the internet saga (as in, my lack of it) promises to finish on wednesday. i'm still sort of aghast that, through company error, my connection was cancelled and it's taken them two bloody weeks to fix. but whatever.

it's a rainy day in montreal. the sky hovers grey and close around the cars, the wet road, the shivering maple trees. it's a day for solitude, black coffee, iron & wine. i'm wearing fall clothes for the first time this year, and it doesn't feel weird. well, maybe a little.
school starts in two days, so i have brought myself downtown to buy school supplies. i need certain kinds of notebooks (3-subject ones are the only ones that work to keep me organized), and certain pens (black, fine point).

i'm looking forward to school. in retrospect, it makes sense that i had the summer "off", considering how burnt out i was last april. i'm also glad i had the time and space to pore over everything that i dealt with: my family and their secrets; my body and my spirit...my brain, though, feels like a knife that's been too long at the grindstone: sharp, gleaming, aching to be used.

what i did on my summer vacation:

• spent the first 3 days in a catatonic state, smoking dope and playing videogames. went to hometown for 3 days and cried a lot because i wouldn't see my friends for months. headed back to montreal and spent one day with met, one day at a going-away party drinking my face off, and exactly 3 hours packing for 6 weeks away.
• went to b.c for 6 weeks (which is exactly 4801 kms. away from montreal). saw all the family i haven't seen in most of my life. got to know a whole lot of pointy family skeletons. picked up every 3 days and moved somewhere new. had a drunken fall on my hip that still whispers to me. almost got arrested. discovered a love for the telephone that i didn't know i had, as met and i talked for MULTIPLE hours a day.
• came back to montreal in the middle of june. basically hit the ground running looking for apartments and jobs, while spending the least amount of time possible in my former apartment with my (at the time) extremely hostile ex-partner. the apartment took its sweet time in manifesting itself, so i literally had to hire a moving company without having any place to move to. signed a lease on june 29, picked up the keys june 30. moved in july 1.
• set up my apartment and LOTS and LOTS of doctor's appointments to keep myself occupied over the next few months. inertia set in. started physiotherapy, and psychotherapy. realized i have a lot to do. actually, realized that i had initially STARTED the healing process in the wrong way, so had to tear back through layers of psychic scab to get to the source.

in the past week, the ex (formerly known as the hobbit) moved back to our hometown, and in stereotypical bee fashion, i have been a bit melancholy since. when he and i first started dating, his family was simply pleased that he'd found a girl, considering how shy he was. not only that, but a girl who stuck with him, considering how 'challenging' he was. they adopted me right away, and to a girl whose own family was in pieces, that was balm to my spirit. the hobbit was, at the time, the first person i had truly trusted with all the crazy, crooked parts of myself, and he loved them and helped me sew them back together.

when we broke up, (or, to be fair, when i broke up with him) i lost our relationship (which hadn't been working in months, if not years), the person i had known and loved, and the support of his family - a mother who checked up on my grades and sent me 'thinking of you cards'; a father who kissed my cheek and invited me to hang out in 'his' room; sisters who teased and bummed me cigarettes and confided in me secrets i was sworn to keep from their brother.

it hurt a lot to let that go, but for a long while, as he lashed out at me, i was able to bury the longing under defensive anger.

but in the week before he moved, under the guise of going over old belongings, (the old, 'who wants what') we hung out a number of times, and patched up the shaky structure of our friendship. my bike got a flat the first night i was riding out to meet him, so he met me in the no-man's-land where i'd found myself and fixed my tire. when i got really depressed last week he was the ONLY person who heard it in my voice, the only person i didn't have to explain it to, and came immediately (again) to my rescue.

i suppose i realized how solid of a friend he is (well, not yet, but hopefully will be) and i missed that.

i also got a job, which is, funnily enough, exactly what i was projecting for, and a little bit what i wasn't. i'm not going to get into too much detail about what exactly i do, or where i work, for obvious reasons, but i can't explain it, there's something about the space that makes me incredibly sad. it's owned by a husband and wife team, and i don't like the way he treats her.

i'm trying to just think of it as something i need to do in order to sustain the life i want, even though after next thursday i have no other shifts scheduled for september.

i'm excited for tomorrow - when i finally crack open the cans of paint i've been meaning to, and get ready for the year. this is my last full year as an undergrad, i believe, and that thought is fucking incredible. i want that piece of paper.