So writing about Canada makes me feel the need to write about Janus, as he was such a massive part of why I went in the first place.. but every time I sit and try to tell that particular story, the words just escape me and it becomes too big a task.
I could just start where I ended the Mystery story (as the Janus era started literally within a month of the Mystery breakup) but that makes it seem all a bit too Carrie Bradshaw-esque, you know writing continuously about lovers, when I'm really not. I'm writing about me, and the vague semblance of life I've lived, thus the people therein. So to make it clear, I'm not in any way, Carrie. But there, see I'm digressing from the Janus storyline. I wanted to write it as a run-down, like the Mystery entry, but I can't seem to wrap it up in that tidy a package. Maybe because of some residual anger and hurt, but more likely because it was all a bit too messy and I can't collect my thoughts to form a proper flowing storyline with any coherent timeline. Well, that and the fact that thinking about him, to this day, makes me raging mad at myself for letting him into my life, and even more raging mad at him for accepting my well-meant invitation only to throw it in my face. But hey, we'll call this my first draft.
So I was a bit of a state after the whole Mystery debacle. I'd moved back home to my mum's flat (thus destroying all the progress I'd made in escaping my mother, and the mess that was my childhood), I had no job, no real drive to do anything other than watch Buffy on the couch surrounded by fag-ends and mouldy cups of tea. But, I was basking in my new-found sense of freedom from the months of suffocation and drama, and felt I could finally breathe a little with the lack of Mystery's weight on my shoulders. So I coasted for a couple of weeks, reacquainting myself with my friends, and the pub, and society. From then, to be honest, it's a bit of a blur.
The transition from newly free and weightless to full-on Janus coupledom, is just a huge blur. Like I said, I have no real sense of a coherent storyline with this. All of the beginning was blanked out in my memory, probably because of the impact of the ending. I can, however, much to my eternal frustration and regret, pinpoint the exact moment I let Janus into my life. And, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I should've stayed home that night. Or taken a different bus. Or stayed a little longer at the pub, or done any of the multitude of things that could have prevented the one sentence that invited him into my life.
"If you're still looking for a place to crash, you're more than welcome to stay at mine."
If there was one sentence in my life I could go back A Christmas Carol-style to stop myself from uttering thus entirely remove from existence, it would be that one. Because I know for a fact, that was the window. If it had been any other night, when he wasn't in need of a place to crash, or I wasn't in such a good mood to have offered, or we hadn't ended up on the same bus home, there would have been no other window of opportunity. We hadn't seen each other for years and barely spoke, even though we shared the same group of friends, and this was a chance meeting. If not for that sentence, we would have continued our non-friendship, maybe seen each other at random gatherings, made some pleasantries and small talk, and I would have been spared a year of stress and pain, and 2 consequent years of emotional celibacy. But then again, maybe not.
So he had been kicked out by his mother (for smoking, selling and growing weed in the flat. Although I'm not sure how aware she was of the last one) and had been crashing on friend's couches. I let him stay for a couple of nights, and within that time we became a couple. Seriously, thats how vague it is in my head. I don't remember any flirting, or propositions, or literal situations. I literally have no recollection of how it happened. It was all so quick - he stays for a few days, starts off on the sofa, ends up in my bed, and ta-daa! A couple is made. I feel a bit tricked, really. Maybe it was all too fast for me to give it any proper thought, and I just went with it til it was too late. Or maybe I was just a little bit slutty, and carefree with myself. (Come to think of it, I have some theories on my succession of bad relationships, but like I said, lets not get Carrie'd away. Oh god, a bad pun. See this is how easy it is to write Sex and the City).
So we were a couple, living together in my old flat, neither of us with any money. Well, what little money we had came from my savings and his dealings. He sold weed and was developing plans to grow it and become a high-on-the-ladder drug baron with an empire of well-designed and well-hidden weed houses all over the UK. He took great pleasure in hypothetically spending all the money he was going to make, and I found myself continuously finding "What I will spend my first £1million on" lists strewn all over the flat. He also was going to become a Premiership footballer for Arsenal (or for Man United, to please me). He was going to retire at 35, and live his days out in his own private island somewhere, surviving on the millions he'd made as a drug-dealing Premiership footballer. He was a deluded, immature, narcissist who thought the world owed him something - not just something, the world owed him everything. Despite the fact he never did anything but whine and bitch about how unfair everything was, rather than actually doing anything about it. I thought he was fantastic.
After the dark dank days with Mystery, the days of no hopes and no dreams, and never looking into the future except in anticipation of more dark dank days, Janus's eagerness to dream and dream big was like splashing cold water on my face. He was so refreshing, I let everything else slide. Like the fact he was wildly (if unknowingly) misogynistic, and how he did nothing but put me down and misunderstand everything about me because of his mother-induced issues with women, and how he somehow manipulated everything, from situations, to people, to words, with the utmost ease and subtlety. But he managed to get under my skin. Where Mystery was, well, a mystery, a web of disguises and secrets and emotion, Janus was an open book. His openness to reveal who he was made me so very curious about, well, who he was. I wrote this about him when I was in these first throws of infatuation.
