March 13, 2016. (Unfinished)
How the hell that happened, I don't know. Mid-March of 2016. Oldness has not just hit me, but it's settled in and seems to be staying.

I am a mom. I am a mom at the age my mom became a grandmom.

This year has been insane, and I don't say that like a burnt-out teenage skater dude who just landed a jump on his board. But in a curl-up and hold myself as I rock myself to self-soothing comfort insane.

I cannot pinpoint the apex of the (searching for word: pain, trial, suffering, or the arrested moment where my life suddenly broke into the downward run on the roller coaster I am yet to see an end to).

It was a free fall. Gravity finally started to add some resistance in the form of a small support network. Amanda.

What a year. This time last year I was near full-blown breakdown mode. I had moved into my fourth apartment, this one I was determined to call home-for at least the remaining duration of my university career. I don't know what possessed me to think I was capable to take on a 'fixer-upper' along with maintaining my honours status for the full-time joint honours degree program I undertook, AND run a growing start-up business. 

Possession date for the apartment finally arrived. I did a quick tour of the never cleaned space, sat on the filthy floor and cried. I knew the place needed work, but the reality of how bad the space was hit me within moments and I realized I shouldn't touch anything without first buying a mask and gloves. It was a teardown. 60 years of smoke stained the walls orangey-yellow. I knew I wouldn't be able to breath if I didn't get it sealed over immediately. The high-ceilings which caught my initial love and attention became soon hated with the weeks of washing, priming and painting. I couldn't leave a single surface untouched. Windows and window sills were black with dirt and grime. The 1960's teal green stove I am certain had never seen cleaner, and the fridge, just as old but less teal was alive with black mould. 

I lived with my things strewn haphazardly from boxes and suitcases. A friend visited me, his first words with full sincerity were, "Paige, you live like a junkie". And I did. My only furniture was an aluminum painter's ladder and a mattress on the floor with a few blankets and a pillow. My school work and laptop, along with takeout food containers formed a nest for my body.  

For two months I subsisted like this. My Tuesdays and Thursdays started with class at 8:05 am, which gave me Monday, Wednesday and Friday for crossfit at 8:00am. My 'box' (gym) was a half hour walk, I finished each class on my ass dying, only to look forward to that half hour walk back, this time straight uphill to get to my sociology class in the MacDonald Medical building at 10:35. I had a three hour long seminar on Thursday which I was never prepared for-You simply could not get the one week worth of reading completed with the ability to debate intelligibly in the two hour slot I had before class, the allotted time I gave myself. I don't even remember going to my fourth class. My afternoons, evenings and weekends were spent frantically trying to finish the seemingly never-ending painting, cleaning, and renovating. The times in between that was answering emails regarding reservation requests for my other 3 apartments, and cleaning and preparing these apartments for the changeover of guests. I often would go to a morning class, race to the old port, clean one or two apartments and then race back for my afternoon class.  

The September and October mornings were cold, my little apartment was heated with adorable hot water radiators which I did not have the ability to turn on or control. It wasn't until it was it well below freezing before those radiators would serve a purpose other than vintage aesthetic. It could be minus 35 outside and I'd have to have all the windows wide open to help dissipate the burning heat. But those months of non-heat were cold. I'd change under the blankets and shuffle around with slippers. I often just threw jackets over what I wore to sleep to avoid the changing in the cold. Because my floors were so gross, shuffling in slippers became reminiscent of childhood games where touching parts of the floor was equivalent to being eaten by sharks, I often tripped in my slippers resulting in accidentally touching the dirty floor. I am certain I threw up in my mouth on more than one occasion when that happened. Just a slip of a socked covered toe onto the gross floor would leave me feeling an unclean of biblical proportions. My floor: I had initially thought my kitchen and front entrance floors were painted hard wood. I loved what I thought was painted black and white checker board on wood. I learned after moving in, that it wasn't paint, but very old sticky tile which had worn right through so it was perfectly cracked along the wood lengths of the hard wood it was stuck to. There were areas in the kitchen, like under the fridge and stove where the floor either rotted completely off or the installer was simply too lazy to move the fridge to put the tile on under it. I slowly started chipping the tile away, it wasn't enough. I employed an iron and wet towel and then a heat gun and chemical stripper. This created a grossness of dirt and filth not meant to live in. And because I am sharing my time with university, painting, crossfit, and my business, the task of taking off the sticky tile and therefor fear to touch the floor fell over a time span of never ending weeks.

