Floating

There is a gold fish where I work. He or she, as I have yet to find out which, is kept by themselves in a secluded room many visitors never find. Their tank is growing greener by the day and the water-level drops at a similar rate. It is not my job to feed them, but, seeing as I do not know whose job it is, I have secretly added it to my small list of tasks.

I look through neglected books for seven and a half hours of my day in an inn that, too, may not be found by visitors. I feel like we are a lot a like, this unnamed fish and I. Floating where we can in the spaces that we are allowed to, acknowledged only when it is convenient. I used to build my work space in the bright and the open, on the large, maple dining room table, but recently I have found myself in the worn, plush chair, forgotten like the house pet it sits beside. This way, we all know we are not alone.

Today was an odd day, yet somehow fitting for the type of week this has been. Minding my own in public spaces, I was hit on twice; once by a man and his speech, again by a man and his car. I am used to gazers. I have grown accustomed to being a woman and the repercussions that reap from that. I have learned to ignore the eager eyes searching for the nipple potentially peeking through my shirt. I am also used to gazing at accidents after they have happened, and the evidence they leave behind. What I am not used to is dealing with either of these head on, which made today an overwhelming one.

There is a pizza slash Mediterranean slash HBO TV show enthusiast joint that has a great slice for less than five bucks close to where I work. I had brought salad for lunch, but this time could not bring myself to eat it. Upon arriving, I was in good spirits. I was listening to music, it was a sunny day and, although I was not looking forward to going to the local fair for the third time this week, I had promised my sister, and knew I would still have fun.  Better still, there was only one other customer waiting for their order, meaning I would have more time to read my book before heading back to work.

“How are you?” He said.

“I’m good. How are you?” People are allowed to be polite.

“Good.”

I place my order.

“For here or to go?”

“Here.” I say.

“You should have said it was a fair day. Then I could have said, like you, because that’s how you look.”

My stomach churns.

“I’m just saying that. Even if you have a boyfriend, I’m just saying you look good.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

I take my seat on the opposite side of the room.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you mind if I sit with you?”

“I was going to read, actually.”

He sits.

“Have you been down to the exhibition?”

“I was there the other day.”

“I work there.”

I take a bite of my food.

“Would you want to go with me to the exhibition, tomorrow, maybe?”

“I work until nine.”

“You could come after work.”

“That’s okay.”

“Okay. Would you be interested in a date somewhere else sometime?”

“I hate to be rude, but no. That’s okay.”

“Okay. That’s okay. I’ll take that as my loss, then.”

I turn my page, trying to focus on the ink and not his words.

“Are you looking for a friend? Even if we don’t hit it off we could still sit down, have a nice meal.”

“I have friends.”

“Maybe you could introduce me to one of your friends sometime.”

“I don’t have a lot of friends that are girls.”

“Oh, so you’re a tomboy? We would be perfect together. I was raised on a horse farm.”

“That’s interesting.”

His order is called, he gets up. “My name is Eric by the way. If you want to look me up.”

He gazes. I say nothing. He leaves. I have to force myself to finish my meal by planting my feet on the ground.

“How is everything?” The worker asks. She just started her shift.

“Good.”

“It’s nice and cool in here.” She notices my book. “Relaxing, too. Nice and peaceful.”

Peaceful. I think.

I leave after glancing around my car, making sure Eric is not lurking. I roll up my windows, turn on the AC. Everything is fine now. You’re okay.

I wait a while to turn onto the one-way street that will take me back to work. It is busy. Other people like to escape work for lunch as well, and I notice the decorations being strung for the Irish Festival happening this weekend. There is a break in the traffic that I am thankful for, and, almost as soon as I straighten my wheels, I am struck by a man who was parked on the side of the road, probably once just as thankful as I.

I sigh, pull over. My door does not open now, so I crawl to the passenger side. The man is waiting for me.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“You must have come out of the side street, there. I didn’t even see you.”

“Yes, I did.”

“This shit happens, eh? Life happens.”

There is no mention of insurance, but that’s what people do in these situations, isn’t it? I have never been here before.

“You don’t have to worry about your insurance.” I hear myself saying.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. ”

“Okay. Mine only got a few scratches, too.”

I climb back into my car.

When I get back to work, the door is locked. Everyone else has either gone home or are running errands, and I am thankful for this, because I hate crying in front of other people.

You’re not a dumb girl. I tell myself. You’re not a dumb girl, you’re not a dumb girl. But no matter how many times I say it, in this moment, I find it hard to believe.