You.
You are confident, to the point of egotistical.
You are hopeful, bordering on naive..which is charming, and part of what drew me to you
You have a temper that if sided with violence, would scare me
You love me so willingly and without doubt, and for that I thank you
You feel better than most, and I suspect that you are
You are smart and you know it, and place too much importance in it
You have a sharp sense of humour and like to make me laugh,
which says a lot about you
You have a messiah complex, which compliments my supposed superiority
and means we end up cheek to cheek or head to head
You're not afraid of getting your hands wet, getting as entirely involved as you do
An open book, an open target, an open wound
Your will and cheeky disposition remind me of a child
You are paranoid and continuously feel victimised
You feel no-one can touch you when the world's on your side
To be with you is to feel extremes, which is exhilarating and exhausting,
particularly when I am so weary
You can be so open with me, raw flesh laid out on the line
which scares me sometimes. Such exposure taunts my reticence,
which I concede as necessary
You are optimistic and not afraid to dream - you're
so refreshing in a world of defeatists
You aren't afraid to wear your colour outright
Even if it means dulling mine
You can be so soft, which I tend to forget
You are articulate, and use it to your advantage
(I would never dare say manipulation)
You are so very free with a ball at your feet
I feel closest to you when you admit a weakness
You have a tendency to be self-involved and a little antagonistic
And cannot see me as anything but woman.
It's funny, rereading that reminds me that it actually was good at the beginning, much as I hate to admit it. He did make me laugh, and he was very gentle sometimes, and I really did care for him. And, we made a pretty convincing couple. I was convinced, too, that I loved him. But that was partly my fault. I had my own reasons for being so eager to fall in love (but again, thats another story, for another time).
So for a few weeks we settled into a routine, until for a reason which escapes me at the moment, we found ourselves homeless. I vaguely remember him being the reason we were homeless - I had the option of staying in the flat, but if he was out, I was going with him. I had nothing else going on in my life, in hindsight. So, to give it the run-through, we spent our nights crashing on friend's couches, and our days in cafes making lists of people we could beg the next few days of couch-time from. It actually scares me a little to think how little self-respect I had, as is shown by the amount of people I begged, shamelessly, for couch-time, and even money. Believe me, I am not proud of that time - I wouldn't be so ashamed, or even ashamed at all, if I was doing it for me, but I wasn't - I was fine, I could live at the flat if I wanted, I didn't need the cash. I was doing it for him. I was begging family friends, burning bridges, stretching out my friends' collective patience with me, for him. But for some reason, I couldn't separate his predicament from my own.
We ended up living in the bedroom of a friend who was at uni, with his mum, who charged us minimal rent, under the condition we were tidy and kept to ourselves. We did so, and spent the wages of both Janus' part time retail job, and his dealing profits, on food and cigarettes. I vaguely remember that being the period of building up resentments on either side - he was constantly hinting at me that because we needed money, I should get a job, occasionally being supportive, but always looking down at me. I was still hoping to go back to college, and saw getting a job 'to get me by' as the shutting of the tiny window of opportunity I had, and the first steps in a path that lead to mindless 9-5 office work and eventually waking up at 30, realising I had wasted my chances at actually becoming something. Obviously, I had some issues with overanalysing my own decisions! But I couldn't understand how he, the Big Dreamer, didn't understand that I was scared of finally giving up on any small dreams of becoming who I thought, maybe, I could be. Alright, so I was a little naive, but to be honest I wanted to keep what little naivety I had left. I was, and still am, terrified of becoming genuinely bitter. But my weakness at the time meant that I took his judgement so much to heart that I felt like a failure. And because I had nothing to fill my time with, while he was out selling clothes or dealing weed, I would dwell on how useless I was in his eyes, and thus I became useless in my own eyes. I was living out a fight in my own head that I was too weak to live out in reality - between his careless judgements of me, and my own, sliding, sense of self.
We then moved in with Pickled Lily, my best friend who I'd lived with for 2 years before the Mystery debacle. She was also Janus's ex, and first love. He screwed her over too. Now I'm not at all a posessive person, probably because I'm so precious about my own space. But I was driving myself a little crazy with all my internal insecurities, that this just played on my inferiority complex of the time, adding to the long list of things I found to convince myself Janus was right - I was a failure. Pickled Lily was living proof of what 'Janus's girlfriend' should be, and I was falling way short of the mark. (Obviously, it wasn't like that at all. But you get my downward-spiralling sense of self-worth, and reality!)
