Today I took my camera into the shop to be sent away for repairs for the third time in two months. That isn’t to say that I’ve actually sent it away three times, but this was my third trip down to the store in an attempt to send it away. The first time when I heard it would take 6 to 8 weeks before I would get it back, I decided to keep it just a little longer because I really wanted to take photos with it while I was in Banff.

The second time I took it in, the lady behind the counter told me they couldn’t “look it up” on the computer and I would either need my original receipt or have to pay $50 to send it away. Yeah right! I promptly decided I would come back on another day with my receipt. What a hassle.

Today I took it in, realizing full well that this means I’ll be switching back to my little Kodak point-and-shoot camera for the next month and a half—an idea that does not please me as I’ve become quite addicted to my Nikon D70s.

The problem with the camera, and they tell me this kind of thing is quite rare, is that the aperture was somehow getting stuck after I would shoot a small number of photos, and then the next shot would be extremely under exposed and the display would flash the word ERROR in nice friendly letters. After a few seconds—sometimes as many as 30—the camera would return to normal pretending like nothing happened. At other times, it would just refuse to take anymore photos regardless of what I did until I hit the preview depth-of-field button clearing the aperture from its incorrect position.

Although the extra trips down to London Drugs were a little bit of a hassle, I’m glad I happened to be there today because, while I was standing there waiting for the guy to fill out some paperwork, who should I see but my ex-fiancée Janine and her husband, Jonas.

It was a pleasant, but short, reunion. She told me a few things about her life and I brought her up to date on what I’ve been doing over the last two or three years. It was too bad I didn’t have my camera working—it would have been nice to take their photo; they looked really nice together. Her husband appears like a fairly on-top-of-it kind of guy and it sounds like things are coming together nicely for her. It’s fantastic when you can have such a genuine and guilt-free conversation with someone for whom you once cared so much about but had, at one point anyway, lost the ability to communicate with due to the baggage of a relationship gone bad and the complications of a new girlfriend whom was quite jealous of the old. I am happy for Janine and pleased to have found out what her life is like now.

The whole experience got me thinking how things really have worked themselves out for the best—it was hard to see that just a little over 4 years ago when we broke up.

This bittersweet ride is almost over. I’ve had the time of my life here—filled with both good and bad experiences. I guess some lessons take a lifetime to learn; I’m definitely still learning.

I had a fantastic weekend. The May long weekend is one of those fickle beasts where anticipation is rarely meted out with actual reward, but I have to say I never would have imagined mine would be so fun.

My kid sister and her husband Glen invited me out to Buck Lake for some fun and adventure with their family. Glen’s brother Jason even picked me up halfway in Calgary so we’d each have someone to chat with on the way up and of course to save a little gas. What a fantastic family. I’m guessing the invitation was due, in no small part, to the fact that I’ve seen better days. Though I might have a thousand people read this website, when it comes to the real world I have been a little bit of a recluse lately. So again, this weekend was a lifesaver.

First thing when we arrived on Saturday morning the boys immediately started to play. It was one game after another, tossing the baseball, a little catch with the football, and then the competitions started. I bet you I can knock over the lawn chair from here, next time make it Ryker’s minuscule plastic chair. Of course the chair was no match for the pig skin.

“Yeah, it was weird, the wind knocked it over and the leg just broke right off”. The grandparents are apparently used to the their sons breaking Ryker’s stuff as Grandma says with a smile, “Oh, sure it did”.

It rained that night as Chris (Glen’s oldest brother) and I finished up the Texas Hold ‘em Poker match. I had a pretty big lead, but it was getting late so we went all in blind on one deal and I ended up losing everything. Still that game is extremely fun, and we weren’t playing for money. Seeing the rain pouring down on my little tent—though I’m sure it wouldn’t have been bad once i got in it—I opted to sleep on the floor of the fifth wheel. The next day Jason, Jock, and I took the Quads out through the fresh mud and had a spectacular time. Part of the fun is trying to go through the most impossible rutted up mud traps to see if you can make it. If you can’t, well then that’s what the winch is for and with a little help from the other guys you can pull yourself out of anything. It’s great!

That night the Oilers beat the (not so) Mighty Ducks and afterwards we took the boat out wakeboarding. I have never been wakeboarding in such perfect conditions. The water was like glass and as the sun set it left pink and purple streaks that glided down into the reflection of the lake. I wish I would have had my camera out that night because except for swallowing a few bugs, the mood was absolutely perfect! I even landed a few big jumps across the wake.

