Sky

5:30 a.m. and the sky is navy in colour. It reminds me of deep, dark waters where you can't see anything past the surface. Twinkling lights fill my window. At last, it's almost summer. It snowed for 6 months this year. All of a sudden, though, yesterday it was sunny and warm. I took off my winter jacket.

I got my summer tires put on my car, Blue. At The Great Canadian Oil Change, the worker recognized me from my job and asked if I worked there. Later, at my dad's bank, I went inside with him. The banker recognized me from my work, too! She even said it was I who had served her. I asked her how my service was. She said, "The best." I take great pride in what I do.

I went to dance class and scampered up the pole in plastic white heels. I drove around downtown Ottawa with the windows open on my way to the bookstore. I will triumphantly return to the diner today, smiling and happy to be there.

What you can't stop

Light spills over everything. I notice the blue-grey morning sky, the dry cement. Snow melts, music poetically plays on. It rains for days. You can stop things: you can stop feeling, you can stop thinking but you can't stop the sun from rising.

Work

My work is endlessly blessed. 20 years in food service. At my spot for 4 years. I just love bragging about these things. I'm proud of myself. One shift, I couldn't stop crying at my tables. I was taking their order but tears were just pouring out of my eyes. My boss told me to clock out and go home, luckily the lunch-rush was over. I stood in the parking lot waiting for my dad to pick me up because I crashed my car into a sign that week and it was getting repaired. I cried and cried. I still work there. I still love it. I still stand up for what's right as I always have and no one can stop me. ✨

War

There's war. You should be sad. That's how I justify my own sadness. I'm sad for the world, a bleeding heart. More women should be in more powerful positions. I don't know how it's 2026 and there's still war, famine, poverty. It's sad. There's little to nothing I can do about the wars overseas. I'm usually good at accepting things I can't change.

Spring

The sun will rise at 7 a.m. Every day I check the time the sun will rise and anticipate it, looking out my window as if I'll see it soon.

This is the first summer in which I have cut off almost every girlfriend I had, always wishing they were someone else.

The season is about to change. My favourite time of the year: summer looking close and long. I hope it's hot, dry and sunny every day. I hope I work 30 hours a week and save every cent.

January thaw

I swear there's only two more months of winter left. My parents call it the January thaw. It's been raining and above 0 degrees the last few days. Canada gets less brutal. I stacked up a pile of zines that my friends made for me and put them in a pink crate at the end of my sofa for easy access. I purged the shit out of my place, giving Ginger 4 garbage bags full of clothing and shoes, bras and bathing suits. I like leaving and saying goodbye the best.

Blackness

I think I'm Black. If I were a Black girl, would I be Nigerian? Ethiopian? I choose Somali. That's my favourite African-American culture. Once, Rima told me a white guy asked her to dance at the bar and when she said no, he called her the n-word. So she got her cousin to stomp his face on the curb. 

Mantra

Self-care, focus and boundaries are my mantras for 2026.

Crime__view/Pineview

U smell like purple flowers. The ambulance is close-by. I pace the hallways of our haunted house and wonder, if this is the last time I'll see you alive, if I'll kill myself. Suddenly, Vanier seems scary and mean. Suddenly, I don't seem so tough. It's 11:30 pm at night, half an hour away from when we were supposed to start partying again, and you don't seem so alive. 

It's me who's different this year because my bf isn't here and I'm alone again. I think of his ex, somewhere in Blackburn, struggling without thinking about me or where he's touching me. She never has to be jealous again. I think about my belongings and how I own them now, how he could never give away my stuff again. I hope it's worth it. 

He chain-smoked. He smoked in my house. I told him we can't smoke in here but I opened the windows for him nonetheless, I let him do whatever he wanted to. I can't stop myself from thinking about him today on his deathaversary, like that, with his chain around his neck, dead.

Chief Keef

At Broadway, my old cook Georgie, this big, fat Black guy, used to play this song on repeat and make neighing horse noises at the hottest servers. It was not at me at the time. He’s dead now. What I remember about my dead ex-coworkers is that they were nothing short of hilarious.

2026

What changed? I'll tell you. I changed. I got smarter and faster this year. The first day of the year is today and I'm at work, serving the restaurant by myself. I'm pretty sure I was waitressing when you were born. I've never been more concerned with numbers, letters or words. I've never been more focused on myself and my career and my side-hustles and my businesses. The business of my body. Making it work for me.

2025

When you inhale purple, you know you can die. For his deathaversary, I put the pic of us kissing on NYE on my Instagram profile as if he were still here. As if he were still here and making fun of me and playing our tracks and I was still in love. I'm not this year. Despite the fact he abused me, despite the fact he said I was no legend, despite the fact that I was his girlfriend at the time and I chose him. I'm out here putting nothing but respect on his name.

Open the wounds

The first train leaves Blair at 5 am Monday morning, I can attest to this. I've been thinking about the id/ego and super-ego lately. I got all the dolls off Fakebook Marketplace. I wrote in my calendar, the start times at work, how much I made in tips that day and scrawled in the corners reasons to continue to live.

Photosynthesis

I was never invited to the basements or the graff jams where everyone was there, or maybe I was but I didn't go anyway. I never cared about the guys and their jawlines. I never cared about the hundreds of dollars I made on shift, it was about what was wrong and right. I could care less that I served him there, that he sat in their chairs and let me talk to him. He came enough times until I served him and then he was polite always but if you think I need this fucking diner then, bite me.

