Forever Tainted

It was just before midnight when I snuck out the front door for a cigarette. Giddily talking on the phone I obliviously sat in the chair just next to the small garden and listened to the pouring rain in the background. “If I get eaten by a bear I’m blaming you,” I told him. If he hadn’t have called, I’d have still been snuggled up in my bed, a cigarette the furthest thing from my mind. To my left I heard rummaging, “There’s a coon, bear or cougar in the neighbour’s garage. I can hear him thumping around the garbage bins in there.” In the pitch of the night, I couldn’t see a thing beyond the car port just 15 feet away. As the thumping and rummaging continued, I stood starting to worry about what unseen creature was so close to me going about his business. Stretching my eyes as far as they could go, I peered into the darkness. After a few moments of silence my nerves got the best of me. I crushed my full cigarette in the garden and stepped back into the door frame of the house, one hand on the door ready to close in a moment’s notice.

Within seconds a black bear appeared from behind a car. “There’s a bear! Oh my god, there’s a bear and it’s the first time I have seen one this close up,” I whispered in a hurried voice into the phone. He must have weighed just 350 or so pounds. He was a little bear, the size I like to think of as a teenager. In his mouth he carried a small sandwich bag. The neighbours must have left the bear lock on their garbage undone. As I stood in the doorway he casually sauntered across our yard, not 6 feet away from me, stopping only next to the tiny tree in the yard to our right. He sat down with his prize and pawed at it for a while. Deciding it wasn’t what he wanted or devouring the contents, he picked himself up and this time walked back to his treasure chest of goods. He made his way back into the black of the garage and disappeared for a moment before the thumping and rummaging started again. Something spooked him, and he dashed out of the black and up behind my parked car, proving how quick he could be if needed.

With a bear that spooked and that close I decided it best to go into the house, closing the door behind me. I made my way to the balcony on the second floor where I watched as another neighbour switched on her balcony light and shot a flashlight through the streets. “He’s in Mike’s yard,” I shouted. Once she spotted him, she let me know and started calling her kitty. I watched the bear make his way back across the streets, and behind a house, certainly on his way to the comforts of his woodsy home.

I wasn’t sure if the boy on the phone believed me. And since he was driving across Canada at the time for work, the phone connection wasn’t all that great. Eventually, while I still gazed at this majestic wildlife in our front yard the phone had disconnected. We didn’t talk to one another until he was a few hours from visiting me here, yesterday.

So last night before dusk we sat on the porch eating, drinking and enjoying the company of a few friends. “Oh my goodness you guys, the bear is back,” Emily pointed to the apple tree in the back yard just 10 feet below us and a few feet away. We closed the balcony gate and watched as an even larger bear then the one I’d seen the night before, perhaps 500 pounds of him, swiped up an apple off the ground and put it in his mouth. He casually made his way across the yard where the real treat was left for him. We’d left a bucket of raked apples meant for the compost next to the green house. All the children in the house watched through a window as the bear sat with the bucket between his legs and feasted on the sugary treats. There was no disbelieving for the boy on the phone now.

Being this close to nature at its finest is one of the blessings of being here in BC. It truly is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And there’s nowhere else on the planet I’d rather be right now.

Karma is a bitch, I wish I knew what I did to deserve this shit storm... He asked me to leave and I did. When someone else he knows shows interest in me, he says he’s fine by it. When I’m seen in public with that someone else, shit hits the fan and my life becomes a soap-opera again. I’m not even on the fucking island and I’m the center of attention.

My father and mother are separating and it’s certain. She’s been in touch with a lawyer who since got in touch with my father’s lawyer. I’ll end up having to testify and that’s fine. The truth will not work in my mother’s favour but the way I see it, she hates me so much without any reason anyway, what more can the truth cause? With any luck, I’ll at least be able to help my father out. Any financial gain she takes away from this separation will be pissed away on alcohol, lawyers’ fees and whatever random crap she decides to pick up from junk shops along the way. She’s already been selling off her gold and pearls to feed her habits. It disgusts me to know what’s she’s done, what she’s attempting to do, and where it’s all going to lead. I wish I knew how my mother became what she is today, and I dread the day I become the same.

I’ve been here just over a week. I haven’t taken a single anti-depressant pill and I feel fantastic – despite the drab things that seem to be happening in my life. I’m well on my way to finding a job and generally, I’m happy. Let’s hope it stays that way.

What the hell goes on in that head? -- Photography again by Sam C.

Most successful people seem to have a story of poverty in their past. Some of the more famous stories always seem to start with something like, “I hitchhiked into town with fifty bucks in my wallet and the clothing on my back...” and they end with, “Today, I’m a content multibillionaire.” Though my childhood was plagued with alcoholism and poverty, I wonder that I’ll never get that chance again. I’ve built and been blessed with too many security blankets and people that seem to love to save me.

