The Death of Small Creatures (11 page)

Where does it come from, this dust?

We breathe in stars, planets and comets throughout the day.
The bright colours in Jupiter's clouds are caused by interactions of various simple gases. Hydrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, water and methane are all present, along with clouds of ammonia ice. Charon, the only moon orbiting Pluto, is made up of water and nitrogen ices, though it would take eight years for the dust to travel here. Tornadoes as large as eight kilometres high have been seen causing havoc across the Martian landscape.

A door opens off the front end of our suite too, though it is a single door and the balcony is narrow and rotted. You feel it might give out as you stand upon it. There is also a cherry blossom tree in the yard an arm's length from the small rotting balcony. In the springtime, the petals will hang on for a while then whir into the street with the petals from all the other trees, creating a wonderland feel.

You probably would not break anything if you crept over the railing on our front balcony, lowered yourself down and hung there briefly before letting go, if the place caught fire for example.

Sometimes I hear the mice scratching in that one lower drawer full of macaroni to the right of the sink, but I am not afraid of mice and rather like the mystery of it. I imagine a mother and father and baby. I imagine big chunks of Swiss cheese. The mother mouse wears an apron. The father mouse does not wear an apron, but this is not considered nakedness in mice world. The baby mouse carries a lunchbox to school. School is somewhere outside the parameters of the house, in the yard perhaps, in the shed maybe, because while I can tolerate the idea of one mouse family residing here on the inside, the idea of a whole city (with an infrastructure, a social system and schools) implies a kind of population that infringes upon my privacy and peace of mind.

When I return
from the washroom, there is a serviette covering something on the table. I sit down and smile. “What's this?”

“That's for you to find out,” he says.

“I see.”

I don't imagine a church wedding or a traditional ballroom gown, nothing with pearls or sequins or satin, no train or tiara or lace garter belt. There will be no minister of God. I don't want to be walked down an aisle. An arm is not necessary. Love is necessary. Stability is necessary. A clean and happy home is necessary. But no, there will be no tossing of the bouquet, no father of the bride giving me away. I can't even imagine my wedding shoes.

Leigh leans over and pulls the serviette off the engagement box.

“Oh,” I say. I open the box. What I find stuns me, a white gold band with a sapphire in the middle, surrounded by five diamonds on each side. It's the perfect ring for me. I think,
How did he know?

Ancient Greeks believed the fire of a diamond reflected the flame of love. They believed that diamonds were tears of the gods. Ancient Romans believed that diamonds had powers, believed them to be splinters from falling stars that tipped the arrows of Eros, the god of love.

“You always said you liked sapphires,” Leigh says.

“It's beautiful,” I say.

Journal

March 5, 2009

The deadened tongue.

The inflamed gums.

The injured back.

What I mean is, the slipped disk, the pocket of air between vertebrae they say is air but you don't believe could be as innocuous a thing as air.

The impetigo lip, the burgeoning of it, the scar left behind, the cyclical nature of herpes, the cold-sore kind.

The vitamin deficiencies, but you don't care.

The hunger.

The body, the monster.

The split ends.

The crooked teeth.

The heavy thighs.

The heavy heart.

The scope of outer space, and inner space for that matter.

The dried wounded skin around the mouth.

The toxic eye, the dextromethorphan tears, the holes in the brain, the decline in memory, the spinning mind, the slowed mind, the dead mind.

The man you half love with all your heart, but it's never quite right, you know? My inability to live without him, or live at any rate, much longer, perhaps.

I am an anti-person, an anti-proton. Does this make me an electron? There is no nucleus here.

The nightmares.

The grogginess. The steely sky. No rain. No snow.

We're moving into a new house at the end of the month, now that we have the boys living with us (they were not getting along with their mom), a nice house too, but that's just geography. Do I want to die? Is it really, truly, a viable option?

March 17, 2009

I am having such an urge to drink. It's been happening more often lately. I have developed a tolerance for DXM, so the highs are not as acute. I need to double what I'm taking of it to feel anything, 600 mg of DXM per day. I am actually considering alternatives, looking at what street drugs could possibly be obtained, in some degree of moderation, because I mean, people do that right?