I could go back to my stage with my pole because I can't stomach it here. I can't live knowing what's wrong and right will never be corrected. That I won't ever get to be in charge of this shit because you guys already got enough managers. I need to talk to one more person about it, ask how happy they are, and shake the hands of my bosses.

This is about me pouring my blood, heart and soul into my work and getting jack all shit in return but a fucking bag of money. Love is torture.

The apathy is death’s work. 

Bring them to their knees

Bring them to their knees and make them suffer for all they have done to you.

Iker,

I did like you, okay? We kissed once, you were wearing a black shirt. If you see this, I miss you.

The difference is

I'm going to change. You're not going to.

Thieves

When I'm alone in my room all I can think about is the injustice. Like how people drown because they don't know how to swim. I can't read your mind but I know what you are thinking. It's funny how each day goes from being sunny to cloudy to raining. What's not funny is my reputation. 

They’re going to prey on you. Until you are weak in the knees, your eyes hurt, and it’s over. That’s what being a girl is like.

Sometimes I spot the cops or ambulances out the window with their sirens blaring, lights flashing. Today I vow to say hello to everyone in the kitchen. It's Friday. In preparation for my staff Xmas party, I will be getting Polaroid film and pre-rolls.

Trust equals love 9/13/21 10:08 AM

"I almost passed out at the gas station today. Ginger, Jesse and I are at The Zoo and he’s putting the legs on the couch right now.

Got two gs. I can’t be passing out in random places. They’re going to send me back to the psyche-ward.

We got purple and Jesse overdosed. There are 6 ambulance people in my apartment. Spent 3 hours at the hospital and then we left. I fucking hate doctors."

The Zoo was 200 Somerset Street West at Elgin. This is the overdose he survived. All I remember was that I slept beside him when we were there, in a single bed. And then we left and no one said a thing when we left. We just walked out. It was at Le Montfort.

Jesse

Jesse picked a fight with me the night before Black Friday in 2021. I remember because I called in sick to Best Buy on Black Friday and got fired.

He said I was "No graffiti legend," and he just kept saying it over and over again, calling me a "stupid slut". Who said I was a legend to him? I never once claimed to be legendary. I found out later he was mad because we did too much drugs.

The truth is, I am a fucking graffiti legend. Here's his playlist:

Buying a domain and redirecting it to my blog was the coolest thing I did this year. I also just hooked up Jesse's mom with Amanda's mom for them to deal in cigarettes. That was pretty fucking cool, too.

The year is almost over and I've definitely lost a few friends this year, even though I thought I lost them last year.

I learned a lot. I became slightly more independent.

Snow

It snowed. Outside looks magical.

Crying

You are able to stop yourself from crying because you think, "You have cried enough."

Things they don't write down about death:

1. The crying gets less severe over time
2. Christmas will be happy again one day
3. The missing part might last forever but the sadness does not

Trauma and UberEats

It's all trauma and UberEats. I've been really into Sims 4 lately. Building a house for my girl, rebuilding it, and advancing her in her career. She's a serious musician now. Work picked up, it's busy again. It'll be busy for a few months til New Year's, slow down in January, and pick back up in March around Eid and March Break.

Christmas is upon us. I decorated for the occasion. I used to be The Grinch, now I'm Mrs. Christmas. That's what I used to call one of my ex-best-friends. I'm in a fight with my parents. It's fine, though. I got told I was funny at work, by a customer, a woman, who then said I was deadpan. She told me I'd do well on a British sitcom. I told my mother and we all laughed.

I love my job so much. I am so happy, grateful, and thankful to be there. I love my bosses, I'm making them all Christmas cards. My coworkers are truly the best, they're all so cute. I love my owner, he's one of the best people I've ever met in my entire life. And my GM is absolutely spectacular in every single way. Outstanding citizens, I get to work with, every single day. I'm truly blessed and I know it.

I think the only thing that matters in life is that you’re able to make yourself laugh.

Religion

I am an atheist. I do not believe in God, Jesus, the Bible, or anything like that. As far as I’m concerned, Heaven doesn’t exist and Hell is right here on earth.

I am curious about church though. I like cathedrals: the ceilings that seem to go on forever, the organ’s melodic sounds in the background. I like sermons: the good advice, the beautiful words. And I like the idea of gathering in the morning to sing and recite poetry.

I’ve never been religious but I do believe in Mother Nature, the Sun and moon and stars. I don’t believe in karma. I believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and many things in life are subjective, including beauty.

I was put on earth to smash the patriarchy, break the rules, and defy the ordinary.

Abilify 💉

I saved myself but not everyone is able to. It took Jesse’s death, rock bottom, in order to do so which is sad, if you ask me. Human existence is weird though. I don’t blame myself. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing and it’s youth’s fault.

I didn’t work. Then I got a job at Best Buy and I got fired because I called in sick on Black Friday.

My new outlook includes always doing the right thing. I think Abilify affects my mood so much it’s impossible to think a negative thought. Just sitting here, glowing. Thinking of ideas. 

🌧️

It’s supposed to rain. I’ve resolved to write when it rains. It’s just a shower. It’s not a thunderstorm or a heavy downpour, just a sprinkle of water.

The rain is good for the earth so I like it. It’s the beginning of October but it was hot out yesterday. This month I see a chip off the full moon and think it’s a full moon, I love using that excuse for things. No wonder everything was weird at work yesterday. I like the moon, too, when it’s full or halved or hidden by clouds.

