Since I've Been Gone

I'm back.

Think of this entry as the season premiere. I'm sure I haven't left anyone hanging off the edge of their seats, dying to know what happened next, but on the small chance I have, I apologize for running off on you without any prior warning.

I did not have a nervous breakdown, and I'm not, as far as I know, clinically depressed. I did not quit my job, nor did I end up living happily ever after with Shawn. On the surface, everything is just as it was before. Further down, however, the picture is considerably different. I came face to face with some of my demons over the past few months, and while they are ostensibly banished, the realizations about myself that came out of those encounters are definitely not.

As this past summer progressed, I found myself sinking further into an abyss of denial. I mentioned I was feeling angry for no reason. I think I was angry at myself. I was denying that the amount of partying I was doing was having a negative impact on my health, work life, and general well-being. I was denying to what extent I was in love with Shawn. I was denying that I missed the circle of friends I lost when I ended my relationship with the Ex. I was denying that I missed the Ex's family, which I now realize I do, as well as how much I miss seeing my own. I was in denial that I was beginning to do to myself all the things I hated that my Ex did to himself.

I was sleeping in a lot, showing up late for work, mostly as a result of staying out too late, getting too drunk, and ending up at someone's place doing cocaine. I'd go out, vowing to have a couple drinks and then head home, and end up crawling home at four or five in the morning. I was spending a lot of time with Shawn, who had been pestering me to move in with him and then take over his apartment in September while he went travelling - which I was, against my better judgment, strongly considering - when he suddenly announced he was moving to Montreal.

He asked me to go with him. I told him I would think about it. At this point, my wall of denial was firmly in place and our friendship was entirely manageable for me. Rewarding, even. We had a lot of great, intimate talks, and the chemistry we had from back when we dated seemed to be turning into a very close friendship.

And then he went and fucked with my head. After a few too many cosmos at his goodbye Toronto dinner, we went outside for a cigarette. I started telling him about a boy I liked that I'd met at Pride, and he suddenly went off. He told me he wasn't sure what I thought of him anymore, but he'd been thinking about me a lot, and how I just get him, and that he still found me attractive, and that he wants to settle down, but he needed time to get to the right mental place to be able to do so, and that this was why he was going to Montreal, to clear his head, and that the more he thought about it, the two of us just fit. So I could date this guy I met all I wanted, but that I'd better be prepared to give the guy up when the time came for us to be together.

The sheer arrogance of him basically asking me to wait for him was not lost on me, but at the same time I felt like I'd been read like a book: convinced someone is the one, I likely would wait for them. Of course, Shawn prefaced all this with "Brent told me not to talk about this with you because he thinks it would fuck with your head."

In my defense, I would just like to state that I then told him "Fine, then let's not have this conversation." Though "conversation" would imply that there was a dialogue, when really it was Shawn simply saying all this stuff to me - all this stuff that I've always wanted him to say to me but that I never thought in a million years he would - while I simply stood there listening, not quite believing what I was hearing.

The problem, of course, was that I should have known better than to believe what I heard. But the heart is foolish, and the heart wants to believe. As the next couple of weeks unfolded, with Shawn conveniently parked 500 kilometres away, my cleverly constructed dam of denial began to crack and spring leaks. The boy I'd met at Pride told me he just wanted to be friends (and now we are) which was a bit of a kick to the face of my self-esteem and left me feeling unwanted and vulnerable. Speaking to Shawn on the phone filled the void, since everytime we talked he begged me to move in with him in Montreal, which acted as a kind of Miracle-Gro for the bits of longing that had slipped through the cracks of my denial. Maybe, I thought, I should just do it. Throw caution to the wind and take a chance and just go there and see what happens. I concluded that I would wait until I went there for Montreal Pride and see how that went.

I don't what I expected to happen. I built it up in my mind that Pride would be the weekend that we would end up together. It would be so fitting. It would be exactly a year since we met, in the same city where we met, no less.

So of course it all went awry.

In the meantime, however, I went home to Timmins for a week, accompanied by one of my favourite people, my friend Earl. It was a good trip. We had a lot of fun: the weather was perfect, we did a lot of silly but fun touristy things, and hung out with my amazing parents. At the time, I thought the trip had cleared my head. Looking back, I think this is when I started to become aware of my demons, but instead of dealing with them I simply burrowed myself deeper into my various denials. When we returned, I got stupidly high and drunk the first night back.