Now here, the story blurs again. Weeks coasted by in this charade of a half-life, whereby I was playing the role of.. well, I never really was sure what, but I was playing a role of sorts and couldn't seem to fit into my own life at the time. Anyway, something within me snapped (or possibly the Great Escape Artist that is my emotional subconscious took the reigns) and I booked myself a flight to Canada for the Summer months. I needed to get away. I don't remember Janus' reaction to this, but I'm sure it wasn't the reaction of a supportive lover/friend. Oh wait no this I do remember, he pretended to be pleased for me, then gradually over the weeks leading up to my departure couldn't quite manage to hide his selfish annoyance and whiny childish "But what about me? But what am I supposed to do?' attitude that he usually reserved to aim toward life, but did occasionally throw my way. He hated that I finally had an out, that I had cut a well deserved break (in fact the only real break I've ever had) while he couldn't even admit that he needed one.
Anyway, Canada..
Canada was one of those times, one of those places that I don't think I could ever properly describe. It was 3 months that shaped my life, and I can't quite identify how. It's both crystal clear, and entirely foggy. To try and go halfway to explaining, I finally got far away from my life to look at it properly, and I both hated and loved what I saw. No, thats not right. I hated what I saw looking back, but finally had the chance and the peace of mind, to look forward. And to find out who exactly I was. When taken from my environment, from my stresses, from my mother, from my friends, from all the things I thought I needed.. what sort of person I was left with. And I think I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there were a few blissful weeks of clarity upon discovering I did, in fact, love the person I always thought maybe I was, before everything came crashing down around me.
From the first day I arrived in Canada, I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I stopped eating unhealthily, I just.. well, I stopped. It was as if time slowed down, and I took a big, long, cold breath. And when I exhaled, everything was clearer.
After a month or 2 of revelling in this feeling of being fresh and renewed, I took an impromptu road trip around America. It was as I'd always imagined a road trip around America would be, or what Hollywood movies have always lead me to believe - long dirt roads through dusty deserts, leaning out of the front window of a truck with sunglasses on, radio blaring, cigarette in hand, sun setting in the horizon while I sing along to some Hank Williams track, feeling free as a bird. I'd never noticed how huge the sky is until then, and nothing had ever made me feel as connected with the world.
We coasted through Phoenix, Tulsa, Las Vegas, California, even Texas - until half way we reached Los Angeles. The City of Angels. This is where the first half of my Canadian Summer ended, and a whole new chapter began. Flying into LAX, I was the free-est, most centred, most healthy physically and emotionally that I've ever been. I felt amazing. Flying out of LAX.. well, let's just say I was unrecognisable. If I arrived in LA as the Dalai Lama, I left as Courtney fucking Love.
In LA, I discovered I was pregnant. I discovered this whilst in the emergency room of a downtown hospital, naked but for a hospital gown, with no shoes on, with nobody I knew in the same room, or even the same state. I'd let the boys I was travelling with go on ahead, as I hasn't been feeling well so wanted to stay behind and get checked out before meeting them in Florida the next day. Plus, I had a distant relative I'd arranged to stay with if I needed to. Who, it turns out, was a nurse on a full-time schedule and was never at home, so I had the house basically to myself the entire time. This turned out to be not as brilliant as I'd originally anticipated.
I somehow got myself into a cab from the hospital and found my Aunt's house, unpacked and went to sleep, trying to pretend I wasn't in another country, alone, with basically no money, and no way of contacting anybody I knew, in 40 degree heat, in a stranger's house with no air conditioning and an ant infestation. I then spent the week with my head in the toilet as, funnily enough, it turned out my body was rejecting the pregnancy. I also discovered that I was so far gone that I'd bypassed the legal limit in America to get an abortion. The limit is longer in England (God Bless Britain - I can't tell you how much I longed to be on home ground at this point) but my flight home wasn't until a month away. At which point it would be too late. So, I was having a child. Yesterday I was on holiday, today.. I was having a child. And my body was rejecting it.
That week was like something out of a horror movie, in my memory. I spent 7 days alone, in a stranger's house, lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, throwing up any water or food I tried to force down my own throat, so hot I couldn't see straight, ants crawling all over me, lying in a sweat and tear stained pillow with barely even enough energy to sob. Helpless and terrified, I longed for London. I longed for Pickled Lily, and Looney Toon, and my cat, and my things - I've never wanted anything so desperately as I wanted home.
Starved of water and food, the thought of having to have a child, and all the fucked-up irony in this situation, on top of being violently incontrollably sick every 5 minutes, was too much for my dehydrated mind to handle, and I just broke down. 7 days my dehydrated body lay defeated on the couch, incoherent thoughts and emotions racing, stumbling through my mind as my eyes stared numbly at the digital clock, watching the time change. 2:22. 3:33. 4:44. A line of ants are walking down my leg. 5:55.
At the end of the week, my aunt found me and took me back to the hospital where I was put on a drip for 2 days. I slept most of the time, and managed somehow to convince the doctor to release me and tell my Aunt I'd just had a virus. On the way back to her house I picked up a phone card and called home. Pickled Lily was amazing as ever and we discovered that my flight home was actually within the time limit whereby you can legally get a termination. The word relief doesn't even cover it. Seeing the light, and giddy from having some form of control (even if in the form of an International Phone Card), I called Janus. I'd been praying to speak to him all week, in disbelief that he wasn't there to talk it through, to comfort me and make me feel more normal, and knowing that when I spoke to him, my other half in this situation, I would be less alone.
