**Disclaimer - don't read this. I'm just writing for the sake of writing, I'm a little fucked up right now but I need to experience this to get it out of my system. I should be writing about the insane dinner we had last night, and how sick Dave must be of curry or my messes in the kitchen. I should be writing about the CN tower and how Sophie braved her vertigo to look down, or the way I learned to look at the city with new respect despite the cheesy taboo put upon the lieu I was seeing it from. I should write about a lot of things. I'm writing about nothing at all first.**
I'd talk about the drive down but all the people that were there, were there, the storm dark and furious, the discussions long and shining, the music more often than not coming from our throats despite the three hundred and twenty mp3'd morsels on the copilot's CDs.
There were many of the important road-trip bonding moments in those heavy conversations, despite the lack of planning, anticipation, and the fact that I've made this drive so many damned times.
The frenchmen slept, the Quebecois lady with the haunting grey eyes listened intently, half-understanding our outlandish conversations.
We sang a couple of french tunes, I tried to learn a couple of the old irish ones that I've heard a thousand times but never had the courage to sing along to.
Turns out my memory is still student-survival guided and I need the lyric sheet to memorize its layout.
Driving down the 40, I forgot to point out the Environment Canada building with the Satellite that I accidently shut down.
I never forget to point out that building. Not even when I drop Kaffeine off at home after a night of making magic explode.
Merging on to the 15, when my illustrious copilot marveled at how it felt like we were entering a place that we've visited before, but not like home I remembered feeling exactly that last time.
Dropping Seb and Sophie and Annik off at Berri, I was already unsure of myself around the other cars. I was afraid of the bus who's lane I was double-parked in.
Driving my copilot northwards, I was suddenly unsure which way lay St-Laurent street, something that should be impossible to forget.
Three sleepless nights (due to my achy toe, nothing else) and six solid hours of steering-wheel clenching could be a good excuse for that. Quite frankly, I got lost trying to find the 401, when I really shouldn't have. It was fun getting lost, though.
Driving back down Clark until it spit me onto St-Laurent, until it spit me onto Yet Another Highway, I was suddenly so alone in these dark streets.
A foreigner with my agressive Ontario plates, driving too slow, no longer understanding the intuition that Montreal drivers have of each other.
My mastery of the Toronto U-turn technique and the comments I've been getting lately on it may have something to do with that.
Maybe I've just been away long enough now.
Part of my melodramatic little girl is telling me "I told you so, you'll always be homeless" -- shadows of alleyways loom in my memory as I remember the way I tried to envision myself as a wild and wanton gypsy in their farthest corners.
That felt like home, almost, but that isn't my definition anymore either, is it?
Oh, I'm not homeless, not really. I'm loved. I have numbers to call. Places to sleep, each with a pillow and some even with arms to warm me when I really need that cry.
I have a home in Toronto, I have routine cuddles most mornings, kisses that feel just right, that familiar sensation turning up Garden street to turn onto Indian , slowing down to watch the corner onto Merrick...
I have a home in Paris, in Lyon, in Brussels, in Hamburg, and definitely in Montreal, places where if everything falls apart, I can go find pieces of myself and build a new crysalis.
Home home home home. I'm still finding my next definition for the word. Maybe my copilot is right and I've chosen a definition without admitting it to myself, and if that's true then I'd better do some serious listening and then perhaps rewriting.
But really, I'm just typing for the sound of the keys over daddy's screaming.
Welcome to another episode of coming home -- the definition I never want to have again.
Yes, daddy, I'm a failure. Yes, daddy, I'm useless. Yes, daddy, I make all the wrong decisions and I'm never going to make it and I'm a shame on the family and I'm stupid and fat and...
Wait.
Fat?
The spell broke then and I turned on my heel and wandered downstairs and right now I can hear daddy screaming at mommy about the stupid, worthless, disrespectful child she raised.
Worthless. Gods, that word hurts no matter how much proof I have heaped on my list of achievements to the contrary.
Every once in a while though, when I remember how Tia called at four am and crossed the city to come cry on my shoulder, it hurts a little less.
I'm going to go apologize to mom later, she's being submitted to her own litany of worthlessness because I walked out on it.
But I'm not going to apologize for not wanting to listen to it anymore.
Not while I still have that big orange sign just next to geekslut's appartment shouting in my head -- the words on it "frein moteur" so utterly foreign.
A new traffic sign, and I not only don't recognize it, I don't understand what it means either, on a corner I've passed so many thousand times over the last decade.
Dark brown wet brick buildings on a street that I've driven down before somewhere back on the plateau, threatening me with the cold in the dark spaces between them.
Melodrama, melodrama, but I need this. I do. Catharsis, right?
Honestly, truly, my thought as I drove the first block sans passengers, was how foreign I felt.
My thought twenty minutes later as I tipped the full-service gas station guy for checking my oil and complimenting my stickers was "what a warm smile".
Twenty minutes? *checks pulse* Not bad, I'm still made of rubber and stuff so resilient it has to be science fiction.
My thought right now is "I'm sorry, Dave. When my father asked me if you were more than my roommate, I said yes, that you were my closest friend. When he asked if I was paying you rent, I said yes, which is true. When he started screaming, I didn't correct the implication that you are not my lover nor my love. You are. Greatly. I'm imagining your warm mouth on the tears streaming down my cheeks, the tears it took me so many years to learn to cry. You are so many things.
So many things that my father does not deserve to know, that he does not deserve that much power over to desecrate."
I'm sorry Montreal, for feeling alone in your arms, for thinking the words "I am not a Montrealer anymore" as I violated your streets with my car, momentarily unappreciative.
I'm sorry mom, for not being able to give you so many of the things that a mother, despite your/our mistakes, should be able to enjoy of her daughter, her eldest, her ex-angel.
I'm sorry Mr. Co-pilot, for spending so much of that time repeating the same lament, thank you for lending an ear and for drowning me in cleverly phrased compliments.
I'm sorry Seb and Sophie for spending the drive speaking in english and only with my copilot, my attention had to stay in the front of the car.
I'm sorry thunderstorm, for not appreciating you, for the negativity with which I tore through you.
I'm sorry Eric and cf, and Laura and Marvamillion, whose numbers aren't in my palmpilot because I only remembered that I can't dial cf's cell number once we were past Kingston. With the opera and the wicanning and my ritual birthday ego-rape tomorrow, tonight was my only night to try to see you, I made it into town too late for the opening night of the technicolour coat, but I was hoping I'd at least be able to find you somehow.
I don't know who to call, and I'm afraid that I'm not very good company right now.
Must be the aging process. ;)
I'm sorry dear diary for this bout of pathetic melancholy, but I am in my parents' basement and that is what I do here. What I did here.
This is unfortunately one of the few things that I have not forgotten about Montreal, and sometimes the cold in my memory overshadows the sun in the faces of the wild-haired girls bedecked in scarves and torn taffeta on the mountain in the summer.
I miss the snow, I miss the faces, I miss so many things
but right now I'm being a melancholy shithead. I do that. I'm sorry.
I just hope I make up for it sometimes.
Can we tell that I'm not right in the head right now?