Now, sitting next to the gold fish that swims with excitement when they see me, with half an hour left of the seven and a half hours I was supposed to work today, I am writing, and realizing that what is dumb is the thought that, as a woman, I find it hard to stand up for myself. Standing up for oneself is not polite and is not considered kind, but it’s a kindness to yourself, which is something that should not have taken me this long to understand.

I am young, but this excludes me from nothing. A lot of men think themselves innocent, incapable of doing wrong to those around them, whether this be through actions or words. I am an easy target for this, because I try to be a good person even when the other is clearly not. I used to think one could not be both kind and strong. Strong meant rough, kind, gentle. I wanted to be gentle. I am learning that it is more than possible to be both of these things, simultaneously. Strong when it is needed of you to be, but gentle at the same time, too.

The gold fish probably has a name that I have neglected to ask for, or maybe never has and was merely bought for the cosmetics of their pearly scales. Either way, I have named them Eric now. Names hold as much power as you are willing to give them, just like words, or people, or yourself.

 

Atoms

 

A document in my drafts from June, 2017.

I am a person who talks to herself. A lot. I laugh with myself, I sing to myself, I have interviews, conversations. I debate, compliment, bicker, rant, cry, smile, all while I am alone. I think this is a healthy thing to do, but the insane usually have to be told they are not of sound mind. Maybe I just haven’t been told yet.

Today I was rant-whispering to an imaginary person in a scenario I had fantasized. I’m not sure if my thoughts unravel themselves, or if they fall down a rabbit-sized hole –maybe they do both, but I had for some unannounced-to-me reason, looked my reflected self in the eye and said, “You are not a waste of space.”

I had stopped. I took a breath. There was a sudden pressure on my chest, my fingers, below and behind my eyes. This was something I needed to hear, and it was something no one was ever going to tell me because they didn’t know I needed to hear it. But I did, somehow. An inner-conscience, mini-me who is truer than I’ll ever be and lives in a pit within the deep confines of my chest, knew it was something that had to become words for me to realize it. I am not a waste of space.

I don’t exactly know how I’ve been feeling recently. This spacey-ness of mind has to be caused from something more than sleep deprivation, and it turns out it’s been inner conflicts I’m not used to experiencing. I have been feeling unimportant, unreliable, manipulative, annoying, self-obsessive and disappointing to those around me. I feel like a friendship of mine has the potential to fall apart, that I am not meeting family expectations, like I am a horrible person for being human. I feel crushed. Not in a defeated way, but as if compressed down to a size that fits. I don’t want to fit. I feel as if the world has turned its sharp edges towards me, in an attempt to cut me down into something more comfortable.

I know a lot of this is not true, however. That they are only exaggerations that began as ideas and were then overthought, but these exaggerations are in my head now and I want them out. But loud music doesn’t seem to be working this time, and solitude isn’t helping either. I feel like I need to be around people, but being around people is part of the reason I feel this way to begin with. Although that’s not exactly true either, because all of this is me.

And who am I? I’m not exactly sure. That’s a question you wish someone else could tell you the answer to, but it doesn’t work that way. Isn’t that the grand prize to life? The secret at the end of the game, the three heel clicks, the drink me potion that brings you back to reality again? Sometimes I wish there was a template or an average set of guidelines people could reference from time to time, to see if you’re going at the right pace or not, but to be honest, I’m not sure if this would actually help.

I told myself today that I am not a waste of space, and the reason it caused me to feel the way I did and spew out this messy array of syllables is because it was the truth: I am not a waste of space. I am not a waste of space because I am made of space, of stars, of magic, and people recognizing this does not take anything away from me, nor do they suddenly become the source from which I get it from.

I am my own person. A human with bad skin, who laughs at herself and eats all of the chips at a party, and watches shitty movies made for TV because she finds them oddly relatable and rightfully funny, and stares at the moon and the stars the same way she will undoubtedly the one she loves. And none of that did I take from anyone. And none of that can be taken by anyone, because I am here. And I am not a waste of space.

Watchmen

Today is May 23, 2017. It’s a Tuesday. Summer weather, although I’m wearing a sweater out of comfort and habit. I went to the Warf with Toni. We people-watched a young couple, and then an old couple, and then a man with his dog I thought looked like a Bella but was actually named T.J. We asked.

We said the young couple looked like a Becky and Sean, that they had been long-known acquaintances but now they were actually getting to know each other.

“Look at how she’s touching her hands, her face, her hair.” Toni had said. “I was doing that when I sat here. I know what she’s thinking.”

But I was listening to his laugh, because I had done that before so I believed I knew what he was thinking. The way it was a little higher, a little more polite, not as obnoxious as I’m sure ours sounded to the men on their boats nearby.

