I was talking to some people about a short story I wrote back when I was teenager.  The story was about how I will die.  It stemmed from me telling them that “every time something great happens in my life, I thought ‘wouldn’t it be funny if I died today?’”  Wow.  That is so Vonnegut.  Anyway.  This is a little piece called “Social Anxiety hey hey hey” that I wrote when I was in highschool. Ha  ha ha.  Grammar etc. has not been edited, so that this can be enjoyed in its natural form.  Hilarious.

One day I’m gonna go outta my house and people will be all ‘Oh my god. I recognize you’. And I’ll say ‘what? what are you talking about? When did this happen?’ and it will seem like a horrible joke. [It's like that story I read in grade 9 English about the man who woke up and discovered he was the mayor of his town and didn't know how.]
‘I’d hate to become the people I hate’ I’ll complain. So then I’ll hop in the minivan with my dad and go to Wyoming. And go to Albuquerque and head west. Yeah, ba by. On Route 66. cause we never finished the trip. We only made it to Albuquerque last time. And then we’ll reach the coast. And I’ll be happy cause I made it. Then something disasterous will happen. I’ll be in West Hollywood eating a snocone on Santa Mon ica Boulevarde at a crosswalk. The cross walk will say ‘walk’ and i’ll walk. Then out of nowhere will come a speeding Chrysler that runs a red light and collides with me. Blood, Leora and Snocone all over the ground; All over the windshield. I’ll curse my self as I’m dying ‘I always said I’d die the one time I didn’t jay-walk …’

I don’t feel like doing anything today.

I feel like a piano full of anvils was dropped on my skull. It’s ugly outside. I have to go downtown and pretend to be a tourist. I have to get to work tomorrow at 6:30am and show that I have done things in my own time as research for my work.

That would be fine, but telling your new boss that “my rabbit died and it’s the anniversary of my dad’s death” is no better than telling your teacher that you failed an exam because you were hungover.

The air is heavy. I have nobody to accompany me on my adventure today. My dad’s ghost is breathing down my spine, and it is not comforting me at all.

.

I received this book on Friday . When I looked at it, the first thought that went through my head was “oh man, my dad would love this. This book is SO my dad.” I wanted to call him up and show him the book, cause I knew how stoked he would be.

Four years have passed, and sometimes I still forget. It’s strange to look at pictures, and have such clear memories only to be equally aware of the absence from your life of a person, while you are mystified by the absurdity of their sudden death.

It’s still so real . All those late-night talks over coffee; all those roadtrips; all those days spent at the recording studio; all those special in-jokes and catch phrases. The memories haven’t died when your heart has stopped beating, but the lack of exchanges makes it increasinly difficult to comprehend what happened on that hazy day.

I don’t know if I can say I wish that my dad would suddenly reappear in my life. He reappeared in that dream. The dream where he confirmed his self-imposed martyrdom to the family. The idea of someone being gone for so long only to reappear and to except that life will just go on without the heartbreak would be harder to accept than the death itself.

Game plan for after I wake up tomorrow:

- Go to clinic to get stitches removed.

- Get lungs checked out to see if I have bronchitosaurus; I have had a bad cough for the past three weeks

- Finish filling out forms for work.

-Fill out form to get Care Card here

- Fill out Criminal Injuries Compensation Board forms; Forage for postage stamps and envelopes

- Remember the simpler days when all I had to do was wake up and play with Duplo.

It happens this time of the year, every  year.  It has ever since 2003.

I noticed what day was coming up, and I started to feel lousy.

I couldn’t distract myself, so I sat on the front porch and attempted to bask in the beautiful weather.

I couldn’t distract myself, so I tried to count cars.  Every time I got to “two”, I seemed to get caught up in thoughts.  I sat there for forty minutes.  So, by my count, I saw two cars, despite the fact that I saw car after car zoom by.

I used to sit on the front steps at home, like I was waiting for something that I knew was never going to arrive.

ME!

My eyeball persevered after 36 or so lonely, dark hours.

Honestly, the things you don’t appreciate until you have them (temporarily) taken away… Sure, if you only have one eye you aren’t blind, but it makes things difficult.  This is a brief moment of thanksgiving to my parents for having had the proper, healthy genetic makeup required to have two-eyed children.

I want to go home.
Being here is starting to become difficult. I feel like I’m going to cry, except I don’t cry. I want to, but I can’t. The tears just don’t come out. I don’t know what it takes to reduce me to tears, but it takes a lot, I guess. Obviously it takes more than sitting at ground zero of the place that reminds me of the most painful things that have happened in my life.

