the time I started at that job in March of 2000 until I quit in early December 2001, many factors would manifest that would set the stage for the unfolding events of the rest of my life. I didn't see that at the time. By working at Toyota I would meet all kinds of interesting people, learn about the sales process, and discover that I could learn about products and sell them,..., of course, Toyotas were especially significant to me because of the Japanese roots to the company. I had already been to Japan three times, and I spoke the language fairly well, and I thought to myself that I could possibly get a job with Toyota Canada at the time or possibly with Toyota Japan.
I started working at the Toyota Dealership in Prince Albert in about March 2000, and the Dealership was called Frank Dunn Toyota. Frank Dunn was the name of the man who owned the dealership, but my oldest sister, Kama, her husband, Peter, whom she had just married in August of 1999, was the sales manager there. Working there meant that I had to work with Peter, my brother in law, as my boss. I decided to try it.
In the initial days of the job at Frank Dunn Toyota, I was asked by Peter to take some material home with me on a car that was being offered for sale at that time called the “Echo,” and to study the material and learn the main points about the car. This meant a great deal of studying because the goal of the study was to be able to do a “walkaround” on the 2000 Echo. A walkaround was a type of presentation that you did by walking around the car and speaking about all of its various features and why each feature you mentioned was good. When doing a walk around, the object was to impress your audience and get them into a test drive and the way to do that was, like with any presentation, to, first of all, know your topic. So, I took the information on the Toyota Echo home with me, and I made a plan to memorize it. I used to sit down with a pen and a stack of blank papers and just write out each speaking point,...- again and again and again. I had done that all throughout junior high and high school. It took time and it took patience, but it wasn’t that difficult. It did take a lot of time and effort. Strangely, I was good at it. I imagined myself walking around the shiny little car, extolling its every virtue,..., with effortlessness and poise and eloquence,.... I sat and I wrote the points, and then I read them aloud, and then I rested for a few seconds, did a quick daydream, and then started writing again. I did that for about three full days. Slowly, I began to master and memorize the Echo.
The morning came, to go to the dealership, and perform my walkaround. There was another person scheduled to do a walkaround as well. I drove toward the dealership and the day was clear and cold, about minus 30 degrees celsius…. The exhaust from the natural gas heaters was going straight up from each chimney of each house in Prince Albert, and I noticed that as I drove my “1987 Chevette” to the dealership. I concentrated and reviewed the content of the walkaround as I drove to work,..., I was going to speak on the exterior, the mechanical, the safety features, the interior, and the warranty, and I was going to have a catchy opening and a powerful close that “brought it all home.” We all got ready for the walkarounds and were asked if there were any volunteers to go first,... “I’ll go” I volunteered.
I dove into my presentation and poured every ounce of effort I had into it! It went well. I got the job! I often did walkarounds while I worked at that dealership, and I was very fortunate that my brother in law had the wisdom to ask that of his employees. It allowed me to see that I could do it, if I tried, and in doing that, I was able to realize that I could memorize most anything, if I had the will to do so.
I began to sell cars, or I began to try. It wasn’t but a couple of days into my sales job when my grandpa and grandma Hislop arrived at the dealership and purchased a 2000 Toyota Camry. My brother in law did most of the work, but he gave me all of the commission. I sold 4 cars in my first month and then progressively more with each passing month. I didn’t always like what was happening at the dealership, and I wasn’t always happy, but for the most part things went well.
One night in April, a group of my brother-in-law's friends were going out for drinks and I was invited to join. We went to a few pubs and drank our fair share. I usually drank more than my fair share. One of my brother in law’s good friends was a very gifted athlete and a very intelligent guy and he generally did well at things. His name was Grenville Rickert. That night I was in a particularly foul mood as I got drunker and drunker, and, I was filled with anger as I listened to Grenville speak about a particular athletic event that he had entered the summer before, and done remarkably well at, and I, in my frustration with my mental circumstances and my frustration with myself, and in pure jealousy, I lashed out at him verbally. I wanted to hurt him, I was so mad, at him, and at myself, and at the world,... so I point blank declared to him that I didn’t think he was anything special, and that he annoyed me, and that I would beat his time in the previous year’s event, and that I would go in the event in four months’ time and that I would beat his time! I did that in front of my brother in law, whom I had only really known for a couple of years, and in doing so I had really stuck my neck out. I had thrown out a challenge for my boss (who was also my brother in law) and his best friend, all present to see, and I was of the mindset that my word was everything. In short, I had said I would beat him, so I, now, had to beat him, and I was actually telling myself that I had to beat him or else—-,.... I would look stupid, weak, etc. and I didn’t think I could endure that….So, the very next morning I began to train for the Frank Dunn Toyota Triathlon.
