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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.