Chapter Twenty Seven:
Vancouver 2012: Into the Frey
In March 2012, I left for Canada, ahead of Sonoko and our two children, Shinzo and Sasha. In the years leading up to the move, I continued teaching, and I also tried, sometimes frantically, to procure employment so that there would be no need to find work when I arrived in Canada. It was futile, though, because the job postings in the ads that I browsed needed to be filled long before I would be arriving in Canada. Still, I scoured the Vancouver Craigslist and kijiji job postings on the internet, making email and telephone inquiries from Japan. I was so anxious, wondering where I was going to work…, because I was obsessed with external outcomes (and happiness) and similarly obsessed with proactivity- (in order to be “effective” and in turn, “successful”)– and that was my attempt at being proactive….
Now let’s just pause for a moment and look closely at what was actually happening in my mind during the months before I left Japan. I had been doing ERP, the best way I could (while not hiring someone, and you should know that the narrative that I read was to the tune that the goal of all therapy is for the patient to become his own therapist). I had been trying to do the opposite of what my OCD was asking of me. This was an idea I had, again, read about on the internet, in many articles written by a great many different people. I tried to simply “ignore the irrational thoughts and obsessions,” and I tried to “purposely take risks.” That was taking its toll on me because instead of habituating to the anxiety, as I read was supposed to happen, I was really actually struggling with the anxiety. For example, I took a risk in 2007, and still in 2010, I was worrying about potential disastrous outcomes from that decision. There was that, plus the continuing “tab” of obsessions that was being “run up.” I remember going to the farm for a 10 day “holiday” in 2010. I went in March, from Japan, with the intention of finding some relaxation or gaining some insights into my “out of control” mind. I flew to Vancouver and then to Saskatoon. Then, I borrowed my aunt’s vehicle and went to visit my Grandma Hislop at Hungry Hill for about 7 days. What a difficult time that was! I didn’t tell people, but I was obsessing all day, every day, about “irrational” things.
Even though I lived in Japan, my mind was often in Canada, worrying about things that were extremely unlikely, but worrying all the same. There was really no such thing as rest, except when I was in a deep and dreamless sleep. I thought about death a lot. Suicide was a topic that was often flickering across my mind, and with those ideations I felt intense and all consuming grief and sadness, and it all had to be hidden from the view of anybody I had any interaction with, and the very act of hiding it was a full time job in and of itself.
Looking back, there were a few key factors at play in my life that were making my life the nightmare that it was. The first was my world view that there was no higher power that was in control of life, that it was all randomness and all outcomes were achieved by the individual. The second were the ideas that followed from my worldview, namely that I had in my mind that I had to be “Happy ” and achieve certain things to be “successful.” This translated into me putting pressure on myself to achieve results, including pressure to never have the obsessions and compulsions in the first place…. The third thing was OCD itself, the real thing (real illness, an anxiety disorder), the fourth thing was frustration that I wasn’t achieving the outcomes that my mind had decided were necessary for “happiness.” With those things in my mind, my life spiraled out of control. All that, plus my adoption of the modern theory that mental discomfort was something that could end up really helping me. That is a fundamental mistake that caused me a great deal of misery and suffering, and it was the ideology that is expressly communicated in many modern books and articles by licensed medical doctors and PH D holders. I trusted them, and millions of people do trust them everyday, but in fairness to myself, I was raised to believe that doctors are kind of like “Gods among men” and I took their words to be the “gospel.” I could write another book solely on the amount of frustration and the types of frustrations I have had with doctors,.... I no longer trust them unquestioningly or take their words to be any more accurate than any other mortal. I am now more than healthily skeptical of doctors and for that matter, “experts,” in general. Yet, although the tactics (proposed by doctors and experts) that I employed to “conquer” OCD were unsuccessful, it was precisely through that very long and frustrating process of reading articles and books and trying to do what was recommended, that I began and was able to have the realization that it (the doctors and medical community’s ways) weren’t working, and that, in turn, finally, gave way to the exploration of the spiritual realm…. The spiritual realm, when I finally gave it an honest effort, began to give me peace and much needed relaxation, and, I made the discovery that I was already a bearer of virtues and strengths, only, for the longest time I had been discounting them, and even ashamed of them.