It was the end of October before I had finally finished painting. Mid-terms were nearly over and I was behind in classes. I was having a difficult time managing everything. My body ached, I was religious with my crossfit training and I knew the painting was hard on my body. But it was my brain which was concerning me. It became numb. It felt like it was made of Styrofoam  A sensation I had experienced several times before, each equally frustrating, but this time I couldn't shake it. there wasn't a morning I didn't wake up without feeling confused and as if hit by a truck. My eyes were blurry, my face would go numb, and I couldn't remember things. I could watch a movie and wouldn't be able to tell you what it was about. Reading and writing papers became a near impossibility. 

I started seeking medical advise. Because my mom has Lupus, M.S., Thyroid disease, and Rheumatoid Arthritis, they tested me for ANA-anti nuclear antibodies, the protagonist in autoimmune diseases. It was positive. I may have freaked out. I was convinced I had MS. Up until this moment, I was maintaining. I was slowly chipping away at my soul-dampening reno project, as well I was keeping up with my school responsibilities and still making it to crossfit. My brain wasn't working, but my abs were chiseled! The fear of M.S. broke me. 

I know I am stopping rather abruptly. I figured I'd post it anyways. I'm tired. g'night. 

I got the phone call yesterday. The one I've feared for over 15 years. It's all a little surreal. Nothing is yet conclusive. I will just have to wait and do more tests and wait some more. My brain has been 'fuzzy' for the past 3 years. It was most noticed when I started university. It would go numb. I wouldn't be able to concentrate or retain anything that I had read. My thoughts would not connect. It wasn't normal. I was written off as a stress and anxiety case. Even after hearing about my family medical history, the repeated message that nothing is hereditary was the calming balm the drs tried to assuage me with and then send me on my way. I'm pissed. 

I tested positive for ANA- Antinuclear antibodies. *sigh*

I went on a date. Kinda. It has been a while. It has become second nature to shoo propositions away with my busy schedule. Jaded. Perpetually unimpressed, I disqualify potential suiters at their hello. This individual found me buried beneath a mountain of copying in the Mcgill copy room as I prepared my readings for the semester. He came back and asked me to join him for dinner. I was too busy. He messaged me the next day. I was too busy. And again the next. I finally acquiesced.  Tonight. Sitting on my gross dirty floor chipping away at the intolerable sticky tile amidst disorganization only excusable for a clinical hoarder, I answered sure. I was tired. My hair should have been washed and make-up reapplied, perhaps a better outfit even. I left my place with a screw it attitude, not caring to impress. I am too tired to impress. 

I have the ability to meet some incredibly interesting people. My world could not be more different than the world’s of the vast majority of men I attract into my life. I have never known privilege until I moved to Montreal. I’ve dated men whose childhood memories included only flying in their private jet and ancient terra-cotta army pieces in their summer home. Ambassador upon Ambassador’s sons- I’ve dated three now. I’ve turned down (very premature) marriage proposals and opportunities to be with individuals whose night out with the guys means amateur racing night at the ferrari club. 

I’m not sure where I am going with this. I guess I am perhaps frustrated with myself. Concerned that I may be making big life mistakes by not opening my life more. Is this a simple status issue? Having learned that this incredibly accomplished young man, kind, and generous and funny grew up privileged, scares me.  I have already subconsciously ruled him out from being someone I will likely see again. The unemployed, addicted, and troubled-that’s who I comfortably return to for friendship. 

It’s been a few days since I’ve written this. And I really don’t have anything to add. I wasn’t ever planning opening up the relational aspect of my life, partly because I didn’t want to hurt my ex husband incase he fell upon this...which in itself is ridiculous I guess. My need to protect and continually care for people who have never reciprocated is another issue for another time I guess... that group also fits the stereotype of who I find myself most aligned too... Oh, like Freud, I shall blame my mom. 

well until next time... ciao

I have been in my head the majority of the day, striving for the silent muse of rational thought. The reprieve from a heart which beats black; the ink of sorrow stains my veins. How I enjoy sitting in the waves of melodrama, rocked and sometimes thrown, feeling deeper than what is needing to be felt. I think I shall dive further, until my breath is gone and my vision becomes the coloured snow of a tv program scrambled from bad weather. I was remarked at once. Yes, remarked at, not really told, or asked, but remarked at-talked to as if I wasn't there. My friend stated"you're emotional" stamping his proclamation in a true canadian way in adding a cliched 'eh?' at the end. I was offended and confused and tried to excuse it away. I was too tough to feel anything. Being emotional meant you were sensitive and could be hurt. You couldn't hurt me, I was determined to never be hurt. I can't remember how I tried to dismiss the remark, but it has stuck with me for a very long time. I have always considered emotion a bad thing, until very recently. 

