Paralyzed

2:27 am: I've lost most conception of time. Time of day, time of week, time of month...

Today was another day almost wasted. My sleep pattern has been so consistently off that I'm starting to think that I don't really need that much sleep.

Thursday
I forced myself to go out on Thursday night to see what the Champaign bar scene was like and to see some old friends and maybe have a good time. It was entertaining enough, but really just left me wondering how so many kids here can be content with the campus bar scene. Now if you haven't already noticed, I'm something of a NN, Negative Nancy. People just go to drink, hook up, maybe have a passing conversation or two... I really just want to dance and meet interesting people. Unfortunately that wasn't really the case on Thurs. night. I didn't really want to have someone order drinks for me, so I brought a flask with me. Drink of the times: gin. I had just enough to be in an altered state, yet was still entirely able to ride my bike back to a sailing shinding after deserting the bar somewhat early. I challenged Brian to foosball and definitely held my own. I forgot that we may have plans tomorrow to continue the challenge... Anyhow I had a decent time, and when I finally got home at 3am, I was ready to sleep. Somehow I didn't manage to fall asleep until 4am maybe.

Friday
The next day I had to turn in a book project at 11am and then two problem sets at 3pm and 5pm. The book project was left mostly undone before I went out on Thurs., so I knew I had work to do on Friday morning. Woke up at 8am (sleep tally: 4 hours), and worked on the psych assignment until its 11am due time. Then had a working birthday lunch with some friends and then went to Stats to work on a lab. The instructor just did a bunch of simpler problems on R, so I kept working on the problem set due in my other (more difficult) Stats class. I was understanding the material better than when I had worked on it on Wed.. so ideas just came rushing in, and I had to get it all on paper. After my lab, I worked pretty fiercely to get in the tougher problem set (managed to get it in on time!). After I turned that one in at 3pm I still had another one to finish off. Did those problems, turned it in before its 5pm deadline. At this point I didn't even feel tired. I literally worked on things from 8am-5pm running on 4 hours of sleep, and I didn't even feel it. Then I went to Shakespeare in the Park which was fun. Kept sneaking remarks to my friend about people sitting near us... Managed to stay awake throughout without a problem... Then I went to a friend's apartment and had a good chat until 1am maybe. Rode my bike home and probably was in bed by 1:30am. (Someone who had said they were going to call to make plans, definitely never did...)

Saturday
Sat. morning woke up with a huge headache (mentioned in previous post) at around 12pm (a decent 8.5 hours!). Decided to stay in bed and try to get back to sleep, spent time reading a bit. Definitely did not clean apartment or anything that would've really made me step outside of the situation to realize that I was being self-loathing and lazybones. Fell back asleep at 4pm (again, let me stress that I accomplished nothing between noon and 4 except for making my headache worse with caffeine) and woke up again at 8pm. (4 more hours of sleep!) Watched Sense and Sensibility and then Erika called. This is really my first outing (sans Katie and Pat) that I honestly enjoyed. We went to a Karaoke bar in Savoy where I was ID'ed. I had already planned not to drink, so I was a little surprised when the bartender ID'ed me when I was looking to order club soda... I told him he didn't need to ID me because I wasn't drinking. He then told E not to pass me drinks for the rest of the night which was really insulting because I had no intention to do such a thing... That bar turned out to be a little slow, so we decided to go to Champaign. In the meantime I'm texting D trying to see if he wants to hang out at all (he hadn't kept his promise to call on Fri. night, and also didn't seem interested by the fact that we would be hanging out in dt Champaign... not really a big deal.) We walked around and I've found the places I need to go to. Campustown is so suburban. None of the places there are really unique, but Champaign really has some character. I hope that I can get in at 19 because those are the places I need to be hanging out in... All I need are some friends to hang out with :) Anyways we walked around, hitting every street on each side about 3 times... I found a photo store I want to inquire in to get cheap film. They're also selling ceramic tajines at 10,000 villages...
We then decided to hit campustown to have seen most of the scenes all in one night. We walked up and down Green and then ran into some old hs buds of mine. I was really excited because these ladies are so hilarious! It was a welcome laugh fest. Say cops ticketing underage drinkers and breaking up fights here are there. I was happy to be 100% sober, it was so much more fun to just watch the drunkies interact in that state... Got home around 2am maybe. Then I start being crazy. I managed to stay up until 6am.

Sunday
Woke up at 1o am on Sunday (zzzzz count: 4 hours). Put a few of my things in piles around the house, went to the grocery store and made some delish meals... Did a whole lot of nothing until I tried to fall asleep around 9pm... That did not work at all. Never have I ever tossed and turned so much in my life. Finally got to sleep by 6am.