I am interested in searching for spooky clouds in the sky at dusk. I like the change in temperature, how cold things get. Winter mystifies me and it is up and coming.

Baker’s hours

I’m up at 5. I shoot out of bed like an arrow, wide awake. I don’t know how anyone sleeps in past 5 am. Sometimes I wake up at 4:30 am. I call this baker’s hours. I am up and studying the earth for signs of life. I am up, lifting weights and eating oats.

I like the mornings because more things happen at 5 am than they do after 8 pm at night. My thoughts are organized this early, I feel strong. I mean: nothing’s open, no one’s up, but I like the empty, dark street.

The sun rises at 7 am in October. While I wait for the world to wake, I look at the sky, think about the hours ahead of me and try to colour inside the lines.

Inspiration

I’m inspired by everything. My past, the homeless, the weather. I take inspo from photographs I see on the internet, from patterns in nature, from people in my life.

I listen carefully for jokes at work. I scribe my demons into poetry and stories and blocks of text that go no where. I write about desperation, depression, death.

Write what you know. It’s the first thing I learned about writing. I started with who I am. I started from the beginning. I had to cover my traumatic childhood, the drug years, the medication and diagnosis, the struggle towards sobriety.

Tackling that was easy. The hard part is coming up with what’s next.

$17.60

Everything is fuzzy white carpets and instrumental beats at home when I return triumphantly from another day at the restaurant. The gym is my sanctuary and I learn new things every day. Life gets simpler after I block a girl who takes, takes, takes.

I scarf back oats for breakfast. I write facts and I’m not making shit up. I guess I’ll never know what the point is but if I’m not applying pen to paper, I won’t be getting any closer to it. My time is valued at $17.60 per hour. This is fine because I have no control over it and I don’t get emotional over things I have no control over. 

5 am

Sunrise is at 7 am but I’m up at 5, contemplating existence in my uniform.

Ginger + Diva

I used to have an interesting lifestyle, let’s put it like that. My friends were Ginger and Diva. I’d drive out to Ginger’s in the morning, she lived in Draper and we’d go to Starbucks. Diva lived there at the time. She’d be plopped on the sofa with YouTube or reality TV shows blaring from the television.

We’d smoke weed all day and lounge around. This is when I didn’t have a job. Ginger truly took care of me. She took me under her wing. Now she’s got a baby and I’ve got a hash pipe and things are different. 

I’ll forever miss them, the way things were. 

I lived at Ginger’s, too, in her spare bedroom. I spent enough time there, enough to feel like I lived there. I got a chilling call from her one day in which she said her boyfriend Cory had overdosed and died in their bed. I knew Cory, too, of course.

In 2019, I threw a birthday party for myself and invited 10 people. No one came. Except Ginger and Cory, standing there in my building’s hallway, with a bottle of wine. At Cory’s outdoor funeral, I cried and cried.

Fog

I’m not used to the cold yet but you think I would be with the way you treated me.

The flashbacks I have include Jesse filming us kissing as the drone circles us from above in the parking lot at tech wall and then him overdosing in our bathtub.

When Phil drowned, I found out when I was with my friends at the water park, and the cruel irony of it all made me cry even harder.

When the summer ends, I always think about curling up under the neon red lights in my apartment at 5:00 pm when the sun has already set. I always think about working hard and about how life often includes doing things you don’t want to do. I wonder what the point of it all is, and even though I can’t figure that out, I trudge forward.

August 24th

Today would have been Emma’s birthday if she were alive and turning another year older. The time is 6:00 am. I work at 8:30 am. I am thankful to have a distraction today: work. Tomorrow I’m off, too. Thank god for that.

Fake freckles

It’s so quiet at 7 am on Saturday morning. I put on neon pink eyeliner and dotted my cheeks and nose with fake freckles. I didn’t know it til now, but this is what I’ve always wanted to look like. I start work at 9 am and the two hours of silence ahead of me calm me down. 

Work/summer ending

After work I turn the music up to the maximum amount that the TV will allow me. I try to forget every table. How’d I get so lucky, though, to work for the creme-de-la creme of diners in the east end of Ottawa? An institution, really. 

I get treated with respect there. I’ve worked enough restaurants to know that this is the golden dayshift I’ve been searching for. I don’t take it for granted. I thank Jesus every day I get to go to work. When I’m not at work, I think about working. I talk about working. Work, to me, is easily the best distraction from my miserable thoughts that I can think of. Art is great and all, but I am consumed in my little job and it really means everything to me.

My foot hurts but the pain makes me alive. Outside looks like a jungle. The vine in the backyard snakes around the fence and the flowers stretch towards the sun.

Meanwhile, at home, my feet are bare and the balcony is hot. The sun makes things sparkle. A guy leaves his number on my car and I tell him I don’t want a boyfriend and I’m asexual. He leaves me alone after that.

Jesse

I crushed on him for 10 years before we dated for real. I met him in 2011, we dated in 2021. He was Chelsea’s roommate. Chelsea was my friend from elementary school, my drinking buddy. We knew each other in grade 5. He was dating a girl at the time when I met him. I don’t want to mention her name. 

Things Jesse taught me:

1. Don’t spit on the ground
2. Don’t put up with bullies

It is important to note he was obsessed with me. Once, I left him, because he was still dating what’s-her-face, and he said, later, “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I knew you would come back to me.”

I have never been more in love with anyone and it absolutely devastated me when Jesse died. I miss him. All my old poetry is about him. He called me his North Star once and I wrote it into a poem.

