I have a great trip home. It is filled with wonder and
adventures; flying over the Amazon is amazing, almost getting arrested in
Panama infuriating, missing my flight connection in Toronto frustrating… but
all this time I am still traveling and unexpected things are part and parcel of
that so I enjoy the good bits and deal with the not so good.
At home my bathroom, which is small, seems huge. My bedroom,
which is large, seems palatial.
My first weekend is great.
I had a chance
meeting at the bus stop in Toronto with a Deep River teen that seemed like so
much more than mere coincidence that I feel compelled to go and visit with her
parents the very first evening and have a lovely couple of hours chatting with
them.
The next day Helf’s retirement do is a perfect place to meet
and chat with teachers. I make Leanna laugh, which gives me joy, Alison is keen
to hear stories and fills me with warmth, Suzanne’s delight at seeing me is so
genuine that I am almost shy, and people, like Suzette, whom I had not even known
were following my trip, surprize me with this knowledge.
My son Ben arrives home the day after me to be here for a
week. I love having him in the house.
It is great to catch up with my roommate. I get together
with my Saturday morning coffee group, to go snowshoeing with my Sunday
afternoon ski group, feel like I am being embraced by the community.
But I know, all this time, that I am still riding my
‘vacation high’. I am allowed to talk to everyone about my trip and how
wonderful it was. I can bask in the glory and exoticness of having been away
for four months. Soon this will pass. Things will be back to normal.
Tuesday I will have to teach. I am filled with trepidation.
Can I do it?
The weekend after that Ben will leave and head to the states
and since my roommate is seldom here I will be alone. Again I am filled with
trepidation. How loudly will the silence echo?
And a week passes.
Though Ben has not even left yet the silence already echoes.
I am turning invisible.
I have not contacted any of my friends who live here. I have
not even reconnected my phone. I have, in less than seven days, started to
slip, to fall, to spiral down down down down into the familiar well of
depression. I am free-falling downwards and I can sense the walls of the well
flying up past me as I am sucked further and further down. The sky is a mere
speck way above me and soon it will be out of sight. It is dark down here, and
I am alone, but I am not lonely. The walls encasing me provide a level of
security, in a womb-like way, that leave me totally isolated from society yet
still, oddly, somewhat comfortable. (And it is my comfort in this place that
has me more scared than anything else.)
I talk on the phone to my best friend who lives in
Vancouver, I stop and chat to the teachers in the school, I go to the photo
exhibition at the library… but I am lost. I do not do anything that provides
any real connection. I am becoming a ghost.
When people ask, casually, how I am doing I admit that I
have not lived alone ever in my life and that I am finding the adjustment
difficult, I tell them that I am not acclimatized to the cold, I tell them that
I find it isolating not having a vehicle, but I do not tell them that I am
already lost. I do not tell them that there are too many hours in the day. I do
not tell them that there is nothing, nothing, tethering me to reality here.
This is supposed to be my real life but I feel … I feel I have less substance
than a shadow, than an apparition, that, outside in the cold, I might simply
evaporate, disperse, disappear. My existence is more silent and tenuous than a
forgotten dream.
Already I dare not talk to anyone for the fear and pain
inside is a clenched fist, an overwound spring, a disaster waiting to happen… I
know that, were I to say anything real to anyone, I would fall apart, sob for
hours, cry until I was beyond tired, and still not have a solution. My problems
are bigger than a bread basket.
I eat out a couple times with Geoff.
Jane invites me snowshoeing but I don’t go.
Shelley is persistent enough in calling me that we start up
our regular weekly walks.
Suzanne has me over more than once for lovely lunches of
homemade soup and fresh bread.
School is fine. I go out to lunch every Friday with my
favourite teachers.
But I am not present, not connected, not attached to
anything.
I respond, occasionally, but never reciprocate and know from
past experience where that leads.
I never answer my phone and seldom reply to texts or
e-mails.
I often go to bed too early for lack of anything better to
do and then wake up in the middle of the night totally disorientated unable to
figure out where I am or what season it is.
Alternatively I suffer nightmares so terrifying that they
leave me shaking, cold, and far too afraid to dare go back to sleep again
regardless of how tired I might still be.
I cannot dredge up energy to start anything new or even to
finish old projects. I don’t organize my photos. My blog sits. I had feared falling
apart but watch - detached, shocked, dismayed - at the speed with which this
has happened.
Alexander comes home for a few days but by then I am already
so far gone we do nothing special.
I have retreated into a shell so thick I can barely see what
is outside it.
I am stuck, marking time yet ironically never know how much has passed. I have trouble keeping track of what day it is, what time of day even,
I do not have a purpose.
I am lost.