I got to spend the next morning playing with the little man, my nephew Ryker, at the park and got a few pictures of him there. It’s so fun to watch what he finds entertaining.

Back in Calgary that evening I met up with one of my old friends from Medicine Hat and we went to dinner together.

Things are really starting to line up for her. We started talking about when we were younger going to church together. We talked about what everyone else in the same church age-group was doing with their lives. We talked a little bit about what our Sunday School lessons were like and how even as a kid she realized that I was the only one in class asking the hitting questions and she could see the pain in my eyes when the responses I got weren’t very satisfying.

She also helped me realize something that night which might very well change my life. She pointed out that I’ve had quite a hard time letting things go, whether it be a misunderstanding from junior high or a break-up or whatever. She claimed (ever so kind that she is) that she thinks I’m a genius and on that same note that sometimes my great mind refuses to just forget about things. Obviously I’ve been aware of this my whole life, but something about the conversation just stuck and I began to finally realize that holding onto anger for things whether they happened 20 years ago or just last year was pretty ridiculous. What was I trying to accomplish anyway? It’s high time I let things go; it’s high time I learn not to cling onto things so much; and it is such a burden off my shoulders.

So I’m back home, reclusing as usual, but I feel good. I’ve done all my household chores, the lawn is mowed, the DVD I have been meaning to burn for a friend is done, and it’s got me thinking, why shouldn’t I be happy anyway? After all, every day is a gift, and some days are extra special gifts—like the ones where you go quadding and wakeboarding in the same day. I’m a lucky guy.

Reading Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker review on Charles Tilly’s new book “Why”, I had one of those eureka moments in tracing back and understanding the deterioration of an old relationship. I hope you’ll glean some insight as well.

Though I haven’t read it, Gladwell summarizes the book’s breakdown of the types of reason-giving we give into four categories: conventions (social formulae), stories (common sense narratives), codes (legal formulae) and technical accounts (specialized stories). Depending upon the type of reason we give, we run into trouble because of the unspoken message that is sent by our choice.

Imagine, he says, the following possible responses to one person’s knocking some books off the desk of another:

1. Sorry, buddy. I’m just plain awkward.
2. I’m sorry. I didn’t see your book.
3. Nuts! I did it again.
4. Why did you put that book there?
5. I told you to stack up your books neatly.

The lesson is not that the kind of person who uses reason No. 1 or No. 2 is polite and the kind of person who uses reason No. 4 or No. 5 is a jerk. The point is that any of us might use any of those five reasons depending on our relation to the person whose books we knocked over. Reason-giving, Tilly says, reflects, establishes, repairs, and negotiates relationships. The husband who uses a story to explain his unhappiness to his wife—“Ever since I got my new job, I feel like I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had time for us”—is attempting to salvage the relationship. But when he wants out of the marriage, he’ll say, “It’s not you—it’s me.” He switches to a convention. As his wife realizes, it’s not the content of what he has said that matters. It’s his shift from the kind of reason-giving that signals commitment to the kind that signals disengagement. Marriages thrive on stories. They die on conventions.

As I usually do with Gladwell’s writing, I highly recommend you check out this article, “HERE’S WHY“.

And I’m not taking it. I’m heading back to Lethbrige. Thanks so much to everyone I saw on this trip. It’s meant a lot to me.

(What do you know Anna-Maria, I guess seeing me wasn’t so bad, eh?).

For the heartbroken I’ve found a report that indicates your “psychological” pain is just as real as if were physical: Pain of Rejection (transcript).

So what we’re looking at. This activation this red block here is in the anterior cingulate cortex. And this is basically the same part of the brain that’s involved in physical pain. So when we feel distressed or when we feel bothered by some kind of physical pain, that’s the same activation that you’ll see.

So you’ve got a broken heart and clearly you already know it’s no different than physical pain, but what you may not know is what to do about it.

According to the transcript the brain also has a kind of safety valve that protects the brain against feeling too rejected:

We also found in out study that this area, the right ventral prefrontal cortex which is sort of right in over my eyebrow, we also found activation here. …/… and this area has typically been shown to be associated with regulating people’s distress …/… And so people who had more activity in this area actually reported feeling less badly after they were rejected.”

So perhaps this safety valve that is the key to mending a broken heart.

