So far, this jaunt down to the provincial capital of Victoria has been one of incredible tumult and beauty- signed by loneliness, depression, heart-ache, job-gain, job-loss, general existential confusion about my direction in life, and even a minor car accident.
Let's start from the beginning: the first week of August, my (now ex) girlfriend and I spent our time recuperating from MotionNotion festival, which we had finally returned from on July 31st to immediately sulk into our respective beds and individually mull over the psychedelic party we had both enjoyed and endured.
For the rest of that week, I spent my time saying goodbye to old friends in town as I slowly prepared myself for my final departure to Victoria, which I had been planning on migrating to for a good 2 or 3 years but had put off for a multitude of reasons and a multitude of different times. Finally, however, it was happening.. and I had the lucky bonus of knowing my girlfriend of 7 months at the time would be accompanying me on her own adventure to the University of Victoria, where she was planning on the humanities to take a year of general studies and test the waters.
My plans for returning to school in September had quickly dripped apart over the course of the summer months as I realized I had been accepted to Camosun College on the basis of only 1 or 2 classes I was technically eligible for in the Arts and Science program I was wanting to take, having neglected to notice that I was 2 percent off from the C+ in English 12, which was required for 98% of classes anywhere within the post-secondary spectrum. As well, I was only eligible for $1800 in student loans as I had worked such a well-paying job the previous year.. but the $5000 they expected me to contribute, I had spent in Europe between last March and April.
So, school became somewhat of a pipedream once again, but I took the half-hearted steps of attempting an English assessment (which I failed on the basis of my improperly structured essay writing), and then signed up for the SIDES English upgrade course, which I am still (unconvincingly and with little motivation) doing on the side from time to time. If I can really push myself with it and give myself the time to upgrade, it'll literally open up the whole post-secondary world to my intellectually hungry brain which is still waiting in books and internet articles to be fed in the same way it was in high-school.
Anyways, returning to the general narrative, my girlfriend helped me pack everything and even assisted in the painting of my room (which my mother had demanded I do before I leave) without asking for a cent. It was a labour of love, and the two of us were in deep with each other... to the point that we had discussed (what seemed like) the very real possibility of our spending the rest of our lives together. Obviously we made no guarantees due to our age, but the vibe was one of incredible depth and beauty that I now know will still float around my head like an aimless cloud for years to come (especially considering the very unique experiences we shared together). After we had the room painted, we desperately packed a rented UHaul trailer with everything we could fit and departed the next day down-island with the help of my mom and her significant other of the time.
I felt little sadness in leaving Powell River, as my mental faculties felt like they had been stagnating over the course of the last year as I overworked myself both physically and mentally at the care home job I had been working, as well as simply within my ability to overthink practically everything in existence.
So Powell River faded behind me and, although I was nervous to start a new life on my own in a new city, I was finally ready to face the challenge in its entirety.
We arrived in Victoria around 3 in the afternoon on August 9th and unpacked my things, picked up a few groceries and other necessities, and then said goodbye to my mom and her significant other. My girlfriend had decided to stay with me for the first couple days of my being in Victoria, just to spend time with me, as well as to help me adjust. Once she left on the coming Monday, I wouldn't be seeing her until her arrival on residence at Uvic on September 1st (although her and her mother later came a day earlier, and she stayed the night with me before going to set-up at the University).
The first few days we spent exploring and familiarising ourselves with the city, and I kept an eye out for job postings and hiring signs which seemed to be abundant in the city at the time. I also got a call from a hat store in Mayfair Center that I had applied to during a visit to Victoria in July.
After an emotional goodbye on the Monday of my girlfriends departure, I immediately went to Mayfair for my interview at the hat store and was called the next day with the news that I got the job.
I quickly became disillusioned with the job (having worked for the same company at Metrotown Mall in Burnaby back in 2011) due to its creepy forms of subversive salesmanship, as well as my general lack of knowledge for brand-names and sports teams (which are practically a must for Lids, which thrives on little more than the sports market). I began to become more and more depressed during my time there, and continued searching around for other jobs to both supplement my income as well as potentially replace Lids. I found one with a very upper class cafe downtown known as Dolce Vita. From the start, I knew their idea of 'work ethic' was going to be very different than mine.