It may not be obvious here so I will also mention that the topic of relaxation is extremely germain to this entire story. To put it quite simply, for a very long time, I found it very difficult to simply relax, in fact, I couldn’t relax, ever,.... To say that relaxation techniques are not helpful or relevant in the treatment of OCD is, in my opinion, ludicrous. If I feel anxious, then, I am tense, fearful, and preoccupied, and thinking about something,.... If I am relaxed, and loose, not fearful, and not preoccupied with anything, as can happen during meditation or when doing certain activities, then fear and anxiety are absent, and so is OCD. Therefore it is my strongest contention that relaxation techniques, and meditation and breathing exercises as well as yoga and any and all types of exercise ideas are all valid measures to take against OCD. It must be emphasized here that for years I discounted all of the above measures because of the content of some articles that I read, that were written by PHD graduates who are also authors and clinicians who make their incomes by “treating” people with OCD,.... It took me a long time to come to my realizations regarding all of this,.... I hope it doesn’t take you as long,.... In the end you must come to understand that qualifications and titles such as Doctor or PHD are often fundamentally meaningless,....
As my family and I got set to leave Japan, our strategy was for me to go one month earlier, find a monthly rental, in the Greater Vancouver area and then for Sonoko, Sasha, and Shinzo to come and join me one month later. I left for Vancouver on March 20th, 2012. I had been waiting for that day, with eager anticipation for nearly 3 years.
When I arrived in Vancouver, my auntie and uncle came to pick me up at the airport. They had a condominium in Vancouver, and they had offered me a place to stay while I looked for a place of my own.
April 20th came, and Sonoko and the kids arrived. I picked them up at the airport and we drove to our apartment. It was in a high rise in Coquitlam. The lady who rented it to me was a person who didn’t really care about the rules. I realized she was running a slightly illegal rental business, and the apartment was full of cat hair and pet hair, even though she gave me her assurance that it was a “pet free” place. I had to rent a special vacuum to clean it before the kids arrived. Finally they arrived. It was a happy day. We went to the apartment and began to settle in. Underneath my calm, I was filled with trepidation. I had to find a job and do whatever was necessary to survive,..., I guess that trepidation was part of the plan.
I had been talking to a cousin of my father’s who worked for Canadian National Railway and he had given me some advice for applying for jobs within CN. I had applied for one in New Westminster. The job interview required that I go to a hotel, and then write an exam in a classroom setting. The exam was a timed exam on switching rail cars. I did the exam and I was baffled by it. I was quite certain I had failed. My fears were confirmed when the moderator asked me and a handful of other people to grab our belongings and to leave, as we had been eliminated from the applicant pool because our scores were the lowest.
I got home and I wept in shock and frustration. Right in front of my family, I wept. I was so upset. I had really counted on that job with CN. My dad and my grandpa had both worked there! It didn’t matter though…. I pulled myself together. I would work hard! I didn’t care what the wage was to start, I would establish my worth to somebody and I would get a decent job. No matter what it took.
I started looking through the yellow pages for work. I called up a company out of the yellow pages, it was a tree removal service. I talked to the owner. I told him that I wanted to be a tree faller. The tree faller was the job I wanted because it required skills and it was outdoors, and I thought that might get me closer to the wilderness so I could do more hunting, eventually, and then, my chances of being happier would be increased. I was hired as a laborer but promised that I would be gradually trained as a faller. I started my job.
When I went to my new job, they were paying me 14$ an hour and I worked as hard as I possibly could, everyday, all day long. I worked for a while,..., dragging limbs and sections of cut trees to the wood chipper and throwing them in. After a few weeks I had the realization that the company had no intentions of training me to be a faller, and I decided to move on to something better as soon as I could.
I spotted my next opportunity one day while walking in Vancouver, near Kitsilano, I saw a lady standing next to a van and written on the van was something about landscaping. I stopped and inquired with the lady about employment. She told me to call the owner and she scribbled his name and number down on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I was intrigued, the lady seemed amicable, and she said that she liked the work quite well.
