My Kitchen in Kits 2018
It'd been almost a decade since my last episode.
I avoided everything that might trigger one.
I stepped around it, turned my back, and disassociated.
And then it hit.
It was a beautiful late afternoon in July, around dinner time.
I was washing dishes in the kitchen of my dilapidated yet perfect Kitsilano rental.
My outstretched arms were warm from the gentle breeze
that danced through
the pink sequined fabric
I'd hung over the window above the sink.
It was my favourite time of day.
That time of day, my two cats watched me disappear while
I'd transport myself into the lyrics of Seals and Crofts' Summer Breeze.
Love is Patient; my kitchen rock. Kitsilano 2018
The sunlight shone perfectly through
the horizontal window beside the hundred-year-old back door,
throwing sunbeams on my giant philodendron,
bouncing off the copper pots that hung on a rack from the ceiling and
landing on stacks of pottery I'd just retrieved from the kiln – all inspired by him.
Kitsilano 2018
Seemingly, out of nowhere, my body gave in, and
I collapsed to my knees on the floor beside the stove.
The sunlight disappeared.
The needle dragged heavily across the song playing in my head,
and everything stopped.
My reflection grabbed me through the baked-on grease of the oven door,
I looked myself in the eyes and listened as
the song's lyrics were thrown in my face.
Solarium, Kitsilano 2018
He's not going to
see the newspaper layin' on the sidewalk
while a little music plays from the house next door;
he's not going to walk on up to the doorstep
through the screen and across the floor.
He won't come home from a hard day's work - because he doesn't work.
And his arms definitely
won't reach out to hold me when the day's through.
This is make-believe.
Nannie's Guitar, Kitsilano 2018
This is reality.
You let him in the front door
late at night
on
Thursdays and Sundays,
you share a few puffs in the solarium,
you go for a walk on a star-filled beach,
you talk about things only you two can talk about,
you both do all you can to remain detached,
you come home,
you fuck -
like only you two can,
and he leaves.
Stop living in a fantasy.
Jared, Kitsilano 2018
And with that, I curled into a fetal position amongst
the crumbs and random sticky stuff on the old pine floor
and wailed.
I know my neighbours heard me because their BBQ chatter went quiet.
I respect that they allowed me my privacy -
they knew what I was going through.
The kitchen floor, me, Tilley and Flo
Tilley and Flo - my two cats
Not deterred by my sobs and hiccups,
my cats came over to the sack of me on the floor and
stuck their noses in my wet eyes.
They snapped me out of my mindlessness and
I conjured up enough strength to
crawl to the washroom and puke.
Exhausted.
My forehead pressed against the cold base of the toilet.
My cheek cooled by the tile floor.
My eyes focused on dust bunnies under the claw foot tub I loved so much.
My thoughts twinkled like birthday sparklers, then exploded amongst epiphanies.
I didn't cry during the depressive episodes of my past
because
my brain was stuck in a sludge of darkness.
I was too numb to move.
A broken soul covered with a shell of a human.
A vase I made and a sandpiper skull, Kits 2018
Although I felt like a shell of myself lying there on the cold floor,
I found solace in the realization I wasn't depressed.
I was living a moment in time.
An experience,
a situation.
A moment that one day would be over, and
far enough in the past that
I could
see it as a distant memory.
me in the wildfire pollution Summer 2018 Kitsilano
That beautiful late afternoon in July, when I was
washing dishes in
a warm summer breeze is a memory now.
I can watch it like a movie in my mind,
and
I can write about it.
Not all shit experiences are lessons.
They're simply shit experiences.
They aren't meant for anything.
There's no need to be bitter.
To get drunk, high or angry.
But there are a lot of reasons to be strong.
I crawled through my soul's darkest nights until I had the strength to stand.
Sometimes, I lay collapsed on my stomach
between the thresholds of darkness and light,
convinced it was the end.
But then something inside me would flicker—and I'd get up again -
and again.
The realization I'd been living in a fantasy was the start of my healing.
Little did I know that fully healing meant metaphorically dying.