No phone conversation until then, or since, has ever shocked me that much. Disinterest, selfishness, coldness, these words don't even reach the level of outrageous inhumanity that he embodied during that phone conversation. I'd been longing with every bit of my heart to speak to him for 7 of the most gruelling days of my life, and I'd finally gotten the phone call - and it took him all of 1 minute for me to wish I'd never called him, fuck it - never met him.
He didn't give a shit. I told him, blurted it out, weeping a little with exhaustion, with relief and self-pity and pain and happiness to hear his voice, and nothing. One moment of silence, then..
Look Wednesday Girl, what about me? You don't understand, I can't deal with this right now - my mum's been driving me crazy, I've got so little money you know. Can you call your mum and find out if I can stay at your place, you don't seem to be helping me out here. You're off having your holiday or whatever, but what about me? What about me?
It was like slow motion. My eyes zoned out, the tears hardened on my cheeks, my brain froze and throbbed in my ears, and for the hundredth time that day, I felt like I was going to be sick. I let the phone slip out of my hands and drop to the floor. Just as I remember the exact window through which I let Janus into my life, this was the moment I closed it.
I flew back to Canada and spent the rest of my time there being proactive. I booked a hospital appointment upon my arrival (St bloody Mary's..), I let Pickled Lily know the times of my flight so she could come to the airport, I called my mum to find out how my cat was and if there was anything she needed from the family out here. I also managed to book myself into a college course that would start a few weeks after my return to my beloved LDN. Finally, I called Janus, and told him in no uncertain terms that were he to be within a mile of the airport upon my arrival, I would call the police.
At this point, all the headway I'd found in regards to self discovery and inner peace, was dashed to say the least. Knowing that I'd never forgive myself if I let this ruin my last few weeks of freedom in Canada, plus staying with family and not being able to talk about what happened in LA, I'd had to keep everything inside and pull myself together. This took a lot of out me, and keeping my cool when talking to Janus was too much for me to handle. So I blocked him. In my head, on my phone, in my email. Blocked.
Flying back to London, I should have been.. contented. Nourished. Instead, I was an emotional volcano held together with sellotape, ready to explode and fall apart at any minute - the word disappointed doesn't even cover it. The words crazy with rage and pain don't even cover it. I had just enough sense and presence of mind to sort my body out, which is what I focused myself on. I then did whatever I could to make sure Janus was out of my life. As soon as humanly possible.
..to this day, that's the furthest I can get with this story. So suffice to say, that first month in Canada I built up so much inner strength and calm that I had just enough left to provide the courage I needed to disentangle myself from Janus. From the last in what could have been a long road of disasterous emotional abuse, from the people I seemed to have developed a habit of letting into my life, and for the guilt trips I put myself through because of it.
There are still remnants where should be none - for example in the reaction of my friends at the time, who let me down in big ways - that one still stings.
But ultimately, 4/5 years down the line and he's just a blip in the radar of my past. But to this day (and I hate to admit this so I never will again) but when I think about him, there is an angry teenage girl inside me who pricks me with a pin, as if to remind me she's still there, and boy is she still angry.
Because she was there when, in trying to get him to go away, I kept my mouth shut and let him behave appallingly to the bitter end. Let him say some awful, awful things to me to try and get a reaction, let him scream and weep and throw himself around like a child having a tantrum, only ever saying one thing to him, calmy, quietly - detached. I need you to leave. And to be fair, it worked. He did. I got rid of the bastard. But there is a petty, angry, hurt little girl in me who will always want to run at him with a pair of scissors, screaming "What about ME???!!" And she will never quite forgive me for being too weak to let her say her piece.
It took me at least a year to get over the aftermath and everything that that entailed. I went through my lowest times in Canada, feeling more alone than I've ever been, but I have a sneaking feeling that that might just be me. Sometimes I need for something horrible to happen to shake me out of my funk, to force me to take charge of myself. To push me out of the mess that I've created.. But that's enough blame for now. I took my fare share of the blame at the time, and more. And I kept going.
And yes, I could have done things differently, I could have said the things I needed to say, that I needed to scream from the rooftops, but I bit my tongue, I did what needed to be done and clung on to what little strength I'd found in Canada. Outwardly, I pretended to be fine and waited patiently until the day that inwardly, I was.
It came, as it always does, and I got on with it. Simple as.
----------------
As with any story, there is so much more to it than can ever be told, but this isn't a story I particularly treasure. So I'll write down the bits that I can, and throw the rest away.
I found this quite hard to write. In fact, if I'm honest, I wrote half of it last year, then couldn't ever find it in me to finish it. Not because it hurts or anything to write, it doesn't. I just kept going back to it and could never seem to finish it. Tonight, out of nowhere, I was doing my laundry and getting ready for work and it poured out. And now I'm going to watch an episode of Arrested Development and go to bed. Weird how things turn out.
