vaneramos | Adjustment

This has been a strangely agonizing month, culminating in a horrifying meltdown Saturday evening. It's frustrating that I've barely managed to write about this until after the fact, but perhaps the story isn't over yet. Hopefully Saturday was a watershed or catharsis, because things can only go up from there.

Okay, I love my job. It's interesting, diverting and even energizing. It would have been unfortunate to go to work for a friend of 10 years and find us incompatible, but in fact I thoroughly enjoy working for Les. He is mercurial, but essentially good-humoured and transparent. One never needs to guess what is on his mind, even when he changes it, and I am easygoing enough to adapt. Working for him is anxiety-free. Last week I worked 42 hours. I've begun chipping away at the debt that has plagued me these past 12 years. When I'm working, I'm happy.

The rest of my life has been the problem. Suddenly everything else, especially I, started coming apart at the seams. It always hit at night. I would return home to a cell of misery. Solitude, formerly my refuge, became unbearable, but simultaneously I lost the capacity to tell anyone what I needed or wanted.

Here's what happened Saturday night. Jon had invited me out to a new gay bar in the barrens of Mississauga, called T's lounge. He and Bill picked up Moe and took her along, but were counting on me to drive her back to Guelph afterward.

I came home from work looking forward to seeing my friends. I ate dinner, showered and changed, and as I was getting ready to leave, Jon phoned to make sure I was coming. After we hung up, for some reason I snapped. Everything about life suddenly seemed insurmountable. I didn't want to go to a strange bar and see strange people, or even my friends. I didn't want to be alone. "No one sees me, no one understands, no one cares,"—litany of all the worst episodes of my life. I set out for Mississauga, hoping the feeling would pass, but it only got worse. "I can't go on this way, I want to die," the whole shebang. The darkness pressed inward, and I started to lose track of where I was. Frankly, the thought of Moe needing a ride was the only thing that kept me on the road.

In Mississauga, I had to cross the highest, most exposed freeway overpass in the whole fucking province. My distress exploded. Atop the precipice, vertigo set in. The steering wheel turned to gel. The car rolled on water balloons. Somehow I navigated the sloping curve, landed the Sunfire on the 410 runway, and taxied a few blocks to T's lounge.

A roar of dance music assaulted me at the door, but my friends waved to me from a corner table and I stumbled over. I was white as a ghost, and Moe guessed immediately that something was wrong. She invited me to dance, but it was the last thing I wanted, so we retreated to the other half of the bar, a quiet lounge, unoccupied at that moment. I didn't want to bare my soul, but under the circumstances I had no choice, nothing else left to do.

After five minutes the deejay played "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" (Scissor Sisters), which was irresistible, of course. On the floor, my agony sloughed off like an old snake skin.

Later I let down my guard with Jon, too.

"You're going through a huge change in your life," he responded. "You have to give yourself time to adjust."

Which is, of course, the heart of the issue. Saturday night took me the place to hear it, on the crest of something new, with the very people I needed. On the way home, Moe talked me down further, despite a cottontail that chose my car to end its vibrant, panic-stricken life.

Sunday was my day off. I got out of bed, ate breakfast, and did important things: phoned Danny, tore out four rows of knitting that needed tearing, and took a load to the laundromat. Which brings me to the beginning of another busy week, feeling better I think.

The weather has been strange, too. On March 6 the temperature hit -37°C (-35°F) with the wind chill. This morning, less than three weeks later, a storm front brought a humid 20°C (68°F). Shrinking dark phantoms of ice, and lots of fragrant mud. That's spring for ya, Ontario style. Here is where I live, leaving for work at 8 a.m.