Hey! I hope you are all doing alright. Late August is such a strange time. My apologies for not writing to you all in the past week, I have been very busy and have not given myself the time to write. Before reading this, just know that I am doing fine and I am okay. This is a work of creative writing or whatever. Also content warning for mentions of suicide.
I’m back at school now. My mom came up to Montreal with me and helped me move into my new place: a 200 hundred year old townhome right next to campus. I was the first of my roommates to move in, so I had to recruit outside help to move furniture and such into the second story apartment. It was an exhausting few days driving a U-Haul all around the city picking up massive pieces of furniture and lugging them up several flights of stairs. I ended up getting sick afterwards and I am in the process of recovering from said sickness now.
It’s hot in here. Our apartment, like many in Montreal, has no air conditioning. The hot air rises up to our second and third floor townhome and just sits. I spent my first few days here alone and sick, laying on the hideous yellow couch Wayfair sent us by accident. I cooked a few times so I could eat and I don’t remember what I cooked or if it was ever eaten. I went to the grocery store maybe six times and now my kitchen is filled with food that I will cook and I think I will eat it too.
These routines are somewhat foreign to me. I grew up with a mom, a dad, an au pair, and two older siblings. I was spoiled beyond belief, rarely having to cook, clean, or do too many chores. I had my things, though: fixing the Sonos, fixing the WiFi, hooking up laptops to the TV with HDMI cables, and other processes ordinary to our generation, but alien to those before us. It’s somewhat embarrassing that I am having to learn to be an adult, but given the context, it makes sense.
My mother is the second oldest of eight daughters in an Irish-Catholic military family. She spent her childhood and adolescence swimming competitively and taking care of her siblings. That’s pretty much it. She has been a mother-figure her entire life. She wanted her kids to have the chance to be kids, so she took care of the real life stuff and let us live in our fantasy worlds, detached from responsibility or consequence.
My father grew up in a fractured household. When his parents divorced when he was in middle school, he moved from Augusta, Georgia to Long Island, New York. I think he wanted my siblings and I to have a more stable childhood. He always opposed moving for work, no matter how lucrative the job offer. He always prioritized our education and our friendships and hobbies and interests above all else. Him and my mom put our needs before their own every single day.
I don’t think I could even imagine sustaining myself at this point. It’s like I have two choices: MMA fighter or monk. Military or prison. I think my parents want me to be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor for a while too, but I can’t do math. I hate the idea of being a lawyer. I can’t tolerate thinking of working with cops or with judges. It freaks me out. I guess that leaves “businessman”, whatever the hell that means.
I do actually want to start a business. I’ve thought about it for years. I want to be in business school I think or maybe I just want to work in business, but really I don’t want to do either of those things because I hate business people and spreadsheets.
I need to cut to the chase.
I spent the entire day yesterday in a haze. It was like I was somewhere else entirely. Have you ever put your head under the shower stream and plugged your ears? Kind of like that, but you don’t feel the water and you don’t hear the rumble of the stream’s impact reverberating in your skull, you hear everything blurring together like molasses, sound with viscosity, sound but slow, slow, slow sound. Your eyes move like something is holding them back, you notice everything and nothing all at once. It’s one big painting, impressionistic, but massive, the kind of thing you see at The Met, but the paint is melting. You feel the Earth spinning around you, but it's not nauseating, it's just the way it is.
They tell you, “try mindfulness”, but mindfulness is a lullaby for an insomniac. “Tell me three things you can see, three things you can hear, and three things you can touch.” No, I love you so much. I have always loved you more than I have loved anything else. Maybe it’s not the truth, but in this transient state, between entropic moments (between two magnets, etc), in this state it is true so it’s the truth. I need to apologize to the girl I kissed that one time in 11th grade I hope my old piano teacher is still alive I hope my mom never dies I hope my dad never dies I hope this breeze goes on forever and ever and ever and ever I just want to get high and then die I want to be filled with morphine until my thoughts repeat and repeat forever and everything is just feedback
The other day I sat in one of the McGill libraries watching an older couple outside argue and break up. For twenty minutes the man stared off in the direction where the woman walked. She was so angry her arms were red and her face was pale. That’s real anger, pale face. She screamed something and stormed off and he just sat and cried and I watched the whole thing.
I was in an Uber once and the driver said he had just seen a man get his head ran over by a minivan after being curb-stomped by a gangbanger. He described the liquid remains of the head as reminding him of watermelon and meat. He sped up and drove past my house and said he could just end it all right now he said it was really getting to him and he couldn’t get the thought of the man’s head out of his mind and you know what I didn’t feel bad for the dead man I didn’t feel bad for the driver and I didn’t fear for my life because I’ve been there and I knew he would never crash the car because if he wanted to die he would be dead and that was that. He dropped me off at home. I showered and I slept.
I met with a McGill counselor today and she asked me if I have suicidal thoughts and I said no and she asked, “why?”
As jarring as that question may be, I was more surprised by the fact that I wasn’t surprised. At that moment, I felt like I knew her from a past life and her name was not Maya her name was Natalia. Natalia, she’s existed in my head for forever. She asked me why I didn’t want to die and I was honest when I asked, “what does that solve?” I told her I don’t think about killing myself, which is true, I mostly think about destroying my life. Why would I die when I could just accelerate?
So, I’m in a daze. I’m somewhere, not here. Unaware and unaffected. I think of the jellyfish I saw at the aquarium in Chattanooga in third grade. Why did we go all the way to Tennessee for an aquarium? Atlanta’s is the largest in the world. I smile with teeth because it makes my friends smile with teeth and that’s a small victory. I told the therapist I want to be hooked up to a morphine drip forever. Slow down, slow down, let the breeze come and go. She said she loved me or maybe that’s just what I wanted her to say, so I hung up and I called my mom.
Thanks for reading.