I could just start where I ended the Mystery story (as the Janus era started literally within a month of the Mystery breakup) but that makes it seem all a bit too Carrie Bradshaw-esque, you know writing continuously about lovers, when I'm really not. I'm writing about me, and the vague semblance of life I've lived, thus the people therein. So to make it clear, I'm not in any way, Carrie. But there, see I'm digressing from the Janus storyline. I wanted to write it as a run-down, like the Mystery entry, but I can't seem to wrap it up in that tidy a package. Maybe because of some residual anger and hurt, but more likely because it was all a bit too messy and I can't collect my thoughts to form a proper flowing storyline with any coherent timeline. Well, that and the fact that thinking about him, to this day, makes me raging mad at myself for letting him into my life, and even more raging mad at him for accepting my well-meant invitation only to throw it in my face. But hey, we'll call this my first draft.
So I was a bit of a state after the whole Mystery debacle. I'd moved back home to my mum's flat (thus destroying all the progress I'd made in escaping my mother, and the mess that was my childhood), I had no job, no real drive to do anything other than watch Buffy on the couch surrounded by fag-ends and mouldy cups of tea. But, I was basking in my new-found sense of freedom from the months of suffocation and drama, and felt I could finally breathe a little with the lack of Mystery's weight on my shoulders. So I coasted for a couple of weeks, reacquainting myself with my friends, and the pub, and society. From then, to be honest, it's a bit of a blur.
The transition from newly free and weightless to full-on Janus coupledom, is just a huge blur. Like I said, I have no real sense of a coherent storyline with this. All of the beginning was blanked out in my memory, probably because of the impact of the ending. I can, however, much to my eternal frustration and regret, pinpoint the exact moment I let Janus into my life. And, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I should've stayed home that night. Or taken a different bus. Or stayed a little longer at the pub, or done any of the multitude of things that could have prevented the one sentence that invited him into my life.
"If you're still looking for a place to crash, you're more than welcome to stay at mine."
If there was one sentence in my life I could go back A Christmas Carol-style to stop myself from uttering thus entirely remove from existence, it would be that one. Because I know for a fact, that was the window. If it had been any other night, when he wasn't in need of a place to crash, or I wasn't in such a good mood to have offered, or we hadn't ended up on the same bus home, there would have been no other window of opportunity. We hadn't seen each other for years and barely spoke, even though we shared the same group of friends, and this was a chance meeting. If not for that sentence, we would have continued our non-friendship, maybe seen each other at random gatherings, made some pleasantries and small talk, and I would have been spared a year of stress and pain, and 2 consequent years of emotional celibacy. But then again, maybe not.
So he had been kicked out by his mother (for smoking, selling and growing weed in the flat. Although I'm not sure how aware she was of the last one) and had been crashing on friend's couches. I let him stay for a couple of nights, and within that time we became a couple. Seriously, thats how vague it is in my head. I don't remember any flirting, or propositions, or literal situations. I literally have no recollection of how it happened. It was all so quick - he stays for a few days, starts off on the sofa, ends up in my bed, and ta-daa! A couple is made. I feel a bit tricked, really. Maybe it was all too fast for me to give it any proper thought, and I just went with it til it was too late. Or maybe I was just a little bit slutty, and carefree with myself. (Come to think of it, I have some theories on my succession of bad relationships, but like I said, lets not get Carrie'd away. Oh god, a bad pun. See this is how easy it is to write Sex and the City).
So we were a couple, living together in my old flat, neither of us with any money. Well, what little money we had came from my savings and his dealings. He sold weed and was developing plans to grow it and become a high-on-the-ladder drug baron with an empire of well-designed and well-hidden weed houses all over the UK. He took great pleasure in hypothetically spending all the money he was going to make, and I found myself continuously finding "What I will spend my first £1million on" lists strewn all over the flat. He also was going to become a Premiership footballer for Arsenal (or for Man United, to please me). He was going to retire at 35, and live his days out in his own private island somewhere, surviving on the millions he'd made as a drug-dealing Premiership footballer. He was a deluded, immature, narcissist who thought the world owed him something - not just something, the world owed him everything. Despite the fact he never did anything but whine and bitch about how unfair everything was, rather than actually doing anything about it. I thought he was fantastic.
After the dark dank days with Mystery, the days of no hopes and no dreams, and never looking into the future except in anticipation of more dark dank days, Janus's eagerness to dream and dream big was like splashing cold water on my face. He was so refreshing, I let everything else slide. Like the fact he was wildly (if unknowingly) misogynistic, and how he did nothing but put me down and misunderstand everything about me because of his mother-induced issues with women, and how he somehow manipulated everything, from situations, to people, to words, with the utmost ease and subtlety. But he managed to get under my skin. Where Mystery was, well, a mystery, a web of disguises and secrets and emotion, Janus was an open book. His openness to reveal who he was made me so very curious about, well, who he was. I wrote this about him when I was in these first throws of infatuation.