And I think this is part of the reason why people tend to write poetry or write in diaries more when they’re sad than when they’re happy, because there’s something about turning on this region of the brain that helps turn off the parts that produce the distress itself.

If you’re not a poet/artist/blogger, (or if you’ve been forbidden from writing on the subject) it also mentions that a drop of alcohol can help ease the pain.

A very good friend of mine once wrote me a beautiful note that had this quote from Violeta Parra. “Don’t cry when the sun is gone, because the tears won’t let you see the stars.”

I wish it was this easy: How to Mend a Broken Heart.

Tonight I played water polo for 2 hours. I’m beat and I’m going to bed.

After the games I had a good time chatting with Brock about my summer and about the breakup. Getting home I realize it stirred up a lot of emotions.

The psychologist Carl Jung introduced the term introvert to describe a person whose motives and actions are directed inward. Introverts tend to be preoccupied with their own thoughts and feelings and minimize their contact with other people.

I’m not sure it’s a black & white situation where either you are or are not an introvert, but I did enjoy reading Caring for Your Introvert. I can’t help but relate this back to why things didn’t work out, and maybe the article offers some clues about why I am the way I am.

Even if I am a bit of an introvert - I try to fight it. (Not very well considering it’s Friday night and I’m not at “Ice” or “The Corn Maze” - two places I was invited to go tonight.)

My day included:

• Cashing two cheques! (yay)
• Paying off my summer class tuition (boo)
• Browsing Chapters (meh - nothing to interesting)
• Shopping at the brand new Superstore that opened today and having my mom buy me food (yay)
• eating corn on the cob with my parents (yay)
• cleaning the house and spilling a bucket of mop water all over the floor (boo)
• Trying not to think about you know who (meh - breaking up still sucks)
• Blogging about my day (yay)

Well that’s about it. Hope you had a good Friday. Here is your moment of zen: Redneck montage.

The Scoville Family Reunion has a lot of us thinking about our grandparents. My grandpa died during heart surgery about 16 years ago and it’s been just under a year since the family was together for my Grandma’s funeral.

It was a sad time but many of us were able to take solace in the fact that my grandma’s death was a release from the years of suffering with alzheimer’s and what had become a joyless life.

I overheard my mom talking about how she’s still quite saddened by the loss and how someone at work suggested she take time to truly “grieve”. She said she didn’t really know what the person meant by grieving. Hadn’t she been grieving on and off this whole time?

I googled “stages of grief” and found this list:

1. Denial
2. Bargaining
3. Anger
4. Depression
5. Acceptance and Hope

I immediately related it to my own situation with Anna. Her decision to move away and date other people feels to me, for all intensive intents and purposes, just as great a loss as I could have had. I realized that I have been going through my own grieving process.

The first strong feeling I had when Anna announced to me that she wanted to call of the wedding was denial. In fact I was in so much denial that I couldn’t even ask her what was bothering her, I just flat out refused to believe that she was actually calling it off. I insisted that what she was feeling was just cold feet and it would pass. Looking back, I think she understood my reaction to indicate that I didn’t care about her concerns.

The next strong emotion I felt was anger. I was angry that Anna was ending what I thought was a great relationship. I was angry at her for not talking about her concerns, and most angry at her for telling me that she didn’t even want to see me again. I was furious that she had called off our engagement over the phone, and now that I was in Vancouver - where she was - she didn’t want to see me before I left for 7 weeks to Malaysia, and potentially didn’t want to ever see me again.

Next I felt a combination of confusion, hurt, and guilt. I wanted to do anything to have her back, and I tried to bargain with her. But my bargaining skills were horrible. I did meet with her in Vancouver, trying to show her that I cared and later I told her I would pay for her to come to Malaysia with me, and when that didn’t work I told her I would buy her gift upon gift. She told me not to waste my money, so I didn’t. I knew that I hadn’t done anything “wrong” per se, and so I asked her plain out to just give me another chance. I tried to take all the blame for what supposedly went wrong but all I accomplished was convincing myself that I did in fact do something wrong. I explained to her that I was trying to do everything she wanted, but her response was that trying wasn’t enough. She made some joke that if I thought it was, then perhaps I had watched too much Sesame Street as a kid. Ouch.

She did try and make me feel better by admitting that I shouldn’t feel guilty because she didn’t really have a reason for breaking up other than she didn’t feel in love with me anymore. She told me that she had only been kidding herself and that she had been “faking love” since before we were engaged. She hadn’t felt truly in love for months. She explained that she still thinks I am a great guy and she would even recommend to any of her friends to date me, but that for her, she just didn’t feel it was right.