Sunday, I leave the island broken-hearted with more than fifty dollars in my wallet and a car that’s insured in my name – with everything I own on the western content packed into the back. But the intent of leaving the island is to truly start over – and this time, with as little outside help as possible. True, my father lent me the money to insure the car (which used to be my mother’s until her license was suspended for being a drunk with epilepsy & other mental conditions). He is also lending me more money to make sure I have enough to start up, to put a down payment on a house and tide me over until I find work. On top of that, I still get rent paid to me from my apartment in Dubai, and alimony as well. And I’m not going to a town I’ve never seen. I’m heading to Squamish, where the one sister who actually has her head on right, lives with her husband and twin children. Perhaps I’ll never be able to start a story like the many famous successful people. But I will be successful & I will find contentment.

Perhaps, I’ll even get to writing that damn book I’ve been thinking about?

Some anonymous dickhead who got a hard-on for me on another site decided to tell me what my problem was in comments here earlier today. Oh feeble minded anonymous and those like you, please allow me to make it easier for you by pointing out what my fucking problems are, so you can gladly copy & paste them in the future and be at least remotely accurate in your findings.

My biggest problem is myself. I’m a fucking cunt, not only to you but also to me. There is NOTHING you can say to me that I haven’t already told myself. I suffer a number of psychological disorders, I grew up in an alcoholic family, I have been molested more than once. I seek love in the wrong places from the wrong types of men. I cut myself. I snap, and have attempted to commit suicide (and murder) on more than one occasion. I burn way too many bridges and I find it really hard to forgive. I have to take pills to get my pitiful ass out of bed most mornings. I over-analyze just about everything. I don’t trust people, and I don’t trust myself. I make piss-poor decisions. I judge harshly, and I’m even a little racist not to mention bias concerning some things. I’m a little over weight and on the verge of becoming anorexic, my mother lost her mind and thinks I’m the antichrist. My son is on the other side of the planet, and I have made a miserable mess of my whole fucking life.

I never should have been born in the first place. But guess what dickhead, I was. And I’m not going anywhere real quick, and most certainly not because you believe the world would be a better place if it only existed of people as oblivious of themselves as you are. I may be a royal fuck up, but I know myself and I know along with all these ‘problems’ (that many, many more people face without even realizing), I’m also more intelligent than your average twat, more loved than most online trolls, more intuitive, more artistic, more creative, funnier, more accepting, kinder, bolder, stronger, with a broader view of the world, and I have a brilliant future waiting me. I excel in everything I do!

I’m 27 years old and I’m well on my way to fixing my problems, thanks to the fact that I realize they exist. Maybe instead of telling other’s what you think their problems are, you should spend more time asking yourself what the fuck your own problems are and counting your fucking virtues.

I realized the other day a fair number of my girlfriends met their boyfriend’s, fiancé’s, or husbands online. It got me thinking, I haven’t met many new people here since I got back, period. It seems as though society as a whole is making its way to the internet. TV commercials here are littered with advertisements for dating, connection, and socializing sites such as eharmony.com, or plentyoffish.com. Is this today’s and our future’s way of connecting with people? Is society as it once was dying?

Growing up, I never had problems meeting people or making friends. It’d be a lie to say I have such problems now. Perhaps it isn’t me that’s cutting herself off from the world, perhaps it’s the world cutting itself off from anyone who isn’t online? I met a friend of mine for coffee yesterday. As I stood in line waiting to order my coffee, I overheard a girl chatting on her mobile, “They sent me the same thing on facebook!” Her whole conversation seemed to be about her life online. My friend arrived with her baby and we pulled up a few chairs outside. The girl on the phone sat alone on the bench, waiting I guess, for the phone to ring again. She seemed out of place without a laptop in front of her. She seemed out of place, alone in a coffee shop like Starbucks without a drink, with a little bit of an empty look on her face. I wondered if I looked the same when I ventured out alone.

Is the internet making it hard for us to socialize? Is it making it harder for us to be a functioning society? Are online dating sites worth checking out? Is there a stigma attached to relationships that are formed online? Could there be any romance in it at all?

Five or ten minutes after I hung up the phone with my dad, the phone rang again and the call display showed my ‘Canada House – Puckle’. He was explaining to me that my mother got the results of her EEG and the doctors have found signs of Epilepsy. They refused to act on it because she has not had a seizure that she can remember in the last month or so. There’s some hope that much of what she’s been going through and putting us through have been physical after all. No doubt at all, any and all symptoms were increased thanks to her severe alcoholism. He told me she seemed to be doing better these days. She was looking for work, asking about insuring the car (though he will never agree because it’s down-right out dangerous to let her drive) and relatively positive about the idea of visiting some of her old friends.

For the past 10 or so months my mother’s hate for me has seemed to increase. A week or so back, my sister was visiting from the mainland and got to spend a day with her shopping. They planned a BBQ for the evening and when my sister mentioned that she was calling to invite me, my mom responded with, “Fine, she can come, but I’m leaving.” The fight was on, because my sister, my father and my brother know that I have done nothing to encourage this deep a hate from her. My mother’s feeble attempts to defend her opinion were drowned out by her psychotic behaviour and words. She had just called and asked to talk to me a week prior while I was with my sister, as normal. Nothing had changed in that week.