If I said it, I had to do it. I took everything way too seriously. Especially, the opinion of other people. That was part of OCD. Like I had an over-vigilant approach to integrity- it was integrity on steroids. If you said it you had to do it. There was some kind of neurological divergence at play there.
The Frank Dunn Toyota Triathlon was and is a triathlon that is an annual event held up in the town of Wakesieu in the Prince Albert National Park. The triathlon consisted of a 1.5km swim, a 62km bike, and a 13 km run. Some people did all three events by themselves, and some entered as a team of three people, with each person doing one of the three events. I was doing all three events by myself, just as Grenville had done. I began training in April and the event was on August 13th. I forced myself to train and I just accepted the pain of running, swimming, and biking, on top of everything else. I didn’t know much about diet and nutrition. I didn't feel like learning. I drank beer and rye-whiskey and wine (like a fish), after most of my workouts, and every single night, and I drank especially heavily on Saturday nights. In the end, race day came, and I went and completed it. My time was 3 hours 12 minutes and 30 seconds. I was the fastest man in Prince Albert, but I had fallen short of beating “my rival'' by nearly 15 minutes,... I wasn’t happy with my results, in some ways, but in other ways, I felt like I had done quite well. I was still upset with my brother-in law’s friend Gren. I was sore about my loss, and I took it very personally. Losing face was extremely difficult for me, I always imagined that people were thinking the worst of me. I wanted, very badly, to just be able to relax and be free of guilt, anxiety, and shame.
On the other hand, training for the Triathlon had been a good learning experience. Even though I didn’t have a coach, or have much of a will to diet and even though I drank heavily, I still finished in a respectable position. I even forgot to get my bike tires pumped up before the race, and I had a very hard time getting my wetsuit off. All of this made me wonder how fast I could have been if I had been focused on the triathlon in full, like I had focused on deer hunting…. How fast would I have been then? It was an interesting question. Why did I even care?
I carried my grudge with Peter’s friend, Grenville. Months went by and I was going to University and selling cars part time. One afternoon, in about May 2001, while driving back to Prince Albert, from Saskatoon, I got a call from my sister Jennifer. “Gren died.” she said.
I was near the town of Duck Lake and I pulled my vehicle over,.... “
What?!” I asked her, incredulously.
“Gren died in a plane crash,...” she said. “He was flying a plane for his job, and it crashed,..., and he died.” I could barely comprehend what she was saying. This man, whom I was so upset with,..., with whom I felt such rivalry, and whom I felt this great conflict with, was dead? I sat there at the cemetery in Duck Lake on my way home from Saskatoon, with my cell phone in my hand and looked out the window. I was overwhelmed with mixed emotions and then guilt and anxiety. I had been so angry at him. Now a new dread arose within me as I thought to myself:
Maybe I had (somehow) caused his death….? Somehow,...? Was it possible?
I sat there and began to process the whole scenario and my OCD dove into the content. Was it my fault? How was I going to live with myself? Gren was dead, but I was worried for myself?! What was the matter with me? Why was it always about me? I hated it. I had to face my brother in law, Peter, now that his best friend was dead, and I had to face everyone and be the guy who had been mad at Gren and had been a sore loser, literally until he died. I had been angry at Grenville, but I had really been angry with myself and with my shortcomings and my mental illness. I had a problem, and I hated other people for that! Now, Gren was gone, and it was too late for me to say anything to him or to ever explain to him that it was me who was wrong, and it was me who had a very big problem. I had a problem,.... IT was a very private and a very embarrassing problem, but I took it out on others…. That was the reason why I had lashed out at him,.... I couldn’t tell him that. He was gone. I felt so sad….
There was a wake for Gren, and I went to it. I broke down in tears and I wept for Gren, and I also wept for myself. There I was, going through my life, full of burdens. During all the time, I continued having intrusive thoughts and performing compulsions. I didn’t tell anyone of my inner problems at the wake or at the funeral. Ideally I would have been solely focused on Gren’s life, and on his friends, and his and their loss, but I couldn’t help my minds’ various activities and it continued to frustrate me.
I had a few girlfriends during those times, which was a complicated issue. It was complicated because I had needs like anyone else, but I was tormented by my thoughts during most of the times I would be trying to socialize with any female. I had to be half-drunk to be half-comfortable with my girlfriends. I would wake up in the night at the house of a girlfriend and think some obsessive thoughts and feel the pangs of anxiety and I would watch the sleeping form of my girlfriend and think how silly it was to be with someone, so close to them in proximity, our bodies only inches apart, but yet feel so alone and isolated and afraid to confide in them. Though I tried to hide it, I was either drunk, hung over, or thinking about being drunk nearly all of the time. It was my survival method, but it wasn’t great for my sex life. Mental health was not something I felt I could talk about, with anyone.