Later that day I called the owner, and the next day we met for an interview. The owner told me he had a lot of work in the Greater Vancouver area, and he hired me on the spot. My wage was to be 16$ an hour, but there was a great opportunity here, he assured me, as he mentioned he was looking to sell his company and perhaps I would be the buyer? I quit the first job and began the landscaping job. Again I worked as hard as I could.
Initially, everything went fine. Soon, however, trouble began when one of the workers saw me lighting a cigarette before official break. It was pouring rain and I wanted to have a smoke while I continued to work in the downpour. The lead hand saw me light up. The lead hand was upset with my choice, and he went straight to the owner who happened to come to check on how things were going that very morning at the first coffee break. The lead hand was a Colombian fellow and his English was poor. His wife also worked alongside him on the crew. She was like the lead hand’s lead hand. He expressed his dissatisfaction with my actions to the owner that very day, during the morning break and then he misunderstood something I said to the owner, because his English was poor, and then he became very upset with me.
Later that evening I got a call from the owner. He was going to have to let me go….
I saw what was happening. I wasn’t liked by the group, and they had all the clout with the owner, and they wanted me gone, so I was gone. Now I had to find a new job.
By this time my family and I had found a more permanent accommodation in Vancouver in a neighborhood called Kerrisdale, near UBC. We had moved into our condominium and our kids had been registered into school. I was extremely worried that I didn’t have a job, so I spent my days thinking about how to get one. Naturally I wanted to get a good job, that is, a job that paid well but I refused to seek out work as a salesman or to be a teacher of any kind, because they were not part of my ERP strategy, they were too familiar. I wanted something rough and tough and foreign, because I was trying to change myself. I was determined to work in a hard job, so I could become accustomed to anxiety, and no longer suffer from OCD.
I thought about being a heavy equipment operator. That was rough man’s work, and it was full of responsibilities. If I could do something that caused me to worry more,... I hoped that would really help me in the long run. But how would I ever get that job?
I phoned several companies,.... I went to one morning meeting at a heavy equipment company and then talked to the hiring manager. He tried to dissuade me from trying to become a swamper– swamper was the title that you gave a labourer who worked alongside an excavator, helping the operator do various tasks. It was dangerous and it was very dirty. In the end he told me he’d call me, but he never did.
I saw an ad in the yellow pages for an excavation and shoring company. I didn’t even know what that was. I gave them a call- and a pleasant lady with a charming British accent answered the phone,... “Black Diamond shoring,” she said, politely. I explained to her my situation and that I was a hard worker and that I was desperate for work. She told me that her husband was getting ready to start a job and that he was looking for a helper, but she warned me that it was very dirty work. The next day I received a call from him. He offered me a job for 20$ an hour,..., I accepted his job gratefully and hung up the phone, relieved, but unsure of what lay ahead of me the next day. I gathered up my work clothes and prepared myself for my new job.
During the days of shoring, I was a labourer for the most part, but I had to anticipate what needed to be done and then do it, without being told. I did it. I worked as a driller’s helper sometimes, carrying heavy drill steels (bits) that were 6-8 ft long and weighed about 100 lbs each. I carried them on my shoulder and climbed up steep hills and over all kinds of uneven ground. I lifted up heavy and awkward anchors and guided them into grout filled holes, or carried big sheets of steel mesh that we would fasten a certain way against the cut out banks of earth that were being excavated, we would apply the mesh around the anchors, with rebar and tie wire, anchors that we had installed into holes that we drilled on a downward angle into the bank and then inserted anchors into, and then grouted into place. After we had installed the anchors we would fasten steel mesh properly around the entire “lift” and then once that was done, a shotcrete truck would come and we would “shoot” the entire lift with shotcrete. Shotcrete is like concrete but it is pumped out of a hose with a nozzle on the end at high pressure and the hose is extremely heavy and potentially very dangerous. Shotcrete is about 20 times harder than concrete. This whole process was done to “shore up” the excavation, adding strength and structural integrity to the walls. The excavations that we were working on were sometimes very deep, and we shot the shotcrete every time we excavated a new 6ft. I was making about 20 dollars an hour and I thought that if I could learn the trade, and advance I could possibly make enough money to support my family in the city of Vancouver, and that would maybe mean I would be successful. I wasn’t being reasonable.