I would opt to live a sober life if I could do it without this anxiety, which is probably buffered at the moment due to the new Zoloft and clonazepam. Without these, I am pure chaos.

I am seriously thinking of drinking tonight. This would be only the second time since I quit two years ago, almost to the day.

We shall see what the night brings.

I am booking a flight to NYC tomorrow. From NYC it will be onward to Duluth, Minnesota. The trip isn't until June 1. It's for my niece's graduation from high school. Should be interesting. I have never been to New York. Will visit, among other things, Ground Zero.

March 18, 2009

I didn't drink last night. But everything's falling apart. I am instilled with such terror, almost hyperventilating, can't seem to catch my breath, zero energy, have not slept all night. My sleep patterns are reversed. The night before last I stayed up all night, woke up early in the morning, ran into Leigh in the kitchen, admitted that I hadn't been to sleep at all. He guffawed with great disdain and disgust, like I was disgusting to him for being someone who would be so strange as to stay awake all night long. The sun was pressing through the opaque yellow curtains. The window was open. The plume of the curtain was billowing inward into the room. I wanted to touch the plume, go stand in that light, but Leigh guffawed, and in that guffaw and turning his shoulder to me, he made me feel like nothing.

I let him make me feel that way.

I lay on the couch after Leigh went to work and slept solidly, without even the slightest disturbance, until 5 pm and only woke up when Leigh opened the door to the bunny room and saw me lying there, obviously having slept the whole day. I was so disoriented. I asked him what time it was, because I thought surely he was just popping in to say bye before leaving for work, but in fact the entire day had transpired unbeknownst to me, and Leigh said, “IT'S FIVE O'CLOCK, LIKE, AS IN, I'M HOME FROM WORK.” He was really pissed off.

He slammed the door and left me there.

I got up, readied myself, as I had an appointment with Fiona for 6 pm, which I was late for of course. How do you oversleep for a 6 pm appointment?

Something strange is happening to my hands, my skin. I have had no appetite. I eat nothing for days except yogurt or chocolate chip cookie dough. As a result (and probably because of all the DXM I have been taking) my knuckles are cracked and chafed, as if they have been dragged across concrete. Toxins are leaking out of my hands, through my knuckles, and my skin is dry and cracking. My knuckles are almost bleeding.

I am so terrified. I am just so fucking scared of being alive.

March 18, 2009

There is only a little grid.

March 24, 2009

Arrived on time and bleary-eyed for my MRI this morning; had to be there at 7:30 am, which meant getting up at 6:30 am, which is tricky considering that would not be an atypical hour for me to just be getting to bed. As it turns out I fell asleep face down on my folded arms on the floor of the bunny room last night at a very reasonable hour (sometime after 11 pm), woke up with bits of bunny kibble and fur stuck to my face.

A receptionist directed me to my first left, down a long hallway, to a second reception area for Medical Imaging (identified by a light blue fluorescent sign above the check-in area). It felt very fast-food outlet.

A nice Asian lady told me to take a number. My number was 54.

A heavy-set, fleshy woman with auburn curls called my number, even before the other people who were there before me. I don't know why.

The fleshy, auburn-haired lady told me to hop up on the bed and lie down. She pulled a blanket over me and gave me a rubber pump (like the end of a turkey baster) which I was to squeeze if I needed to scratch or move or cough at all, as I had to remain absolutely still while in the machine. She put big, soft headphones on me and pulled a helmet over my head.

I was being enclosed.

The bed moved into the tube. I was in motion but my body was perfectly still, sliding inside a tube the way bread slides into an oven.

I was in.

I spent half an hour getting my brain imaged, in blue hospital prescribed pants and a long overshirt, which I could not figure out how to tie properly, so from a side view my middle section was bare and a curvature of breast could be observed if one so desired. I found this oddly erotic, to be exposed this way inside a machine, soft cushions covering my ears.

Time passed quickly and it was over.

I want that picture of my brain.

March 30, 2009

Leigh and I and the boys moved into the new three-bedroom house on Foul Bay Road this weekend.

Moving day started off terribly. I fell asleep in the bunny room the night before, and was still high on DXM in the morning when Leigh opened the door at about 7:30 am. It seemed as though he had been up for hours.

