Oh... this is a different kind of heartache.
When two little girls look up at you and ask "When are you coming back, monstre? When are you going to play in the park with us like you used to?"
When their mom says "Yeah, when?" and their dad looks at me with the only face in the family that matters anything to me, tired, and worried, with tears welling in his big grey eyes.
We went out for dinner, Spiderman's assurance that he will always be alone sitting like a stone in my gut, talked of computers and how much I've forgotten during my stint in management, talked of Annie's worries for her children, the school system, their lack of french, how they hate doing their homework if cousin Monstre isn't there to tell them why it's cool to know this stuff.
We airplaned the girls to bed, big goodnight kisses and me hiding my tears when they asked me if I'd be there tomorrow.
I once swore to never be an adult, never to swallow the truth for fear of disappointment.
Another childhood promise broken.
Picking up Cfoo we raced over to Eric's where Ollie was waiting with scoop-me-off-the-ground hugs and Cfoo and I did our acrobatic cuddle routine, him stretched across a desk chair and part of the couch, me lying against his mattress stomach, encircled by his legs, his arms affectionate in my hair, Eric showing us DAOC on the machine and Ollie making DAOC geek jokes until the desk chair threatened to slide out from under us.
"When are you going to come play DAOC with us, Monstre?"
"When I have a home I know I'm going to stay in long enough to get a desktop machine. And a desk."
Collective sighes abounded, different from the fetish shop sighs, heavy and heart-rending.
Cfoo's in Toronto tonight with Val, and neither will be able to make it to the party. Saying goodnight to Cfoo I cracked and smoked the traditional "last cigarette" on his stoop like we'd done every summer night waiting for the dawn two years ago.
Driving off, my shoulders were heaving.
This morning I had e-mail from Val, simple and short and heart-rending aussi.
"Montreal misses you. I need you."
Cf, fuck, I miss hearing you laugh.
It's one in the afternoon and I'm doing laundry and starting to pack and preparing to see my grandmother this afternoon before doing groceries for the party tonight.
I arrive in Paris on Monday, with time enough to cry into my bedsheets before hopping a train for Limoges where I will cry into my hotel bedsheets until 6am wake-up rings and I race off to drown myself in hexadecimal jargon.
"I can't wait until my kids are going to go to the park with your kids, Monstre."
"I can't wait to teach your kids how to build castles out of cards, Monstre."
"Your kids are going to be the only kids in town who like bedtime, Monstre."
And every time...
"I'm not going to have any, guys. I'm never going to be stable enough. I keep coming close, so close, we were so close..."
But I'm afraid, and unready, and not worthy somehow.
"When are you coming back, Monstre?"
Driving back down the 40 to the 15, to the 20, remembering so many heartaches in so many different cars along that same trajectory, I'm shredded and torn and dying.
I don't want to leave. I'm not ready to stay.
Part of me keeps thinking about how to ship my stuff back from Paris, how I'm going to go about moving, if I really want to move back in with John, especially considering how difficult it is to find appartments in Montreal right now, where in hell I'm going to find work I can respect myself for doing...
...and part of me is looking forward to forgetting myself to the technical difficulties in Limoges, looking forward to this or that trip to the Perigord or the Pyrenees, biting down on my heart like I've always been so good at doing and forgetting the heartache of going to bed every night this week, closing another day of hugs and closeness and love with the most incredible people I've met in my wanderings across the entire planet.
It's true, I've confirmed it. Montreal has a certain wildness lying beneath the suffocating earth that bolsters hearts and makes them more beautiful.
It is one of the greatest cities in the world that I have left pieces of my heart in, not for its traditions (although they are great), not for its architecture which is stunning in the parts between the ultra-wide flat american streets, but for its people.
And people have always been the hardest for me.
And yet somehow, it feels as though I've grown mountains from the little shit I used to be that couldn't look at them without revulsion, and I prefer this heartache to the loneliness of being the only monstre in my sociopathic little head.
But the reaching out hurts. Letting them in hurts. Letting them so close that hugging cfoo goodbye last night was the most painful thing in the world...
Is something I keep telling myself is worth the pain.
I'm not going to run away from the pain. I am proud of it, thrilled to be feeling something...
But it hurts. Oh gods, it hurts.