I should grow the fuck up and not brood over the things I cannot change, but that is easier said than done. No… I’ve accepted I can’t change these things, but I’m still haunted by them. Haunted stiff.

Those problems will never go away, but it’s getting intense. Toronto is making me ill and I don’t know if I can ever come back. I’m sure I will, but I don’t know when. I just want to be in Vancouver right now, but be able to bring a few select people in my luggage.

I want to go home. I want my dad back. I want to go home. If my dad was here, maybe this would be home. I came to visit “home” and it didn’t exist.

Sometimes I think that my dad killed himself as a desperate sacrifice to my family.  Sometimes I think that the hospital my mom took him to was at fault for his death: if a nurse had not left him unattended for those five minutes, would he have died?

Sometimes, like today, I wish my dad could be here to proofread my papers and tell me how smart I am, and tell me how I’m everything he had wanted in a daughter.  I was a piece of clay he molded and molded into what he thought a daughter should be.  I want that praise, but not from anybody else.  Anybody else telling me I’m “good” makes me feel uncomfortable.  You haven’t made me your experiment, so you can’t really say that I’m the ends to those means.

March 29th is three weeks away.  My dad was still alive on March 29, 2004.  Part of me died on March 29, 2004; part of my dad died on March 29, 2004.  My dad died on May 21, 2004, and another part of me died that day too.

I walked home in the rain and didn’t even bother to wipe the wet hair out of my face.
I didn’t mind. They doped me up.

She took me to a white-washed room.
I had never seen this particular white-washed room, but I had been in it dozens of times before.
The same 12×9 white walls and white floors, with white chairs and white lab-coats.
This was only an hour after a woman in triage barked at me “well, what’s wrong with YOU?”
I said to the triage woman that my brain is on the verge of exploding, but in layman’s term so as not to be interpreted as a full out lunatic.

I had sat in that room before, and I had sat across from that same person before. On some occasions she had looked like a man, others a woman. Sometimes she was white, sometimes he was Chinese. There were others. The room had stayed the same and I stayed the same all these years and all these visits.

She said to me that she was the psych nurse and that “it appears as though you have an anxiety disorder.” I had heard this every time I sat in this room. She asked me to do what I do every time I sit in that room. I listed off my resumé. My traumatic, fucked up resumé. Once again, she checked everything off on her list except for “suicidal”, “hears voices” and “hallucinates”.

She told me there are things in life we can’t control. She told me it must have been upsetting when my dad died. She told me that moving to a new city and going to a new school are probably contributing to my anxiety. She told me everything that I already know. She was a nice lady with purple eyeshadow.

When I left the white room, I had six white pills for the road. Whenever I leave that room they give me pills for the road.

And a pamphlet to call to speak to more people who will ask me the same questions and tell me the same things I already know, and may or may not dope me up further.

This is not fake. This is a real e-mail. I am immature, yes. This has inspired a play to be written…I’m hilarious. I do not need to fully explain this, because the e-mail explains it all. In short, I was insulted at how a douchbag named George who was my mom’s boyfriend left her for another woman, and decided to break up with her via e-mail.

******************************************************************************

First of all, my mom did not give me your e-mail address, so you can’t get angry at her. I’m pretty smart, I can figure things out.

George, when I was a little girl, you were a cool guy. I remember you being a nice person. I remember playing catch with you and my dad in your backyard in Brampton; it was fun. I mean, you would have to be a stand-up kind of fellow to be friends with my dad.

I really would like to know one thing. I want to know HOW could you do this to my mom? Let’s just look at a few little details here:

How could you spend two years not contacting my mom after my dad’s death? Do you realise how many people just abandonned my mom after my dad had died? People who she thought were her friends too, who she had known for decades?

If you had not gotten divorced from ******, would you have even bothered contacting my mom, or would you be like the rest of them? Do you realise how abandonned and lonely my mom must have been? I think you did, I think you were well aware that you could take advantage of my mother when she was so vulnerable.

Do you know how shady you come across as? Not contacting my mom until JUST after your divorce has been finalized? If my dad had not died, would you have contacted my mom after your divorce? Were you just waiting for the day my dad would die so that you could divorce ****** and get my mom back? How could you stab your dead friend in the back and then try steal his wife?

1 strike is the first divorce, 2 strikes is the second divorce, 3 strikes is going after your dead friend’s widow and then dumping her over the internet.

It does not even come as a surprise to me then, that you dumped my mom because you found a different woman.

But really, how can you do that? Are you 16 years old? Grown adults don’t dump people over the internet. Neither do men with balls. You spend years pursuing my mom and then don’t even have the balls to break up with her over the phone?