Friendship

You cannot take away from other people because you think your problems are worse.

Things I learned about ending a 15-year-long friendship:

1. You need time alone to grow

2. Being honest with yourself is important

3. It’s okay to feel a little sad about this chapter in your life ending

4. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries

5. People can have their opinions but you know how you feel

Summer 2025

The wind smells like flowers. Corn and cherries are for dinner. The summer hits with a heatwave, the hottest I've ever seen it. After that, it rains and the temperatures return to normal. My parents take off for the cottage in Quebec and I'm home alone again. They take me off the door at work. One day I look at the schedule and my name isn't on it. I'm a server again. It took 3 years to get here. I'm proud of the work I've done.

I walk around the mall with my headphones on, listening to some whining boys sing about tragedy and heartbreak, my favourite tracks. I adorn myself with sparkles and fake lashes, thick lines of make-up, highlighting the beauty mark I have near my eye in slick black.

People bug me but there's nothing I can do about it. I bide my time in the mornings and look out the window for signs of life. This summer, my intentions are to protect my boundaries and grow.

Bruises tell a story. Mine are of self-expression and divine self-care. The ghost-girl I dance for is my little sister. Every time I dance, I wish she could dance, too.
I choreographed this routine because this song reminds me of you. Don’t let it go to your head. But then again, you think you’re better than me, so why would it?
Grief moves through the body in an electric way. First I feel fat, wet drops of tears coating my shoulder-blades. Then I feel myself trot across the studio, grab a pole with all my strength, and fling my body across the room in a motion that leads with my hips and everything sparkles as I spin around and dizziness doesn’t exist.

I feel the floor again beneath my clacking 8” heels and land on my tip-toes. Still here.

Clown painting

She used to have this clown painting. She painted the perfect face of a clown, it was yellow and green. It had a big red nose and jagged teeth. I took the painting with me to Montreal and lost it there, it was stolen. I’ll never forget her signature at the bottom, her full name. It is the one thing I regret: losing that clown painting.

She Said She’d Haunt Me

She used to say she’d haunt me. This was before she died. I didn’t know how much death might hurt. That I’d feel my skin being ripped from my bones. It is instant and slicing and death never goes away. But I see her flip-flops, the purple Gumby ones I’d saved, one of the very few things I have left of her, and I think how proud she’d be of me now.

Ghosts

I watched a cloud overtake the sun as I stared up at the sky in a baby pink velvet mini-dress I got at Value Village. I adorned my right ankle with a thin silver anklet before setting off into the day.
That morning was all silence and the scent of gasoline escaping from car’s exhaust pipes. The hot pavement scorched the bottoms of my feet as I scampered in-between lawns. 
I was trying to take a photograph of a nearby cherry tree when a summer wind blew a Jasmine-scented floral aroma in my direction. I inhaled deeply and bent into another position for the snapshot of the pink tree. 
In the late afternoons, I used to come to this abandoned swimming pool and watch the boys skateboard in the emptiness of it. The small pools of rainwater made the skateboard’s trails look like glitter in the sun. Once I found a mixtape at the ledge of the pool. It was labeled, “For the ghosts,” and we listened to it, over and over again. Trying to make sense of the track-list, trying to summon a ghost.

Garden State

There are construction workers filling in a forest with a neighborhood behind my parent’s house this summer. There are large machines and it reminds me of Garden State when it rains.

My coworkers squabble and I tell them they’re like my parents, trying to be funny, but they probably thought it was sad. Which it is. But it’s also kind of funny. I mean, you have to laugh. That’s how I look at it. Life is funny. One second you could be up and the next down. That’s just how it works.

In the stunning early morning silence I practice gratitude and mindfulness and study such things on the internet and in magazines and try to become a better person. Who I am doesn’t bother me anymore like how it used to.

Love

When I say love ain’t shit I mean it isn’t to me. I don’t mean to say that Jesse was a bad boyfriend, he wasn’t. It means maybe I don’t need the type of love that’s always shoved down your throat in your childhood in stories. I don’t need to have a boyfriend again. Tried it and it wasn’t for me. 

Music

Jesse made me a playlist on Spotify before he died. He titled it “Harleen Quinzel”, and in the description he wrote that I was the love of his life.

Sitting here listening to it now, I feel guilt and regret. The first 2 songs are my songs. The opening song is Fake Love by Daniel Jang, who is a violinist and the entire song is strings and keys and when it fills the room and all that’s left of Jesse is the stupid tattoo on my wrist and this playlist he left for me, it eats me alive.

The next song is from a band I kept a secret from everyone but I suppose it doesn’t matter now: Her Space Holiday. And the track is, “Something To Do With My Hands”. That one cuts out quickly at the end and the next songs are all Jesse’s picks.

“Play this when I’m gone” comes on and the irony doesn’t escape me.

I guess I know what love is, then. And it ain’t shit. Here's it:

20 years

It’s been 20 years since my little sister, Emily Grace, was killed in a car accident. 

Here is proof. The car on the left is the one in which my mother’s mother, my grandmother, was driving, when she fell asleep at the wheel and also died on the scene.

I was in the passenger seat. My foot was broken. I woke to my grandmother whimpering, “Someone help me, get me out of here,” I heard her die. All I could say though, was, “Where is my sister?” 

When my parents arrived at the hospital in Quebec that day, I got the answer. “She’s in heaven, with grandma,” My mother said.

I was 15 years old. This happened on August 2nd, 2005. I called her Emma. She was 13 turning 14 in 22 days. Her birthday is August 24th, 1991.

