Weary Monday

Monday was all about naps — and of course, dinner with J&B. I also enjoyed a surprise lunch with Leslie. But I could not get started on a dress. I’m fine with that. I had a lot of angina during the early part of the day so rest seemed apt.

Today and Wednesday are supposed to be sunny so I hope to get some cold-weather walking in.  

I’ve decided that I’m going to belt the wheat with dried orange slices and I’m drying (salting) some beautiful red berries that I hope to use like gemstones (I hope). I’ve also got some lovely bleached leaves to use too. My idea is to make a wedding dress that a totally broke dust bowl bride might make herself.

And that means the blood dress cannot be a wedding dress. I cannot have two wedding dresses in this project.

And I’m thinking I might alter my regret dress idea. I’m thinking I might write the phrases of regret onto tags that I’ll attach to door keys. I’m thinking these are notes people have left attached to the house keys they are surrendering to the spouses they are leaving. My ideas evolve, so this may or may not happen.

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Tonight, the people who felt I should do a TED-X Vancouver talk are meeting. Tonight or tomorrow, I hope to receive their text —the final part of the TED submission. Then it can to Charmaine and I will begin the waiting process.

I think it is a strong submission but I have no expectations or hopes, just curiosity and I am open to opportunity.

Monday: My First Day of Being 69

Video Text: It always surprised me that it was so hard to speak when I’m by myself here at home — even though its morning and you’d think that after sleeping I’d be a relaxed calm person. But Dr. Shoja says that with PTSD it’s almost impossible to feel total security when you’re by yourself — that you remain on alert; that is why speaking is so hard. And why it’s so wonderful to be with people you that trust and find yourself able to speak the way I should be able to speak. My first day of being 69.

From my window around noon today.

An Idea: The Regret Dress

It’s Monday December 5^th. It’s 6:00 am; I have been up since 4:30 because it is snowing. In fact: It is snowing like mad and I love it when it snows. It hasn’t snowed downtown for a couple of years. (Update: By 9:00 it was raining.)

It’s day one of being 69.

Yesterday we had a Sylvia Salon — a gathering of friends of the late Chris Adkins — and Mel announced that he had just purchased a home on Saltspring Island and that he would be moving there early next year. That had someone ask him if he thought it would be hard to move to somewhere where he knows no one after a lifetime of living in Vancouver. He said he had friends there.

But we got onto talking about retirement, real estate prices in Vancouver, the wisdom of relocating for our old age and the challenge of moving to somewhere where you don’t know anyone. Several of us are single so we also talked about the difference of moving to where we know no one as a single person versus doing so as part of a couple: No one single wanted to move to a place where everyone was a stranger.

Moving to a place where everyone is a stranger is an ideal metaphor for what it’s like to       suddenly be living with C-PTSD after 68 years of living as a “normal” person. You have to be “in here” to understand its aptness.

At one point during the salon I moved to sit beside Jennifer. Suddenly, with her, I could talk without a single hesitation. I talked completely normally and fluently endlessly. I talked with her in a way I haven’t been able to for ages in public.

With C-PTSD, you can lose control and become a quivering mass requiring an ambulance; conversely, you can suddenly find yourself completely symptom free. Both situations have you asking yourself: Why is this happening?

The explanation about why a person with C-PTSD or PTSD can suddenly become hopelessly overcome with crippling symptoms is long and boring; the reason the same person can become symptom free is because they find themselves in the presence of a person whom they fundamentally, profoundly trust.

When you have PTSD, strangers are a challenge. That is why, often, I cannot speak at all to clerks. Recently, I failed to hear someone on the street who’s seen the watch on my wrist so he pulled me gently by the arm to get my attention and asked again for the time. Well I had to get assistance because I immediately had a seizure — now, though, instead of my whole body, it is usually just my left arm or both arms.

The world is full of strangers. For me, the world is full of people I cannot trust. That is why it is so difficult for me to be PTSD symptom-free, why I stay home, why I can only talk well with people I trust and why it is like I’ve moved to a place like Mel is about to do. I live with an intense feeling of being “other.”

When I first met Dr. Shoja in April, I thought her mission was to help me to get back to being myself. Now I understand her purpose as being to help me get used to being this stranger in a strange land.

One thing she said very early on was that I would lose some relationships.

My friend who dumped me the other day said was that he was mad that I could go to Kamloops this past August to see Dwight because I’d opted out of accompanying him to the events surrounding the marriage of his cousin.

He fails to understand the difference between these two activities. One is walking out my door, into my elevator and into my car to drive alone all the way to the hotel where I stayed with my closest friend — one single person. The other is being with a crowd, most of whom are strangers and with lots of activity. And for much of the time, I’d be on my own.

And he never bothered to ask why; he just dumped me. And I thought: This is like getting dumped by a lover. People are dumped all the time. It’s given me an idea for another dress: The Regret Dress.

