It starts here.

I guess I should start by introducing myself and explain why I’ve decided to publically chronicle one of potentially the most personal experiences of my life. My name is Melissa and I live on a big lovely island on the West Coast of Canada. I’ve lived here for almost 4 years and my life leading up to this has been, without going into all the nitty gritty details, pretty damn enriching, exciting, exhilarating, and eventful. From humble beginnings in a small town in Quebec, I’ve managed to travel the world, used to be a model, have a few degrees under my belt, have had some profound experiences that have truly shaped my mind and intentions in life….all things considered, I feel blessed and I’m a very content person.

I’m in the last year of my 20s, have a fantastic apartment that I share with my psychotic but loving fat Siamese cat, have a great job, am in a rad band, have a fantastic circle of friends, am in pretty flawless health despite the obvious vices of caffeine and booze…so what’s my deal? Oh poor me, I’m a former model with a Master’s degree and boo hoo I can’t find love? I’m not looking for sympathy here. I’m just hoping to share my story because I think it’s an important process and one that I’ve been avoiding for years. Maybe all my life!

Kind of a cliché, really. I have a twin brother and big sister, and two half-sisters. Yes, this means my parents are divorced – huge shocker these days. So, yes. I’ve known most of my life that I have, to use a very technical term: “daddy issues”. For as long as I can remember, I have been absolutely boy crazy. But my sexuality and really, my need to connect with someone in that intimate way, has led me to make bad decisions over the years and I’ve realized now that allowing passion to be my compass, I’ve been simply exhausting myself.

It’s hard to say when this hetox really started. Something switched in my mind and heart on New Years day. Since then I’ve definitely shifted in my sexual appetite and ability to throw myself into situations that aren’t healthy. That being said, I did continue to see E (tall dark handsome artist type, infinitely tortured and only into that big all-consuming love/lust – way too intense for real life) until at least March, so it wasn’t quite as revolutionary as it sounds.

Once I met, or re-met, SR (the Beckham lookalike surfer with the tattoos, mysterious and oh so manly, with eyes that cut into you like blue machetes), something else shifted. I was so overwhelmed by my attraction to him and the potential that I saw with us; something inside me was advising me to focus my energy on this one. But in retrospect, that sounds a bit like a broken record. I'm a hopeless romantic you see, and I often have those epiphanies where I believe I've met THE ONE. The trouble with SR was that I had been lusting after him somewhere in the dark corners of my heartloins since I met him a year prior, so a lot was built up in my expectations. We started seeing each other and it immediately got heavy and intense. Fast-forward to now…. He’s not ready for a relationship and has told me this. I for some reason took that as a challenge, not realizing that I was just setting myself up to get hurt. But the good part of this has been that by genuinely being interested in someone (more than the one lover of many scenario that I’ve been enjoying (?) the last several years) I managed to make some important steps.

1. I got rid of my backburners…kinda. When I met SR, I knew that the only way to make something work is to focus on one person. I'm realizing now that that person should be me! OK, I still have moments of weakness, usually when I’m home alone and bored and online. If some gorgeous man that I know is still pining over me starts chatting, I almost always respond. That is going to be one major focus of this hetox – getting off my damn computer, and purging guys from my facebook that really shouldn’t be there.

2. While I was swooning over SR, I started to do things for me. At first it was to distract myself from thinking about him or checking to see if he had texted or messaged me. I started redecorating my house, working on creative projects. In this time I also joined a band and have been spending a lot of time with my good solid girlfriends who aren’t boy crazy (another issue that I’ll bring up later). This has been such an important step towards focusing on myself and my life, and I'm realizing now that maybe I've been using guys as a distraction from certain parts of life, but what has happened simultaneously is that I've been missing out on all the wonderful parts of life that come with being alone!

3. I started reading Rumi…now, this is going to sound flakey as heck, but I don’t care. One day, I was feeling really depressed about the state of the government (we had just lost the election to the Cons) and work was drab. I just couldn’t focus on anything and well, my heart hurt! I wanted to move somewhere else, do something dramatic. I stopped into a bookstore and grabbed three books: In Defense of Food, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Rumi’s book of love poetry. It was one of those moments that you see in movies. Like each poem was written precisely for my own soul. The whole notion of looking inward, finding love from within…etc etc, I always knew I should be doing that, but wasn’t sure exactly how to. Even though many of his poems may have been written for his love and muse, I felt them resonating to a very solitary part of my soul. With a little bit thrown in here and there that I projected onto SR (hey, it takes a while to recondition!)

4. Once SR steered away from me in order to continue working on himself, and once I stopped making excuses for his behaviour and actually accepted the fact that he really wasn’t ready (huh, shocking! Just like he told me but I wouldn’t listen), it helped push me into where I currently am sitting. If someone could ignore an obvious connection because they knew they needed to work on themselves, why couldn't I? If it's truly meant to be, then we can find each other down the road somewhere, when both of us are good and ready.

So all this has led me to recognize that...I need a break! I need to NOT have a man in my mind at all times, I need to stop having sex (even though I really really really really love sex), I need to listen to my heart and sort out why it is that I can’t commit to the right guys, seem to attract the same guy over and over again, never get the guy that I actually want. I want to stop obsessing about men, stop connecting with every good-looking guy that I have that spark with, and fill myself with love. My own love.

I’ve known that this has needed to happen, but I get so easily distracted with the opposite sex. I’m realizing now that it’s actually an addiction of sorts. I’m a lover of love but as Rumi writes: "if you love love, look for yourself". My Mum mentioned the notion of a ‘mancation’ – she read about it or saw it on some show and the concept was to take a deliberate break from men. Right around that same time, a good friend of mine said something along those same lines and I was venting about SR and deciding whether or not I would stay on the sidelines while he worked on himself. Why wasn’t I doing the same thing – not for him, but for me? I know the rest of my friends and family support my decision…I was getting sick of them not being enthusiastic when I talked about a new guy. But hello! It’s because they never last more than a few months! And I mean, I’m almost 30 so this has been going on for a while.

I’ve decided to journal this experience and am considering today the first official day of my hetox. I'm not sure why I've decided to post this on a blog..I guess it makes me more accountable to the process in a way. I’ve decided to spend about 30 minutes a day chronicling the experience. I’m thinking I would like to take 6-months man free - I'd really like to get to my 30th birthday in October having had this time of celibacy, cleansing, and clarity. I think it would be a pretty wonderful way to start a new chapter in my life!

So internet world, welcome to the depths of my heart and soul! Stay awhile…and listen to me go through man-withdrawal, do some patchwork on the ole ticker, and hopefully revolutionize the way I look at love.