She was funny. We used to walk 15 minutes to Chapters with our girlfriends Kelsey and Hannah every day, and we’d talk about everything. We’d discuss death, even. Emma said she would haunt us on the toilet so we’d jump up and get pee everywhere. One of her famous jokes was, “What’s the matter, Grandma? You piss your Depends?” For anyone who doesn’t know, Depends are adult diapers.

My grandmother always called her “bold”.

I never wanted sympathy. I learned that I’m truly alone. I’ve come to the final step of grief: acceptance, and I’m happy and well-adjusted. I’ll never forget her, though. I posted pictures of her here, in case you needed proof she was hilarious.

ETA: I know I post that car accident pic too much, but I can’t fucking believe that happened to me.

Spring

Other than critiquing pole videos of myself and listening to a triple emo playlist Spotify made me on my birthday after choosing a variation of emo for every category they suggested, I haven't been doing much. At the end of every day, I rip my eyelashes off and contemplate existence.

This spring has so far been epic. Lots of rain. The hot weather is just arriving now. Finally I opened my window. This is probably my favourite time of the year. I love how sunrise is at 5:30 am. It's my favourite thing about spring.

Beautiful

It’s beautiful: even when it’s raining, even when it’s snowing for the millionth time. It’s beautiful and there’s no other way to look at life if you ask me. If I wanted to think a negative thought, the mood stabilizers would prevent it. The doctor upped my dosage three summers ago when I was acting erratic after Phil passed away. 400 mg of happiness. Once a month. Injected into my arm. At the outpatient clinic in the Montfort Hospital.

It could be worse. I could be drinking straight whiskey and doing drugs, but I’m not. Every day I am thankful to be sober and mindful of my existence. I can breathe, I can see, and I feel like myself again.

Fake plants

Every plant in my garden is fake. 

Jesse Larocque

Tomorrow would have been Jesse’s birthday. I am forever changed by what we went through. I love you, I miss you. I do this all in memory of you.

No one will save you

At some point, you have to take control of your life, no matter how bad your childhood was. Blaming someone else for your problems never works. I would know. Running around doing nefarious things on the streets taught me that you only have yourself in this world. No one will save you. Barely anyone helps you. You’ve got to help yourself.

Driving

I have cat-like agility when it comes to driving. I like driving. One of the jokes we have about driving is: we’ll drive to IKEA (which is on the other side of the city) during traffic so we can talk the whole way.

One time a bus driver stuck his hand out the window and told me to slow down. The fastest I ever drove was 160 on the way home from Toronto. 

One time a lady got out of her car at a red light, walked up to my car, and asked me why I drive so crazily.

I drove drunk only once. I never got caught but I did smash into someone else’s car and had to pay for the damage.

I got sued for $1 million dollars after rear-ending someone on Ogilvie. Insurance covered it. I had to go to examinations for discovery. After that, my father and I spoke with the lawyer for our insurance company and she said it was a bogus claim. We never found out how much he got in the end.

Sadness

Sometimes, when I think about the restaurant that I work in, sadness overcomes me. Sadness from all the secrets from the customers, the workers and even my bosses. It consumes me so much I cry. There is a lot, but not much I can be specific about, but it all amounts to a lot. A lot of sadness, that is. This is a rare occasion, on which I think about it all and cry. In fact, I think this might be the first time. It’s unsettling and discomforting. I’m soft, in the end, even though I may look tough.

Safe, healthy

A lot changed. I chopped off all my hair. I got a new tattoo. I feel like a newer version of myself, one I like better. The winter is coming to an end and the clocks spring forward today. 
I’m still schmoozing tables for tips at the diner up the street. They asked me why I liked it so much there. “I was a waitress without a restaurant,” I explained. I’m still posing on my crooked pole and taking photos with the self-timer in my buzz-cut and boots.
My boss grabbed my hand and told me to slow down. I applied her advice elsewhere in my life, as well as at work. It has helped me. 
My apartment is so beautiful at 4:45 pm when the sun is shining right through the window. I never take days like this for granted. It feels better than anything knowing I am safe and healthy.

Nice

That's what would of done you in: expecting acceptable commentary from someone who looks like they don't know how to be acceptable in the first place. You have to hold your tongue. If you can't think of something nice to say, you don't say anything at all.

Love

When someone tells me they love me, I don’t care who it is, or what our relationship is, I always tell them I love them back.

Day 1

Somehow, I lost myself. It happened sometime after high school ended and it lasted for a very long time. I am not uncomfortable in my growth. It makes me uncomfortable to not grow. Today is day 1. 

Government

While Donald Trump is yelling about tariffs on the news, I am furiously building my second ever greenhouse in Sims 4 on my laptop from the corner of the room, seriously doubting the goodness in the world. Politics never interested me. As far as I’m concerned, there is little to nothing I can do about the state of society. It’s not the government’s fault your life is fucked up, something I learned early in life. Not in Canada, at least.

Winter

Statistically, Ottawa is the coldest capital in the world. Tons of snow is crippling the US, where people deny climate change, but there's barely any signs of winter here. Ottawa's notoriously colder than Toronto, too, which is on Lake Ontario. The time I spent in Toronto, the winters were mild. Now the winters are mild here, in Ottawa, which bodes well for me. I like winter, especially a mild winter. The cold, fresh air makes me feel alive.