Monday
Defs missed my 9:30 class because I'm terrible at alarms that early in the morning. Woke up at 10am, really upset because I love that class! Decided to take today off. I made a delicious breakfast, and managed somehow to work on various problem sets from noon until 6pm. Then I cleaned, cleaned, cleaned my apartment. It feels so nice to have a very clean kitchen with a fridge nicely stocked in vegetables and fresh fish and meats. Tonight I made courgette with mushrooms and onions with tilapia. I added herbes de provence and chili powder with cardamom seeds (talk about fushion dining!) It was so light and scrumptiously moist! After dins I tried to fall asleep, but unfortunately it still isn't happening for me.

I read up on the internet and have discovered that I have all the wrong behaviours near bed time. I usually eat dinner late, have a cig before bed (who knew nicotine was a stimulant!, have a coke zero around 3-4pm, try to fall asleep watching something, anything, don't really spend a lot of time in natural light outdoors, don't really exercise except for ferociously riding my bike... Over the next few I should really work on my bedtime routine. It's a necessity because I have decided to stop taking naps so that I can tire out by night time. The good news is that I'm still great at Stats when I'm tired...


Anyways that information was mostly logistical.



For those concerned by my previous post, I think it's just part of my breaking-up with Montreal. I'm actually very happy with that post, because in just a few lines I have managed to capture how being away effects me. When I first got here, I just tried to move on, tried not to think about Montreal too much or the fact that I had just transferred. It's unfortunately a daily occurrence for me to associate people, places, things back to Montreal, so it's a real sign of my mental health that I can't just move away without looking back...

Looking forward is the real hard part. My very low lows are only salvaged by indifference on most occasions. I'm scared to enjoy my time alone too much because I don't want to shut off communications completely, but by numbing myself to most of my feelings I am falling deeper into this hole. To exist now, I have to minimize my field of vision to what is directly in front of me. The basics. Family, Statistics, Food. I'm hoping to add Photography to that list soon. I've found a darkroom, but I just need to find a decent price on rolls.

Suki is right, I should try to save myself and work on being whole again. The biggest problem though is that most of what I'm feeling now has nothing to do with where I am or what I'm doing. I could be in the most suitable place in the world for me and still lock myself in my apartment. There's not much anyone can do to pull me out of this. Suk has given a lot of advice on many topics across the board that I have heard, but can somehow never really put into action. I do consider a lot of what we talk about on a near-daily basis, replaying conversations past which seemed to be helpful at the time.

At least I'm thinking about regaining my life, my joys, my passions. Trying to plan it out, to make the most optimal return to true form. I've been lost for a while, and just because I haven't found the right path, doesn't mean I'm not striving to walk in the right direction.


Not sure how much of this will makes sense to those who don't know, but I'm pretty sure I have a readership of one pseudo-sibling in the city of lights.

enjoy

I'm not there, but still here.

I decided to clean up the blog a little bit. Ironically, the only post I left on here involves that trip to the strip club after the UVM dinner. Somehow it seems to be the only meaningful post I've put on here. Two years in Montreal, and all the evidence about my time there and my feelings there are linked to going to a strip club with one person I never want to see again and another I talk to casually... If it was at all possible, I've managed to isolate myself more from the people and things I love the most. At least in Montreal, I could ring up Katie or Jessica to go take fun pictures, have picnics with Fran, do crafts with MJ or go sailing with the crew. Now, I rarely talk to people, I can barely put myself together to leave the house. It's a good thing that I have schoolwork to do because otherwise I would just have completely wasted away. I'm not even trying to like it here at he moment. The Stats part of this transfer deal is so far one of the few things I can manage to get really excited about. I'm not sleeping enough, I haven't gotten groceries in a while and really try not to go out for food.

Montreal is really easy to like. There are just so many things going on, so many bars, restaurants, clubs theaters. Anything that I would ever have wanted to do extracurricularly was there. It's a city with a distinct heartbeat of pre-loved music overspilling into the street during an impulse walk up St. Laurent, punks wiping down your windshields pour 25 sous, sloppy nights and bruising recoveries. When it was good, it was really good. I've never been so happy as I was first year in Montreal. After the honeymoon, real life hit. Math should've become a bigger part of my life. I should've loved it like there was no tomorrow instead of getting wrapped up in these silly dramas I would now retell with the shame of having been so young and stupid.