Of course I have been sad since the beginning of the break-up. Being in Malaysia I tried to hide it as much as possible, but by the time I returned home, some serious depression set in. I had the job at the University to distract me through July, but the deep sadness returned when my job ended. In addition, Anna decided that in order for her to get over me, she would stop communicating with me. She has always maintained that she would like to remain friends with me (an idea that causes eyes to roll when people hear about it) but whether or not she intends to keep in touch with me in the future, the present void that’s left behind has been a tremendous downer.

All of this has left me bouncing around between these emotions. I have only recently begun to feel the more positive acceptance and hope. I am able to see that though I think her decision is a bad one for her - short-sighted and impulsive, it will work out for the best for me. I guess I should consider myself lucky.

I’m not sure if reading my story is going to help the average person better deal with grief, but writing about it helps me understand that the way I’m feeling is very normal and that I’m close to moving on completely. Just as the pain of death heals with time, so do the pangs of divorce (we weren’t married but for all intents and purposes…) and you know what they say: “The best way to get over someone, is to get under someone else.” It’s been four months. It’s high time I found someone new.

This past weekend Anna-Maria moved from Vancouver to Edmonton. I have been pretty upset—with the break-up and now with the idea that she is moving. I think it has to do with the fact that all this time after the break-up my plan was to move to Vancouver and I guess potentially to wait and see what would happen with our relationship. Maybe that’s why she moved? I don’t know. She said that finding an acting job in Vancouver was too hard. Frankly she needs to try harder—I wish I could have been there to help her out.

Sitting at home, I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate what I’ve been through in my life. How I’ve come to the place where I’m at now, where I’m going and what happened to make me feel like my future is sliding out from under me. It’s a frustrating feeling; it made me think about the last time my life went through such a drastic change.

I’ve made some mistakes; I’m doing what I can to fix my life. Mostly what I feel during the day is regret and I wonder what I should do now. I had a hard time getting through the night last night. I ended up waking up around 3:30 and staying awake until 11 this morning. I miss having that friend to talk to. I ate some breakfast at around 5:00 and finished my little painting project. I should paint the other trim in the rest of the house. At eleven I fell deeply asleep, taking a five-hour nap. This sleeping twice a day can’t be healthy—it feels terrible. I thought I was switching back to a normal Alberta sleeping pattern but when I’m sleeping more in the day than the night I guess that’s just not the case.

I’ve been thinking about Anna-Maria. I’ve been thinking about how much my life has changed for the better since that sunny day in June 2002 when we met outside the church building in Medicine Hat and how it’s changed since our break-up. But I love thinking about the day we met. It wasn’t long until we sat together with her brother, Jakob, at Moxies enjoying dinner. It was the first time we really talked. I felt compelled to relate to her a very personal story. The story of the last big change in my life—how I ended up being expelled from Salt Lake City one early morning on the 20th of May, 1999, but I never told her all of the details. So now I’ll relate it to you—like Paul Harvey might say, here is the rest of the story.

But before I tell you what happened that day, I think it’s important to move back in time almost a year earlier to May 27th, 1998. I apprehensively entered the doors at the Mission Training Centre in Provo, Utah. I was about to embark on a full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—known colloquially as the Mormon Church. I was apprehensive for many reasons. I had been feeling tremendous pressure to go on this mission and I didn’t feel deeply ready. I was heartsick for my girlfriend at the time and the strange rituals performed in the initiatory Temple ceremony that all new Missionaries are forced to take part in before they leave freaked me out. I am not going to go into details but suffice it to say it didn’t sit well with me. Though always coupled with a companion, that next year would leave me feeling more alone than I’d ever been in my life. I constantly missed my home, my family, even my cat—most of all I missed my girlfriend, Sharon. She was so proud of me for “serving the lord”.

I decided to buck up and became a hard working role model. From the start I studied relentlessly, I really felt what I was doing was right, I began to feel good about what I was doing, I believed that I belonged to the one and only true church and that I was about to go out and save the lost souls living in Salt Lake City. Though to be honest, I remember when I arrived at Salt Lake City, only a one-hour drive north of the training centre, I was still deeply troubled.