Things began to get harder and harder for me, at least inside my head, while during a 4 hour shift at Lids I could barely keep it together and almost broke down into tears for no other reason than a cultural depression over what the world is based on, and why I can't be free to make it a better place. As soon as I got off work, I felt like it might be time (after 2 years of up and down severe depression and anxiety issues) to see a doctor about medication. I was aware of the fact that the stress of the move and my old world being turned upside-down obviously exacerbated these already pertinent problems, but still felt that, perhaps, medication was worth a try as these issues weren't something I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. Or, at least not in their current intensity.
The doctor perscribed me 10mg of the SSRI known as Cirpalex, to be taken once a day.
Within a couple days it seemed to be working in a strange way.. most likely placebo.. but I felt a general mood-lift about my life and, when a scheduling conflict occurred between my 2 jobs and my boss at Lids insensitively threatened to fire me if I didn't make the shift (refusing my rational compromises and insistences that it was simply a misunderstanding and nothing to explode over), I had the courage to stand-up to him and immediately quit over the phone after a speech that you 'don't just blatantly threaten someone with a loss of their livelihood like that. You treat no one.. employee or otherwise.. like you just treated me.' I believe that, had it not been for at least the placebo affect of the antidepressant, I might have just put up, shut up, and taken my boss's flagrant abuse of power.
He hung up, and I was left to hinge my bets on Dolce Vita.
However.. I had had one strike of luck. On my last day actually working at Lids, a disabled fellow and his worker came to browse hats. I sparked up a conversation with the worker about how I used to do that sort of work back in my hometown of Powell River, and he immediately informed me that they were hiring to work with the particular client he was with. He gave me 2 phone numbers and an email, and I slyly slipped them all into my back-pocket to avoid suspicion from my boss at the counter.
After 2 days of further tumultuous work experience, this time at Dolce Vita (once where they threatened to fire me due to my missing a spot while mopping), I made the call and scheduled an interview with the care home in Esquimalt for as soon as was reasonably possible. Within 2 days, I had been out there, done the interview, and got the job. They planned to schedule me to work Sunday's with an incredible 26 year old client with cerebral palsy. I was excited to see the rules were loose due to the company being a family affair as opposed to an organized care home.
Around the same time, I began to realize that the antidepressant was having the blatant side-effect of severe insomnia. I would never really sleep.. I would simply roll around with my eyes closed all night, and wake up feeling unnaturally awake.
Eventually the crash came, and it was pock-marked with severe anxiety and a fear of psychosis, so I quickly scheduled a new appointment with my doctor who prescribed me Ativan, and instructed me to take both the Cipralex and Ativan at night (as the Ativan would help me fall asleep). It now seems to be a regimen that's working for me, despite my little inner shame over being medicated.
Dolce Vita finally came to a crumbling halt one day when, completely out of the blue, my bosses sat me down and told me in the nicest way that I was good, but not good enough for the cafe (seeing as the job description is to basically run the whole place on your own). So, they offered me 2 options: 1: take my last pay-cheque and the last of my tips, or, 2: take one last week of working to prove myself.
I took my last pay-cheque and headed on my way, and they gave me a free Spanish Latte as a way of saying 'sorry' and ending it on positive grounds.
So now I was left with nothing but the care home, which did give me a few sparse hours here and there at random points throughout the next couple weeks. I continued to look for jobs, but with less of the same gumption I had before and with less of the same success. At a certain point, I decided to take near-joblessness as a chance to make my art work for me and paid a visit to the Victoria City Hall where I bought a buskers permit. So far, I have only truly busked once (as I only really have one song to play), but I made 4 dollars in 4 minutes, so it's a definite incentive to learn more of my own songs as well as covers, seeing as it could potentially pay as much as a minimum wage job if I could conjure up enough material.