I really wasn’t thinking things through or being realistic. Instead I was being pig- headed, and stubborn because that is what I believed was the wisest at the time. How could I ever achieve my goal of being successful if I didn’t persevere? How could I successfully complete my ERP therapy if I gave up on my plan? I had moved my family to Vancouver, and I, sick of my sickness, and angry at my family in Saskatchewan, felt the best course of action was to just keep working as hard as I could. I would show everyone I was tough enough to succeed in Vancouver and to beat OCD with my ERP therapy. It was sad, how I thought,...but I was just doing what I thought to be the wisest and most magnanimous thing I could. To work on my mental health! Still there was a war within my mind. I worked feverishly and sincerely, always early for my shifts, and paying close attention when chucking steel for the air-track drillers…It was nearly ridiculous. It was ridiculous, except I didn’t see it that way. I was scared of losing my job and not having work so I put on a front of being tough. I was in survival mode, but deep down I was still anxious. Still. My plan was to not be anxious. My plan was to be strong and to get used to the anxiety, and I hoped that the anxiety would wither away. But the plan wasn’t really working. That was the unfortunate and inconvenient truth and I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Instead, I just dove forward, and worked harder, determined to make my plan work.
I worked through the summer, and into the fall. The guys in the crew respected me because I could really “put out.” I hustled across the job site, sweat pouring down my temples and back and adrenaline pumping through my veins. I took big threaded drill steels on my shoulder, they were heavy and they cut into the flesh of my shoulder, and ran up steep inclines, making trip after trip after trip. It was bizarre how hard and fast paced I worked, but not everybody put the same amount of effort into it. I put my heart and soul into each and every moment. That is, until I got seriously injured. Then, one night in October of 2012 while working in the dark, the grout tube cracked as I was pulling it out of an anchor hole and a fine spray of cementitious grout shot directly into my right eye! I was in instant agony and I couldn’t see out of my right eye and I panicked and screamed out for help, because I thought I had maybe lost my eye. The grout man was right beside me and he had the water hose and he handed it to me, and I began to flood my eye with clean water,.... Cementitious grout is a highly corrosive product that causes cancer if inhaled in its powdered form, and I now had it in my eye in its liquid form. The bag had all kinds of warnings written on it… I was very worried. I had every reason to be, it was very painful and very serious.
I was screaming in pain, shock, and anxiety, when the foreman walked up and shouted at me at the top of his lungs to “shut the Fu** up!” I stopped screaming, in shock, but I was still in terrible pain…! The foreman told me bluntly that I was overreacting and that they had all experienced what I was going through! (He was lying). I was in complete horror and total disbelief! I knew they had never experienced what I was going through! Don’t forget that I worked a lot with my dad all throughout my childhood, and I had my fair share of injuries way back then, stepping on rusty nails that penetrated the sole of my foot, burning my hands on a hot powerplant muffler, and getting bit by dogs, or stung by bees, or hit with baseball bats,... just to name a few,..., but this blew all of those right out of the water!
The foreman proceeded to try to make light of the situation,.... Instead of rushing me to the hospital he casually made jokes about my injury and the rest of the crew went along with it. He saw nothing urgent about the situation, but I was in agony, and my patience was wearing thin, but I listened and endured his stupidity with obedience born of fear of losing my job. Frightened of losing my eye, I asked him if we shouldn’t be calling the ambulance?” No!” He said, “No way!!” He blathered on idiotically, how, all ( he thought) I should do, was go home and take a warm bath! He was not grasping the gravity of my situation at all. He further established his detachedness with reality when he asked me if I would be able to drive my motorbike home? Was he crazy? I was losing my cool, but I stayed calm. I was actually in shock, because my eye seemed totally screwed. I didn’t want to lose my eye! The foreman begrudgingly offered to give me a ride home and after we all piled into the truck he lit up a joint and he began to drive me home, laughing and joking obnoxiously about the whole situation. I wanted to be a good worker and be part of his “crew,” so I kept quiet, but I was losing my patience by the second!