I met my Mission President, David A. Christensen. I felt more love from that man than anyone I’ve ever met. He kissed me on the cheek. I’m not sure if he read through to my concerns, if he was trying to freak me out, or just trying to show me how much he cared. I think he did all three at once. I think kissing me on the cheek had a lot to do with his exposure to the culture in Brazil (Previously he had served there both as a missionary and then later as a Mission President). I immediately felt that I would do anything for that man. Unfortunately I wouldn’t get the chance.

His three-year term was up and within a week a new Mission President arrived. James A. Stephens, a man that would make decisions that would forever change the way I reflect on my mission.

President Stephens was an awkward looking man. Although he was tall, his features seemed small on his face, small eyes, small ears, a particularly small chin. He was from North Carolina and despite the sunshine there, he was a sickly pale colour. With his strong southern accent, he had a way of speaking that just exactly failed to move me. I tried hard to love this man; I tried hard just to like him. We were told that the new Mission President would be a great orator and a spiritual giant. Even though I’d only met President Christensen a couple of times it was immediately clear that President Stephens was not a hundredth the man.

Nevertheless I pressed on. I knocked on doors I converted people to “the restored gospel of Jesus Christ”. I was good at it. We baptized seven people the first month! Getting people to commit to baptism came naturally to me and of course the companions I had were very dedicated as well.

At this point I should mention how mistreated I felt here by my companions. There were four of us living together. Two new missionaries and two Zone Leader companions. We weren’t allowed to buy bed sheets for the first week. I remember one instance when I wasn’t allowed to stay up past 10:30 to eat a steak that I had just cooked because even though my companion asked me to cook us each one for when we got home, it was past our bed time. Instead he told me I should eat it in the bathroom. As if God wouldn’t mind me staying up to eat it as long as I pretended to be taking a dump. I understood the point of the rules, we were only to do our shopping on Tuesdays to prevent wasting time loitering around the mall, so I would have to wait a week for bedding but I couldn’t understand how freezing my ass off each night or choosing between going hungry after skipping supper for a baptism and eating in the bathroom was what a mission was supposed to be about. It was an unhappy time.

Behind the scenes, the nightmares from my childhood had returned. I jolted awake to the sound of myself screaming. It was a premonition, someone was going to die. My companion slept silently beside me not noticing a thing. I didn’t mention it to anyone.

A month later, I’m not sure if it was the flu or if it was even related to the revelations I was having and was about to have. Whatever it was, I remember not feeling well and going to bed early that humid August night in Utah.

My companion and I approached a child of 9 years old. A kind of ironic twist given my aversion for baptizing kids of inactive Mormon parents. Have you been baptized I probed? Even in sleep I was on the Lord’s errand. Suddenly another missionary approached us. He was alone which was odd—missionaries always travel with at least one companion. We greeted each other and suddenly I recognized him, it was my old friend Kris from Medicine Hat. He asked if I had heard the news about Greg. No.

“Yeah, he shot himself”.

I began to sob, and to run. I found myself approaching my house in Medicine Hat from the rear. Greg lived across the street. He was my first “best friend” in the world. I was so upset. I yelled for my parents, for someone—anyone, but nobody was home. I huddled into a ball on bed of my childhood room, weeping.

Suddenly I was awake—after a few moments of figuring out where I was, I realized I was in Salt Lake City and Greg was dead. He wasn’t really dead, I assured myself, it was just a bad dream brought on by the flu. I wish that were the case.

What happened next, was probably the very worst handling of the situation you can imagine. For days my mother had been calling the mission, trying to get a hold of me to tell me the news. Instead of contacting me immediately, President Stephens looked at his day planner. He noticed that we were already scheduled to meet next Monday and decided it would be best to wait until that meeting (three days after the funeral) to tell me what happened. (As an aside, after this event I made sure my parents always had my phone number and could contact me directly though they never did).

In his mind he prepared a speech for me. Why People Commit Suicide, by James A. Stephens. (I think the A stands for Asshat). He never counted on me getting sick. I missed our appointment. Using no logic that I can understand he decided that since I was already ill, he wouldn’t add to my burden by telling me about my childhood best friend’s suicide.

Instead I found out the next day. Once a week missionaries were allowed to check their email. My mother had written 5 times. The latest email hung ominously on top of the list of emails with subjects like, “Please Call”, “Where Are You”, and “Important”. It was adorned with the simple subject of “Sad News”.

