The Bloody Doors Off

Better have a seat; this might take a while.

Maybe dim the lights. Atmosphere.

And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you know. (Maybe take out a restraining order.)

It’s been incredibly hard of late.

And I may have talked about this below. And it could be contradictory by the time you get there. (Because I’m writing this part last. If that’s not clear, then I suck as a writer.)

But I think I’m allowed.

Financially, I’m on the razor’s edge.

I have a monthly commitment to the CRA for back taxes, and the credit card likes to crawl over its limit and fixing that takes a good chuck of change. Add in a few choice spends (paying for groceries for a change), wet food for the cats, kibble for all the fur babies. It adds up. Last month I had a $6 Uber charge bounce (twice) and got charged $45 NSF (twice!), which put me in the negative. I eventually got it reversed (after applying for overdraft, how do you think that conversation turned out). But. Fuck.

There are days I can’t walk the length of the condo, I’m in so much pain from the plantar fasciitis. When I can walk, I cannot overextend myself or it’ll trigger a flare up and that’s all she wrote for at least 24 hours.

I think my memory is impaired.

That’s the first time I’ve thought that out loud, let alone admitted it publicly.

I forget conversations. I forget names. I forget events.

At least the imagined conversations were dreamt as I’d nodded off moments earlier.

It could be a side effect of a drug I’m on. Wouldn’t that be awesome?! Find a different medication for my restless leg and I won’t keep dropping people, places and things.

But.

And there’s always a but. Amiright?

Old, buried memories. Events and people and vivid details of such. Someone created a Paul Koster Film Festival and are replaying lost memories because isn’t it fun to see where you thought you’d be or how the fuck could you make THAT decision, you nit wit? Occasionally? Oh yeah, I remember her. I can replay running through the secret path behind the houses on the north side of Painted Post Drive during a game of hide ‘n seek and remember when I had to climb over or squeeze through, start to finish.

But I didn’t remember we had that conversation yesterday.

Tonight, I’ll sing my songs again. I’ll play the game and pretend. (Can I get an occupation? God’s receptionist? Thank you, you intelligent bastard.)

This all I write now. Complaints and snide comments about the American political landscape. No one fucking cares. It scares the shit out of me because it will spill over here. I don’t know to what extent. But we’ve already seen the Freedom Convoy occupy the city of Ottawa in 2022; what a shitshow that was. This was our MAGA-equivalent, striking a blockade and demanding repealing vaccine mandates and other extreme shit. Ha, this was the one time the US tried to follow us. Someone south of the border tried the same thing and no one showed up. Too many truckers and people on the fringe who want change because goddammit I don’t like these fucking guys walking down the street holding hands, and they’re trying to implant a 5G tracking chip in me through the Covid-19 vaccine, and it’s not really Justin Trudeau running the country, it’s a consortium of lizard people from the dawn of time.

(Okay, I made that last one up. Or did I?)

Things are. Fragile. That’s the only word I can attach to what I see happening in America. Hungarian Prime Minister Dictator Viktor Orban recorded an audio endorsement for Trump today. And then everyone reacts as they always react, with either outrage or a shrug and an excuse for his behaviour. Even people who’ve realized the orange cheeto is a fraudster and rapist and grifter and have successfully deprogrammed themselves from the cult will still vote for him because the other guy is (a) three years older than Trump, and (b) he’s a democrat and they’re worse. How? Why? Because. Don’t ask questions I don’t have an answer to.

And I don’t think anyone does, to be honest. I don’t think anyone really knows how this is going to play out through to November.

And we’ve got a federal election happening in 2025. Thankfully our election cycle lasts six weeks. But it’s the lead-up. Will Trudeau step down and let his party elect a fresh leader? Doubtful. And Poilievre? I had to reference check the spelling 5 times. And see, that to me feels like the core issue with him. I cannot fucking get used to the mere idea that he could win a year October and the horrors he would inflict on Canada. He’s Donald Trump if Trump looked like a high school math teacher who also coached his son’s baseball team, and only discovered contact lenses because his wife thought he’d look younger. And here, we have Doug Ford, Ontario’s answer to what would happen if we elected Ron Desantis to run our province?

Did you know? If you have a wart on your finger our socialized healthcare will not cover treatment, even though they are easily transmissible. But if it’s on a different part of your body, well friend it’s your lucky day. After they freeze the wart on your naughty bits, you should go out and by a scratch off ticket, because you’re one lucky son of a bitch! Oh, but you sir, here’s the bill. Will that be cash or credit?

Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered, or driven to its knees. (Put the baseball bat down, that’s more than enough.)

Okay. I was writing the above section and a word caught my eye.

Fragile.

And I wasn’t talking about politics.

Earlier this week, for maybe the second time ever, I posted a long screed to a very select few people.

I told them. I was spiralling. I laid it out, and said thanks for listening and they didn’t need to respond. But friends never listen to you, do they?

One person made an offer, the same offer from in 2013. I felt stronger this time. And by the next evening, I was on my feet again. (Ironic choice of phrase, as I’m currently suffering through plantar fasciitis (which I’ve suffered from (as I can recall) the early 1990s) in both heels and diabetic nerve pain in various spots in my right foot (recent).

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all. (I think the movie Coffee and Cigarettes was based on the hours I spent in a mall donut shop in the early ’80s.)

But yeah. Didn’t know where this was going. Is it too late to pull the ripcord and junk this?

I promised to be honest in these chronicles, whether or not it makes me look like an asshole, or needing professional help.

Fuck.

Honesty’s hard.

Honesty hurts.

Being honest with others is easy for me, once I trust you. There may be stuff you should know about me that I haven’t told you (yet), but that’s only because I’ve forgotten it.

And if I’m being honest with myself right now?

I’m not in control.

Things are not five-by-five.

It’s one-thirty in the morning and I haven’t had dinner yet. And as a diabetic, I need to inject insulin approximately 12 hours apart to maintain a steady level in my body.

That never happens.

I punish myself at night. I make myself wait to decide on dinner, or I will subconsciously snack on something (tonight it was potato chips with a french onion dip, something I haven’t had in years) to push back the need for my third meal.

I’ll make dinner for my wife, I generally do. I even make extra salads so one is prepared for the next night. I haven’t done enough to forward that same offer to the boy, and that’s my failing. He’s gotten very independent of late — which is so fucking awesome, my pride for him is enormous — but I can and should still at least offer to feed him, right?

Oh hey, look at the clock, I’ll say. It’s approaching midnight. I should eat something.

Such a horn of plenty on offer: 2 frozen dinners, frozen chicken strips. If I want something hot I could fry up that ham steak sitting in the back of the fridge (for how long now? at least it’s vacuum sealed so it’ll last another week, right?) but it’s late and Marlo isn’t a fan of the smell of ham cooking so I could run the range fan to suck out the smoke but now it’s going to be loud and dude, it’s midnight for fuck’s sake what are you doing polluting the condo with the smell of meat across the room from a vegetarian?

Well, there’s beans. Again.

Or I can put a ham and cheese sandwich on the griddle.

Path of least resistance.

So I’ve been trying to change that. I fried up the ham steaks, fried some eggs. Made spaghetti for the first time in a decade, I’m sure. Felt accomplished. Felt good.

So why am I not doing that now? Why did I buy those pork chop things that I used to enjoy, just sitting in the fridge. Because it’s ‘too late’?

Or I haven’t got the willpower.

It’s too much work to feed myself.

Hence my abnormal (until recently) amount of delivery orders from various restaurant chains.

It was one or the other, as far back as I moved away from home (the second time). I would batch cook food on Sundays to last me for a week. My go to’s were meatloaf, tuna casserole and spicy sausage pasta in the crock pot. Jesus Christ, you put cheese on top and microwave it just enough to melt? I made food, and it was good.

Maybe that was the secret. I got it over with and didn’t have to face that reality again for another 7 days.

Never gonna happen like that again, unless we get a kitchen twice our current size and a 36 cubic foot, stainless steel French door refrigerator with an ice maker, a spout for cold water, a computer panel that temperature controls various compartments based on its contents, and a transparent screen that, with a push of a button, will light up and show you how many yogurts you have stacked.

Yes, I’ve thought of this.

Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be 70.

I’m phoning it in with my psychiatrist. And as he is now in his mid 80s, and should probably quietly retire, his questioning of late aren’t very probing, even after I told him I was spiralling (before I wrote it in a private Facebook post) and he asked if I needed any refills on my pills and confirming the same conversation in two weeks.

So I’m intentionally withholding vital information about my mental health from a man who has medical privileges at North York General and has been helping people fight their demons his whole adult life.

My demons sense a chink in my armour.

And I’m worried they’re about to storm the castle.

Think it’ll work?

It’d take a miracle.

It’s 2:25 am. I guess I should eat something.