Then Becky and Sean got up and walked away, comfortably, at magic hour. We watched them go just as they had watched us arrive.

“There they go.” Toni had said. “Walking off together into the sunset.”

“What if this is their spot.” I had went on. “And we’ll know it’s their spot, and we’ll watch their relationship grow and prosper and fall in love, and then disastrously fall apart and come back together again like some romance novel. And we’ll be like, ‘There’s Becky and Sean.’ And then one day they will hear us talking about them, and they’ll be like, ‘What are you talking about? Our names are Amelia and Brett.’ And then we will apologize and they will be incredibly creeped out and we’ll never see them again.”

She had laughed at that. “Amelia and Brett.” She giggled. I had laughed too, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty for some reason.

I have been struck, again, with the realization that there are a significant amount of people in my life that I will never see again. Why haven’t I been studying them as closely as I had Becky and Sean? I can still recall what they were wearing, the way they sounded, the color of the travelling paper cups in their hands. There are times where I find myself terrified, completely overwhelmed with anxiety over the idea that I will forget how people look like when not framed by the shape of my phone. As if by them leaving, I will no longer recognize them if I were to be suddenly bumped into in a line at Walmart, or a Chapters, or for an expensive cup of cheap coffee. That the way they hold themselves, or subtly fidget with their hands, or glance upwards when entering a new room will be wiped from my mind, and it will be these things I notice now that would make them unrecognizable to me then.

I don’t know if I have the fear of losing people, but as of the moment I’m not sure what else to call it. Maybe, too, it’s just the fear of growing up. Or letting go. Or both. Or all three. Because apparently I have to be excessive that way.

Hospital Rooms

To those few followers who don’t know me personally; I am a Type One Diabetic and have been for about two-thirds of my life. I feel like this is something worth reading about, and if not, then at least worth writing about. I was diagnosed when I was six years old. I consider this an unfortunate thing, being so young, but then I look at my sister and realize she was only four. I have the vague memories of Before which she doesn’t even have. We were in the hospital three weeks from each other. I remember the ocean-themed room in the midst of being painted, and after I was done crying through the needle work on my arm I was honored with choosing the color of the octopus, which stood like an unfinished coloring book on the wall. Purple, was what I said. When I finally left, I peeked my head in to see the finished room I felt I was now a part of. Low and behold, the octopus was pink. It was probably the most upsetting thing I had experienced that week.

Around this time last year, my grandmother and I were talking in the kitchen of my aunt’s house. It was a conversation about mental health, attitudes, and the power of positive thinking. She ended up saying, “You could easily be depressed.” I agreed with her, even though my cousins did not understand why she would say such a thing. Diabetes has taken control of my life because it has to. Otherwise, I would not be here. It is like the child who constantly wants attention, or the annoying ex you just cannot get rid of. It can easily sneak up on you and break you down if you do not look after it, which is excruciatingly hard to do some days, because it is just not fair.

If I didn’t want to be a female anymore, I could get an operation. If I hated having brown hair, I could dye it. My eye color can change through contacts, my environment can change by moving away. My life can change if I stop being lazy, and tolerate the suggestion that wellness isn’t just for health freaks and yoga fanatics. But this? This I am stuck with. No matter what I do, or how much I try, it doesn’t get easier. If anything, the build up of scar tissue makes it harder, and you get to where you don’t even feel like a person anymore. So what do you do then? Doctors and hospitals are suffocating. People tell you how to live your life when all they see you as are numbers. My body is dead tissue under skin, and it’s no wonder your blood sugars are yo-yo-ing because I don’t want to do it anymore. 

If I had of told six-year old me this, she wouldn’t have understood. Hospitals are fun! She thought. Walking through the halls with the suitcase she never had the chance to use before, coloring pictures for the nurses to hang on their walls, room service, free toys, a view of the city lights at night, what wasn’t to like? To be completely honest, I don’t remember any of the bad parts, the scary moments from those first days. I remember making a cloth doll in the toy room, playing with fake food, squeezing stress balls, being incredibly jealous of the boy with the shoes with wheels that would roll on the floor. I remember eating out for the first time since being in the hospital, and walking back in like I owned the place. What I don’t remember is saying what my mother can’t forget; “Today was a good day, except for the bad parts.” The truest sentence I think will ever fly out of my mouth.

Six-year-old me was wiser than 17-year-old me. “Today was a good day, except for the bad parts, ” is the attitude you should have going into every single day. No matter how horrible your life seems in a moment of frustration, or when you are overwhelmed, today can still be a good day, and that is something not just diabetics should remind themselves of. Your outlook on the world you live in affects everything you do, think, and feel. A second of positivity in a moment of darkness can change your entire day. Sure, life sucks shit, but those mantras are tiring and old now. Life is what you make it, and if you want a happier one, or, like me, you want to kick Diabetes where it hurts–just smile. Even when you don’t want to. Smile until you don’t know what else you could possibly be doing. Smile until Life smiles back, because it will, and you’ll both love it.

