10 October 2009

How the Glinch Stole Thanksgiving

Well, I wouldn't recommend this feeling to anyone.

I'd been moping around before I even got to work today but it's worse now. I closed up the store sometime between six and six-thirty this evening and stepped out onto Queen Street East. It was already dim and cool, but most of all, still. Queen East is normally bustling even late in the afternoon but the Thanksgiving plague had apparently taken everyone. In the houses on the street, the lights were on but everyone was staying home.

It was eerily quiet as I trudged Westwards towards the bus stop. The wind and rain from the previous few days had disappeared, and the sun did it's best to fight inevitability but the last light of day was disappearing before the bus even arrived.

I wished it was sunny. The great thing about sunshine is that it gives you the excuse to wear sunglasses. The eyes are the window to the soul and with shades I could've hidden the fact that I felt as though I would burst into tears at any moment, that I felt hollow, that it seemed the next decent gust of wind might blow me down the road like an empty Tim Hortons cup. I ended up standing on the opposite side of the road to the bus stop so that I wouldn't be in clear view of the other people waiting.

It feels like heartbreak. It feels as if I've just lost something or someone. Physically, my shoulders are slouched, I can barely pick up my feet to walk, and I'm moving about the place very slowly with an extremely nonplussed look on my face. The only fast thing is my typing but after ten years of writing for a living, that's unsurprising. Mentally, I lack motivation. The burger I bought en route home is sitting in the kitchen as I type because I have no appetite. I don't feel like doing anything that requires thinking or moving.

Emotionally, I'm in bits. There is nothing like a 'family' holiday to highlight the fact that I'm 38, no longer married, and sans famille in this massive country. Even when trying to look into the future there is nothing visible - let alone promising - along the lines of family, lover, or partner. I do try not to think about it - I try to think about how cool it'll be to have my own place instead. But, I am a victim of my own efforts. In the thinking, learning, researching and everything else I've done in the last year or two, the spin-off benefit has been that I now know myself much better. The downside is that I know that the reason why I feel like there is a gaping, raw hole in my life is because there is a gaping, raw hole in my life. It's where my wife and kids are supposed to be. Like my Grandfather before me, without that feeling of connection, the feeling that I'm needed or wanted, I feel untethered. I am the errant canoe that slips its mooring rope, and drifts slowly into the lake mist, never to be seen again.

Emotionally, the other downer is that what I am currently experiencing makes me realise that I really need to get my shit together in the next two months. The only difference between tonight and Christmas Eve will be that the temperature will be lower, and my emotions running higher. Because my job is a retail one, we'll probably be working right up to the last minute so I can't jet off to the UK for xmas as I might do ordinarily. I will be here, in Toronto, alone.

So, by then I need to be stronger. Much stronger.

At least I can take my meds soon. Just another 109 minutes to go...

No comments:

Post a Comment