2024

This is what I learned about myself last year: I do have bipolar I. I did experience mania and depression before I was medicated. I don’t want to fight over it anymore. I have come to the realization that I must accept my diagnosis. In doing so, I have become curious about the disorder. Usually when something’s broken, I say, “it gives it character.” I’m not broken, though, just different.

Mental illness

In my opinion, everyone has mental illness. It’s just the degree to which it affects you.

Now dry your tears and go to work. Because that’s what people do. 

5am Girl

5am Girl is available for sale! Hard-copies and digital copies available
$20/15 pages
5am Girl is my diary transcribed from October 2019 - June 2022

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E-mail me if you are interested in purchasing a copy victorialouisehanson@gmail.com

The news

I could be anywhere else in the world. I could be demonstrating during a protest. I could be in war-torn countries, third-world countries. But I'm here, in Ottawa, safe as milk. Ottawa is one of the 10 safest cities in Canada. I've never felt unsafe here, even walking around the street late at night by myself. The problems in the world infuriate and confuse me. I watch the news only to turn it off.

Kaylie Smith

A 16-year-old girl is recovering from a vicious attack in Cobalt, Ontario, a town 500 km northwest of Ottawa. On Sunday night, her ex-boyfriend, an 18-year-old, struck her with a vehicle and cut off her hands with a knife. She was airlifted to CHEO and is alive. She underwent brain surgery as the weapon was lodged in her skull. Her ex is facing charges of attempted murder. 

Femicide is a term for the murdering of females. A partner is responsible in 40% of homicides involving a female victim. Every year, an average of 66,000 women are violently murdered globally.

This is an epidemic.

Pictures

I'm crying because I usually get what I want and I want it but I can't have it. Instead I'm singing love songs at pictures of myself. And getting recognized for my hard work. Nothing feels better than that.

Halloween

It feels like a summer night though it's almost Halloween. I'm on the phone to my girlfriend looking out at the highway which is black but for headlights. My playlist is comforting. I had another great week at work, another good month. I count them down. I record everything these days. I started a new journal for daily affirmations and mantras.

I got a new Big Bird costume from Spirit Halloween. Every year, I'm Big Bird, but this year, he's been updated. It's going to look amazing and I recommend everyone visit me at work that day. Halloween is on a Thursday this year. My birthday falls on a Monday, which is the first of my days-off. I'm going to go to the flower cafe and take Polaroids.

It was the half-smile that got me. It doesn’t help my favourite work is always about you.

Heaven

No, I don’t believe in heaven. There is definitely no such thing as heaven. Who could believe that, after you die, you continue to live? I pray but I don’t think it gets me anywhere. One day, the girls at work asked me if I believe in heaven. 

“No,” I said.

They didn’t believe in heaven either.

October

It’s fall. The clouds overtake the sky making everything glow. Like that, summer ends. Snow covering the earth is what's next, after Halloween. The evening sun disappears. The birds go south. Hibernation is upon us. I like this time of year. It's a time for reflection and reconsideration.

I did it for my art

You could chalk it up to me being fucked up over my childhood. I did it for my art, though. I wanted to pick at the dark recesses of other’s sick minds. I did it to write about it. So I’d know what it was like: what it felt like, what it looked like. Looking in the scariest places of the city I found what I wasn’t looking for. Death, drugs, pain, loss. I knew what I was doing.

This does not bode well. With you, not talking to me, and me just talking to myself. 

Thoughts after work

I come home from work. I put on my favourite playlist, my favourite clothes. I think this is the way you're supposed to live your life. I pretend I'm elsewhere but everything stays the same. I don't know if minutes mean anything but many pass me by. I let the beat play over the thoughts in my mind because I don't want to think them. Instead I think about hustling breakfast plates. It is engrained in my fibre to work, I was raised this way. I don't know what I'd do without it.

I used to be friends with people who didn’t have jobs. I used to not have a job. I hated it. Something about memorization, rhythm, money. Something about having somewhere to go. It gives me purpose. 

35 in 2025

I let people push me around. I sacrificed happiness for the sake of others. I let people walk all over me, use me even. I don’t know why and I have no explanation. I was young. I was impressionable and feeble-minded. I would never let this happen again. I stand my ground now. I’ve matured and grown up. I’m 35 almost. I’ll be styling by the time I’m 40. I wonder what the world has yet to show me.

Asexuality

In the last 24 hours, two men have told me they “need a girlfriend.” If there’s anyone who doesn’t need a partner, it’s me. In fact, the very idea turns me off. I am a sex-repulsed asexual. I have always been this way. The world is so hyper-sexualized. It's gross, to me.

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others. There are asexuals who are indifferent to sex and don’t mind it, and then there’s me: someone who is repulsed by the idea of sex.

I like to be left alone. Thanks in advance.

Reap what you sow

There are things you should know about me, like that my sister died. And there are things you may have gathered about me, from reading my work, like how I love my job no matter what. I don't want to forget about her. It moulded me, her death. It made me who I am today. Without having known Emma, I might be half as compassionate as I am now. And I'm not that compassionate to begin with. I believe people reap what they sow.

Upcoming months

Oh my god, winter is soon. I love winter. I love the seasons. I love the way the air changes, the way the setting changes. I can't wait for the snow and cold. The trees look infinitely prettier, in my opinion, when they're covered in white snow. The winter means my birthday, Christmas, New Years. This year it'll be 2025, which is huge. I'll be turning 35 on December 2nd.

I can't wait.

Restaurant

2 years ago today I got hired at my present job. I work today. I sat at table 18 for my interview. I didn’t get hired on the spot. I didn’t get a call-back. I e-mailed them a follow-up, and she hired me.

