The Bloody Doors Off

(Continued from Catharsis, or…, because, why not?)

Fuck, I am feeling it tonight.

Weightless.

After spilling the generics in Catharsis, I took a good, no filtered look back to that weekend.

Replayed select moments behind my eyes.

I think my brother Wayne was there, as chaperone. (We were a lot of under-18 high schoolers, they wouldn’t let us travel out of city without them). And I remember how they busted into the room, almost a beat after their hoped climax sputtered, and came to my aid.

I snuck out as they were reading them the Riot Act.

Things were different for me in high school, after that weekend.

Not great, but manageable.

But oh yeah, there were huge depressive episodes. During rehearsal break, I would sit at the top of the stairs just outside the dressing rooms, in complete darkness.

More than once, I cried.

(See? I knew if I waited to write this I’d lose the thread.)

And it’s 10pm, and I’m mid-way through making my wife’s salad and figuring out what I’m going to eat, but I had to stop and create this post because of an Important ThoughtTM.

(Dammit, WordPress, why can’t I find the superscript function?)

Part of it, I think, had to do with resolving this trauma; forgiving them, and myself.

We were under 18. Our brains were still cooking. We did stupid shit, and not once considered the consequences of our actions until it hits us square in the jaw.

It was a fucking horrible prank, and it got played on me.

And sure in a falling of dominoes kinda way, it realigned the trajectory of my life. If it hadn’t happened, my depression might not have been triggered. At least in that moment. But it had a profound effect: I started hating going to school. I managed to graduate because two of the drama clique asked if they could film me wearing a bear costume while dancing around a field with someone’s niece while they overlaid a musical rendition of A.A. Milne’s Spring Morning.

Where am I going? I don’t quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-
Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don’t know.

Not only did that swing my Mass Media Studies failing grade into the black, but it secured my Grade 12 diploma. (I tried to go for Grade 13 but quit after my co-op assignment at The Scarborough Mirror.)

But damage was done, there was no way in hell I was going to College. Even though everyone in the bullpen, including the Editor-in-Chief (Dave Fuller, I think his name was) were encouraging me to pursue a journalism degree.

Instead I took a Government-sported tech course and learned how to use Wang computers and how to replace a font ball (like a typewriter but … not) and that lead me to working for a temp agency to, during a staff shortage, offered me a short-term contract at Bank of Montreal’s credit card division as an administrative assistant.

The money was too good to pass up.

And that, friends, truly launched direction of my life. Every experience, every waking moment, was possibly — I’m not saying it was, this is like a theoretical physicist pondering his own existence — possibly have been my nexus point.

If you believe in the multiverse theory, and part of me would marvel if it were true but I’m not betting the house on it, then there was a version of me who didn’t pull a stupid stunt to impress the cool kids in drama, or he did but he got the fucking help he needed by a professional. He studied journalism.

He wrote.

Every day.

And got paid for it.

I find it oddly comforting to think that, in another dimension somewhere, I’m living a radically different life. Because he should.

And I’m gonna continue living this one.

Because, despite the depressive episodes and anxiety attacks of late, this is a pretty awesome life.

Who knows?

Maybe he’s jealous of me.