Before I knew it, my friend Brent and I were off to Montreal. The first night started out with such promise. I had made a mixed cd for Shawn before he left, filled with "hidden" messages clearly stating my true feelings, and when a song from it came on while we were getting ready to go out for the night, he told me he loved the cd. We went out, had a great time, and before I knew it we were really drunk. We went back to his place with some cute guy we'd met while out. Brent promptly passed out. There was definitely some sexual tension in the air, and the remaining three of us got ready for bed. I fell into bed next to Brent, and was keenly aware of Shawn and the other boy fooling around on Shawn's bed a mere four feet away from me.

I wasn't so drunk as to not see that what I was thinking was probably a bad idea. I knew that it was certainly not a romantic idea. Why not just get up and get into bed with them and see what happens? So I did.

And just like that, I fucked it all up.

A few moments passed, and Shawn got up, left the bed, and went downstairs. I felt foolish. But this other hot boy was right there and all over me, and though I should have just gotten up and left immediately, obviously I wasn't really thinking in any kind of rational way, if at all. So I stayed put. Fucked him. In Shawn's bed. When it was done, the sun starting to creep in through the windows, the boy quickly threw on his clothes and hightailed it out of there with barely a word.

I laid there for a moment. I wanted sleep to take me immediately, to whisk me out of this, but I really needed a glass of water. I got up and went downstairs. My heart fell out onto the floor and shattered into a million pieces: Shawn was laid out on his living room floor with some blankets and a pillow. He looked up at me. Was that diappointment on his face? Annoyance? I couldn't tell.

I poured my glass of water and sat in the chair across from him, took a few quick sips, not making eye contact. I felt ashamed. What had I done? How could I have just undone all I'd hoped for in a matter of moments? The tension was palpable. I realized I had irreversibly changed in Shawn's eyes, had knocked myself clean off of whatever pedestal he might have had me on. I could feel his respect for me draining from the room. I put my head in my hands.

"I'm not mad," he said.

I looked up, looked at him. "I know," I said, waving off his redemption, "but..." I stood up, took a few steps towards the stairs. "I'm just... embarassed." Pause. "I'm sorry."

He told me that really, it was okay, and that he was actually kind of relieved, as "that boy was pretty aggressive."

Which one? I thought.

I went back up to bed. I tried to coax Shawn upstairs to his own bed, but he said he was fine where he was. This made me feel worse.

The next day on the way out for coffee we didn't talk about it. An attempt by Brent to make a joke about it that afternoon was met with dagger eyes by me and a very snappy "I don't want to talk about it, alright?" by Shawn. I busied myself with tying my sneakers and waited for the subject to change.

The rest of the weekend was fine. Great, actually, considering I dashed my dreams of true love like so much trash to the curb.

When I got back to Toronto, I felt empty inside. Stripped clean. However, the incident appeared to have been shelved. There was phone talk again of me moving to Montreal, to my surprise, but I tried to distance myself from the topic as fast I could. It made my head spin. What was I doing with my life, for fucks sake? I knew I needed a change, but was moving away the answer? Shawn was coming back to Toronto in a few weeks for his birthday and to pack up the rest of his apartment. Maybe something would happen then? Part of me was still clinging to this, but I know I was grasping at straws.

At work, my boss announced that he'd decided to give the business back to the original owners, so suddenly the stability of my employment was in question. He was pretty sure the owners would keep me on, but nothing was certain. This confused me more. If I were to leave my job and move, this would be the perfect time to do it, work-wise. What should I do?

I had a mini-meltdown. One day, after a night of partying yet again, I simply shut off my alarms and didn't go to work the next day. I didn't call them, didn't do anything. Co-workers tried to call me, left messages saying they were worried that someting bad had happened, and I was wracked with guilt. I felt paralyzed. What would I say if I called? Eventually I called and explained I had a panic attack. We had a long talk. I was honest and told my boss I simply freaked out.

This was when I realized I had to stop this madness. I had to cut back on my drinking. I was fucking up my job. That night I had to dj at the monthly I spin at. Afterwards, a bunch of us ended up my Ex's place for post-gig drinks. My Ex and his friends (some of whom are mine, but now distantly) were doing GHB and were supremely fucked up. I had done a couple of lines and was feeling alright, but I found myself looking around and not liking what I saw. There were some younger acquaintances there and I thought, you know what? You're not twenty anymore - what is there to be gained by sitting around getting fucked up with these people? I watched my G'd out former circle of friends and wondered: if I were still a part of this group, is this what I would be doing on a regular basis? Why are smart, incredibly successful people pumping themselves full of chemicals every weekend? Why, to a lesser but no less stupid extent, am I? I'm not even having fun.

It hit me that in five years time this was not where I wanted to find myself. Bored and being boring. I gathered my gear and went home.

