Chapter 1

An Introduction

"Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it."

Truer words have never been spoken.

My life, as much as it could have been called that, was your run-of-the-mill, ordinary set of blahs, garnished with enough boredom to choke an elephant. I had few friends apart from my sister and her husband whom I both loved dearly, had been cast away in an emotional rollercoaster of a relationship because my girlfriend didn't want to put in the effort of smoothing things over between herself and my parents, and was struggling with my personal finances, trying to figure out how I was going to pay for my college education. The only relief I got from the doldrums of my otherwise pitiful existence was the escape provided by reading fantasy novels and watching science fiction movies.

It was so easy to lose myself in Casper Van Diem's role of Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers, to imagine being able to fly, impervious to bullets as was Christopher Reeves in the Superman series, and to see myself filling the famous role of Neo immortalised by Keanu Reeves in the Matrix. Compared with my life, the roles in the pictures seemed so much more... I don't want to say that they were real, but they were certainly more appealing than the life I was living. Call it the success of Hollywood cinematography or call it the pathos that was my life, but I began to wish something shocking and drastic would happen, transforming my life into that of a fictitious hero who managed to overcome all odds, save the world, and win the heart of his lady, all within a neatly packaged two-hour-and-eighteen-minute window.

"Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it."

What follows is an account of how things came to pass. Consider it a cautionary tale to all those who dream of saving the world, to all those who dream of being rescued by a prince charming, and to all those who dream of living in a world created by Terry Goodkind or Stephen Spielberg. Their worlds don't exist, nor do the characters within them. Believing them to be real and wishing to live as Richard Rahl or Kahlan Amnell is as dangerous as cursing the heavens and mocking the fates. It is to invite disaster upon oneself, disaster from which there can be no reprieve.

"Are you still pining over that black hole of a relationship you called perfection?"

The question jolted me out of my daydreams. I had been thinking of my ex-girlfriend, Linda. This was the girl I had thought my dreams were made of; attractive, thought-provoking, and above all, claiming to love me. The reality, it turned out, was shockingly disappointing. Sure, Linda was easy on the eyes and could carry a conversation, but she was unbelievably selfish when it came to the things that mattered the most to me in our abortive relationship.

You see, Linda and I lived some eight hundred miles apart from each other and had met last summer by means of pure circumstance. We both had some friends in common who lived only an hour and a half from Montreal, which is where I was born and raised. In late July, they decided to hold a weekend retreat at their cottage, a retreat to which we were both invited. We had a blast and hit it off; campfires, exchanging stories, and playing like a pair of water-nymphs in the crystal-clear lake not fifty feet from the cottage was the weekend's standard fare. I was perfectly stress-free, having just completed my Bachelor's Degree at McGill University, and was finally looking to unwind after four years of academic toil; she was in the middle of her Bachelor's Degree at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and was loving every minute of it.

Compared to the others at the cabin, we had the most in common, and so naturally gravitated towards each other for companionship. When it came time for me to leave, a few days before Linda was scheduled to leave, we both found it particularly difficult. Neither of us wanted to be apart from each other, as there was a strong bond of attraction formed between the two of us, on many separate levels. Although my staying at the cabin wasn't to be, we made sure we would be in touch.

A tumultuous long-distance relationship ensued, with Linda ending a relationship in which she was unhappy and with me cloistering myself off from the world, availing myself to her with frequent trips to the beautiful city of Richmond. The moments I spent down there were blissful; I got along superbly with her parents, easily befriended her entourage, and was able to cause the entire world outside the two of us to seem to simply disappear. Oh, and lest I forget, our passionate, soulful, and frequent lovemaking sessions left us both extremely satisfied. It seemed we were made for each other, and I couldn't foresee a future without her in it.

In the middle of October, I arranged for her to finally come and visit my family. While my parents and my sister were courteous while she was here, the end result was a disaster. Linda had not made a favourable first impression on those closest to me, and managed to piss everyone off. Unbeknownst to me, as I was blinded to everything and everyone except for her, she carried herself in such a manner as to say, "Look at me - I am your better", something to which my family took exception. After she left, the pressure to get rid of her was so great that I constantly found myself on the defensive. It was not a pleasant situation to be living in.

Come the turn of the month, Linda called me on the telephone and tearfully explained to me that our relationship couldn't develop any further. Her ex-boyfriend, whom she had dumped in order to be with me, was managing to get on with his life without her. This upset her greatly, as she had assumed that his love for her ought to be eternal; she wouldn't feel right being in any relationship so long as he could still play with her heartstrings.

I understood, and gave her the space she needed. But I was crushed.

It wasn't so much that we were breaking up because she wanted to get back together with her ex; I had previously met the fellow, and Linda was way too good for him. It was that she just had emotional baggage which she hadn't yet resolved, and she needed to do this before she could be with anyone, let alone the man she said she hoped would turn out to be her Prince Charming. Linda told me she needed to be alone simply so she could put her life back together, and to find out what it was that she really wanted out of life. Naturally, she wanted to "remain friends", as the phrase goes, and hoped we wouldn't lose touch.

I lasted about three weeks, until the pain was too much to bear. I knew from her IM away messages that she was often out at the movies with her friends, getting asked to dance at the local club, and enjoying life, all without me in the capacity as someone with whom she could share her happiness, on all levels of a healthy and romantic relationship. I understood that she needed space to recover emotionally and to reacquaint herself with self-esteem outside of a passionate commitment, but I couldn't act as a spectator, nor a confidante, nor a safety net during this period. It simply tore my heart to pieces, and I let her know that while I wouldn't stand in her way of finding her own happiness, it hurt me too much not to be a part of it.