Around this time, my girlfriend was packing up in Powell River and saying her last goodbyes to all of her friends. During an all-nighter prior to her departure, she was suddenly kissed by a guy and did not tell me for the next couple of days. I suppose it helps to add the context that her and I had been fighting quite a lot (on and off) for the past couple weeks over the phone regarding little things like her always being late to Skype dates and just generally late to anything at all, thus causing me to put my life on hold. This issue (and others like it) never seemed to get better, so the intensity and ferocity of the fights increased with each passing incident. Anyways, upon her arrival, she came and stayed with me at my place and we had a typical mushy lovey evening of 'I've missed you's' and all that. It was beautiful and of the depth we had already swum within one another.. of course there were things looming over it now that were stranger and more pronounced than ever.
The next day, while I was at work, her and I got into a fight over the phone and she admitted that a guy had kissed her on her last night in Powell River. She said it was only a split-second peck, but had her friend not interrupted, it 'could have escalated' and she 'would have enjoyed it.' I later discovered (too late) that, although the kiss had very briefly occurred, she had only embellished the details to deliberately hurt my feelings at the time. This was the first step towards our rapid and final demise as a couple. This particular call ended in my yelling at her that I wanted nothing to do with her, and that I wanted her out of my life for good, thus proceeding to block her throughout my social networking profiles and return to work in a frazzled and dazed state of confusion and shock.
During this state of confusion and shock, I was driving with my disabled client. We were both having a bad day, so we decided to go find a place to pull-over and just rant to one another. As I drifted to take a left onto a back street, someone pulled out of a parking lot without looking and I, being as dazed as I already was, wasn't in the state of mind to notice them in time, so they collided with the broad left side of our vehicle, dragging both of us to a screeching stop right next to the left I had planned to take. It was an older couple who had been driving a brand new Ford Mustang, and despite my shock and panic, I was relieved to know that nobody.. neither the couple or the client (save for a slightly sore back) nor myself had been injured. The older man who had been driving seemed to have put out his shoulder a little, but both were competently walking within minutes and we were all giving statements to the arriving police officers who proceeded to block off the scene. My phone had died so I had no way of getting a hold of my boss (the clients mother). A police officer lent me his cellphone anyways, so I called the first number I could think of (my girlfriend) and told her I had been in a car accident, but that I and everyone else was alright. She was shocked to hear this news, and we both agreed to meet later that night to just be with one another, whether that meant discussing our issues or just holding each other due to the shock of what had just occurred.
I spent the rest of my shift with the client organizing a way home and getting a hold of his family, informing them as to what had happened. It was all so overwhelming; police report numbers, advice on who to call, ICBC details, etc.
I saw my girlfriend that night, and despite our melancholy towards our current situation, we cuddled and just listened to music, discussing a little of what had happened earlier in the day between us (I forgiving her for the whole kiss fiasco). I wasn't allowed to stay the night in her dorm as it was the first week, so I left around 11:30 for home.
The next day (and, frankly, week) is a bit of a blur. I recall perhaps having a minor fight with my girlfriend at some point the following day, but nothing to the extent that we had had the day prior. I believe we agreed on a week long break to figure things out and just give one another space.. however, later that night, I was hanging out with a new friend of mine, drinking and ranting to each other about our problems, and no matter how hard I tried, I could no get a hold of my girlfriend. Her phone rang sometimes, and other times went straight to the message machine. She later admitted to deliberately ignoring me due to her 'losing hope' in our relationship. The friend I was drinking with was suspicious (after I told her the 'kissing' story) that my girlfriend was probably cheating on me. I thought of it as a possibility, but wasn't sure. Once again.. in all fairness to her.. I can't remember if we had agreed on a break or a break-up at that point.
The next week was spent back and forth between her and I, until finally, she admitted that she had had sex with some Christian freshman and taken his virginity. She claimed that it had been on a night after I had said I had wanted nothing to do with her and wanted her out of my life, so her claim was that, although it was a slutty and terribly disrespectful thing to do to all parties involved, she had done it because she was so depressed about our relationship ending that she just wanted to get me out of her system as quickly and effectively as possible (both her and the Christian freshman coming to regret what they had done right away).
She had kept this information from me for close to a week, finally informing me during an emotional phone call at 3 in the morning. She claimed that, although it hadn't been intentional, during the act she had figured it would be best so as I would hate her for it and move on at a quicker pace.
