“The first week of July is supposed to be a glorious time of summer fun days. It isn’t, for me. I usually experience it from behind sealed-off windows and blackout drapes because I can’t get hot at all and physically function. I use this time of lock down to obsess about how my life didn’t turn out like I planned. But that’s kind of a cop-out because I never had a plan that I didn’t make up the minute life forced me to change course. I applied to go to college so I could get student loan money so we wouldn’t get evicted. I opened a business so I could get small business startup funds so we wouldn’t get evicted. I took shitty jobs working for shitty people I hated just so I wouldn’t starve and get evicted.
The point is, I never wanted to do any of those things, but I did them because I needed to do SOMETHING fast or it was going to all come crashing down around me, and I had to stop that. I got into relationships with the same sense of panic. I broke leases, quit jobs, left cities, walked away from people I loved under the same circumstances. I left people holding the bag, staring at negative bank balances because my cheque bounced. I did this because I needed to do SOMETHING, anything, to stop the downward trajectory.
In the past, these rash decisions would fuck over my friends and family and people I barely knew and didn’t care about. In recent years, these decisions landed me in a city I hate, with thousands of dollars in credit card debt, a college diploma and student loans I didn’t want and about 800 business cards I did not need. I guess I only hurt myself now. I understand that I do this because I want to fix things and I’m not happy with waiting..”