Rewind back to the summer of 2000 during the triathlon preparation. I had been training for the event and I was noticing that I would very often feel that I had to have a bowel movement, while I was running. This was a problem. I started moving my training location out to the Little Red River Park, where there were many trails in the pines, so that I could carry toilet paper and could jog off the trail and go for a shit, no matter where I was. I was really worried about it. It was another problem for me to brood over. When I had a bowel movement back then, at that time, there was a lot of blood on the toilet paper and it actually came dripping out of my rectum after every bowel movement…. I was embarrassed, ashamed and very worried. Now what?! I thought.
Desperate for reassurance that I didn’t have cancer of the bowel, I went to the emergency department one afternoon at a clinic in Prince Albert. I was embarrassed, but I forced myself to go. When I got a chance to see the doctor I explained to him my situation. He gloved up and did an examination, and he told me that he thought it was only hemorrhoids and that it was normal.
(It wasn’t just hemorrhoids,...!)
The doctor should have asked me if I drank a lot of alcohol, and whether there was any incidence of Diarrhea,..., but he didn’t…. I felt that I had gone to the doctor for nothing! And I felt that the procedure of the doctor examining me was very invasive and uncomfortable and humiliating! In truth, I had ulcerative colitis at that time, and I would be plagued with it until I finally went to another doctor (another doctor!) in Japan in 2004, got a colonoscopy, and got treatment for Ulcerative colitis. Colitis just made life a lot more uncomfortable. I had done the triathlon with colitis, sold cars with it,and lived my life with it, probably since I first noticed symptoms in the winter of 1996. It was something that just made everything a lot harder….
One last thing that was a part of my life that needs mentioning here, is my involvement in Shotgun shooting sports. I was involved in shooting sports in 2000 and 2001, and I really enjoyed shooting clay targets. I used to go to Thursday's trap shooting and then Sunday afternoon skeet shooting. These two events are quite different. Trap shooting is where you stand on a line behind a trap house (bunker) that is dug down into the ground, about 20 ft. (7m) away. You stand at the line on a concrete pad with your shotgun mounted in your shoulder and cheek on the butstock, ready to fire, and then you call “pull” and the trapper in the trap house releases a clay target and it goes flying out of the trap house, up into the air at an angle, away from you, and you try to shoot it. You can shoot twice. You get five turns, then the person next to you goes. There are about five stations that you shoot at in each round. So, 25 targets per round. It was fun!
The other event that I liked even more, was skeet shooting. Skeet shooting was another shotgun sport with flying clay targets, and with several stations to shoot from but the targets came from all directions,... and it was way better than trap. Two shots per target. 25 was a perfect score. I loved shooting sports, and I did pretty well in them, but I would overthink them and I would be nervous and I struggled to get a perfect score. I would get about 75-80%, or 19-20 on most of my games. That bothered me. I wanted perfection. I took my hunting very seriously, and I was struggling with my wing shooting in the field, that is, while hunting. I was missing a lot of shots, and I would get extremely upset when that happened. I was determined to learn about wing shooting and be a great shot. I had problems in my life, but I vowed to myself that I would not allow wing shooting to be one of those problems. I didn’t care so much about clay shooting, but I did care about going out hunting with an acquaintance and then having an easy chance at a bird, and then missing the shot. I could barely stand the humiliation that I would feel in that situation. I vowed to rid myself of that problem. I put that one on my tab too.
In 2001 I graduated from University with a three year degree in English. It had taken me seven years…. I had booked two weeks’ holidays to go out hunting in late fall. My plan was to go hunting ducks and geese. I went out hunting but I ended up really not enjoying myself at all. I left my gun in its case overnight one night after hunting and it was wet, and the next day, when I arrived at my hunting spot and pulled the shotgun from its case, I noticed rust forming! I panicked,... so much, that I decided to drive back into town, 1 hour, and clean my gun. I took apart the gun into its various components and I oiled and wiped it all down,..., I finished cleaning the gun, but I wasn’t finished feeling anxious and worried. The rust was gone, the reason for worry was gone, but I still felt terribly anxious and dreaded that I would never be able to calm down. This was how OCD was experienced by me. Anxiety, and a fear of anxiety never going away. This is OCD in its most potent form… The experiencing of terrible anxiety and dread and the effort to stop it now and in the future, and after eliminating the source of the worry, the worry still continues, because the worry is about the worry itself…. “Why did I get so anxious?” Because I have an illness. It was so very hard to accept that, and it was dreadful, beyond words,....