Devastated, I wandered back to the missionary apartment. What I wanted most in the world was to call home, to find out what happened, to make sense of the strange situation I was in, to consider the option of attending the funeral. At this point of course, though I didn’t know it, I had already been robbed of that option.

The story goes on and on, and if you can believe it, it gets worse. The other missionaries insisted that I not call home until first getting permission from our inspired leader President Stephens. I phoned up the mission office, and after holding for some time, “the man in charge” came onto the phone. I told him that my friend had died and that I wanted to call home. Somehow he didn’t hear my request. Instead he wanted to know how I knew about that, and I explained that my mom had written me an email—which this being our preparation day I had read. I was confused because it sounded like he knew about this. He couldn’t have known though—otherwise why didn’t he call? I put such thoughts out of my mind. “Oh, well…” he stumbled, “I want you to come down to the Mission Office right away.” I felt a wave of frustration cross over my body, I just wanted to call my parents, was it really that big a deal? I would ask myself that question a lot that day.

It took forever to get into the car. The other missionaries would drive me to the office but since they had been playing basketball they needed to shower and change first. It was frustrating, but the frustration was just beginning. When we finally arrived at the office, the President was in a meeting with another missionary. I waited another 45 minutes. I kept wondering why calling home was such a big deal?

Finally I entered the room. I was sad. President Stephens went into the speech he had prepared. “People commit suicide for a lot of reasons…”

I don’t remember if I was even listening. I looked at my watch. Another 45 minutes past. Is calling home really that big a deal? It must be. I finally interrupted his speech. I was scared to ask, but maybe if he knew how much it meant to me, he would change his mind. “Can I call my parents?”

His face went blank, and then after a pause he replied, “Oh, yes of course!”

What? Of course? That’s all I had to do? Just suggest that I might like to call my parents and “Oh, yes of course!?” If it was that easy then why have I been waiting all day to be able to do it? The surge of emotions twisted inside me. On the one hand, I was elated after the past few hours of agonizing to finally be able to call home but at the same time I was confused and horrified that the reason I hadn’t been able to before now, wasn’t because it was such a horrible thing, but because, even though I had asked him on the phone, it hadn’t occurred to him that that might be something I would like to do.

This next part might make you sick. My mission president, the man supposedly called of God to make decisions on my behalf, dialed the phone for me. Nobody was home. I held my contemptful thoughts that maybe if I had called earlier in the day I would have gotten in touch with them.

“Maybe they are at Greg’s house,” he suggested. The idea of calling the Nielson’s house so soon after his death frightened me, but I felt a strong desire to make contact with someone. I agreed and he dialed again. My parents weren’t there.

“Hello, brother Nielson, this is President James A. Stephens, I’ve got an Elder Milner in the room with me. A friend of his that grew up across the street from him just committed suicide the other day and he’s quite upset”.

I’m not making this up. My face went pale. I can only imagine what Greg’s dad was thinking. I hope he was thinking, I’m talking to the biggest dick in the whole world. He asked whether the Elder Milner in the room was Jeff or Gary. My brother and I were both serving concurrently, Gary in Argentina and myself in Salt Lake City.

He didn’t know my name. Even the Zone Leaders knew it. Not only had my mother been calling for a week, not only did I call him several hours ago to tell him I would be coming down there, but he had a list of photos and names of missionaries hanging on the wall right beside us, and he still didn’t know it. I would have thought with all of these things the least he could have done was bothered to learn my name. I can’t think of any good reason why he didn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if President Christensen still remembers me, and I only met him twice. I don’t know why this shocked me, by now I should have expected it.

I held a lot of resentment for James A. Stephens after that incident. Every encounter with him was much like the ones I’ve already described here. At one point he suggested I try “Prozac as a vacation from my worries”. He also suggested I try it only on a trial basis, “Just try it for a week or two”. He has no idea.

“Hey Stephens! Heroin is a vacation from your worries too, think I should try that?” I kept my very loud thoughts silent.

I was happier the farther away from the Mission home that I got. I dreaded the required monthly meetings with him. Of course there were other deaths back home, no one so close as Greg though, and the Happy Birthday audiotape from Sharon that also doubled as a Dear John added to my sadness. Things were rough on me. I went to the doctor about my depression.

