well, it took a month for the finality of the shift to really assert
itself, but it's finally sinking in. i am now living in windsor, ten
hours from....
...well, from what, exactly? memories, most of them not so good.
i'm
an introvert. i suppose not all introverts have strong social problems,
but i'm one of the ones that does. in the months leading up to my
departure, i was behaving in a way that was unusually social. i've been
through multiple brief periods of existing within a social group, but
it's definitely not the norm for me. the norm for me has been having one
or two close friends and no acquaintances except the friends of those
friends, really often even having nobody i could call a friend, and
going through periods of weeks or even months without engaging in any
kind of social interaction, or even engaging in any kind of actual
conversation with anybody except my father. my real friends have usually
been books, cds and names that exist only on a computer screen.
i
remember one period around '09 or so when my dad and i weren't talking.
i was in school at the time. i went in to talk to a prof and was
stuttering so hard he asked me if i was
"on drugs...or..."
*brief pause*
"...do you have MS?".
in
actuality, i just hadn't spoken a word to anybody in something like
three weeks and was having difficulty with my vocal muscles. i'm
expecting the stutter to return over the next few months...
i've
posted a ton of pictures of things i'm doing in my place, but what's
windsor actually like? from the perspective of an outcast by choice, a
hermit, windsor is really not a lot different than ottawa. i kind of
feel like i'm living off bronson, because the sewers are being replaced
on wyandotte. oddly, the next major street running parallel is the
italian district - preston. and i'm surrounded by arabic and east asian
businesses.
when i need to take the bus somewhere, i take the 2. fancy that.
so, life actually hasn't changed much at all. really, it's the similarities that are more jarring than the differences.
there's
a large river a few blocks north, a bike path that runs across it and a
city with a different culture on the other side of it. i haven't been
over yet.
a lot of the shops are boarded up along a few
of the main streets. but, really the only businesses that exist are
restaurants, pawn shops, beauty salons (there's an absurd amount of
them) and speciality grocery stores. all of the bigger stores are
located in the suburbs. like, there's no mall downtown sort of thing.
right now, that's been annoying as i've needed things like coffee makers
and had to take the bus way out to get them, but as i settle in i think
i'll get used to that. i'm not a mall person, anyways.
almost
everybody under 40 is either a hip-hop kid or a punk, so i look a
little out of place (although i'm not actually). the frequency of large,
attack type dogs is a little unsettling.....but i suppose it's
connected to a deficit of pigs, so maybe i shouldn't complain. scooters
and bicycles are both very popular here, which gives the city a sort of a
late 50s feel. how much that may be connected to the area's punk,
garage, mod legacy? i don't know. it's quite normal to walk down the
street and experience the smell of marijuana coming from several
different houses at the same time.
safety? i think i'm
ok. there's one house a few blocks up that i got some gross stares from,
but then their parents came home and that stopped. kids that think
violence is cool can and does happen anywhere. where i grew up, there
was a street where average annual income jumped abut $150,000 and it was
the rich kids that were more dangerous than the poor ones.
here's
an interesting quote: "can you answer me a question? why is it that you
sound like a man, and look like a sexy woman?". i was getting trolled,
actually.
so, those are the differences.
from
where i'm going to be spending the vast majority of my time, though, it
doesn't matter very much. to me, the only substantial difference is the
cost of rent.
with that, i'll stop posting about the
move. well, i have a lot of little things to build, still. but i feel
the transition period is over.
...and in more than one
way. the last month has seen the end of two years of no fixed address,
two years of my dad fighting cancer and two years of occupy-related
correspondence.
today is also three years on hormones.
it
all ended just as abruptly as it started. i'll probably look back on
this period as the worst period of my life, but also as a sort of a
portal from one phase of existence to another.
tomorrow starts right now.