 

 

(Fun)draisers

Saturday began our first fundraiser raising money for grad year. Being at school for noon on a weekend was not as horrible as I originally thought, but it was still a fundraiser. A canteen where we sold cheese goop on chips and steamed hot dogs to a gym full of exhausted parents and sweaty teenage boys. Two hours well spent.

I know most everybody goes through the same reactions, and I, too, will be one of those “Can’t believe it’s my last first day..” people when the time comes around,  but it is still bizarre. So it begins,  is the only phrase I can use to describe this weekend, for it’s the beginning of an end. An end to childhood, to high school, to an ignorance of the outside world I have yet to realize I have. So much yet nothing at all is this life right now. In the grand scheme of things, the years spent dwelling in the halls of public school are irrelevant and usually not thought of, so why is it that parts of you are scared to leave?

I am excited to start the life I will lead after graduation. I am not excited to graduate. Ceremonies are long and emotional. There is so much in one person, and when faced with leaving a close-knit group of 52 persons behind, it is overwhelming. It feels easier to just not do it, but that’s not how things work, thankfully, otherwise nothing would change and change is important. Everything changes. Everything has an end, and everything has a beginning. It’s true, what Scott Fitzgerald said, about the crisp, new beginnings of Fall, but I am ready for a real beginning. One with new environments filled with strangers, and rooms screaming to be filled with personality. I am excited for an independence I have yet to experience. I am looking forward to the person I will become after I graduate, and all I can do right now is hope she will be more than cheese goop on chips and steamed hot dogs.

There’s a Fugitive at the Bottom of the Stairs

Around eight o’clock today I had Toni over to play board games, and around 10:25 we heard screaming. Now there is a mouse hiding in our basement.

Apparently the story is this:

Abby was alone in the screened-door living room watching the Olympics, when she noticed a thing walk through the front door. She didn’t know what it was, so she didn’t say anything. Only when my father walked into the room did Abby point it out.

“There’s a thing by the door.” she said.

“What thing?”

“That thing.” she pointed.

“That’s not a thing, that’s a mouse.” said my father, who proceeded to chase it down the stairs with a broom.

At this point, both Max the dog and my mother were screaming.

“Get the broom!” my mother told Abby.

“Dad already has the broom.”

“I seen two by the cupboard earlier! Hurry, go get it!”

Abby rushed to the cupboard, only to find no trace of anything even resembling a broom.

“It’s not here!” Abby said.

“Well where is it?” asked my mother.

“I don’t know.”

“Well I didn’t take it.”

“Isn’t it in the basement?”

“Why would it be in the basement?” asked my mother, hearing the muffled swears of my father and quickly growing more frantic than she already was.

“Isn’t that why you got the new one? So the old one could be for the basement?”

“Where’s the broom, Abby?” she asked.

“I don’t know!”

And this was when we walked in.

“What’s going on?” I asked over yells and bright lights and dog barks.

“There’s a mouse.” said my mom.

I peered down the basement steps to see a chair thrown across the room, then at Toni, then said, “I’m going to my room.”

Which I did, but not before I heard her say, “Shut the door, Abby. This mouse is not leaving.”

Abby did as she was told. “I don’t want to see it dead.”

“Well neither do I, but no mouse walks through the door of my house and just leaves.”

And that was what was happening in my house at 10:25 on a Saturday night. Toni left almost immediately afterwards, which was convenient for her as a person who hates mice and crawly things. As soon as she left I darted across the road to my grandmother’s who had a bag of mouse traps waiting. When I returned, I witnessed a riveting argument between Samuel and my dad about whether to use cheese or peanut butter to catch our fugitive, and now I am on watch duty.

I sit with my back against the stove, watching the towel and wrench boxes set against the bottom of the door for any small quiver of movement, which, in normal circumstances, would only be a boring thing to do. But I am actually pretty bad at it because over the occasional snap of a mouse trap, muted grunt or heated conversation, the Olympics are still on TV.

 

 

This is a Title

I have realized by now that a career choice in blogging for me would not be a good idea because I do not know how to do it very well. This is, what, my seventh blog post since May? I am horrible at time management and keeping schedules that are not forced upon me, and also knowing what to write about when I am aware that people I do and don’t know are going to see it.

I think I am missing the point.

