September 22 2022

There's an older french guy in a wheelchair who’s a regular panhandler out on the streets here and I’ve seen him around many times over the years. He has a bright spirit and a good sense of humour and sometimes I end up chatting with him for a while. I live downtown now, which is still so weird and hectic and jarring in contrast to my 2 years of being a forest creature. Yet I’m starting to embrace the convenience of being able to wander out in my pyjamas to grab grocery items in the morning if I need something for breakfast.

The french man was outside of the grocery store yesterday and we started talking and he told me about a conversation he had with his father, one of the last before he died, where he told his father that he was proud of him and then his dad started crying. He then talked to me about the whole thing of seeing your parents as fellow human beings and forgiving them for their mistakes. I told him how I had finally started to come to that place within myself and I’m really glad that neither of my parents passed away with a ton of unresolved stuff between us.

In accepting my parents as the flawed humans that they are who did their best with what they had. I’m also facing the reality of accepting my life as it is, and that I’ll never be able to go back in time and make it all better and live out some Leave it to Beaver fantasy of what family is. There’s a lot of sadness and emptiness and disappointment. Many times over the years I’ve tried to recreate some illusion of what I wanted my relationship with my family to be or to make up for lost time and I’m always reminded that it’s just not possible, and that I’m quite alone in the world and have been for most of my life.

I don’t know what a healthy relationship is like, because I’ve never had one. Sometimes I’ll spend some time with a family or a group of friends who are closely connected and loving with each other, and then usually afterwards I end up crying a lot and in deep sorrow. It just makes it more stark as to how much I’m missing in my life and how much pain I have inside of me. I don’t know what to do with all of the pain inside of me. It wants to cut and destroy. I try to let the anger become sadness because sorrow is less destructive than fury.

All I can do is hold on to myself and try and find some way to carry the pain and darkness and walk with my head held high and try to be open to the possibility of better days ahead. And then some days everything just depresses me a lot and I feel a dense fog of hopelessness wash over me.

There are some huge shifts happening inside of me right now, that’s for sure. Maybe I’ve been putting this off for a long time because it’s so difficult and painful.

**

I watched Benny and Joon and cried a lot, it was so cute.

And, hey, Gothtober is almost here: a time when everyone in the world should put aside their differences, take some psilocybin, listen to some Alien Sex Fiend and take a trip to the Celtic Underworld.