In the end

Yesterday afternoon I met J for a drink at a nearby pub. It seems like such a civilized thing to do as an adult person, to drink beer while the sun is still in the sky. They encourage this behaviour, you know, by selling $4 pints, which was okay by me. We each had two pints and I was still home by 5:30. J is getting married next summer and I have threatened to wrestle with his mother for the right to walk him down the aisle. I mean, this isn’t a joke. I am going to start weight training. J is one of my favourite people in the world, so much so that I am willing to fight his mother, who I also happen to think pretty highly of, apart from her insistence on being involved in her son’s wedding instead of me. 

J told me about his father-in-law (to be) dying from brain cancer. He chose to end his life using MAID and J talked about going to be there with him at the end of his life, supporting his partner through this. This story was particularly significant because J and I normally laugh together, only laugh together, because J is one of the funniest people in the whole world. And most of the time when we get together we just make each other laugh. But yesterday was different. He told me that they are talking about adoption, which is incredibly expensive if you go through a private agency. And he told me about being sent out to buy potato chips because that was what his future father-in-law wanted to eat for his final meal, and wandering around the grocery store trying to decide which chips, because no one had specified. And wanting so much to get it right that he bought every kind, bags and bags and bags, so as not to disappoint.  And for some reason this was the part of the story that made me spill over. And that’s not something we have done together before either. And when we hugged goodbye in the parking lot we said I love you, and that was also new for us. I think we are both growing up. 

Whatever the cost, I will pay

The pharmacy after dark. The elderly - and safe - shoppers looking for compression socks and reading glasses have gone to bed, and the opiate addicts have awoken. A young guy with a tattoo that covers his entire neck and some of his chin ignores the line and drops into the chair you take when you are invited to consult with the pharmacist. The pharmacist does not look at him but knows he is there. No eye contact. Gives him the methadone drink. It seems wrong that there is no privacy for this interaction- but maybe they don’t want to be alone together. I don’t know. 

I am at the pharmacy after dark because I forgot to pick up my migraine medication earlier in the day, when I meant to. Although I considered it, it’s not really a medication I should skip for a night. Doing so is likely to bring on a morning migraine, the dizzy kind. I didn’t remember I had run out until I was getting ready for bed, and annoyingly this meant getting dressed again and going out when I wanted to be in my pajamas. I didn’t bother putting on a bra. (What’s the point when you’re wearing a winter coat anyway?) The pharmacist looks me in the eye when he asks what I need. My lack of neck tattoo is working for me. 

I don’t want to be around the neck tattoo guy either. It isn’t that I do not understand what brings him here - I really really do. I lived with my sister while she was spiraling down the same pathway. I lived in the same house with her as a child, the same house that may have caused the whole trauma that made her start. I don’t know anything for certain but I am familiar with the genre. It makes me sick to my stomach. Not in an ‘I’m better than you and you disgust me’ kind of way.  More like an ‘I know you and it makes me so sad to recognize you that I can hardly breathe’ kind of way. Sometimes I think I am done with all of that heartache, and sometimes a kid with a fucking neck tattoo can make it all rise up in the back of my throat and suffocate me while I’m standing in line waiting for my bloody migraine medication when I just want to be at home in my pajamas. 

Whatever. He’s taking methadone, and that’s several steps further down the road to recovery than my sister ever attempted. So maybe I should celebrate Neck Tattoo Guy, smile at him. Give him a fist bump in front of the rack of compression socks. Or at least make some fucking  eye contact. But I don’t want to. I want to make it to the liquor store before it closes. I want to get home and get back into my pajamas, take my migraine medication, and pour a big glass full of Irony and Hypocrisy, and drink deeply. And congratulate myself on dodging another migraine, whatever the cost. 

Before you crash

Tomorrow is the first day of my holiday, and so I booked myself to fill in for C for a day, because heaven forfend that I should take a day off. I have trouble slowing down, like a downhill skier who needs some runway (is that the right word?) at the end of the race to lose the momentum that threatens to make them crash into the boundary fencing. I will ignore the nagging inner voice that asks me if I want to work five in a row because, why not be productive? I have plans, other plans.  I have a book I want to read and I have time to read something that isn’t a psychology textbook or a peer reviewed journal article written within the last seven years (because everything written prior to that is trash). I want to read a quirky little book about time travel written by a Japanese writer.  He’s not Haruki Murakami, but really, who else can even come close? We shall see. There has been a lot of buzz about this book, and if you travel in the nerdy sort of circles that I do, you’ve probably already read it and moved on to the sequel. Please don’t tell me it doesn’t live up to the hype; I don’t care.  I’m reading it anyway. 

Objective wonder

When students hand in their papers to me, they often write my name as “Dr. LastName” instead of just using my first name, as they do in class.  I feel compelled to correct this misconception; I do not own that title. I always tell them so on the first day of class. It is meant to be a point for us to bond over.  I understand how you feel, dear students, as I am also a student struggling to understand stupid APA7 and wondering why we can’t just have done with these old fashioned restrictions anyway. They don’t hear it. They keep writing Dr.; maybe it is meant to be aspirational. And maybe it works. I am one year deep into the three years, and I do not think I am going to quit.

My mother emailed their annual Christmas letter last week, a custom I loathe. It’s possible that I loathe it because she never remembers my existence when she is recounting all the wonderful things the family has been up to in the last year. But my nonexistence is also one of our special family traditions and it applies not only to the Christmas letter but also to death notices and autobiographical books in which I do not exist although I have stubbornly continued to suck up oxygen that could otherwise be used by plants or to fuel tire fires. (Or to blow your house down.) Maybe the actual reason I hate Christmas letters is that year when K sent a real Christmas letter in an envelope which exploded in a sun shower of red glitter when I opened it, and then added insult to injury by encouraging me to “vote Conservative” in the upcoming election. That was pretty revolting, but as I compare the two things, maybe my unrelenting invisibility really is the bigger problem. 

My vacation starts in a week, which feels unnecessary since everyone around me is on vacation at the same time.  If they are all on vacation there is nothing for me to do, which would make it a rather lovely time to be working. But I am still in the honeymoon phase of the new job at the university (not worth noting in the Christmas letter) and so I am not taking advantage. Maybe next year I will be more wiley about this. 

For what it’s worth I believe I have figured out why  the university hired me even though I was only in the first few months of doctoral studies (also not noted in the Christmas letter). It’s undoubtedly because of my background and recent certification (not notable) in conflict resolution. Because frankly, one of my colleagues is a pain in the ass. And it is my role to learn from her and take over her position while she moves into another department. Not fighting with her is my super power, because everyone else does.  I don’t plan to.  I don’t engage with this kind of stuff at all, not because I have any special certification but because I am not invested enough to be bothered. This is conflict resolution in action, approaching with a Buddha-like sense of detachment.  Whatever man. I’m cool.