(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.

Continue read­ing “like it’s a hol­i­day”…

dead man walking

My first year of uni­ver­si­ty was spent on the 15th floor of a res­i­dence on cam­pus, the same sum­mer Pearl Jam’s cov­er of Last Kiss became a radio sta­ple for over 35 con­sec­u­tive weeks. Unsurprisingly, it start­ed play­ing in the ele­va­tor when I was once mak­ing my way to the cafe­te­ria with a floor­mate, who winced upon hear­ing Vedder’s grave­ly voice and did her best to talk over it, explain­ing her dis­like of sad music.

I was tak­en aback. Depressing lyrics and minor chords were an enor­mous com­fort to me1. As the sole child of a dys­func­tion­al home, the only thing I could turn to when my par­ents start­ed rais­ing their voic­es at each oth­er was a set of head­phones and Discman, and I’d been hunt­ing for sad songs like a rav­en­ous stray ever since I was old enough to appre­ci­ate music.

The same became true of upset­ting movies with dif­fi­cult scenes. Moments of vio­lence, tragedy, and grief would leave me glued to the screen. I was fas­ci­nat­ed with the way peo­ple processed their pain (or did­n’t). War films were par­tic­u­lar­ly apt for this, as relent­less years of depres­sion caused me to relate to any sol­dier with a thou­sand yard stare. That glazed, expres­sion­less face spoke of a per­son who had long giv­en up on mak­ing sense of the count­less hor­rors and end­less suf­fer­ing they had gone through.

1000 yard stare

The lights are on, but nobody’s home.

Continue read­ing “dead man walk­ing”…

  1. I’ve come to under­stand how naive it is to think every­one enjoys that kind of mood. [↩]

cum dignitate otium, or, les Cent Jours

At some point in my ear­ly adult­hood, I found it far more enjoy­able to par­take in some­thing for the first time when it was in the com­pa­ny of anoth­er – not only as an intro­duc­tion but a time stamp in the rela­tion­ship.

However, this habit even­tu­al­ly became a rein­force­ment (and tes­ta­ment) of a world­view that did­n’t leave room for feel­ings of inher­ent val­ue. I would deny myself any form of plea­sure unless I was with anoth­er per­son1. It’s like I need­ed some­one to val­i­date those expe­ri­ences, and did­n’t know how to give myself per­mis­sion to enjoy them oth­er­wise.

One might have believed that many painful years alone would give me the chance to devel­op a bet­ter sense of self-com­pas­sion, but a career has a way of con­ceal­ing such inad­e­qua­cies. That’s why I had as much grow­ing to do as Heather did, even though I was the one to ini­ti­ate the heal­ing sep­a­ra­tion. Three months would cer­tain­ly be far too long for me to tide myself over with chores or mind­less busy­work. An aver­sion to idle­ness would inevitably lead me to find ways of occu­py­ing my time in a more mean­ing­ful way, and I would be respon­si­ble to no one but myself.

Spending some time in exile also seemed like an effec­tive way for me to learn how to pri­or­i­tize myself, to fig­ure out my wants and needs, to dis­cov­er who I tru­ly am when the mask is down2. Unfortunately, it was­n’t prac­ti­cal for either of us to live apart, even though a com­plete break would have giv­en me a bet­ter chance to heal. As Heather was still work­ing from home3, I spent whole days with the office with the door closed and made it my goal to pass the time in enjoy­able ways.

Continue read­ing “cum dig­ni­tate otium, or, les Cent Jours”…

  1. Another rea­son los­ing L____ was so hard; she was the only oth­er per­son in my life who made it a point not to watch our shows until we were togeth­er. [↩]
  2. How easy this is to for­get after years of cohab­i­ta­tion. [↩]
  3. The pan­dem­ic was in the sec­ond wave. [↩]

aporia of faith

In recent years I’ve been rumi­nat­ing on the ques­tion of whether or not humans have inher­ent val­ue, per­haps because my sui­ci­dal ideation caus­es me to won­der whether life itself is worth­less. The sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of such a idea means I don’t ask any­one for an answer, but I do probe for opin­ions. My friends have all told me that they believe peo­ple are inher­ent­ly valu­able; or, at the very least, they know they’re valu­able because they val­ue them­selves, even if they can’t say the same about any­one else.

This sur­prised me at first; I can remem­ber believ­ing that each per­son is a bur­den on soci­ety who has to earn their place, as soon as I was old enough to under­stand such a con­cept1. But a few years ago when I told this to Jesse, he expressed dis­be­lief based on the way he’s observed my treat­ment of oth­ers.

Being chal­lenged about my views by a per­son I so high­ly respect­ed cer­tain­ly gave me pause to recon­sid­er. When I thought about a stranger I might meet on the street, I felt that that life would be a ben­e­fit to the world, that that per­son deserves to be loved, hap­py, safe, and healthy as much as any­one else sim­ply because they exist. Suddenly, I real­ized that it was myself whom I believed to be worth­less, and I extend­ed this belief to oth­ers to soothe any pains I had over such a thought. I did­n’t despair about my worth­less­ness if every­one else had just as lit­tle val­ue.

I can trace this warped world­view to my child­hood, when my par­ents treat­ed me sim­ply as an exten­sion of their lives. They made it clear that their love was pure­ly con­di­tion­al, based on my obe­di­ence, achieve­ments at school/work, friends, roman­tic part­ners, and how those all com­pared to oth­ers. I was always work­ing from a deficit of love, try­ing to earn their approval and affec­tion by doing the “right” thing, which was defined as what they want­ed2.

This is no more appar­ent than when try­ing to show myself com­pas­sion (or per­haps mag­na­nim­i­ty would be the bet­ter word). Imagining myself as anoth­er per­son before me, every time I say to him “You deserve to be hap­py”, my mind can’t help but fin­ish the sen­tence with “…as long as you…” as if that hap­pi­ness is con­tin­gent upon some lev­el of per­for­mance at a work­place or achieve­ment in a career.

Unfortunately, aware­ness does­n’t resolve the issue. Even though I had an epiphany that helped me under­stand the fal­la­cy of my world­view, try­ing to sud­den­ly believe that I have an inher­ent val­ue seems as implau­si­ble as find­ing a ran­dom peb­ble on the ground and believ­ing that it’s worth the same as a pol­ished gem­stone. No won­der the opin­ion I have of myself has been so great­ly influ­enced by oth­ers; I’ve been rely­ing on the approval of my peers to give me the val­ue I so des­per­ate­ly desire3.

So if the worth of a per­son is sub­jec­tive and there are no absolute truths, how is it pos­si­ble for me to gen­uine­ly believe that I have val­ue after a life­time of believ­ing that I don’t?

  1. I’m sure that grow­ing up in a cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety that views any­one who does­n’t work (includ­ing seniors) as lazy and worth­less con­tributed to this belief. [↩]
  2. Not only would this cause me to feel like I had to con­stant­ly earn my hap­pi­ness, this would also cause me to believe any dif­fi­cul­ties I faced were my fault — that I must be to blame if some­one did­n’t find me attrac­tive, or I must have deserved any­thing I suf­fered. [↩]
  3. I even­tu­al­ly learn that exter­nal forms of val­i­da­tion like this are unre­li­able and gen­er­al­ly unhealthy. [↩]