You.
You are confident, to the point of egotistical.
You are hopeful, bordering on naive..which is charming, and part of what drew me to you
You have a temper that if sided with violence, would scare me
You love me so willingly and without doubt, and for that I thank you
You feel better than most, and I suspect that you are
You are smart and you know it, and place too much importance in it
You have a sharp sense of humour and like to make me laugh,
which says a lot about you
You have a messiah complex, which compliments my supposed superiority
and means we end up cheek to cheek or head to head
You're not afraid of getting your hands wet, getting as entirely involved as you do
An open book, an open target, an open wound
Your will and cheeky disposition remind me of a child
You are paranoid and continuously feel victimised
You feel no-one can touch you when the world's on your side
To be with you is to feel extremes, which is exhilarating and exhausting,
particularly when I am so weary
You can be so open with me, raw flesh laid out on the line
which scares me sometimes. Such exposure taunts my reticence,
which I concede as necessary
You are optimistic and not afraid to dream - you're
so refreshing in a world of defeatists
You aren't afraid to wear your colour outright
Even if it means dulling mine
You can be so soft, which I tend to forget
You are articulate, and use it to your advantage
(I would never dare say manipulation)
You are so very free with a ball at your feet
I feel closest to you when you admit a weakness
You have a tendency to be self-involved and a little antagonistic
And cannot see me as anything but woman.
It's funny, rereading that reminds me that it actually was good at the beginning, much as I hate to admit it. He did make me laugh, and he was very gentle sometimes, and I really did care for him. And, we made a pretty convincing couple. I was convinced, too, that I loved him. But that was partly my fault. I had my own reasons for being so eager to fall in love (but again, thats another story, for another time).
So for a few weeks we settled into a routine, until for a reason which escapes me at the moment, we found ourselves homeless. I vaguely remember him being the reason we were homeless - I had the option of staying in the flat, but if he was out, I was going with him. I had nothing else going on in my life, in hindsight. So, to give it the run-through, we spent our nights crashing on friend's couches, and our days in cafes making lists of people we could beg the next few days of couch-time from. It actually scares me a little to think how little self-respect I had, as is shown by the amount of people I begged, shamelessly, for couch-time, and even money. Believe me, I am not proud of that time - I wouldn't be so ashamed, or even ashamed at all, if I was doing it for me, but I wasn't - I was fine, I could live at the flat if I wanted, I didn't need the cash. I was doing it for him. I was begging family friends, burning bridges, stretching out my friends' collective patience with me, for him. But for some reason, I couldn't separate his predicament from my own.
We ended up living in the bedroom of a friend who was at uni, with his mum, who charged us minimal rent, under the condition we were tidy and kept to ourselves. We did so, and spent the wages of both Janus' part time retail job, and his dealing profits, on food and cigarettes. I vaguely remember that being the period of building up resentments on either side - he was constantly hinting at me that because we needed money, I should get a job, occasionally being supportive, but always looking down at me. I was still hoping to go back to college, and saw getting a job 'to get me by' as the shutting of the tiny window of opportunity I had, and the first steps in a path that lead to mindless 9-5 office work and eventually waking up at 30, realising I had wasted my chances at actually becoming something. Obviously, I had some issues with overanalysing my own decisions! But I couldn't understand how he, the Big Dreamer, didn't understand that I was scared of finally giving up on any small dreams of becoming who I thought, maybe, I could be. Alright, so I was a little naive, but to be honest I wanted to keep what little naivety I had left. I was, and still am, terrified of becoming genuinely bitter. But my weakness at the time meant that I took his judgement so much to heart that I felt like a failure. And because I had nothing to fill my time with, while he was out selling clothes or dealing weed, I would dwell on how useless I was in his eyes, and thus I became useless in my own eyes. I was living out a fight in my own head that I was too weak to live out in reality - between his careless judgements of me, and my own, sliding, sense of self.
We then moved in with Pickled Lily, my best friend who I'd lived with for 2 years before the Mystery debacle. She was also Janus's ex, and first love. He screwed her over too. Now I'm not at all a posessive person, probably because I'm so precious about my own space. But I was driving myself a little crazy with all my internal insecurities, that this just played on my inferiority complex of the time, adding to the long list of things I found to convince myself Janus was right - I was a failure. Pickled Lily was living proof of what 'Janus's girlfriend' should be, and I was falling way short of the mark. (Obviously, it wasn't like that at all. But you get my downward-spiralling sense of self-worth, and reality!)
