Cures for Life:  Offer a convincing and life-saving source of hope, promising to liberate you from horny, hangry fat days and any other stagnant mediocrity in your existence. Examples include granite countertops, organizing your Tupperware collection, or a good hard fuck from behind.

Divorce Diet:  The unplanned decrease in calories that occurs during a devastating break-up when you are too distraught performative crying in alleys to make any effort or decision around food and end up defaulting to Ryvita Crackers and tahini butter and when you’re feeling rich, maybe some molasses.

Generic Married Man:  As the name suggests, not a great Cure for Life. Also known as R. Vagina Cleanse.

Gifted Child Syndrome: The angst and pathologies that emerge when Mrs. Vanden Bosch deems you exceptionally special in grade one and skips you into Mr. Wilson’s grade three class and you spend from age six and a half onwards struggling to achieve something extraordinary and spectacular with your life.

Mammoth Complex:  the perceived notion that you are perpetually ballooning toward becoming the size of a mammoth, even though by all accounts you are a very reasonable and human size.

Micro-Cleaning Empire: Deep Cleans with Erica J. Schmidt, founded by born again cleaner, Erica J. Schmidt. Tagline: Home and soul revolution through deep cleans and tidying. Target market: overcommitted middle-class households in Montréal’s Mile End.

Madonna Whore Complex: I cannot take credit for this term. My tenth psychologist Howard said I had this, but I think it was a misdiagnosis.

My Ex-Wife is Crazy Club:  During my dating career, I have found that so many dudes like to blame their failed relationships on the fact that their ex-wife or girlfriend was “batshit.” So curious that there are so many crazy exes! It’s a phenomenon. Like unread copies of The Happiness Trap on everyone’s bedside table.

My Life’s Most Beautiful Blogging Fairy Tale:  An epic love story in which I move to Halifax for a dude and record vague accounts of our exquisite fucks and adventures with our Big Black Dog and trips to the market to buy apples on an obscurely named blog that Oprah has yet to discover.

Oprah Project:  Your massive, ambitious brilliant idea that will land you in a lime-green chair across from Oprah amidst an emerald-green forest which is really just Oprah’s backyard.

Olympic Yoga Routine:  For close to eight years, I devoted two hours of my life to a series of acrobatic yoga postures, supposed to cleanse my organs and tone my body and bring me to supreme spiritual heights. It was invigorating. Within eighteen months, my back started to hurt. As I continued to crank my leg behind my head, and fold backwards to get my face closer and closer to my crotch, my left hip began to make obscene noises. It would feel like it was out of place and not give me any peace unless I put my hand on the outside of my knee and resist until it made this upsetting clunk. I would need to repeat this clunk several times a day, and sometimes several times an hour.

Performative Crying in Alleys:  This is when you wander the alleys of Montréal, and amidst the cats and empties and dandelions, you cry so hard that passersby pause and say, “Oh! Is this a performance?”

Professional Eating Disorder:  Refers to when you spend a year to several decades of your life balancing your daily mileage and pathological exercise routines with the neurotic monitoring of snacks and forced deprivation, sometimes interspersed with a little or great deal of vomit.

The Boatman:  The star of My Life’s Most Beautiful Blogging Fairy Tale. We met on a boat at my Cool Friend Fern’s wedding.

This is It Boyfriend:  A popular Cure for Life that you think will lead you out of your perpetual state of angst and longing and sugar cravings and around the corner into a charmed existence of fulfilling your enormous potential plus three-to-seven decades of endless and glorious, good hard fucks from behind. But often, the This is It Boyfriend is more likely to mean a whole bunch of barbecues with your in-laws, shopping for couches, and maybe the odd blowjob on a Sunday afternoon.

YouTube PhD:  Unofficial credentials obtained by watching as many YouTube videos as you can on any topic you want. Excellent options include feng shui, natural dental care, and facial yoga.