A blog is just a way to get thoughts out of your head, a way to put yourself out there in some shape or form, and not everything I write on here has to be this monumental, meaningful mess of words (that was a mouth full). This is for me, because I thought it would at least make life a little bit more entertaining. So, to reinforce this new spark of ordinary day inspiration, I am going to tell you how my life is going, because screw it. I am not Dawson (nor do I want to be).

I have finally started to read George.R.R.Martin’s books, and I think it is more of a commitment than I was anticipating. These books are massive and there are five of them and it almost makes me want to cry. I am excited to get into them though, and I have managed to stay oblivious about most of the deaths in the series and would appreciate it if I could keep it that way. I’m not even one hundred pages into the first book yet, and I am quickly running out of things to talk about because I’m not even one hundred pages into the first book yet.

I’m also running out of places to put my books. I have a stack on my desk, an overflowing bookcase, a trunk that can hardly close and crates of children’s books that I don’t have the heart to get rid of. I’m not complaining, it can just become frustrating sometimes because like anyone who shares this problem, I just keep buying more. Books are addictive because words are addictive, and it’s no wonder why I am a writer.

My favourite bookstore is this tiny used one in this tiny town called Alma. The store itself is named Cleveland Place, and every time I go there I pretend to not hear myself internally squealing. It’s adorably cozy, the entire town is, actually. There is a kids corner under the stairs, and antique lamps and green suede chairs meet you when you decide to walk up them. As soon as the red screen doors open, the musty aroma of once unwanted pages meets you, and I can’t help but smile. Every. Single. Time.

Alma, for those wondering, is the strip of road where the houses become a bit  denser on your way to Fundy National Park. It’s the town that is rich from tourists and fishermen, but they show it in such a modest way you would never think so. Alma is so small and quaint and beautiful, that it feels like home, even to those who have never been there before. Even to those who come from the Pacific coast just to see the East and know what an ocean looks like. People come back here, to Alma. And I plan on living there at some point in my life, even if it’s just for a year.

When the tides are out you can walk on the seafloor. This year we were on the hunt for purple rocks for Paulina, so she could fill a glass vase to put in her room. On the way back we had decided to come in with the tide, which was at first stressful because we were so far out and the waves can be fast, but then it was nice and peaceful and slightly eerie. It was bizarre to think that in an hour or two’s time, where we were standing would be so submerged with water that even the tallest of us would be forced to swim. It almost made you feel like just being there was something you weren’t supposed to do, which is maybe why people like to do it so much. But maybe not. I don’t know, really. I am just an addict after all and maybe I should be focusing on photography instead.

I’m Telling You To Stop

I don’t know when the world became such a broken place. Some people would argue and say it has always been this way, that it is only now we are realizing it, but I don’t agree with this. And I get it. A wheel turns both ways, but why are we choosing to go backwards?

It feels to me as if all of these wars, protests, mass shootings, and political uprisings, and the millions upon millions of lives that have been lost in the last 80 years alone, have been for nothing. We promised each other and we promised ourselves that we were going to change, and look where we are now. People are still dying and being slaughtered, senselessly, for no reason other than being alive.

In 2013, 66.4% of single-bias hate crimes in the U.S targeted people with black skin. 78.6% targeted Jews. Hate groups like the KKK, Neo-Nazi, White Nationalists, General Hate, Christian Identity, etc. still thrive, and not only in the States. Austria, Belgium, France, Czech Republic, Taiwan, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Australia, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and so many others have had numerous accounts of hate crimes and toxic ideology, and in 2014, the terrorism and hate crime rate increased by 80% in just one year.

And it’s two years later now. And it’s 76 years since the end of the Holocaust. And it’s 48 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And it’s 15 years since 9/11. And nothing has changed.

And I get it. People get scared, and most times, people tend to try to kill the thing that scares them, and that is why terrorists are so successful at messing up the world. But we have to stop being afraid of each other. The world is made up of people, and that’s all they are. They’re just people. And I don’t understand what is so hard to understand about that.

People aren’t scary. It’s the weapons that they hold in their hands and the ideas they hold in their heads that are scary. It’s the fact that the whole world is on the edge of their seat, not sure if the next hashtag will be #prayforus. And it makes me want to scream at everybody to stop. To yell, and cry, and explain to them that it doesn’t have to be this way. That a person is a person even if they don’t look like you. That we embraced science fiction before we embraced the human race and maybe it shouldn’t have been done in that order. That if we could all just stop, and slow down, and allow each other the time to catch our breath and to think clearly, maybe we could be okay. And maybe we could make a promise to each other everyone is capable of actually keeping.

 

References:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33205339

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/charleston-church-shooting/hate-crime-america-numbers-n81521