Honestly, how do you rationalize this? I really want to know what your explanation is for these years of disrespectful actions.

It may not have been the most mature thing for me to track down your e-mail address and send you an irate message, but too bloody bad.

I hope that one day you will experience the pain my mom has experienced.

Yours Truly!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Leora Brooke *******************************

p.s. BC is fucking awesome dude!!!! too bad you’re a douche bag, otherwise I would invite you to hang out and smoke some pot with me on the West Coast!!!!

Death is sometimes hard to wrap your head around. It doesn’t weird me out or scare me. Most of my life, growing up, there was constantly someone in my family dying. Eventually everyone died, so the death tapered off. It left some sort of impression on me. , I guess.

Anyway, I have started school again which means I can apply for Orphan Benefits. Outside of the emotional pain suffering one might endure when somebody who meant the world to them dies, there is a beautiful bureaucratic obstacle just an arm’s reach away.

I called up Human Resources Canada today because I had a few questions. It made me think about how desensitized people have become towards death because of all the administration involved when somebody dies. The man I spoke to asked for my dad’s Social Insurance Number. I didn’t know it. He asked me “the date of birth, please.” . Date of death. Spell his name. Do I have any other brothers or sisters? Their dates of birth. I understand you have to make sure you are speaking to the person they claim to be.

When somebody dies, there is a huge paper trail left behind. The only way that paper trail will disappear is by a mass mailing of death certificates. If you don’t send out the original death certificate, which is totally unrealistic when you consider how many institutions need to see that death certificate, you get somebody to notarize that death certificate. Additionally, they sometimes have to write things like “yes, I saw the original and it bears likeness to this photocopy.” They must say the date they signed the photocopy and so forth.

The death of somebody becomes, as I said, so desensitized and detached from what it is supposed to be. Death becomes being preoccupied with making a list and checking it twice and mailing out dozens of stupid copies of death certificates and application forms to prove somebody is dead so that you don’t have to pay for them, OR mailing out dozens of stupid copies of death certificates and application form to prove that somebody is dead so that the government will pay for you. I don’t even know what death is supposed to be anymore. It feels like another administrative formality.

My dad was once a person.

I realised that it wasn’t just the Government of Canada who had looked past this fact. I had too.

“The fear of death would be more painful,” and so he did it. “And so I did it.”
I had a dream my Dad came back. He never died, he just went away.

I was sitting in the living room on East 22nd when I looked up, as I frequently do when someone opens the door. It was the evening. [ We were sitting on the couch talking about whatever it is we usually do. ] There, standing in the doorway was my Dad. I knew it was him before I even realized it was him.

My Dad had tears in his eyes. He never had tears in his eyes. I sat on the bus this morning and thought about this. I got tears in my eyes. I never get tears in my eyes.

I said, “but Dad, I already once had a dream where you came back from the dead. THIS is not a dream. How did you come back from the dead?” Inside I was begging for this to be real.

He told me that he learned he had a disease and there was only one chance he might ever live. He was to be taken away to a small medical centre, but could tell no one and would have no contact with the outside world. We would be told that he had died suddenly and that an autopsy would be performed. If a cure was found, he could come back and we would learn the truth. Dad was not given the option to think this over, he only had one chance.

[I asked what disease. It didn't matter what disease.]

I knew exactly why he did it. Death would be hard for us to deal with, but the fear of death would be more painful. In my life, my Dad caused so much pain in trying to prevent it. He had no idea. He did it because he thought it was for the best.

“Death would be hard to deal with, but the fear of death would have been more painful.” He echoed my thoughts and I tried to wrap my head around what had happened.

My Dad had tears in his eyes. He never had tears in his eyes. He barely spoke that night. He just stared, with those tears in his eyes. He understood. [ Somehow I knew that he knew how the last 3 years and 8 months had been. He hadn't been there, but the information had been relayed back to him.]
He knew about the trial; about how I quit drugs; that I moved to Vancouver; that I was FINALLY moving on with my life. He knew.

I learned that a few days earlier “they” found the cure. They found it and so my Dad was able to leave and return to his old life.

I tried to make sense of this. I never wanted to believe he died. I never saw his body — the funeral had a closed casket and I refused to look at it during the brief, private viewing. I never said “goodbye.” I never went to his interment. I never lost hope. Maybe he had been alive all these years after all.

It wasn’t a dream. In dreams you don’t see eyes, you don’t see the tears in the eyes of someone who has never cried before. You don’t see doorknobs and tiny details, all recreated perfectly to match your REAL living room. Please tell me this isn’t another dream that will pull on my heart strings and leave me with tears in my eyes while I ride the bus to North Vancouver at 7:14 in the morning.