Now here, the story blurs again. Weeks coasted by in this charade of a half-life, whereby I was playing the role of.. well, I never really was sure what, but I was playing a role of sorts and couldn't seem to fit into my own life at the time. Anyway, something within me snapped (or possibly the Great Escape Artist that is my emotional subconscious took the reigns) and I booked myself a flight to Canada for the Summer months. I needed to get away. I don't remember Janus' reaction to this, but I'm sure it wasn't the reaction of a supportive lover/friend. Oh wait no this I do remember, he pretended to be pleased for me, then gradually over the weeks leading up to my departure couldn't quite manage to hide his selfish annoyance and whiny childish "But what about me? But what am I supposed to do?' attitude that he usually reserved to aim toward life, but did occasionally throw my way. He hated that I finally had an out, that I had cut a well deserved break (in fact the only real break I've ever had) while he couldn't even admit that he needed one.
Anyway, Canada..
Canada was one of those times, one of those places that I don't think I could ever properly describe. It was 3 months that shaped my life, and I can't quite identify how. It's both crystal clear, and entirely foggy. To try and go halfway to explaining, I finally got far away from my life to look at it properly, and I both hated and loved what I saw. No, thats not right. I hated what I saw looking back, but finally had the chance and the peace of mind, to look forward. And to find out who exactly I was. When taken from my environment, from my stresses, from my mother, from my friends, from all the things I thought I needed.. what sort of person I was left with. And I think I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there were a few blissful weeks of clarity upon discovering I did, in fact, love the person I always thought maybe I was, before everything came crashing down around me.
From the first day I arrived in Canada, I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I stopped eating unhealthily, I just.. well, I stopped. It was as if time slowed down, and I took a big, long, cold breath. And when I exhaled, everything was clearer.
After a month or 2 of revelling in this feeling of being fresh and renewed, I took an impromptu road trip around America. It was as I'd always imagined a road trip around America would be, or what Hollywood movies have always lead me to believe - long dirt roads through dusty deserts, leaning out of the front window of a truck with sunglasses on, radio blaring, cigarette in hand, sun setting in the horizon while I sing along to some Hank Williams track, feeling free as a bird. I'd never noticed how huge the sky is until then, and nothing had ever made me feel as connected with the world.
We coasted through Phoenix, Tulsa, Las Vegas, California, even Texas - until half way we reached Los Angeles. The City of Angels. This is where the first half of my Canadian Summer ended, and a whole new chapter began. Flying into LAX, I was the free-est, most centred, most healthy physically and emotionally that I've ever been. I felt amazing. Flying out of LAX.. well, let's just say I was unrecognisable. If I arrived in LA as the Dalai Lama, I left as Courtney fucking Love.
In LA, I discovered I was pregnant. I discovered this whilst in the emergency room of a downtown hospital, naked but for a hospital gown, with no shoes on, with nobody I knew in the same room, or even the same state. I'd let the boys I was travelling with go on ahead, as I hasn't been feeling well so wanted to stay behind and get checked out before meeting them in Florida the next day. Plus, I had a distant relative I'd arranged to stay with if I needed to. Who, it turns out, was a nurse on a full-time schedule and was never at home, so I had the house basically to myself the entire time. This turned out to be not as brilliant as I'd originally anticipated.
I somehow got myself into a cab from the hospital and found my Aunt's house, unpacked and went to sleep, trying to pretend I wasn't in another country, alone, with basically no money, and no way of contacting anybody I knew, in 40 degree heat, in a stranger's house with no air conditioning and an ant infestation. I then spent the week with my head in the toilet as, funnily enough, it turned out my body was rejecting the pregnancy. I also discovered that I was so far gone that I'd bypassed the legal limit in America to get an abortion. The limit is longer in England (God Bless Britain - I can't tell you how much I longed to be on home ground at this point) but my flight home wasn't until a month away. At which point it would be too late. So, I was having a child. Yesterday I was on holiday, today.. I was having a child. And my body was rejecting it.
That week was like something out of a horror movie, in my memory. I spent 7 days alone, in a stranger's house, lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, throwing up any water or food I tried to force down my own throat, so hot I couldn't see straight, ants crawling all over me, lying in a sweat and tear stained pillow with barely even enough energy to sob. Helpless and terrified, I longed for London. I longed for Pickled Lily, and Looney Toon, and my cat, and my things - I've never wanted anything so desperately as I wanted home.
Starved of water and food, the thought of having to have a child, and all the fucked-up irony in this situation, on top of being violently incontrollably sick every 5 minutes, was too much for my dehydrated mind to handle, and I just broke down. 7 days my dehydrated body lay defeated on the couch, incoherent thoughts and emotions racing, stumbling through my mind as my eyes stared numbly at the digital clock, watching the time change. 2:22. 3:33. 4:44. A line of ants are walking down my leg. 5:55.
At the end of the week, my aunt found me and took me back to the hospital where I was put on a drip for 2 days. I slept most of the time, and managed somehow to convince the doctor to release me and tell my Aunt I'd just had a virus. On the way back to her house I picked up a phone card and called home. Pickled Lily was amazing as ever and we discovered that my flight home was actually within the time limit whereby you can legally get a termination. The word relief doesn't even cover it. Seeing the light, and giddy from having some form of control (even if in the form of an International Phone Card), I called Janus. I'd been praying to speak to him all week, in disbelief that he wasn't there to talk it through, to comfort me and make me feel more normal, and knowing that when I spoke to him, my other half in this situation, I would be less alone.