There are so many powerful, strong women I work for now. I am so beyond blessed to get to work for them. I am in awe at their compassion, their tenacity.

Thanks. Just thanks. If you’re reading this: thank you.

This is the longest I have worked at a real restaurant. Technically, my longest restaurant job was at A&W and I worked there for 3 years. But this is going on forever.

September

It’s September which means back-to-school and orange and red leaves. Work dies down. My intentions for fall are to spend more time alone and save more money. My friend does full moon rituals. We carve out our manifestations on a page and light candles during them.

Self-love

You can’t fake being healthy. Either you are or you are not. I’m bargaining with death again. I’m old now and you can see it in my face. Maybe I’m not that old but I’m not young anymore. 

The streets all stay the same but I don’t. It feels as though everything has changed. I am not the same girl, cluelessly chasing what I thought was love. I have higher standards now. I have inner peace.

Different things are important to me now. Instead of loving someone else, I love myself. That means more to me. 

Not everyone

It rained the day after what would have been Emma’s 32nd birthday. All day, the 24th, was sunny and hot. Her birthday was on a Saturday this year. 

I think there aren’t enough stories about women who save themselves. About strong mothers. About survivors. About women who don’t fall in love, get married and have babies. I think it should be less about love. Not everyone finds love. 

Help/save/fix

I tried my best but you can’t help, save or fix someone.

Abusive relationships: a theme

I don’t know how I ever got into an abusive relationship in the first place. Domestic violence was never prevalent in my home growing up. Guess the men I chose were scum.

Nico took cash from my wallet when I was sleeping. After that, Miguel tried to smother me with a pillow. He verbally and physically abused me. Even Jesse ripped a nightgown off of me and was also verbally abusive before he overdosed.

What I have to say is about it is that I’ve never been more prepared to deal with whatever comes my way next. I’ve never been stronger.

August

It’s dark at 8:45 pm and the mornings are cool.

Being human is disgusting but it’s also miraculous. It depends how you look at it. 

I work hard so that I’m true to myself. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of me, but the dialogue I have with myself does matter.

I skim through books on boundaries and assert mine when necessary this month.

I get enough food, sleep and exercise and this is what allows me to be content. It’s not about what you do, but your attitude about why you do it. 

Blessings

Maybe the reason I wrote this blog was to explain myself. I wanted to be clear about the truth. I wanted to defend myself. It’s not that I care about people understanding but my side of the story is important. I didn't mean for Jesse to die, it just happened.

On the patio today, running my section, I thought about all the things I’m grateful for: my job, all my new friends I met there, the staff party coming up on Monday, where I get to see everyone in their street clothes. I am counting down the hours. I think about my apartment, beautiful and safe. I don’t think I’ll ever get robbed there. I think about my parents, my cousins. How lucky I am to have them. I think about how privileged I am to be a Canadian; how much that means to me is unmeasured. I count each and every small and large blessing that was given to me and I cry and thank god.

July

Through the screen I see fireflies in the garden. My mother says they’ve been there for 6 weeks but I haven’t noticed them til now. My favourite song is about drowning and my nightmares are of getting robbed. I’m in a hospital, all the pictures I’ve ever taken are spilling from a box on the floor as I’m trying to collect them. I wake up to the same thing every morning. 

Glow

Driving on the highway in Quebec, I see the sunset reflecting orange on a building and I think it might be the most beautiful thing I’ve seen. 

Remember me like this:

I was surprisingly nice on the street today. I smiled at people, usually I only smile at garbage men and the homeless. I even let a car go. I never let cars go. The medication must be working.
It’s a beautiful day but this city means nothing to me.
You have “no” written all over you and you never wanted to think about me again for years. It personally destroyed me. I wanted to kill myself in Ottawa. I wanted to kill myself in Toronto, too, but cars yield to pedestrians and the world goes on another fuckin’ day. I am crying in the back of a cab. I thought I could lose you a thousand times over but I was wrong.
Driving in a car and I’m pretty sure I want us to die. The Gatineau hills roll in the distance. My nightmares are of lakes full of sharks. We burned our hospital bracelets. Spent all day taking things for granted, including you.
I went somewhere today. But I completely forget where I went. I guess we’ll never know.
You are what I don’t want to write about, you liar. He couldn’t have done it without me. The precision and grace in which I was fucking with you was noteworthy.
“We’ll be happy in no time,” I say, as we do another line. Tell yourself you won’t be high forever.
I made a list of reasons to live. Brace yourself for impact: he is in love with another girl. This swallows me. How silly of it for me, to imagine what it would be like if he were in love with me instead.
She will make you pay. But not with money. Can you afford it?
I don’t want to waste my film on you. That’s when it occurred to me: life is the saddest thing. Passed out under an overpass, one day she’s going to have to deal with it. Lying there with you made everything seem okay. I get night terrors if I think about you now. Remember me like this: wanting you. Love like it’s easy. Do you ever miss a version of yourself you abandoned? “I knew you would come back to me,” he said, “I just didn’t know when.” I was 20 when I found out love was a gyp, so why did I continue to chase it blindly? People will never forget how you made them feel.

