Ramblings 4: One Year On
Last year's summer was not amazing for me. I was forced out of university before it was done, and where I was excited to spend one more summer in Kingston, it all vanished with my dad getting brain cancer and later dying. The separation caused a final rift in my relationship and I got broken up with. There were some people I saw here and there but with the move I felt I lost my consistent social life. On top of that, moving to the big city from Kingston, I had no idea how navigate meeting people. Everyone was so good at shutting everyone out and I had no clue how to get in. To add to this, I got an injury that caused a nerve shock, creating a ton of pain shooting through my left arm, destroying my sleep and ability to exercise. I was working all the time, because I felt I had to be there, but I wasn't doing much or accomplishing anything.
After a week of every day feeling more vulnerable, weak, and isolated than the last, I remember going to my home gym, trying to lift some weights, and being unable to lift 2 pounds with my left shoulder, and I mentally collapsed. This collapse lasted several hours, and because it became so late, when I reached out for help, I didn't get much response from anyone. Not really to fault them, even at rock bottom I knew it was 1 30 AM on a work night. Getting no responses I started to reach out to more people, including my ex, who had called me multiple times since the breakup due to her mental health reasons. I knew I was in a bad spot, and knew it was my time where I needed help. Her response was “Don't come to me about this” which is somewhere close to as bad as you can be when replying to someone in a mental health crisis asking for help. She had also recently gotten an award that was offered to me. Queen's Athletics shut me out as the recipient because I dropped a semester to be with my sister in the hospital. The award represents supporting the cheer team in memory of a teammate and dear friend of mine who had helped me in the past, but ended up taking her own life some years back. The person with the award now turning me away in my time of need was another layer to the crisis. This whole everything was pretty brutal. Luckily, a bit later, Elisa got back to me and we chatted for a while.
When talking to Elisa I expressed that I felt like everything had collapsed. My friends groups, my support systems, my family, my prospects for further education, really just all of it. It felt like every aspect of my life was measurably worse, and things were not improving. She expressed that loneliness in Toronto is pretty tough and had been struggled with it a lot over her life too. Maybe it was just the fact that both of us understood how hard it is to be long-distance with Bennet, but we decided that we could tackle this head-on. We set up some plans to hang out, she had some ideas, and we got to work. Plan one was a Fall time event at Square One. This was October 2nd, 2023.
Naturally, we called it operation friendsmaxxing. We decided that to tackle this loneliness thing we would come up with more plans, and I made a goal of hanging out with someone every day. Liam, Elisa, and I started hanging out in some capacity very frequently, sometimes doing cool and interesting things, sometimes watching movies that weren't even the most interesting with nothing to say to each other (since we last saw each other a day or two before). I grabbed some food with some old family friends, and in particular, I remember going to Joey's with Rob, the dad of a family friend who knew my dad but they fell out near the end. We talked. He asked about my dad and said his side of things and wanted to know mine. We talked about his life and times when he thought it was truly over for him. We talked about my life and how it seemed like my life was truly done for. My old coach Shaver called me a couple days later (I had called her that fateful night too) and we chatted about everything, including the award which was weighing on my mind. Dumping everything on everyone else helped a bit, and hanging out a lot helped a bit. Things were brutal, but something had kind of started, and it was time to make it what it could be.
I don't really remember it much. Maybe my mind was just in overdrive simmering in everything that was so overwhelming. I realized that there were indeed people around before this. There were the vampire nights, which require a shout-out to Eddie and Tetyana for those costumes, they seem to be the best at dressing up and I need to get better. These were a blast, but in my head, I had been so isolated and out of it that I felt like I was grasping at straws to make something happen. From now on, plans would be the default state unless they fell through.
There were a ton of plans for the next while, and after hanging out with people so much, I realized that socializing was, as I still say, like a muscle. Like hitting the gym, going once or twice makes you super sore and tired, and it's kind of foreign, and it's easy to just forget to do. Like going to the gym, if you do it all the time, make space for it, and make it happen, it starts to become natural, it keeps happening, and it makes you feel better. We had a book club back in Kingston (Vgh) that I missed, but I needed to appreciate that it was here too! Not only that, but the people in the book club tended to have lots of cool ideas for things to do. I decided I didn't have to do something every day, but would focus on making higher-quality plans. Where before I felt like I was grasping at straws to hang out, my social life started to become more regular and more successful.