On days like this, which require a great deal of exertion and organization, when great change is happening, Leigh gets totally neurotic, becomes the delegating authority, needs things to go exactly as per his preconceived timeline and agenda. He needs to take control and get everything moving and churning into a system of his liking.

So Leigh opened the bunny door and said, “Honey (strained, exasperated), come on, get up, I could really use your help today.”

The boys were still sleeping too.

I snapped. “Leigh, I'm barely conscious and already you're treating me like your assistant.”

This exchange set the tone for the day. I toiled and cleaned the old place while Leigh and the boys did the heavy moving and hauled stuff over to the new place.

April 1, 2009

Today was spastic, convulsive, demanding, weird. I seemed to forever be running for buses, or to get somewhere on time, always though arriving late, feeling apologetic.

Started off by running three blocks in black boots with two-inch heels to catch the Number 7 up to UVic. I had another temp job to get to. (Somehow, I've been enduring the odd temp job. Temping has become preferable to the pressure in my home. Leigh's insistence that I get a job has paid off.) It was my first morning in the new house, and I didn't factor in the location of the nearest bus stop, which turned out to be much farther away than I thought. Having finished moving the night before (I was up till 3 am setting up a kind of cozy little room for the bunnies in the basement), I was still so cluttered inside from the chaos, the disarray. My mind was spinning.

I arrived five minutes late for work. I was taking the meeting minutes for the full-day workshop, so the day could not start until I arrived. Apparently all attendees were waiting for me, though the women to the left and right of me were nice and said not to worry, that they were all just getting settled.

I sat down at the laptop and poised my fingers over the keyboard, a stupid smile on my face. The lead professor did not seem impressed.

An hour later I spilled my coffee on the boardroom table, which resulted in me on my hands and knees, blotting the carpet with paper towel. People were gracious and forgiving about it, didn't damage any laptops or paperwork, thank god. While on my hands and knees, I said sort of coyly, “You are all going to remember me now, aren't you?”

Then this nice, older woman named Elaine (a specialist on HIV/AIDS and gender equality in Africa) said that in some cultures it is customary to bless the earth upon which a gathering is to take place with beer, spill a bit upon it, thus honouring the ancestors who lived before upon this earth. I got up and said, “Well, I aim to please.”

April 2, 2009

Day two on the temp job: I was completely and totally fucking stoned during my second day of transcribing notes for the International Committee of Aquaculture.

I have been disappearing to the new bunny room in the basement of this new house with the laptop, to blog (usually falling asleep partway through) or to watch some online TV. I go down there and consume copious amounts of dextromethorphan, doubling up on my medication, anything really, anything and everything, to just numb the hell out, because I am so completely tense and hopeless, feeling pissed at Leigh for treating me like some kind of subservient helper in the creation of his new home.

I took something in the area of 600 mg of DXM, but this time I took it quickly, almost in a frenzy, so much so fast that I passed out before I actually got to feel the elated effects that I typically strive for in taking it, so fast that I didn't get to enjoy the high. I just dropped out of the conscious world, and as I did, the drug coursed through my body, in my sleep, so that when I woke the next morning for work, day two of Aquaculture, I awoke completely stoned, so stoned I did not realize I was stoned until I was on the bus to work, surrounded by so many other people, and the claustrophobia set in. I realized in the light of day that everything was askew, off-kilter, that my hearing was affected, and the world, while it was there, clearly transpiring around me, was transmitting itself through to my conscious self through eight layers of static.

I debated bailing on work, simply because I didn't know what would happen in that room, because I was too high to know if my behaviour was anything in the realm of normal, or if I was only imagining that I was behaving normally, in a functional and appropriate manner. In other words, I had no definitive grasp of reality. But I went, and I sat down in the room, and the day progressed. I felt reasonably sobered up by about 4 pm when the day ended.

None of this feels right, this life, this new house. This morning, I was screaming in my dream, only I was actually screaming out loud, into the house, my screaming carrying all through the halls and rooms. I don't remember why or what I was dreaming. Leigh came in and jostled me awake, said something indiscernible.

He went off to work, the boys went to school and I had the day off, so slept until 2 pm, having been up most of the night before of course, spinning my wheels, because I just never feel ready to go to sleep.

It's all a blur these days, just a hazy blur.