“Fu*K,..., Hislof!! (yes, he mispronounced my name too…) you live far away!!!!” He exclaimed, annoyedly, as he laughed and exhaled a large, strong-smelling plume of cannabis smoke. I tried to go along with it, and faked a faint grin …, he assured me I was taking all of this far too seriously, and he offered me the burning joint, but I refused…. He shrugged his shoulders and took another toke— then, once more as the smoke billowed out of his mouth he bemoaned the fact that my house was in the opposite direction of where he lived! What an inconvenience!
When I arrived home, my family was scared when they saw me! Unsure of what to do, I called 311, which was a number you could call for non-emergencies to get guidance from a city employee. An operator answered and I was not surprised when she advised me to get to the hospital as soon as possible. I called a taxi and off I went. I was rushed into an examining room and in short order I was told that my situation was very serious and that I was going to be in the hospital for several hours and that the treatment that I was going to recieve was going to be very painful!
What they told me was true. It was extremely painful. They tried to put a drip system under both of my eyelids but I could hardly stand the pain! I asked for some kind of anti-anxiety medication and they gave me Ativan and morphine, intravenously and that allowed me to relax enough to undergo the procedure. They got the irrigation system set up to flush my eyes. I would drop in and out of consciousness until About 4 o’clock in the morning, when the irrigation of the eyes was completed, and they carted me out into the hall to sleep off the drugs.
The next day, I woke up in the hallway of the hospital, on a bed. I sat there dumbfounded, trying to comprehend what had just happened,.... I didn’t go to work, but rather, made a telephone call to the company Safety Officer…. I explained what had happened. I hadn’t been wearing safety glasses, but just my normal everyday glasses…. My foreman had said nothing to Safety and had not called or texted me to ask if I was ok or anything. The safety officer drove over to see me, and he urged me to be careful with what I said about the incident…. That was a bad sign. When I returned to work a few days later, I was immediately shunned by the foreman and the crew for reaching out to the safety officer. He called me a “rat,” and asked me if “I liked cheese.” After all the effort I had made on his crew,.... I was hurt, disappointed, and intimidated, but I was also angered. That was what I got for working as hard as I did,...? I could have lost my eye but he didn’t care. I was scared of the foreman. He was on a different frequency than I was. I tried working on his crew again but he gave me the cold shoulder and made it very uncomfortable for me to work there. This is what you call being “run off site.” A Couple days later, I requested to be transferred to a new crew. It wasn’t as fun, there was no fellowship. It was just a job, and a bad one at that.
A few days later, I had lunch with an equipment operator and he said something to me that caused me to stop and think. We were talking while having lunch and there came a pause in the conversation and he looked at me and he asked with a puzzled look and tone in his voice, “What are you doing here man?” He looked at me questioningly, with a kind smile on his face….
“What do you mean,” I asked?
“Like, why don’t you get a trade? Like go up to Fort Mcmurray and get a trade?”
“Oh,...,” I paused,... “I don’t know?” I stammered,...
He told me what he meant, by “getting a trade,” and I thought about it after lunch and for the next few days. Getting a trade,.... I had been thinking about that.
A few days later I quit the shoring industry and called the union about going North. About a month later I got a call from the union rep. Did I want a job? “Yes,” I replied. Yes, I most certainly did….” I took a job at the airport as a labourer, and a few weeks later I was driving East from Vancouver, in a car I had bought for a thousand dollars, heading through the mountains and back toward my home on the prairies. I was going to the Town of Hardisty, Alberta, for my first job in the oil and gas sector. In many ways my life was going to change. I was going to make more money, and I would have work for the next few years….
Still, I doubled down. I would work harder than my co-workers and tell myself that the worst was going to happen. I was still on the program…. I would learn, in fact I was learning, the hard way, but it takes time…. It was precisely because I spent my time and effort asking the questions and running the race, that I was able to find the answer. Still things had to get worse before they would get better.