So when the phone rang this time showing her house, I assumed it was my brother calling. I answered and was shocked to hear her voice. She was talking as though all was normal, as though she hadn’t hated me for reasons unknown to me. She told me about her EEG results, she told me about her job hunt she even invited me out for coffee sometime. At the end of the conversation she said, “I’m glad we got this chance to talk.” As if for some reason she felt she could not call me up at any time previously, like I had somehow cut ties with her and not the complete opposite.

I still don’t know what to make of the conversation. I am not sure how to feel about it, or what is going on through her head. I do now know that my father was distant from her yesterday, busy with his own things and giving himself a break from the insanity. Perhaps she was just that lonely. Perhaps she’s half snapped back into reality. Perhaps, the ice I heard in the background was her first drink of the day and getting drunk alone is never any fun. Who knows.

The international documentaries made on Dubai are careful with their camera work. It’s rare that you’ll see the skyline, littered with cranes and construction workers almost dangling from their deaths tens of stories up, without harnesses. The architecture looks brilliant on the outside. Sleek glass windows, buildings so tall from the ground you imagine they touch the stars at night, marble flooring, and in some of the higher-class hotels, faucets plated in pure gold. Look a little deeper and you’ll see the walls are cracking under the paint less than a year after construction was completed, the wiring is a mess causing random mini-explosions, plumbing backs up and the building itself is no more stable than a shack.

I fell into the trap of buying an apartment in Dubai. It wasn’t a month later that, that the air conditioner (a vital instrument for living in the UAE) stopped working. It wasn’t two months in when the toilet decided to continually flush itself with a constant rush of water making its way through the bowl, increasing my electricity and water bills to shocking amounts. It was the very first week I was there, that the pipes under my sink broke and my kitchen flooded. So very pretty on the outside, but its core is complete and utter crap. Still, that lovely little piece of property is worth about 33% more now, two years later then it was when I purchased it. Why? The illusion of Dubai is simply that grand!

Life in Dubai is much the same as most of these buildings. It is picture perfect on the outside, but disturbed at its core. Visit Dubai for a week and you’ll fall in love; stay there a few years and you’ll learn to despise just about everything about it. Dubai teaches you one thing really well, and that’s how to become a plastic person. The only problem with being plastic is, plastic can’t comfort your heart – nor can the plastic people you end up surrounded by. Material things take lead, while arts, emotions, anything that makes us human is forced on the back burner.

There isn’t a proper jazz club in Dubai. There isn’t a coffee shop where one can go and watch local talent, whether it be stand up, poetry readings or even a play. All of Dubai’s entertainment is imported for a short while – long enough to put on a show or two, then sent back home. In a place that populated, there has to be talent there somewhere. But who is actually looking for it? Who is willing to embrace it? And who is able to hold on to their own talents while the whims of personal belongings, and picture perfect life charades are taking over everything they do?

In the 12 years I lived in Dubai, outside of English class in school I met only one poet. He was a brilliant writer and most likely could have made something of himself on that talent alone. But he was Indian. And life in Dubai taught him that wasn’t ok. For months he lied to me and everyone he knew, taking on an assumed local identity, concentrating more on what people thought of him and how he could further deceive us of his roots, than he possibly could his writing. I don’t imagine he’s writing still. I don’t even know if I ever actually learned his first name. But he was a talent Dubai and Dubai’s society lost out on.

Dubai is an illusion. From the fairytale cities, to the Barbie-doll type people, there is no real life there; just plastic, paint and a decaying core.

It’s not just skin deep.
~*~


Thank you Sam C. for the photography.

160 of those pounds are the boy I just walked away from. The rest is all me...

Since the start of this uproar, I haven’t been able to eat. Initially, I tried to force-feed myself only to realize that just made me feel over-bloated and worse than I already felt. Soon, I decided not to fight it. This was the silver lining to my cloud, the good bit that’s coming out of this breakup. I look better, I don’t feel half as fat, and I’m able to fit into a bunch of old clothing that I haven’t worn for months. And it was all in a matter of a few weeks.

I’m starting to worry about it though now. Sometimes, I’ll go for two and a half days without eating a thing. It’s only when I remember that I haven’t eaten in so long that I’m able to force myself to eat half a cup of soup and maybe a piece of bread, or so. And now, when I put anything in my stomach, I automatically want to vomit. I try lying down for a while after I eat. I try drinking lots of water. Nothing takes away the queasiness food seems to give me.

I wonder if this is the start of one of those crappy eating diseases like anorexia or bulimia. No matter how much I feel like I want to throw up right now, I refuse to allow myself to out of fear of becoming bulimic. But forgetting or being unable to eat for days may very well be the start of anorexia. I don’t want or need such an added issue in my life – but I’m willing to bet this is going to end up being my next big challenge. Food feels like an enemy now. It's hard to make yourself do something that feels so shitty.

Always got to be something going on in my life... It’s really starting to suck.

By midnight, there was an attempt at murder/suicide that resulted in bruised arms and a gaping hole in the leather couch. By 3am the most passionate love making was being had.

Passion is a beautiful, and yet scary thing.

I still left the house the next day – taking all my belongings with me. I will never turn back. What I’m doing next, is up in the air.