I remember Pattycom. I remember getting my first coffee by accident, taking Nick's order that they got wrong, and feeling like I was glowing. While I was still glowing, we would be chatted up by a random table saying it was international talk to a stranger day, and a guy started talking about his security work and helping a woman recover her sex tapes from her porn recording room at her ex's house. I remember missing the first giant Pattycom visit where 10+ people could make it and being a little angry. I remember the next week there being even more people and feeling so relieved that it wasn't going to be a one-off thing. The small weeks where it was two or three of us. The big weeks where we took up half the place. As someone who was always scared of caffeine after watching my mom go through caffeine withdrawal, coffee became a big player in my new social life.
Things were looking well up, but the terrible events continued to pile up. Losing more friends and family was the default state. My grandpa had a stroke and lost his memory. He slowly started to recover, then had a heart attack and died. Both of these hit me very hard. An old family friend who I hadn't seen in a while, but went to Queen's, died of an infection. My capstone project mate who did most of our project and still happily helped me out with my section when he heard about my dad also died in a car crash. I am very familiar with death, but you still can only handle so much at once. It affected me heavily, but this time, I had friends. I was on a cheer team that I didn't like that was going pretty terribly, and while that team didn't help, I had friends there behind me to air out my frustrations who I knew I could be excited to see no matter what. Worst case scenario, I just had to stick it out till Saturday. Frankly, there was so much happening and I was so stressed that I can barely remember when things happened, or sometimes even much of what happened. I don't even remember it being winter at all. On one hand, it's strange, but on the other hand, maybe that meant that the winter didn't make me miserable like it has in many different years.
I remember writing my Father's Day article where I let myself be vulnerable, which as someone with a solid dose of PTSD, doesn't happen very often. This allowed an introspective and emotional outlet in the Printhouse, and my friends were supportive and not just freaked out by me, which was cool. The Muggies happened! I proposed to my now ex-wife, the drama surrounding the slap, the delicious food and drink, the award for my Father's Day article, and the cigarette in the taxi on the way home was a night of living the high life. We truly could not get much higher.
We made plans for the summer in Edna's backyard, and there were so many ideas from everyone. We did even more than we could have planned for, and I think probably half the plans haven't even been crossed off. I can't even remember when this summer started. So much has been happening so often with so many people that it has just been the best. People say time speeds up as you get older, and I think it's partially true. Having so many plans that are so diverse changes that. Week by week and month by month can go so fast if you do the same thing every day, but we did everything. This summer feels like it has lasted years. Looking back, I can't even recount all the amazing things I did with so many amazing people. I would think I would dread winter because it means this summer is winding down, but I know I'm going to be looking around for even more plans and things to do, and with the right people, it can happen.
We read Dune. We read Dungeon Meshi. Now, we are more than halfway through Fred Hampton. All of these books have been amazing experiences. Dune was the first sci-fi that I really enjoyed as an adult. I didn't know they made them like that. Dungeon Meshi was this weird readable anime that you read backwards? It was funny reading a comic like a kid again, but I loved the adventure and the inspiration it gave me to cook more. It was a great experience. Fred Hampton is my recommendation and it's great seeing how people understand and interact with so many of the concepts in our discussions. We talk about the injustices and the learning what the movement was like and what they were about. I love when people are curious about the same things as me. I love reading.
I think I learned that doing things and socializing is not optional. You can't just wake up and not go to your job for a while. You shouldn't be able to with your own time, but you technically can. You should be doing things by default, and occasionally booking a rest. I would rather meet up with people and fall asleep by accident over not meet up with people. Schedule things ahead of time, book them into your calendar, and try to book more things later. If you have a night of nothing, try to make two plans. If you can make something happen, book it in and make it happen. You can show up and be tired or out of it, I've fallen asleep at a couple of coffee meetups, but I was there, which was better than not being there. It's also restful. If you go home from work and lie down to recover for the next day, you will be tired. If you socialize or do something cool, you will not only have done something but have something to look forward to to do again. This is a way better state to be in. There are little things everywhere, shows, deals, diners, fairs, festivals, trails, clubs, sports, etc. There is always something.
Last night, I went out for dinner with Rob again. We went to Joey's and I told him that it had been around a year since the time we went out, when I was down and out, and he had helped me a ton. We had an amazing time, and it was a nice full-circle moment for me. A year ago, I thought it was just misery from here on out. I thought the fun part of my life was over, and it would just be slowly rotting from then on. It turns out, a lot can change in a year. A place that I thought was leaving me isolated, as it turns out, had some more life in it. With a lot of effort, that turned into more than I could have possibly imagined.
Things aren't perfect, I still have a lot of unresolved issues simmering in my head from the struggles I've been through over the years, but I've found something that really is pretty nice.
You can't stop the rain The friends that come around To talk about the highs and lows, the ups and downs
Oncle