country feedback

My sin­gle-lens reflex used to be a con­stant com­pan­ion on my trips, some­thing I car­ried with me every­where so I could have visu­al records of my expe­ri­ences. Nowadays, my only inten­tion is sur­vival. Always try­ing to make sure I’m nev­er too hun­gry, tired, anx­ious, or sober, lest I have break­down in an unfa­mil­iar place. It leaves lit­tle room for com­fort, even less for any form of artis­tic expres­sion. Fortunately, I always have with me a smart­phone with a cam­era. It may not be able to give me the razor-thin depth-of-field that I favour, but it can cap­ture things in slow motion, which is great for cock­apoos who are born to fetch.

I thought I was sta­ble enough to make it a few hours in a house alone with one of her broth­ers, but the anx­i­ety attack I had while try­ing to fall asleep taught me oth­er­wise. Being in the pres­ence of a per­son with such a flat affect reminds me too much of the time in my life when I was so numb and bro­ken that noth­ing could pro­voke inter­est or emo­tion. Sometimes I’ll find him in a lounge chair for hours, legs reclined, com­plete­ly motion­less and silent and star­ing into space. Even though we’re all glad he’s home and no longer liv­ing on the streets, being around him can be a dis­com­fort­ing still-face exper­i­ment I’d rather not take part in.

Her mom knows how hard it is for me to leave the house, let alone trav­el to anoth­er town, so she always makes her con­tent­ment known when I show up at her door. The shelves in her house are adorned with pic­tures of cou­ples, fam­i­lies, chil­dren, records of a life rich with friend­ships and mem­o­ries. I’m hon­oured to be among them, for I can­not con­cede to being sig­nif­i­cant enough to take up such space in many oth­er homes.

She’s the clos­est I’ll ever have to a moth­er-in-law, and she gives me a hug and tells me she loves me for the first time as we leave. Heather will lat­er ask if I think it’s true, know­ing how hard it can be for me to process and accept love after so many bro­ken rela­tion­ships with sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple. I tell her I haven’t been giv­en a rea­son believe oth­er­wise.

the last blogger

I only knew Dooce through her infamy as the first per­son to suf­fer real-life con­se­quences for things she wrote online. It’s hard for me to be inter­est­ed in the life of any­one I don’t know per­son­al­ly (excep­tions made for peo­ple I feel inspired by or am crush­ing on), and the hand­ful of times in twen­ty years that I was curi­ous enough to vis­it her web­site, I was met with some enter­tain­ing writ­ing about mar­riage and moth­er­hood that I could­n’t give a fuck about.

The last time would have been a few years ago; I tend to check up on a few blog­gers every so often when I’m won­der­ing how the land­scape has evolved1. As one of the few who were pop­u­lar enough to make a liv­ing off the wit­ty rev­e­la­tions of per­son­al details, she eas­i­ly made the list. That’s why it was so dis­con­cert­ing to find that some months there was a sin­gle post, and the post was a list of spon­sored links to things peo­ple could buy. It was espe­cial­ly strange to find her dis­cussing diges­tive issues while a giant ban­ner would fight for my atten­tion under­neath: “And for any­one who may be expe­ri­enc­ing what I am, ButcherBox is run­ning a spe­cial pro­mo­tion through the end of the month where new mem­bers receive ground beef in every box for the life­time of their sub­scrip­tion.”

How much of her writ­ing was gen­uine? How do I trust the words of a per­son who seems to be cap­i­tal­iz­ing on her mis­for­tune?

Perhaps that’s why I was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly moved when I found out she com­mit­ted sui­cide two months ago. It felt like I nev­er knew who she tru­ly was beneath the curse words and prod­ucts being hawked. I also have a hard time empathiz­ing with any­one who would describe preg­nan­cy as an “end­less trove of con­tent”. For me, that kind of mind­set reeked too much of melo­dra­ma, which I find dis­taste­ful enough to avoid in real life.

It glads my heart when I stum­ble across anoth­er online diary nowa­days. A gen­uine one, of course, not updates from a com­pa­ny or a cook­ing blog that’s stuffed with pho­tos to pad the time some­one stays on the page before the recipe is found. No one enter­tains same audi­ence as they used to, and I much pre­fer that to the kind of inter­ac­tive “con­fes­sion­al” Dooce had, or the social media influ­encers of today.

I’m remind­ed of how for­tu­nate I am to still have this lit­tle cor­ner of the web to express myself, a place where I’m not behold­en to an audi­ence for a source of income. So often I find myself too bro­ken to get out of bed, too strung out to pur­sue my projects, too busy to find 15 min­utes to work on a lick. And dur­ing the stretch­es of time when I’m recov­er­ing and there’s noth­ing note­wor­thy to talk about, I’m relieved I don’t have to man­u­fac­ture expe­ri­ences to keep any­one’s atten­tion. I still get mail ask­ing if there are any spots for adver­tis­ing or avail­abil­i­ty for spon­sored posts, and they all get prompt­ly get filed away in the trash.

  1. Also a good way for me to keep abreast on the lat­est web tech­nolo­gies. [↩]

blood simple

Byron died.

It was sud­den and com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed; one after­noon we noticed that he kept to him­self, curl­ing up in dark spots that he was­n’t known to fre­quent. We knew there was a prob­lem when he would­n’t eat, then he passed away at the vet that day. That was almost three years ago, but I haven’t had the strength to prop­er­ly eulo­gize him. It’s too painful when I already spend my days either cry­ing or cried out.

Byron in a ball of yarn

I did­n’t even have a chance to say bye.