Then, I dropped off her radar completely.

A period of about two weeks passed, and then it was the beginning of December. Things were starting to look up for me as I began to get my emotional life back on track. One of the classmates with whom I had taken Italian classes at McGill was beginning to show some interest in me, and it was an interest I was excited to pursue. We had scheduled a movie date for later that week; a no-pressure, low-key affair, simply to see if things could develop. And then the phone rang.

A tearful Linda was on the other end, professing how much she hated not having me in her life, how much she missed me, and (shockingly, given her hesitancy to express any sense of real commitment while we were together) that she was desperately in love with me. I was... well, bouleversé, as the French say. My entire world was thrown upside down. You see, I had fallen in love with Linda the moment I laid eyes on her, and my feelings for her had grown even stronger during our brief relationship. She knew that I had been in love with her because I had told her, but she had never responded in kind, saying that she didn't want to say Those Words until she meant it. So, when she said "I love you", the words rang in my ears that she was ready to have a real relationship with me and would be willing to do anything to make me happy, to help me become the best possible person I could, as I was willing to do for her.

It was only after I had driven down to visit her and spend a large portion of my pre-Christmas holiday with her when I realised that this simply wasn't the case. The one thing I wanted above all others from her was that she make the effort to patch things up between herself and my family, but she declared that it was pointless because they never would have accepted her. Be that as it might have been, that she declared it "Not worth the effort" made me realise that in her eyes, I wasn't worth the effort. Our relationship ended right there.

Never before in my life had I been made to feel so worthless. While Linda and I had been together (as much as our torrid romance could be classified as "togetherness"), I had given my everything in support of our relationship. I was characteristically understanding and accepting of the fact that her past wasn't exactly spotless; I was entirely supportive when she had difficulties with her classwork; she even went so far as to call me the best and most selfless lover she ever had, a man who received pleasure mainly from ensuring his partner was completely satisfied. All of these things, it seemed, things which would have made any normal woman happy to the end of her days, weren't enough for Linda.

"Hey! Earth to Drew! Are you still with us?"

It seemed my thoughts had wandered again. I snapped out of it, and turned to face the source of the voice. Lisa Goodman, a recent classmate of mine and a kindred spirit in most things, had been a bulwark of support through my difficult times. All things being equal, if she had been single and if I hadn't been carrying the weight of the world in depression on my shoulders, I think it's fair to say people would have mistaken us for a beautiful and happy couple.

"Sorry, Lis... my mind just seemed to wander for a minute there."

She snorted derisively. "Look, I understand you loved this girl and would have given her the world, but face it - she doesn't want you the way you are. And she's a fool for it."

I looked at her with faux surprise. "I wasn't thinking about Linda." When she raised her eyebrows in disbelief, I protested. "Really, I wasn't!"

"Come on, Drew. Lying was never one of your strong points. Your eyes give you away every time," Lisa explained. She always seemed to be able to root out falsehood whenever she encountered it. I was no exception, although I tried unsuccessfully to hide certain things from her. "How long has it been since you broke up?"

"Three months," I said sullenly.

"And how long since you two broke up has she called you?"

I frowned. "She hasn't." Lisa knew this already, but it was our habit when arguing a point to act in the most Socratic fashion possible. Establish premises we knew were unshakably true, ask questions to which we already knew the answers, and make the argument proceed along the single shortest path from beginning to conclusion. I already knew where she was going with the argument, so I lifted my right hand in defeat, stopping the argument short. Linda and I were never going to have a relationship again on the fair and equitable terms I wanted them, and the only reason she would call me was if she stood to stand some personal gain, regardless of how it would affect me.

Lisa's voice softened as she reached out and caringly placed her hand on my right shoulder. "I know it's not easy," she said, her eyes full of caring and understanding, "but you need to let go. You need to move on."

I hung my head in shame and despair. No matter how hard I tried to shake the past, to flush Linda out of my system, I couldn't seem to get over her. Nothing worked, and I wished, so desperately wished the world of hurt and pain would cease and I could be at peace with myself once again. It's not that I wished my relationship with Linda had never happened, because even through the pain I could recognise I had grown as a person and uncovered a great deal about myself. It was just that I wished I could feel the way I had before our relationship had started.

"Don't let your pain consume you," Lisa warned. "There are far worse fates than this."

Later that evening, I got into a brutal argument with my parents. The subject naturally centred around money. My parents had bags of it, and it had seemed to me that they used their vast financial resources as both a carrot and a stick when trying to get me to live the life they wanted for me instead of their own, and would stop at nothing to get their way. It seemed that no matter what I decided I wanted to do, my parents were fraught with disappointment, because it never seemed to measure up to their unattainable level of success. It felt to me that if I wasn't as successful as Bill Gates, they would always view me as a failure.

When I was younger, my parents planted the idea in my head that I should be the CEO of a bank, because bankers made vast sums of money. When I made it into high school, and there was a greater variety of subjects available for me to study, and a greater variety of interests to pursue, I dropped my parents' dream. I really enjoyed the sciences, and scored highly in all areas, particularly in biology. This caused my parents to plant the idea in my head that I should pursue medicine, because after all, doctors were very successful financially. However, after one of my friends had a close encounter with death as a result of an aggressively spreading cancer, the medical profession held no interest for me.