Julia's party

When I got there, I knocked on the door. No one answered. I knew they might be in the backyard so I traipsed around the side of the house and saw them all. I walked up to Julia. My hair was cut now, it had been so long since I'd seen her. She didn't know about Jesse, my dead boyfriend, about how he overdosed and died in my bathtub, about anything. It was almost safe. We embraced. There were children running around with water balloons, a plastic blue pool. We threw the dog the ball into it and he chased it and I tried to get a picture. Julia and I hung out in the bathroom while she was getting ready, doing her make-up. I watched from the toilet. She talked about her new husband, how they got engaged and they're moving to Hawaii. It was her birthday. Later, Kel arrived.

 
She was the life of the party. She hugged everyone and everyone hugged her. Kel has always been popular. We talked about how we hid Brenda's bike in the tree that one time we stole it from her. It was good to catch up, it was the first time we'd been at a party together in our entire lives. Which is odd, seeing as we sort of knew the same people in high school. Misty was sitting with her tattoos, blonde and loud in the corner. She said my name. I liked her. She said her pets might be cooked by the time she got home, because it was hot and she lived in a small apartment. Kel and I talked into the evening. All day, I had one mixed drink that Julia made with soda and syrup. I was driving home.

 
When things got more personal and rowdy, I left. I wish I’d taken more pictures of the sprawling yard, the chainlink fence, the kids and their denim shorts. The memory seemed sufficient enough. The long summer days twist into nighttime and I disappear into the car, start the engine, and take off into the black parking lot.

Patterns & schedules

I like patterns. I like calendars and schedules and plans. I like distance and space. I want my creativity to be the centre of my life. I want my projects to flourish, my habits to develop, and my craft to sharpen. I want ideas and hobbies. I want art to be filled into the places I’m missing pieces in. If anything, I can create beauty.

Discipline yourself by challenging your negative thoughts. You don’t have to believe everything you think.

Grief

I had a friend who told me to get over the death of my sister. At the time, my immediate feeling was defence. I am over it, I thought. Later, I thought, is that something you get over? What happens when it's over? You're all of a sudden happy? But grief is more complicated than that. Grieving is lifelong but it transforms and it isn't always sad. Life will always go on. 

June

I watch the news headlines tick by on the local channel. They speak of hope and doom. The summer has arrived smelling like lilies and honeysuckles. June greets me with open arms: the sun in my face, something I take for granted. All the regulars show up at work. There's Adrienne and Percy, a father-daughter duo who are going to the fine art museum in Montreal. And the McCartney's fruit people, who give us blueberries and don't take menus. I bring them all to their usual tables.

A nine-year-old drowns at the beach and life just goes on. No matter how unfair life can seem, you find a way to muddle through it. We are all trying to cope and that includes me. You can't pretend that bad things don't happen but you can find ways to make the best of it. Maybe summer brings out a certain sense of optimism in me.

Goodbyes

The first thing I immediately think of when I hear a beautiful song or see a beautiful sunset is my sister. My mind goes blank and instead I think of whether or not she'd like the song, if she were here. Instead I think of what she might look like, if her hair would be long and blonde. If she'd have long legs like me. I try to smile through it but what fun is there in goodbyes?

Dandelions

The bright yellow dandelions turn into white puffs in a matter of days. It feels like I just noticed them. They line every street. It means summer is coming. I buy myself new hair clips to celebrate. They are neon pink, green and orange. Summers are always prolific, with adventures packed into every day. Walking around the city, photoshoots on the balcony, drinking Shirley Temples at the bar late at night, stuffed into a booth with all my friends. 

They say you need sixty minutes outside every day to “recharge”. I heard it on the radio. I spend a lot of time trying not to worry about the inevitable bad things that will happen, like the death of my parents or my own death. I know what happens when you die. All your friends and family are sad forever and your body gets either burnt into ashes or buried six feet under. I don’t believe in an afterlife, heaven or hell, so I don’t think I’ll reincarnate into a butterfly or anything like that. I believe your memory is then trapped into the brains of the loved ones you left behind, alive on earth.

I like this for myself. I even made sense of death. 

Transit-way in Ottawa

For my entire life, Ottawa had a bus called the 95, which took riders from Orleans to Kanata along the transit-way, snaking through downtown. 

In 2019, the city of Ottawa took our precious 95s away and replaced them with a bunk light-rail train that keeps breaking down in the snow. Everyone in Ottawa was reeling over this. The LRT had problems with its doors, cracked wheels, and derailed more than once. 

The sad part about the whole thing is that we used to have a functioning transit-way. We were all used to commuting from suburbia to downtown on the 95. You could catch the 95 at almost every station. It was so fast. 

The present LRT system does not work. The city should admit its fault and bring back bus 95. The train is nothing but a giant disappointment. 

Note: I do not take the train. I am editing this to add that. I recently saw an interview on the news where this guy my age was saying the train is useful. Maybe I don't know anything.

I never thought about drowning or overdosing or dying in a car accident; in fact, I particularly recall thinking it would never happen to me. Until it did. I’m begging for mercy on the ground to a god I can’t bring myself to even believe in let alone pray to. When the misery of death takes over everything, I lerch toward religion. I find solace in drugs. I tried every form of escapism I could: I shaved my head and moved out of the city. I had the hardest time with the second step of grief, which is anger. I was angry at everyone, everything. Things were triggering. I went crazy in Vancouver and got hospitalized and diagnosed. I went back to Toronto and fucked that up, too. With my tail between my legs, I came home to Ottawa. That was in the spring of 2018. The next five years were disastrous. So many irresponsible, bad things happened on account of my behaviour which was appalling. I’m thankful to say I’ve changed. I look in the mirror and I’m proud of who I am now, something I haven’t always been able to say.