Call It Whatever You Want in Mental Masturbation in Montréal: Confessions from the Boulevard

So. I was in Hicksville for a week. I donned my Mommy costume so that I could assist Drewzilla through the yanking of four wisdom teeth. (Note that I didn't don my Wife costume... because: more on that later.) Staying with Peter and Drew in Hicksville was... different. Good/bad/otherwise/whatever. Read on...

I hung out with my gayboyz and we ate pizza and smoked some primo-Montreal-weed and listened to some great music and talked our faces off. I love those gayboyz so.so.so.so.so.much. Because: they arrived and set up camp in my life just as two major friendships were being BURNED TO THE MOTHERFUCKING GROUND y'all.

(Totally random and ain't-life-strange? fact: I met these-two homos through one of the aforementioned engulfed-in-flames-friendships! Ha!)

Anygay! They have seen me through the dark when I get mired in those deep valleys where the light only APPEARS to have gone out. They continually remind me how incredible I am and really, doesn't everyone need that? Plus, they're all brainy and nutz and our interactions are honest-as-hell. We get high and talk about nihilism and love and physics and music and ambition and space and kindness and loss and, and, and...

Also hung out with MaggieTheCat (my sistah-from-anutha-mistah) and her huzbin, PatrickStarr. I loves them an' loves them an' loves them. They're such good eggs. At their house it's non-stop treats! a coffee-bar! more treats! stories! kittenz-by-the-dozen! and a genuine-warmth... they're happy to see me! It warms my goddamned COCKLES, I tellya. Maggie is all unwavering support and encouragement and smartypants-ness and yooge cans. What's not to love? Plus, I met her on Open Diary!

Drew. Drewzilla. DrewBear. MyGurlDrew. She turned 17 in December. (!!!) She's mostly an adult now - as the young women in my family tend to be. The wisdom-tooth-yanking went well and it was actually pretty fun to hang out with her while she was drugged-to-the-tits and drooling blood and riding the waves of gonna-puke-now (she didn't). When she wasn't out-cold, we snuggled and I teased her mercilessly because she was totally helpless and defenseless.

SO FUN! THIS IS WHY I HAD KIDS!

When she was more coherent and sitting upright with two bags of frozen peas strapped to her cheeks and eating popsicles we talked about how she's finishing high school on a good note complete with Honours in every subject, a gaggle of close friends and how a lot of the crushing negativity/anxiety/horror of her early adolescence - that joyous-for-everyone!-period between the ages of 12 and 16, has mostly passed. She's not out of the woods just yet due to the rampant krazykakes-ness on both sides of her lineage, but she seems to have matured quite a bit.

Finally.

Because, JESUSCHRISTMARIE, I wanted to choke the shit out of her on more than one occasion. Ahem. Plus, she's made the executive decision to take a year off after graduation and before she (signs on for a lifetime of debt) chooses which program at which skool-of-higher-larnin'. But let's get her gradumacated first, shall we? She just started her very last semester and it's going to fly by. Come June, watch this space for my hard-earned and much-deserved bragging rights... watch as my fuckin'-brilliant girl graduates at the top of her class - just like her fuckin'-brilliant brothers did, before her. All this to say: my moving to Montreal in the midst of all this hasn't had too much of a negative impact on her. She's fine. Better than fine, actually and I'm proud-as-HELL of her.

Re: not donning my Wife costume. Hmmm... I have (roughly) 496946 different/incongruous/conflicting/ambivalent/wildly fluctuating and often occurring at the same time thoughts'n'feelings about that.

WELCOME TO THE MONKEYHOUSE!!!

Also: this is not news. Current but subject to change/open to various interpretations/buckle up, bitches! facts about the whole 26-years-long mess: I needed to leave. I needed to leave Peter, leave that place, that house, that role in our relationship and that role as a mother. We love each other. This time apart has given us both some much needed breathing room and space. It has also shed some light on a fairly major blind-spot... our friendship. Peter and I were never really friends. Spouses, co-parents, a "couple", lovers (hate that word, ew), roommates, co-workers, etc., yes. But not friends. Not really. Not in any meaningful way that accounted for and embraced/accepted/celebrated (?) our different perspectives or... built the other person up instead of, say... constantly ripping each other down or, seeing the whole thing as a grudge match, or (in my case), struggling to maintain some semblance of "normal" (ha!) while being large-and-in-charge...

aka: I'm Right About Everything So Don't Argue.

aka: TOILING MIGHTILY under what amounts to THE (extremely seductive and addicting) ILLUSION OF CONTROL.

