NON-FICTION — AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Chapter Twelve — Discovering a Passion For Psychology

Kintsugi: Making, Breaking, and Putting Pieces Back Together Again

The distance that had grown between us while I was in Montreal during the summer of 1987, didn’t fully disappear when I returned. However, we both shrugged it off as we again immersed ourselves into another school year and the raising of our three children.

Besides the usual activities, we had agreed to lead a European trip for the senior French students during the Easter break. M had agreed to be the female chaperone for the trip even knowing it would mean being away from the children for ten days. I had hoped that somehow the trip through France, Italy, and Switzerland would rekindle the magic in our marriage.

The time until the departure for France in April 1988 went by quickly with all the work of trying to reformat teaching instruction to fit with the new methods of teaching a second language. Once the year was underway, I began having visitors come to the classroom to observe these new methods.

My professional status grew stronger both inside and outside of the school. With the preparations for the France trip, as well as the ordinary everyday stuff of living in a small town on the Canadian prairies, I found it necessary to cut back on sleep time.

In the background behind the scenes of this even busier life, I had begun to have nightmares. Cracks were also beginning to appear in my public persona. I was becoming more unsure of myself and was deferring more and more to M’s choices in daily decision-making. And with this pulling back of my responsibility to the family, M’s anger with me simmered.

The trip to Europe went well, as we guided twenty-five students through France, then Italy, and then into Switzerland. Late one evening in Nice, while the students were doing their own thing, we went down to the Mediterranean Sea to walk along the shore.

With the warmth of the evening air and seeing a quiet and secluded corner, I decided to skinny-dip. It was an impulsive choice. The water was cold making the adventure a quick in-and-out experience. Skinny-dipping gave me a shot of adrenalin.

M smiled in relief, seeing the joy in my eyes. This was the Bob she remembered, this smiling man standing before her with a grin on his face.

Back home in Canada, with the trip completed and with other extra-curricular activities lessening in intensity, I began once again, to slip into a quiet depression. My father had died not long after our return from France, in May.

I knew something was wrong with himself, but I didn’t know what it was. I felt numb with the news of his death. I told M I didn’t have to go, nor did I want to go to the funeral. I wrote the depression off as part of the natural grieving process, even though I had no feelings whatsoever in relation to his death. What I did feel was a hole within myself that needed filling.

Falling into another depression had left me without much desire, with less energy, and without a sense of purpose. Being a husband and father wasn’t enough, especially when I believed that I was failing as a husband and as a father.

Because of the depression, I never got around to planning a second trip to France for the spring of 1990. Depression had robbed me of the energy needed for planning.

I had embarked on a new series of university classes believing they would fill the holes within me, believing I just needed to be busy. The problem was it didn’t really take much energy to do the classes. I was consistently the oldest in all the classes. With the ability to read and retain information without much effort, I did well even though I wasn’t giving the courses the attention they deserved.

Repressed libido, vital energy life force, needs to go somewhere. It wasn’t going into my teaching which had shifted into an automatic-pilot mode. My efforts were nothing but repeated scripts, rather than mindful activity based on the students and their needs.

It wasn’t going into community activities, as I was withdrawing into a more passive presence within those activities. And, it wasn’t going into our marriage, which suffered because of my lack of libido.

The nightmares and night storms continued. And when daylight finally came each day, neither of us talked about those night storms. We both sucked in our wounds and braved our way through the daytime hours as co-conspirators, united in facing the outer world. No one would ever know or guess that all wasn’t well in our home.

Life in the small prairie town continued to unfold with an outward normality for us. Our children were growing older, leading active lives, both in school and out of school. M had become busy with her career in the emergency response field as the manager of the ambulance service and with the teaching of First Aid and CPR.

With a change in my studies which now focused on psychology, I regained some balance in my life. In had rediscovered my passion for psychology and philosophy during one course at the university which focused on the various methods and schools of psychotherapy.

Within that class, I experienced dream work under the tutelage of the professor who was explaining the role of dreams in working with counselling clients. Following the encouragement of the professor, I agreed to lead the class of young adults in a group session using a Gestalt approach to dreamwork.

Before the agreed upon time for the dream session, I broadened my research to see what other approaches existed for working with dreams. It was then when I discovered the work of Carl Jung and his approach to dream work that went significantly deeper than the Gestalt method we had been studying in class.

I instantly knew I had struck a gold mine. With the research done, I led the group, including the professor, using a dream offered by one of the students. Feeling flushed with success following the class, I returned to the library and signed out a few books written by C.G. Jung. It was then when I began to dream of becoming a Jungian analyst.

Previously

I want to thank the following people for reading this story:

Brian Lageose, Robert, Dennis Koluris • M.Sc., Bill Harris, Mariana Busarova, Alberto Ocando, Chase Dalton, Mr. Plan ₿, Harshil Mevasa, Author, D. Denise Dianaty, Loicrees, and Buddhi Ruparathna