He didn’t ask me why I was depressed. He instead gave me a prescription for Prozac. “The reason I would give you Prozac, over some other anti-depressant, is because they give the mission free samples”. Luckily I’m not an idiot. I requested a new doctor and eventually found myself in a room with the Church psychologist. Why the church employs a psychologist, I don’t really know, but there I was. I told him about Greg, and about Sharon, and about how I missed home. He was very understanding. He said what I was feeling was normal. NORMAL. and that whenever he meets with a new patient he has a policy of always meeting at least three times. But, he didn’t think we needed to meet again.

Which brings me back to the morning of May 20th, 1999. A wrap on the door signalled visitors. It was around 7:30am. I had been up for over an hour, studying, and currently I was ironing my white dress shirt. It was the Assistants to the President, Missionaries whose main job had turned from that of converting non-mormons from their heathen ways to that of helping other missionaries become better teachers or dealing with other problems. Today they would help me by telling me to pack my things. I was about to have an “emergency transfer”.

They didn’t tell me what the emergency was, or where I was getting transferred to. After all the BS I had been through, I decided to call home. I hated this kind of treatment and I wanted to discuss the possibility of throwing in the towel with my parents. As the phone rang, I thought about the fact that even though I wanted to go home, I didn’t really want to go home. I figured my parents would tell me to suffer through it and things would be okay. But oddly enough nobody was home.

I called my uncle. Not knowing it was still a secret, he spilled the beans. “Do you know where my parents are?” I asked. “They’re on their way to Calgary to pick you up, where are you?”

I was being sent home. Even though my intention in calling home was to discuss the possibility of leaving, I never actually wanted this. The decision had already been made; there was NOTHING that I could do. It didn’t matter—no amount of logic or reasoning could fix this problem.

A day or two previous to this I told another missionary that I was deeply depressed and that I had suicidal thoughts. Suicidal thoughts, not that I actually planned to commit suicide, just that I thought about it. I visualized it, going through the motions, but what I didn’t mention to that missionary and the message that failed to get to my Mission president was that after I thought about it, I thought how glad I was to be alive, how I didn’t actually want to be dead. I guess when I told him how I was feeling, I was just upset and being dramatic.

I could tell you about the trip in the car to see the Mission President one last time, the way it felt like a visit to Don Corleone’s summerhouse where, if this had actually been the mob he would have just shot me in the face because it was easier than dealing with me. Instead the bullet he used was an airplane ticket. Earlier I told him, I didn’t want to go back to the psychiatrist because I wasn’t really depressed, I wasn’t really suicidal, I was just down and as the doctor had told me before, my feelings were normal—I guess I didn’t want to give him a chance to change his mind. I did mention that I would go if I didn’t have any other choice. He said he would consult with the Church’s missionary department and get back to me. This was him “getting back to me?” Agreeing to go to the doctor now was too little, too late for me. I was going home.

I felt ashamed for being home a year early. I wanted to go back but I was so happy to see my family and besides, I convinced myself, I hated it in Salt Lake. I went to a doctor (who happened to be Mormon) in Medicine Hat and told him the whole story. He confirmed that what I was feeling was normal, and he confided in me that my inability to get along with the mission president was probably the reason I was there. Not getting along with him? It’s true that I didn’t like him, but the only thing he ever asked me to do that I didn’t comply with was to go see that doctor again. Sheesh. I used to think that if a missionary couldn’t get along with his mission president it was obviously because he was a bad missionary; someone that never followed the rules; someone who never tried to baptize people. I don’t feel that way anymore. I know from first hand experience that sometimes they don’t get along because the Mission President is an idiot.

I wasn’t the only one he sent home. In fact I heard rumours that he sent home more missionaries than any other mission president before him. It was his one-stop solution to problems he didn’t understand. I don’t know if the rumours are true, I do know that he sent a lot of missionaries home before me.

I was given the option to continue my mission in Calgary. As if—after all the propaganda I had been fed about how the location of your mission is inspired by God I couldn’t see how me being in Calgary really fit with some kind of greater purpose. Then when I refused they changed their minds and said I could go back to Salt Lake City, but I had to leave the day after tomorrow. I declined.

I was never told what the exact reasons for my being sent home were. I was given an honorable discharge and that was pretty much the last thing anyone in the church ever said to me about my mission.

I attended church regularly for the next three years. I still believed in it all despite the people, despite the absurd claims, despite the fact that attending three hours of service on Sunday was the most depressing part of my life. In the spring of 2002 I got engaged to a new convert of the church. She and I planned to get married in the Alberta Temple. Thank my lucky stars, it didn’t work out. I started to date Anna-Maria that Fall, and together we attended the University of Lethbridge. We both quit going to church at the same time, though we were both at the same place with regard to the church and would have made the same decision on our own.