***

Another train of thought incomplete due to time having run out. It is the next day. Day 2 of being back in Montreal (not including my afternoon arrival as I slept most of that day away). My emotions and thoughts are mixed. Missing deeply friends I had just met and feeling as a stranger to those I was once close to. My stubbornness refuses me to acclimate. 

I have been staying with a friend since I arrived, somewhere in the Rosemont area. I feel I am still traveling. My suitcase sits on a strange floor with laundry and travel-contents vomited unabashedly in someone else's room not mine.  The home I go to in a couple of hours is not the home I left. It's a weird feeling, not having a home. Perhaps I have purposed it that way. My business enterprises have always served a more simple purpose than to just make money and to denote to me a title of a career. They have always been the carrier of some other purpose, a means to an unrelated end. My renting out of apartments permits me a mobile and unattached life. I have no junk drawer to signify a life lived and planted. I share my space with strangers, my things are periodically other peoples things. It is an odd thought to think that some other family has photos of my couch and my decorum filling space in the background of their children's growing childhood memories of days lived in Montreal. Babies not mine have taken first steps on the carpets I picked out. It's an odd feeling. 

I go to BC soon. Another living space for someone else I will create. Please don't get me wrong, I love what I do and I know I have somehow created a privileged life for myself. I often marvel at how I did it. I am somewhat waiting the moment I discover a miscalculation of sorts, a missed expense consequently throwing me back to the days when searching couch cushions for loose change was the only way I could pay for the bus to get me to work on time. It’s funny, even then I never considered myself poor. Money was never a marker of poverty to me. I am thankful for whichever life experience that was which gave me that world view. 

Well I suppose I shall finish on that note. The internet in the breakfast place I am visiting has decided to go A-wall on me; and, it is about that time where I should stuff, one last time, my things into my suitcase. My trip is seeing it’s end. 

I am back in Toulouse. The coffee is strong with no milk or cream, but the desert- so yummy. I found a little cafe for lunch. I am satisfied. I am avoiding planning my flight back. I must do it but my flight searches are premised with a little bit of fear. The type of little bit which in the past have unexpectedly morphed into a towering and full blown panic attack. I feel the apprehension in the spot above my chest but below my throat. 

I am scared of going back. I am scared of real life. I am scared of the crippling loneliness. Can I be so bold in my honesty?  It’s a self made loneliness. Montreal has not been kind to me in the friendship and relationship department. I learned too quickly that friendship is often the disguise of fraud and a simple tool for taking. I was taken from. More than once in more than one way, by people I still care for.  

Montreal is an impoverished city where people seem to surround themselves in the white noise of convenient companionship. Both sides take what they need from the other, but nothing is given. The anything given is simply the cover charge, the transaction fee to get what is wanted. I am afraid I may have become Montrealaise, in that sense. It’s a deep lack of trust mixed with a heaping abundance of need, poverty of any sorts resolves itself in the same way. Distrust breeds hardness, hardness looks at the world through a lens not much different than the way one window shops. People are mannequins, their personality, economy, beauty, and contacts are what are for sale. And often, what is not for sale is still on display and easily stolen-thus continuing the cycle with distrust. 

I suppose I should end that train of thought. I have curious layers to me. A deep cynicism hidden in sweetness, kindness, and naivety. They are each sincere and intrinsic to my make-up, but it makes for a confused world view. 

I will be fine. I will make it home richer (not in a financial way), and my sadness of having to cut short this amazing trip will dissipate. It is interesting how my first experience of 'vacationing/travelling alone' I was the least alone I ever remember being. Whether it was new acquaintances turn friendship or age-old friends and near family, my worlds collided and grew, filling with rich and lasting relationships, friendships not built on the commodification of needs yet to be fulfilled. Friendship which are just that-friendships. 

I am leaving Sinai, it’s 12:33 am and we have stopped at some sort of police/army base. There are armored cars and tanks everywhere and I think they are preparing a tank to follow us so that we do not have any problems with me. Apparently I am a wanted good in these areas.  I think they have prepared for an armor car to follow us. I am not sure if this is to protect me from the Beduins or just to help us get through security faster on our way out of Sinai.... Or just a chance for my friend to show off his contacts. It took me a moment to realize how privileged anyone in the army is. I thought to the Roman times and how the generals were eventually one and the same as the emperor. In Egypt it is like that. My airplane seatfriend’s father was or is a general of some sort. He is a very important person in Egypt. I knew something was up when he had a secret agent sort of looking person meet him at the Cairo airport and escort him throught passport check.