I was one sentence away from becoming Canadian.
I let it go because what I wanted more than being Canadian was a lasting relationship with someone I've grown to love and respect as a friend and confidante, someone I care for deeply and desire almost constantly. And that seemed to me a true thing and more important than a piece of paper.
And because I wanted this thing more, because my desire to be truly partnered to someone I loved was more important than my desire to be secure, I've lost both. She's left me. (let's call her Eve).
As we speak, she's sleeping over at the home of the new guy she met a couple weeks ago. But a month and a half ago she sat down in this room next to this computer and offerred to apply as a common law pair for landed status.
There are two things that need to be said about this offer. The first is that it came out of the blue; I wasn't expecting it at all, had no inkling that this was on her mind. The second is that I remember the offer being presented with a spirit of "here, we can do this, you don't seem such a liability", a statement that was all but actually said in various different ways (e.g. "you've refused any kind of help from anyone so I don't really wory about having to pay for you, you're very resourceful").
As I've said before, I love eve. As will be clear by the time I finish my second post, I'm deeply depressed right now and my persecptions are skewed. I don't know, can't know, if I did the right thing. And it eats at me like a worm, like the first ever worm, like the mindless insatiable thing with teeth like the jagged edges of time that will one day eat the whole world and spit it out again, as it has done before. I can't eat, I can't sleep, and now I'm finding it harder and harder to work. I promised myself I would never write anything personal in here again and I'm breaking that promise because the bile of my own thoughts is choking me and I need to spit them out over the side, so I've come here. Because I don't know anymore.
This is what I know. I know that I tried to move furniture over to my new apartment for 12 hours yesterday, tried until about 5am, and I couldn't move more than two plants. I can't even touch most of what I still think of as *our* belongings. I spent most of that 12 hours 'not throwing up'.
If you love someone, you can't put them through an immigration process unless they love you as well. You need to know this, you need to be sure of this. Because the process can be hard, and it can be invasive, and you can be asked all kinds of painful questions about your relationship by men who really should be fucked in the ass with a 2X4. And I wouldn't wish that kind of discomfort, that kind of pressure, on someone who simply pitied me and wanted to help.
There's more to it than that, I could add more, but that's at the core of things.
The sentence I wanted was this one, or one like it: "I love you, and I think we have a chance together if we get this thing done. And I'm prepared to do it because I want to see what our relationship looks like if you're Landed."
That was the sentence I wanted. I didn't want promises, I know promises aren't worth shit. I wanted to be reassured, to know, that we were doing this as a thing together, and that it wasn't just being offerred to me. Because that makes all the difference if and when the shit hits the fan, and in my experience shit always hits the fan.
That was what I wanted. I wanted, I needed, for us to go into this together, if we were going to do it at all. Instead, I said no, because I wasn't sure. And six weeks later She has a new relationship and the biggest fight of my day is putting on the smile that I give to her when I see her to let her know it's all right. I love her so much, and she's really into this new guy and I really am happy for them both. And I want to make sure that she only sees that side of how I feel and not the other side, which is the side that's tying blurry sentences here 20 minutes after I should have left for work.
I want to move this stuff befor she realises that I don't have the strength to do it. That I feel completely fucking devastated and I can't even be sure of the reasons for my decisions anymore, even after I've typed them out.
I was one sentence away from a happy ending.
I have to go.
I don't know how to go on. And I'm pretty sure I don't really want to anyway.
Your second paragraph, above, dripped with so much pain - pain I profoundly understand - that I could barely go on reading.
I actually got up and walked away for a few minutes before I finished.
Why does it take that much pain to make people like you and me speak brilliantly?
Here's the thing, and it may be your answer: I don't care if this is any good or not. In fact I tried, tried so fucking hard, not to write this. Even now I'm afraid that Eve might stumble across this entry: she knows about the existence of the blog.
My prayer is that she no longer cares enough about me to bother. If I'm wrong about that, and she is reading, then this comment is my apology to her for whatever hurt she may feel.
I'm completely disgusted at myself that I even considered this as writing when you commented. If being a writer means that even moments so close to my heart can be stepped back from with ironic detachment and turned into a narrative, then I loathe all that writing stands for and loathe myself more for ever having aspired to be one.
I feel, literally, sick to my stomach. Still. I would carve my own heart out from the cathedral of my ribs if only I could go back in time 8 measly shitty weeks.
The bottom line is this: My shrink was unavailable, My friends are out of town, and if I didn't do something I was going to choke on my own pain or possibly diazepam and codeiene. But this worked. After I published the entry and some small piece of this was outside me I felt relief and I could begin to move my belongings. As long as it stays outside me here I continue to feel that relief, and it's slight but it enables me to function. I'll probably delete it if/when I'm finally free of that need. That's pretty much all.
And now I have to dismantle the computer.