Thank you to all the friends who have called, e-mailed and posted. I feel the love. I apologize for not returning the love in a prompt fashion, but I’m living in a little place called “Denialtown” where there is no cell signal (also, I forgot my charger at the house, battery’s dead, and the cell has all my phone numbers in it). Mom and I have decided that, for this weekend at least, we’re just going to go about life as normally as possible – eating, breathing, moving about from place to place, etc – not discussing what’s happened or what will be happening next. It’s like a little breather between past sadness and sadness-to-come.

Part of my temporary relocation to Denialtown is fighting the urge to call Justin and make sure he’s okay. I refuse to consider the “will we still be friends?” question right now. It’s just too hard. We have a lot of mutual friends who will be affected by this, so I know it’s important, but I don’t know how to handle this yet. He was so distant last time I spoke with him, I don’t know if that’s even something he wants. And I can only envision degradation and embarrassment if I try to hang out around him while: a) I still want to jump his bones, b) I’m still angry at him for breaking his promise to be my partner for life and c) I’m still his tenant with all of my worldly possessions lodged at his home, so there’s a weird power imbalance going on.

I’m going to take a moment to borrow a page from Matt & Liz’s book, and try to list 3 good things:
1.After 3 years, I can take a much-needed break from the hormonal hijinks of birth control.
2.When I’m stressed, I floss a lot more frequently, so my periodontal health is improving daily.
3.I can stay downtown later after work because Lakeshore train service is better than Georgetown.

So, yeah, I’m taking some time to not talk about it because otherwise I start to freak out about the little things… like the fact that all of my mail, including my tax papers, bank statements, work paperwork, Amazon.ca orders and personal correspondence are going to need to be redirected… somewhere… eventually. Or that many of my belongings – video games, DVDs, software – are useless without the complementary electronic systems that are mostly owned by Justin. Or that I have a $125 GOTrain pass for the month of November that is now completely useless to me, and I’ll have to buy a second one for Oakville ($190) on top of that. Or that I own a queen-sized mattress and pull-out sofabed that I don’t want to move, wall-installed glass shelves I can’t move, half a desktop PC which could be divided King Solomon-style with me taking the monitor and keyboard and him having the CPU and printer, but that would be ridiculous… thinking of something as coldly practical as splitting assets at a time like this is total brain-overload. Therefore, I need to extend my vacation to Denialtown until tomorrow at least, and maybe for a few days after that.

Went to see my Dad today, which was a bit of a emotional rollercoaster. I fed him lunch, as Mom was busy working the advance polls for the municipal elections (which I voted in). The lady who sits next to Dad at his dining table is named Rita, and her husband comes to see her, feed her and tell her he loves her and that she is the most wonderful woman in the world every single day. Rita’s dementia is far too advanced for her to know what he’s saying anymore, but he does it anyway, because he loves her so intensely, and has done so for so long. They have been married since the year my mother was born; Mom’s retiring next year at the mandatory age, so you can do the math. Seeing Rita and her husband together is like witnessing a live re-enactment of “The Notebook”, which is exactly what you need to make you feel like the loss of a loving, dedicated life-partner is no big deal. I totally lost my shit while feeding dad his pudding.

Until I’m ready to leave my little cocoon of isolation, I’ll keep posting. It seems like a good thing to do until I can start calling people back and taking you up on your offers of movies, video game sessions, meals, and other socially healthy things.