I thought about being dumped and I kept coming back to how it leaves you with things unsaid, so I started making a list of things dumped people might want to say to their dumpers and I thought I would make a dress out of unsaid sentences in beautiful cursive handwriting.

VERY Close to Done

Okay, her skirt is shorter and she has her megaphone.

All I have left to do is her back straps.

Dumped

Sadly, the biggest thing in my life is the pain I carry from a scathing email I got from a (former) friend. He blames me; I blame my illness. It is a confusing condition for both my friends and me but they have asked questions and stuck with me. This fellow, who lives in another country, hasn’t asked any questions. I’ve just been dumped.

A really dear friend, Kelly, dumped me many years ago. I wrote to him many times but never got an answer. I’ve run into mutual friends all of whom were also dumped. I still miss him and I still don’t know why I was dumped. But boy it hurt.

My cousin dumped me too after a lifetime of closeness. When I fled my home and school, it was to her I went. She is fifteen years my senior. We celebrated out birthdays together for over forty years. Then she disappeared so I tracked down her eldest son and called him. She’s dumped him too.

My third was Wendy. We were friends from work and we had lots of fun. She is a photographer and since I ran a photography gallery and handled lots of international shows, she asked me for advice about a contract she was negotiating.

As negotiations between her and the potential client — a huge, well-known corporation — intensified, she was here every night for a week, often in tears, as we worked out her counter offers to their contract proposal clauses. It was a huge contract and she got it. And then she dumped me. That one really hurt. A mutual friend delivered the message. Imagine!

I make mistakes, but so do they. So does everyone. But dumpers seem uninterested in rapprochement. They withdraw. They seem to act and judge and jury and offer you no opportunity to explain yourself.

I have truly loved my friend who dumped me yesterday for decades. One of my favourite days in my whole life was spent with him, just meandering around town one sunny day, smoking a joint when we wanted, eating when we wanted and just so happy in each others’ company. Gone. What a bummer. We’re both gay; I’ve always felt that gay men are family so I feel particularly sad when a gay man turns on me.

And I’m sad to think that now I am a source of pain and anger for him — a person I always loved dearly. But I never did anything to cause or deserve these feelings he has and if he can’t see that, there’s nothing I can do. He’s asked me not to communicate.

He’s asked me not to write!! In other words, he asked me not to correct his misinterpretations. He’s asked me not to try to make things better. He’s thrown out decades of goodwill over a misunderstanding that he’s uninterested in resolving. He’d rather, it seems, stay mad at me.

And that’s a problem for me because I feel bad and I don’t want to. Not today. Today is my birthday.

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I was born and named Guy by my birth mother. The Catholic Church baptized me and gave me the name Patrick. When the Tyrell’s applied to adopt me, they named me Peter and Peter is what is on my adoption certificate, but they called me Chris all my life.

All the documents say my birthday is Dec. 4^th.

When I met my birth mother, she told me adamantly that another day was my birthday and, as she said, she should know. She also told me who my father was, then recanted that story and told me another that did not make sense.

The theme here is there is that I don’t know much about key things in my life. But for six decades, I have celebrated my birthday on Dec. 4 and it ain’t changing.

 Life ain’t easy.

“Stressed,” spelled backwards is “desserts.”  I’m getting myself a cake today.

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I read a great bit about the Queen yesterday. She was out mucking about in galoshes and rainwear with her dogs in Scotland and she had stopped for a rest where some tourists were snacking. One of them, an American, asked, “I understand the Queen lives around here. Have you met her?” And Her Maj said, “No, actually, I haven’t. But he has.” And she pointed to her security guard.

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I’m actually reasonably happy with the cheerleader. The costume is, as is my standard, “good enough.” I’ve yet to finish it. I have to do the straps at the back; that’s simple. I have to shorten the skirt, too, and that scares me. I’m afraid of making a mistake on something that took two days to make. And then I have to make her megaphone.

I really like her story, so she’s a good part of the show.

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Next, I think, will be adapting the dress I made for Vivicean for my show two years ago. It’s an ornate all-white complex creation that was worn on stage for two weeks. I have to do some work on it to change its appearance and then I have to add the key element: The blood.

My key conundrum is how to apply the blood. Do I use food colouring, ink, red tissue paper or stage blood? I was pretty set on red tissue paper but I think food colouring may be what I use. It gets such a lovely splatter effect. I’ve been practicing on the materials that come off the costume as I adapt it.

Then I’ll do the wheat dress and then the apron — making these two costumes are my plans for coping with Christmas. And wow: I’ll be so far into my project. I’ll have seven dresses done: The Cardinal Dress, Peacock Dress, Blood Wedding Dress, Pearl Dress, Cheerleader Outfit, Depression (wheat) Dress and the Apron.

Close.

Tissue paper with duct tape boots.

I Could Die