As the weeks turned into months, I fell deeply in love with Anna-Maria. I loved the trips we went on together. Disneyland became a special favourite of ours. She was often away for long periods of time following her dream of being an actor. I missed her deeply, but I never let her know how much I thought about her while she was gone. She felt unappreciated.

Where am I today? Well after another failed engagement I’m feeling pretty lost. I’m confident in my decision to leave the church—that’s not what this post is about. But as an ex-mormon I still carry a lot of guilt about what mistakes that I make. I have a strong belief in the importance of family and I think it’s important to be a good person. For that I’m grateful, despite my negative feelings for the church, it’s made me who I am today.

The sorrow of losing Anna-Maria has made me think a lot about my early homecoming. It was the most depressed time of my life, and I suppose my new sadness is just resurrecting memories from another time of melancholy. There are some major differences though.

When I lost my mission I felt that some great and important experience had been stolen from my life, and I was extremely sad, but I was happy to be done. When I lost my first fiancé I felt the same. Now that I’ve lost Anna-Maria as a lover I still feel that tremendous loss but I don’t feel the same sense of relief that I felt with these other circumstances. I don’t feel like secretly I wanted this anyway. My greatest fear is to now lose her as a friend too. It’s hard to balance what she wants from me as a friend with what she no longer wants from a partner.

Anna-Maria is a great girl, someone I should have cherished more. If I had spent the kind of energy on her that I exerted on my mission I’m sure she would still be around. I tried to marry her but I never did enough to convince her how pure my love was. When I was engaged the first time to Janine, each day was filled with dread, when I was engaged to Anna-Maria, each day was exciting—I felt filled with love. I guess her feeling was more of the former. Still I know she’s a great woman and I have no choice but to respect her decision. She’s an extremely smart, witty, and talented girl. She’s also so amazingly beautiful. I have a photo of her on the iPod Photo that she gave me for Christmas; despite our break-up I love to show off her beauty to anyone that cares to see. She’s wonderful. I was lucky enough to see her in Vancouver when I returned home from Asia. She’s still the most stunning beauty that I know. I loved the feeling I had for a brief moment having my arms back around her, her smell, her soft skin, and her small frame pulled up against me. And presently as Def Leppard sings on my iTunes, “Here I go again on my own” I have to smile and hope that everything really will be ok.

I’m fighting it.

Throughout my life I’ve had a tendency to fall deeply in love. In the first grade I fell head over heels for a classmate named Melanie Meyers. She moved away and I never saw her again until the summer of 1988 (3 years later). It took me until half way through that school year to finally get over her. At that age 3 years was over a third of my life - crazy eh? I used to pray to God every night that Melanie would love me. Of course I don’t really pray anymore, but things haven’t changed much as I aged.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to feel sorry for myself and I don’t feel like the Lone Ranger here. I know that most people go through the same pains of a breakup that I’m going through, but after all of the heartbreaks I’ve been through, it just never seems to get any easier. This time I am trying something new. I’m trying very hard to “make the break-up work”. I know she wants to live her own life and where I normally would spend all my energy at forcing something that was not meant to work, this time I’m focusing all my attention at NOT trying to win her back. I find that for me, it’s an extremely hard thing to do.

I want to give her things. I want to call her everyday. I want to fly to Vancouver and see her. I’m trying hard not to do these things.

I don’t want to date anyone for awhile - or at least keep my dates to 1 or 2 per person and then move on; nothing serious for a bit.

After I broke up with my previous girlfriend, I started to date Anna-Maria almost immediately afterwards. This helped me get through the break-up but it built a weak foundation for our new relationship. I was too depressed to properly “woo” Anna-Maria and hence the great memories of our courtship are largely composed of my wallowing for the last girl. I feel horrible for doing that to Anna-Maria and I don’t want to do that to whomever I date next. I have to hand it to Anna for keeping me around through those early days.

I need to get my life in order. I need to work on becoming a better person. To that end I’m going to try and disconnect for a few days (baby steps here). I believe I spend way too much time on the computer and I blame that part of myself for neglecting Anna-Maria. So I’m just going to unplug it for 48 hours. It might not seem like much, but believe me it’ll be a good goal for me.