June 16–25, 2002 — Notes towards a mental breakdown

I’ve become something of an expert at making things unnecessarily complicated. My interactions with people have never made less sense than over the last two or three weeks. I think there must be something wrong with me, and there’s still plenty of time for things to get worse. Sometimes I just want to go home, but I don’t think that will be an option ever again.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks pretending that I’m over Kerry when I’m really just starting to feel better now. I’ve been distracting myself a lot and telling myself that everything is back to normal, but I’ve only been able to get back to work on a lot of things over the last day or two.

Alex thinks that if Kerry offered me the chance to have things go more or less back to they way they were, I would take it. I said that I wouldn’t, that this hurts enough as it is without having to think about going through it again. But it’s easy to say that knowing it will never actually be an option.

I feel a lot more alone than usual, and I find myself a lot more tempted to talk to strangers. I ask customers at work about their piercings or stare at the girl ahead of me in line at the grocery store and try to think of something clever to say. I want to feel like a part of someone’s life again, and “creepy guy in the grocery store” is at least a start.

At the same time, though, I know it will be awhile yet before I’m able to let someone become too critical a part of my life. So maybe I can compensate with small talk until then.

But probably not.

That was a depressing start. I think I should’ve kept more thorough notes over the last week. I’ll see what I can remember and go through the easy parts quickly.

There was definitely a Constantines show that was a lot of fun. I remembered to bring real ear plugs along this time, so I didn’t get any Kleenex stuck in my ear. I don’t understand how some of my friends from Ottawa could’ve found the Constantines boring. Maybe Toronto shows have more energy because people are more into the Constantines here? I can’t think of any other possible explanation.

And I worked a bit, too. Pride Week starts this week, and we’re right in the centre of it. (For those not in the know, Pride Week is an annual event in Toronto. Gay pride and all that. With parades and marches and plays and parties. I work in the heart of the Toronto’s gay village, and around one million people are expected to attend the festivities this year.) We’re going to need a lot of frozen fruit, and it’s going to be a very long pair of shifts this weekend. I’m kind of scared. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been biking a lot more, too. Trying to get used to all the cars around me all the time, and learning to avoid opening doors, inattentive pedestrians, and poorly placed side-view mirrors. I roll my eyes when I see other cyclists using bicycle signals, but as soon as I have my first near miss (or direct hit) involving a car, I might change my mind.

Back in my room, I can hear sirens constantly. The person who lives upstairs seems to be playing a new video game, one whose principal sound effects are sirens, crashes, and screaming. Andrew thinks it might be “State of Emergency”. I just want the sirens to stop.

And I think that’s about it for little things.

I’ve been reading about Phineas Gage a bit today. He was constructing a railway in 1848 when an explosion blew an iron spike through his head. He survived, but his personality changed completely. He became quick-tempered and couldn’t keep a job as a construction worker even though he was a respected foreman before the accident.

Things like this scare me a lot. Admittedly, I’m not hugely worried about having an iron spike enter and exit my skull any time soon. But I don’t think anything is more terrifying than what basically amounts to someone else taking over a person’s body. If you lose your personality and sense of self, all that’s left is for this altered version of you to ruin the memories your friends and family had of you and to stumble off into the sunset doing things you’d never have considered doing.

I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about this so much lately.

I think I’ve been swearing too much lately, too. I should stop.

Meanwhile, going off on a slightly less random tangent, I spent the day with Alex on Friday of last week. We walked around a lot and went to see Insomnia later on that night. During one of the more surprising moments in the movie, we both jumped, and I managed to cough my gum onto my sleeve at the same moment as I jumped, making for a brilliantly executed spasm of uncoordination. Alex didn’t notice the gum incident (or at least she pretended not to), and I threw it out after the movie.

It was a fun day, all in all, and we’ve talked a fair bit since. Even if I’ve yet to succeed in having the people who moved in next door over for cookies and juice, I’m still making new friends, and that makes me happy.

It’s almost midnight and I want to be up early tomorrow to listen for the UPS man. He has two thousand button parts for me and I wouldn’t want to miss him.

That, and my arms hurt a lot. I might need to do something about this.

But not yet.