Friday, December 22, 2017

Things That Happened in 2017

2017, in a nutshell
January: Our kid turned one and Trump was installed, drywall-like, into the White House and we marched in the streets and we also got our eviction notice. January kind of set the tone in a lot of ways, y'know? The Women's March was good and made me feel like that anger and fear were put somewhere; I think it's telling that the year that started with the Women's March ended with #MeToo. I know I certainly did a lot of processing this year around feminism and what it means to be a woman in this world.

February: We went to a "play-in" at City Hall to protest the high price of child care in the city; I doubt the protest did much, but we got our picture in the paper and I felt a bit like I was trying to cash some of the cheques the Women's March wrote. NS and I went to the Beaver Valley while Mike stayed home to work, and we watched Abstract on Netflix and I thought about going back to school for design. We started house-hunting for a new place to live.

March: NS learned to walk the week that we packed up our place, and it felt like our life was falling into the ocean. We didn't have a new house lined up; we saw dozens that were somewhere on the continuum from "pretty nice" to "literal murder basement," and applied to a few, but nothing was rolling our way. I felt so manic and crazy at this point in the year. Our friends kept us afloat with food and wild-staring-eyes coffees, and I love them to the moon and back for this; but March 31 rolled around and we had no new house. The utter terror of being homeless with a toddler is difficult to put into words; it ripped our marriage up and made me yearn to flee the city into somewhere, anywhere, that felt like it wanted us. The big news story this month was how Toronto housing market was incandescent, and it really felt like we were among the victims of, like, a wildfire or a flash flood.

April: We moved into my in-laws place, where I spent a lot of the month being consumed with rage about how nice their house is (so nice!) and how shitty the apartments we could afford were (so shitty!). I took a lot of baths and went for a lot of walks. I visited my parents in Sauble Beach, where condors perched along the ridge of their barn roof.

May: We got a new place! Yay! Yay? We moved all out stuff in on May 1 and didn't actually move ourselves in until mid-month, because the amount of stuff we had was so much bigger than the amount of space. I was an absolutely rage-tyrant to my husband and there was a lot of blaming going on, which left a big boot print on an already tender relationship. I'm ashamed now of how much anger I allowed to intrude into our marriage. Our house continues to be too small for us, but I have several tiny corners that I've made my own, and sometimes daydream about the day we pack it all up for the Next New Thing. However, in May, we were still unpacking, and I was still absolutely engorged with shitbag feelings, and things were Not Very Good.

June: June was the month that our neighbour went berserk on a semi-regular basis, which was terrifying and sometimes hilarious (like when he got arrested wearing nothing but a pink towel), and which added cement to my hunch that our new address was terrible. Real talk: even though we felt safe (mostly, although I did have this recurring daymare about him trying to break into our apartment to rob it and discovering me alone with a baby), the reality of living next to someone who was a domestic abuser, drug addict, bungler of B&E attempts, and general filthy-mouthed nuisance, was a spiritual drag. Trying to decide if I should call the regular police line or 911 was a real fun time; listening to him scream and kick out windows was a real fun time; watching the cops pull up, again, was a real fun time. He left on July 1, and it sort of felt like the moment you christen a ship with champagne; except in our case, the bottle was full of asparagus pee.

July: DRAG RACE ON NETFLIX. Changed my life, seriously.

August: We house-sat for two weeks and visited my parents for two weeks, so it felt a lot like being on vacation. I learned how to give a dog eye drops. There was a partial eclipse. I threw my best friend a surprise bachelorette (with a lot of input and assists from friends near and far). There was racial upheaval in the USA. I made jam for the first time. I read The Argonauts. We talked a lot about Game of Thrones. August felt like a patchwork month, stitched together out of nothing much. Being in transition between places felt almost normal, except that the homes we were in weren't our home.

September: We celebrated three years of marriage by going to Momofuku and falling in love with it. (Ginger Scallion Noodles, hello). We also went to the Drake Commissary and for fancy gelato, and slept in, and frankly, I think that date saved us a little. It feels like it's been a tough, low-connection year, and sometimes a little splurge can be a real balm. I said to someone not that long ago that sometimes, I just want to feel expensive. You know? Like, all my clothes are bought new and not from Costco and my skin looks like it has Sephora lotions slathered on it, and I feel like I have the means to care for myself in a thoughtful way? Like that. So a date devoted to just the two of us, where money wasn't really an issue, felt like such a GD luxury.

October: I went through this really intense two-week period of wanting to move to Port Elgin and open a noodle shop. I even wrote a business plan. On the other side of those two weeks I came to understand that I have no real idea what I'm doing, and for now, because of various factors, we're tethered to Toronto. This is a not-very-affirming drag. But on Halloween, NS sat in a fire truck and we still talk about it.

November: Work ramped up to a degree where I basically skipped my birthday this year. But! We went to the Beaver Valley and started learning how to play Dungeons and Dragons, and man, that was fun. I had a bit of a meltdown due to proximity to some expired friendships, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with those feelings—I don't feel like reconciliation is the right move, but neither is trying to stuff my emotions down a well. And I don't really know what the middle ground is! Mainly I'm trying to come to terms with the idea that other folks—who I used to know and love!—think of me as a villain. And trying to figure out if I can sit in that comfortably, or if there's anything to be done. ANYWAY, FEELINGS, GOD. Sometimes, I'm so grateful for the billion hours of therapy I've had since I was 18; I would be even more of a basket case without them. As it stands, my basket is roughly $400-corporate-gift-sized, which, like me, is filled with expensive jams.

December: I did a bunch of work for a new client. I felt rather competent in my job, which was a terrific feeling. We watched Moana on the daily, and I felt rather less competent as a parent, but hey—this is a bit of a fallow season when it comes to maternal energy. Winter is really tough with a toddler; the snowsuiting alone crushes my soul, and that's before I even have to haul an ice-covered stroller up a flight of stairs, negotiate mittens, figure out snacks, try to pick a destination that will kill a morning but preferably doesn't involve de-/re-snowsuiting, find a TTC route that doesn't involve passing through Bloor-Yonge Station, and so on. Also, I have a terrible cough!

And, of course, this little month-by-month roundup doesn't really capture how bonkers this year was. Being evicted is one of those life-defining moments that made me realize that I wanted to change my life. I no longer felt safe, like the world was my oyster, like anything was possible. It was the same feeling that intruded after my sister was sick, after my dad's surgery, after NS's birth. I wanted to retreat, redesign, recalibrate, realign. I wanted to feel like the universe might care about our little family; and if not the universe, at least the GTHA housing market. But alas, the signs don't point in that direction.

But it also doesn't capture some of the sweetest parts of the year. I deepened my friendship with my mom-friend bestie through weekly bagel dates and playground hangouts; I watched NS transform from baby to walking, talking toddler; I spent many hours with my sister watching Flight of the Conchords and talking about relationships; I spent most Tuesday mornings with my husband, chatting in "our" coffeeshop; I texted my mom a thousand times; I got to see my dad bloom back into health; I read the New Yorker every week; I helped friends move; friends helped us. Even if the universe is like [shrug emoji] at our everyday life, there are people in our world who care very much; they were the sustenance of 2017.

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