No phone conversation until then, or since, has ever shocked me that much. Disinterest, selfishness, coldness, these words don't even reach the level of outrageous inhumanity that he embodied during that phone conversation. I'd been longing with every bit of my heart to speak to him for 7 of the most gruelling days of my life, and I'd finally gotten the phone call - and it took him all of 1 minute for me to wish I'd never called him, fuck it - never met him.
He didn't give a shit. I told him, blurted it out, weeping a little with exhaustion, with relief and self-pity and pain and happiness to hear his voice, and nothing. One moment of silence, then..
Look Wednesday Girl, what about me? You don't understand, I can't deal with this right now - my mum's been driving me crazy, I've got so little money you know. Can you call your mum and find out if I can stay at your place, you don't seem to be helping me out here. You're off having your holiday or whatever, but what about me? What about me?
It was like slow motion. My eyes zoned out, the tears hardened on my cheeks, my brain froze and throbbed in my ears, and for the hundredth time that day, I felt like I was going to be sick. I let the phone slip out of my hands and drop to the floor. Just as I remember the exact window through which I let Janus into my life, this was the moment I closed it.
I flew back to Canada and spent the rest of my time there being proactive. I booked a hospital appointment upon my arrival (St bloody Mary's..), I let Pickled Lily know the times of my flight so she could come to the airport, I called my mum to find out how my cat was and if there was anything she needed from the family out here. I also managed to book myself into a college course that would start a few weeks after my return to my beloved LDN. Finally, I called Janus, and told him in no uncertain terms that were he to be within a mile of the airport upon my arrival, I would call the police.
At this point, all the headway I'd found in regards to self discovery and inner peace, was dashed to say the least. Knowing that I'd never forgive myself if I let this ruin my last few weeks of freedom in Canada, plus staying with family and not being able to talk about what happened in LA, I'd had to keep everything inside and pull myself together. This took a lot of out me, and keeping my cool when talking to Janus was too much for me to handle. So I blocked him. In my head, on my phone, in my email. Blocked.
Flying back to London, I should have been.. contented. Nourished. Instead, I was an emotional volcano held together with sellotape, ready to explode and fall apart at any minute - the word disappointed doesn't even cover it. The words crazy with rage and pain don't even cover it. I had just enough sense and presence of mind to sort my body out, which is what I focused myself on. I then did whatever I could to make sure Janus was out of my life. As soon as humanly possible.
..to this day, that's the furthest I can get with this story. So suffice to say, that first month in Canada I built up so much inner strength and calm that I had just enough left to provide the courage I needed to disentangle myself from Janus. From the last in what could have been a long road of disasterous emotional abuse, from the people I seemed to have developed a habit of letting into my life, and for the guilt trips I put myself through because of it.
There are still remnants where should be none - for example in the reaction of my friends at the time, who let me down in big ways - that one still stings.
But ultimately, 4/5 years down the line and he's just a blip in the radar of my past. But to this day (and I hate to admit this so I never will again) but when I think about him, there is an angry teenage girl inside me who pricks me with a pin, as if to remind me she's still there, and boy is she still angry.
Because she was there when, in trying to get him to go away, I kept my mouth shut and let him behave appallingly to the bitter end. Let him say some awful, awful things to me to try and get a reaction, let him scream and weep and throw himself around like a child having a tantrum, only ever saying one thing to him, calmy, quietly - detached. I need you to leave. And to be fair, it worked. He did. I got rid of the bastard. But there is a petty, angry, hurt little girl in me who will always want to run at him with a pair of scissors, screaming "What about ME???!!" And she will never quite forgive me for being too weak to let her say her piece.
It took me at least a year to get over the aftermath and everything that that entailed. I went through my lowest times in Canada, feeling more alone than I've ever been, but I have a sneaking feeling that that might just be me. Sometimes I need for something horrible to happen to shake me out of my funk, to force me to take charge of myself. To push me out of the mess that I've created.. But that's enough blame for now. I took my fare share of the blame at the time, and more. And I kept going.
And yes, I could have done things differently, I could have said the things I needed to say, that I needed to scream from the rooftops, but I bit my tongue, I did what needed to be done and clung on to what little strength I'd found in Canada. Outwardly, I pretended to be fine and waited patiently until the day that inwardly, I was.
It came, as it always does, and I got on with it. Simple as.
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As with any story, there is so much more to it than can ever be told, but this isn't a story I particularly treasure. So I'll write down the bits that I can, and throw the rest away.
I found this quite hard to write. In fact, if I'm honest, I wrote half of it last year, then couldn't ever find it in me to finish it. Not because it hurts or anything to write, it doesn't. I just kept going back to it and could never seem to finish it. Tonight, out of nowhere, I was doing my laundry and getting ready for work and it poured out. And now I'm going to watch an episode of Arrested Development and go to bed. Weird how things turn out.
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