That’s why these drafts keep pil­ing up. I miss writ­ing as much as I miss the hairy lit­tle com­pan­ion who would jump on my lap for atten­tion every morn­ing, but tak­ing the ener­gy to cre­ate feels so mean­ing­less when I bare­ly have the spoons to cook for two peo­ple and keep a clean house. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive in anoth­er year. The jury’s still out, and I’ve decid­ed they can take their time for now instead of rush­ing towards a ver­dict.

It’s also why I’ve been on a reg­u­lar dose of seda­tives since last win­ter. I used to have to lie down for blood tests1, while vac­ci­na­tions were total­ly fine. After all, there’s noth­ing being drawn, no crim­son essence I can see rush­ing from my body into lit­tle vials. But when I almost passed out, then vom­it­ed, at a clin­ic for a boost­er shot last year, I knew mind­ful­ness tech­niques and breath­ing exer­cis­es could do only so much.

Continue read­ing “blood sim­ple”…

  1. I’d get so light-head­ed that I’d faint. [↩]

(be)longing

I wish I could say I made the deci­sion not to do any­thing for Christmas this year, but the truth is that I no longer have a place to go after becom­ing orphaned in ear­ly adult­hood. Then Shirley’s divorce broke the tra­di­tion of vis­it­ing her fam­i­ly when I first moved to Ottawa, and three years of a glob­al pan­dem­ic haven’t helped either.

Heather could have gone home on Christmas Day but decid­ed to stay with me, know­ing it would be espe­cial­ly cru­el to be alone when every­one else is exchang­ing gifts and enjoy­ing the com­pa­ny of oth­ers. I’m glad it was some­thing she could intu­it; telling some­one to be apart from their loved ones for my sake is some­thing I would nev­er do.

christmas card

The pho­to we used for our Christmas card this year, tak­en when we went shop­ping for my birth­day. Her Oma, who’s too old to have a com­put­er, let alone a social media account, always appre­ci­ates a phys­i­cal copy.

She spent so much of her pre­cious time and ener­gy buying/making thought­ful presents that I felt she deserved all the cred­it, but it was impor­tant to her that peo­ple knew they were from both of us though, so I acqui­esced to her request of “+ Jeff” on each card. It was a gift itself that did­n’t go unap­pre­ci­at­ed.

Even though I’ve come to shirk the oblig­a­tory con­sumerism of such occa­sions, she gave me a stock­ing stuffed with good­ies from my favourite choco­lati­er, some lux­u­ry teas, and three pairs of classy socks to go with with the new pants I got ear­li­er this year. It helped make up for the fact that I could­n’t accom­pa­ny her on her trip home the next day. I’ve been anx­ious­ly wait­ing to intro­duce her mom to more music and meet Max’s new dog, but I’m still too dam­aged to leave the house for more than a few hours at a time before seduc­tive thoughts of eter­nal peace creep to the front of my head and I can no longer breathe.

Among the presents she brought back was more Moselland Cat Riesling that will like­ly become a cus­tom ever since Max spot­ted a bot­tle in a store. Her dad, whom we pre­sume is on the spec­trum, includes the same things in each of the kids stock­ings every year — cheap floss, mint Tic-Tacs, a bot­tle of lock de-icer, vit­a­min D tablets, and win­ter cloth­ing that would be too big for Shaq. I’d nor­mal­ly feel hurt if some­one kept thought­less­ly giv­ing me things that I have no use for, but in this case it’s a nice reminder that I’m part of that fam­i­ly, even when I’m not there.

like it's a holiday

I final­ly had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join Trolley and Steph at their cot­tage, after a dri­ve of rough­ly three hours through scenic coun­try roads. I did­n’t even real­ize how close we were when we passed by it on the way to the farm 17 years ago, although it may as well have been 17 cen­turies. How strange it is to think of those as my sal­ad days when I had already expe­ri­enced enough heartache and trau­ma for a life­time.

cottage

They call it a cot­tage but it’s real­ly a house when there’s a full kitchen, laun­dry room, sev­er­al guest rooms with queen-sized beds; even glass show­er stalls.

Since then, I’ve loved and lost and loved again, taught myself to play gui­tar, and gained an unhealthy obses­sion with canine com­pan­ion­ship. If you asked me back then where I would pic­ture myself now, I might have giv­en you a few guess­es, but none would have been close to cor­rect.

lake

The view of the lake from atop the stone stair­case. Not seen: rows of wood­en reclin­ers and a var­ied col­lec­tion of water­craft — includ­ing a pad­dle boat — at the dock.

roasted veggies

One of the high­lights of a cot­tage week­end is the din­ner Steph spends hours cook­ing for every­one on Saturday. This time, it was falafel, toum, and roast­ed veg­gies, all pre­pared from scratch.

And she always knows how to plate a dish like a New York chef.

I kept myself mild­ly sedat­ed most of the time, but being away from my home for more than a few hours was scary enough to cause a pan­ic attack that left me star­ing dazed­ly into a buck­et once the ter­ror reced­ed. When con­stant com­pa­ny isn’t enough to keep the dark­ness at bay, it’s a sign that I’m still bro­ken and need to occu­py myself, lest I be con­sumed by the void of depres­sion.

Regardless of how dif­fi­cult it may have been, I was grate­ful for time I got to spend with my friends and their dog1, espe­cial­ly after all the iso­la­tion I’ve faced through­out the pan­dem­ic. It was also the per­fect chance for Trolley to try out his new drone while I played around with my new set of poi. If I had more spoons, per­haps I would have record­ed some music or tried to cap­ture the night sky, but I’m try­ing not to shame myself for mak­ing small­er goals and tak­ing the time I need to sur­vive.

  1. I make it a point to give Toba a treat and toy every time I see him, but this time I bought a bag of small­er pig-skin twists so I could sur­prise him through­out the week­end. He also got a bacon-scent­ed throw toy, cause he’s the good­est boy in the world, yes he is. [↩]