Another blog post so soon, you ask? Why yes! If you’re critical or incredulous, shut the fuck up, you don’t have to read it! If you’re impressed at my prolificacy, then, aww, shucks, thanks. I’m often awesome.
Three posts in a day. A new record. Why? Well, the Q parking blog was just waiting for me to have the time, as I already had the photos, and the theme is a recurring one. As for this morning’s first post…I had a few minutes between me and my 8:30 gym date, and a friend made me get emotional, so instead of an overly-long facebook response, I typed here.
As for tonight…I have a lot of time on my hands. I had one of my dearest friends, my brother, my Mark Allen, visiting for almost three weeks. Then I had my first Canadian Thanksgiving and an invalid husband to worry over. Then I had some catching up to do with my Saguenay friends, as well as an AMAZING party weekend to attend. Now…I’m back to what passes for normal in this crazy life.
Being alone again is not a bad thing. I needed it. I’m now unused to the noise of socializing filling most seconds of my day, and like the introvert I’ll never be, I needed some time alone to process and recharge. However, as much as I need this period of solitude, it gives me a lot of time to think, a lot of time to count days and worries.
Today was actually a good day, despite it being full of mental strife. I skyped with the husband last night to touch base once more before submitting my Permanent Residency application. I had printer problems last night, so I deferred the actual finalization of the application packet to today. Got up, motivated by a gym date with a friend, made it to the gym, paid my cardio and ripped at some muscles, and then I was home, with no plans, free to do whatever it was I decided to do. I dallied for a while, catching up with my brother by Skype. Then I got started.
I finished up my application documents, then edited the extra, “this is how you know we’re a real married couple” document a bit so that, as the husband put it, Canadian Immigration workers would read through it and quickly realize “you’re not a Lebanese sham wife trying to get a Canadian passport so you can flee here when the Israelis bomb your shit.” I then sent everything from my laptop to “Darth ‘Puter” (or “the Deathstar,” depending on which member of this Oliviero household you ask for the “big” computer’s name). I had planned to use this transfer to get around the new-network wireless printer difficulties I was experiencing from the welcomed switch from Bell to Videotrone.
No such luck. The wireless (black and white) printer worked flawlessly, once I crawled around on my trembling, gym-abused legs to figure out how to attach it by wire (how barbaric!) to Darth ‘Puter. However, I needed the colour printer for that one, all-important, I’m-not-a-sham-wife document (complete with photos of the happy couple). I eventually pulled up an online tutorial that helped me figure out how to open the blasted thing to replace the black ink cartridge it immediately started requesting. Â However, no amount of cajoling, troubleshooting, or head cleaning led to me being able to print in colour.
Long story less long than I have to make it, the colour cartridge had died of old age, or something, and I somehow managed to effortlessly obtain a new one at the Bureau en Gros (like an Office Max…only “Frencher”). Got the whole damn thing printed out, and I was on top of the world, especially since I’d had the foresight to get sushi and some vodka to celebrate the happy occasion of my victory over surly technology.
But then, I learned something. I’m back in that place. The place where victory and desolation are but a hair’s width apart, separated by a nearly undetectable margin. It was over nothing that I lost my sense of victory and once again had tears welling up in my eyes.
I don’t know exactly which facet of life it is that does this. Is it the language barrier, which made me practice my French for, “Is Enrico here?” for most of the ten minutes it took to drive to his location? Is it being away from the husband, leaving me 600 km from the only reason I abandoned the life I know? Is it more time to myself, having more things boil up in my brain since there’s finally silence, which I so skillfully avoided for so much of my past?
I don’t know what it is. But I know that the result is like a boiling cauldron. That viscous liquid inside is made of many things: joy, sorrow, excitement, disappointment, fear, worry, resignation, hope. It’s unpredictable, as is the flame that heats it, threatening to let it cool or force it to boil over at any moment. What rises to the surface of that cauldron as it boils and bubbles is anyone’s guess; yours is no less likely to foretell truth than mine, unfortunately. Sometimes what rises is a joy and sense of victory completely overwhelming, despite the challenge being mundane. Sometimes, instead, it’s tremendous anxiety over something that bears no worry at all. Conversely, it may be a sense of serenity when, at the very least, alarm is merited.
I’ve had times in the past when my moods have proved unpredictable or a bit out of touch with the situations that spawned them. This, though…since the move…this is something new. It seems like a magic 8 ball with its lack of rhyme or reason, mysterious answers rising into view at the insistence of poorly-phrased questions.
I don’t know.
Well, I do know some things. I know I’m okay. That I’ll continue to be okay. Some days great, some days just getting by. But I’ll be okay. I know that I belong here, even if I’m an outsider, even when I feel I don’t belong, because being here is the only choice that made any sense at the time I was given a choice. I know that my heart is full, even when it aches. Full of the joy and laughter of new friends, full of the yearning for old friends I’ll not see for a while, and full of love for the best friend who I followed to this strange life.
I know that time passes. Sometimes that’s all I need to know.
Come back home. I’m waiting. Patiently and impatiently, I’m waiting.
QuebecOkie 