Speaking of home, relations with my roommate were becoming strained. All I wanted to talk about was whether or not I should move, and it was not a topic I felt I could broach with her, considering I would essentially be fucking her over if I did move out. I grew distant: I would either go out and inevitably end up drunk, or would hole myself up in my bedroom and distract myself with the computer in order to avoid having to face up to the problems I knew she would point out to me.

And then the International Aids Conference rolled into town. I didn't attend, but it brought a man named Ivo into my life. He was a journalist from Switzerland covering the conference that I met while out one night with Brent. We hit it off and hung out all night. He asked me what gay boys got up to on a Thursday night, so I took him to Woody's for their infamous (but tedious) Best Chest contest. We had an okay time, but eventually grew bored, so I brought him home with me and we fooled around. He was sweet, there was no bullshit, and we had lively, interesting conversation. A few days later, on his last night in town, we met again and had a proper date: dinner, followed by a few beers on a quiet patio, and then we went back to my place again.

It hit me that this was the first time since I broke up with the Ex that I had slept with someone more than once.

I didn't fall in love with him or anything (though if he were around, I don't doubt it could happen - it didn't hurt matters that Ivo told me that he could fall in love with me if he were staying longer, which I know sounds like a total line but I'm confident it wasn't). Meeting him was important for me because it suddenly gave me a completely new perspective on everything. As we talked and got to know each other, I had to find new ways of explaining things that were commonplace for me but foreign to him. It's not that I was thinking in some kind of "global" context, but in speaking to him I found myself having to view things through the eyes of a cultural stranger. It took me outside the bubble I had unknowingly been living in and allowed me to examine my existence in a fresh way.

After Ivo left and returned to Switzerland (we've been emailing each other occasionally since) I began to feel better. The following week Shawn reappeared in town to finish his packing and move away for good. I had another gig that week and afterwards we went to Shawn and Brent's apartment, only Shawn was nowhere to be seen. Turns out he was out with his new boyfriend. I overheard one of our friends telling someone else that "Shawn is really happy, he's found his life partner."

On one hand, I felt like I'd been stabbed, but mostly I felt relieved. There would be no moving now. I wasn't uprooting my life to join forces with someone so indecisive. I know what I want with Shawn - why waste more time on him if I can't get some assurance in return?

I also felt angry. Life partner, my ass. Shawn hadn't even told me he'd gotten together with this boy. Why did he have to say all he said to me if nothing was ever going to come of it? Granted, I can't blame Shawn for moving on to someone else after my behaviour in Montreal. What would I think if the situation were reversed?

I realize now I was longing for a change and hoped some external occurrence would get the ball rolling: a change of city, a relationship, getting myself fired. I realize this has been a pattern in my life, and up to now I've been lucky - everything has always worked out. But the change I need must come from within. Somewhere I stopped respecting myself, stopped taking care of myself.

And gradually, one day at a time, I'm putting a stop to it. I've been staying at home a lot, reading more, spending more time with Shannon - remembering that I live with my best friend, not just a roommate. Now that I know I'm staying put in my place and genuinely want to stay put, I've been doing little projects around my pad again: painting, sprucing up the place, taking care of errands and tasks that I've been putting off for months. I'm teaching myself to assess social situations more carefully as well, to not let my insecurities drive my behaviour - am I doing something because I really want to, or because part of me feels I have to do so to fit in? I've realized that living downtown, it's been easy to behave like a party monster because it's all around me, all the time. My sense of perspective was completely out of whack. I've been re-evaluating what is important to me and re-shuffling my priorities.

I have a new found appreciation and energy for my job as well. While it's not necessarily where I saw myself at this age, or where I see myself in a few years, I realize my attitude was all wrong. I was vaguely embarrased at being a retail manager before. In my mind, it was a pointless job that didn't matter, and I treated it that way. I had no respect for the work I do and no appreciation of it's value. But I spend seven to eight hours there a day - if I don't respect what I do, how can I respect myself if I stay there?

I've realized I'm very good at what I do, and that it does take skill, and brains, and hard work, and that it's not something that just anyone can do. It certainly isn't changing the world for the better, but that doesn't mean I can't take pride in it anyway. So fuck embarassment. What I do isn't who I am. How I do it speaks a lot more to my character. I may be capable of much more, but for now, this is what I do for a living, and I'm going to do it with integrity for as long as I do it.

So there you have it: how I spent my summer vacation. Sorry if I was a bit long-winded about it. I guess the short and snappy Reader's Digest version would look something like this:

Since I've been gone, I decided to grow up.