I was beyond shocked and heartbroken at this revelation and now, in retrospect, know for certain it had not been the day I had yelled at her and told her I wanted nothing to do with her (as that had happened only once, on the Sunday of the crash, and we had seen each other later that evening) and, in retrospect, see it was most likely the night in which she ignored all my calls and texts. Although I would like to believe her in her claims that she truly thought the relationship to be irreparably over, my retrospective investigations make this harder and harder to believe seeing as every day and every night after the Sunday, I was trying to get a hold of her and work things out (whilst she was slowly weaning me off of her with weird 'breaks' intended to push my away so I would go off on my own and be okay without her).
After a dramatic reaction by my friends (incited by myself) to remove her from their Facebook's for what she had done, there was further drama and emotional turmoil. We continued to talk things out in ferocity and later in calmer detail, but we now held an angry tension between us that wasn't about ready to burn out. I removed her on all social networks once again, and even went so far as changed my number to avoid her texting me. It was all 'good' (or as good as it could be in a situation like that) until about noon the following day, when she texted me because she had found my new number via a friend or Facebook (still not quite sure which). She insisted that we should meet that night and discuss things, and that we should try being together again or, at the very least, leave each other on good terms. I fervently denied her, but she was relentless and went as far as threatened to sit on my porch all night until we talked things through in some way, shape, or form. I eventually acquiesced (and I regret doing so to this day), so we met later that evening after I finished my orientation meeting at the UVic community radio station (as I'm looking to get a show there within the next couple of months).
We ended up walking around downtown in awkward tension which occasionally burst forth into anger and frustration, until finally we were able to calm to a point, and agreed to try this relationship one more time. Which is what we did.
We went back to my place and discussed the details of what had happened. I investigated her claim that it had been the day I had told her I had wanted nothing to do with her and realized that was not at all the case. This lead to a fever-pitch in my heartbreak, yet we stuck it out together throughout the night and did, indeed, have times of comfort reminiscent of the way it had been back in Powell River. Despite all this, the night and the following day made me realize how significantly damaged I was by the whole affair, and how I secretly hated her for what she had done and that any relationship with her now would simply be one of resentment and jealousy, with me taking out my anger in vindictive and completely unhealthy ways. This led to a long message via Facebook in the evening in which I described the situation and told her it was unequivocally over, all things considered. The following day, I left her a voice mail saying the same thing (as I hadn't got a reply from her yet), and her response was, "Kyran, maybe you should just go sleep with some random girl [to get it out of your system]."
The self-righteousness and blunt stupidity of the suggestion (which I had made as a joke a couple nights prior) made me feel hopeless regarding the situation despite a sudden flood of intense nostalgia and reflection over the relationship as it had used to be. Later that evening, she finally agreed to ending things completely. We promised to talk exactly a month from the day (October 11th), and just see how it went. I spent the rest of the evening with music, flashing back to all the little details of what we had once had; the way she would smile when we joked, the way she used to look over at me with such adoration instead of watching the road when she drove (whether because I was serenading her with a song or just because), the adventures we had gone on together (MotionNotion, random jaunts out south and north of town, an impromptu exploration of Texada), the way her lips felt whenever we kissed, the poetry we wrote each other, the MDMA trips in which we looked into each others eyes and naively declared that we would one day get married.. I don't know if these feelings and details haunt her in the same way. But as is obvious from my writing this at the time, they are still on my mind. I have a lot of anger towards her for what she did to me (seeing as the ex previous to her had done the same thing), and won't be able to help myself in taking it out in sly and vindictive ways using nothing but the truth of the matter. I do still love her with all of my heart, and with the same passion I always did.. and this is why my relative 'hate' is also an adversary to overcome, as it is simply the energy that had once loved her writhing in pain due to her betrayal.
This basically sums-up what my life has been since my arrival in Victoria. There isn't much else to add at this point, except for my hope that things look up, I find another half-decent job, I get over my ex, and I get involved with the art scene as well as CFUV within the coming months. I have no plans on a retreat to Powell River due to this tumultuous start.. but I am unsure as to what my future holds in store at this point. Most likely school, if I can self-discipline to the point of actually upgrading my English.
Anyways, thanks for listening, blue planet.
Au revoir.