Tucked away in a mostly dark year were some bright times. Times involving overwhelmingly good friends, disappointingly bad ones, sober nights in, drunken nights out. Staying up with Katie to do Analysis, walking with Jessica discussing Sartre, de Beauv, ideal love, music... Fran being a better friend to me than I was ever to her, loving me no matter how much I lulled her to sleep with my stories of little importance. And then there were the sailors. A not-so-secret object of desire, someone who's heard my all, someone who surprised me with his capacity to take my rambling calls, who patiently calmed me down and mediated my internal fights. A brittish friend I wish I could miss less, a skeezeball coach who turned out to be surprisingly insightful, a friend with an ebullient personality who makes me feel like someday I could be happy like that too. A boy that I could run towards and away from simultaneously. Roommates I wish I never had, but from whom I still learned everyday.

I really miss this passionate lifestyle, being near people I truly love, all of us exiled on this island of sorts, a place from which most of us were not citizens, but all of us could call home. It's too painful to stay in touch. I don't really want to know what you've all been up to because chances are, a brief glimpse into a life I could've kept on living had I not been so entirely careless with academics. I wish I could go back. Despite all the poor decisions, messy situations and head spaces I had to run away from, I wish I had the courage to stay.

Transferring was perhaps braver, the challenges I face here are of a different kind.

I don't fit in. I can't play well with others, and the loneliness is so crushing I can hardly breathe. I could take advantage of my time alone and do more projects, but if there is no one to share it with, no one to collaborate with, what is the purpose? I know how to be alone. I was alone a lot of the summer traveling, and I had an amazing time.

I have a terrible headache today, I can barely get out of bed. All this pretending to be happy is exhausting.

The problem is, the more I feel unsettled and out of place, the less open I am to meeting new people, reconnecting with old friends.

I want to get lost in this city, but there's no where to go. I couldn't walk for an hour up St. Denis and land on Jean Talon. I couldn't get bagels at Fairmount or go ice skating at Vieux Mont. I couldn't attempt to stay underground as long as possible returning from the IGA with groceries in the mid-winter lung shattering cold. When I am inside I can still pretend I'm somewhere else.

Club Erotica, Adam and Eve, Geisha House

Driving back from a very useful "business" meeting in gorgeous Burlington, VT we stopped at a place we pass basically every week on our trips to the states. It's a little place in St. Athanas about halfway to the St. Philipsburg border crossing. It was one large building

Let's roll the tape back to about 9:00 PM in Burlington, VT. We've just had a delicious dinner and were ready for our trip back home. We had discussed stopping there a few times, and had come to the decision not to go. I had said it would be a terrible experience for me and the guys being the gentleman they are, were content to go straight home. We had dressed up for the dinner (guys in 3 piece suits, moi in a nice fc dress) and were considering whether or not to change out of nice dress for the ride home. J went to the back of the car looking for his clothes and I said, "But we should stay dressed like this." A and J were like "hunh?" And then I said, "Yeah, I wanna go to this strip club." The guys who seemed set on going straight home were now very happy to make a pit stop along the way home. We set out for the drive. As soon as we passed the border, we started looking for this place. We do drive by it everytime we leave the city, but all the towns along that road look the same at night... We did not spot the place for a very, very long time.

Walking up the uber-sketchy stairs to Club Erotica I was so nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I really had to wee from all the water I had at the banquet. The boys grabbed a seat, I swang round to the bathroom. When I came back, I got a drink and had a seat with my fellas. There was a screen playing porn right behind me and a few men sitting at the bar. At some point, these two women started circling our table like hawks. I was so uneasy, so uncomfortable I just didn't know what kind of face to put on. One of the women squatted next to A and the other put a towel down on the chair next to me and sat down. They asked where we came from, what we were up to, where we lived... Then they started to direct all their attention to me.

"Have you ever been with a woman?"
"No."
"You seem like you're the kind of girl who would be curious about it though."
"No."
"Are you sure? We could give you a little dance."
"I'm Ok."
"Are we making you uncomfortable?"
"Yes."

Ok so for a strip club, this place was empty. The two guys at the bar had now disappeared into the stalls for the Lord knows what kind of entertainment. The stage was empty, and these two girls were casually chatting us up. Realizing they wouldn't get anywhere with me, they started to chat up the boys. This is when I really started to respect the guys because they were so much more comfortable than I was in this situation, and spoke to these women with genuine respect. They were having casual conversation with these women. The girls were obviously not used to this (potentially being used to being treated like objects) and quickly decided to just let us be and enjoy our drinks just the three of us.

By the time I got home, I realized that if I ever decided to go back to Club Erotica, I would be much more comfortable. The overall experience was fun and definitely educational and I would recommend Club Erotica to anyone driving past it, just to get a taste of the most sketchy establishment I have ever frequented in my life...