So, yeah... instead of being a friend, I've been the Warden and the Score-Keeper. Weird how I didn't get anything I actually needed from Peter all these years, right?! Weird how we never quite connected - never quite tuned-in. Basically: I would NOT want to be in a relationship with me! No wonder he drank! AHHHH-HAHAHAHAHA! I dunno.

(DO I LOOK LIKE I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING?!?!?)

I checked-out of my relationship with Peter years ago. I had to because it was unbearable in many-many ways due to his alcoholism and drug addiction and its inherent duplicity. I also checked-out due to my own mental illness(es). (Just the facts, ma'am.) Plus, it was just life... the day-to-day work, home, kids, other shit, blah-blah-blah. You know the drill.

Let's sum up! (My stream-of-consciousness/endless run-on-sentences style of writing hasn't changed. CLEARLY!)

I'm here, in Montreal, to work on me - and NOT on "the relationship". The (seemingly endless) Self-Improvement Project is fully underway (yet again) as I try to reconstruct my life in such a way so that it has real meaning to me and is somewhat enjoyable and actually worth living. I've been so hobbled by suicidal ideation that I might as well already be dead. Does that make sense?

Let's sum up! (LULZ!)

Here's what: I'm trying to look after ME, as best I can, with my extremely limited resources. I'm accessing better-quality-than-Hickville mental healthcare. I'm ALLOWING myself to just...

be krazy and be...

OKAY WITH IT.

No more putting on a brave face and denying the fucking AGONY and TERROR I've been imprisoned by.

No more feeling .completely.suffocated. by Peter's-ever-watchful-disdaining-judgey-prick-silencing-shame-spiral! (See: Our Friendship - It Needs Work.) (Also See: This is Why I Almost End Up Fucking Other Men Occasionally. What.)

No more I - AND I ALONE!!! - am responsible for everything, at all times, everywhere. (See: TOILING MIGHTILY under what amounts to THE [extremely seductive and addicting] ILLUSION OF CONTROL.)

No more family-shit! I'm officially an orphan now! I have completely cut off ALL CONTACT with my just.won't.die. "mother" and my totally-broken-and-I-can't-fix-them siblings (I still choose to have some FB-only contact with my sister-who-lives-in-Tennessee but it is stripped BARE because I can't hack it anymore). Doing so has triggered a tsumani of grief but I'm getting to the point where I'm realizing that I've ALWAYS BEEN AN ORPHAN so what, exactly, is new with this?

Nothing, that's what.

Up next is that acceptance-brings-peace stage where I only have to "let it go" a few times a year as opposed to my usual every-few-minutes.

It's krazy!

.....

....

...

..

.

..

...

....

.....

Okay!

All that shit ^ up there ^ was written about two-ish weeks ago... all slapdash'n'haphazard-like because: that's how I roll, yo!

LET'S TALK ABOUT TODAY.

HERE.

NOW.

THIS MOMENT.

It's a Sunday-morning(afternoon, now)-in-February in Montreal. It's cold. It's quiet. I'm drinking coffee and wandering around in my leopard-print longjohns. I'm using my binoculars to watch the planes come in. I'm thinking about taking a jaunt downtown (25 minutes away by metro) to look at a few different blocks of apartment buildings I've only seen advertised on kijiji and/or craigslist and then, on googlemaps. Some of these buildings are steps away from the mountain and the museums and (parts of the sprawling) McGill University and its hospitals (where I go to learn how to be less-krazy! wheeee!) and two funky-ass neighbourhoods/areas I LOVE and three amazing parks...

(This city is GREEN, yo! which is crazy-amazing, given its relatively small size... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal)

... AND!!! very near a place where us looneytoonz-types can gather and do art. Like, REAL ART - stained glass, sculpture, fabric/textiles, jewelry-making, etc. - as part of the therapy I'm about to start receiving to help break isolation, integrate me into a sense of community and, if my work is any good, they'll put it in the gallery where I CAN SELL IT for CASH-DOLLHAIRS, WHUT-WHUT. And all of this is free, btw - these services are funded by La Belle Province. Merci beaucoup, Quebec taxpayers! This-here full-time mental patient is très grateful!

So, yeah. Plus, this is a scouting mission for future reference and by "future reference" I mean: "less-than-six-months-from-now".

Because:

Smell that? ::sniffs:: It's the winds of change.

This long/cold/dark Winter is about to bust up and start thawing. Spring is right around the corner. Here comes another new season.