volume 3: goldfish era

spring has sprung, the grass has rise, i wonder where the birdies is

Apr 12, 2022

I think I misremembered April. She has been so difficult to tame this year. Or maybe the Memory Cinema in my brain has blocked out last year’s lockdown badness and skipped right to the meaty good parts of 20 degrees. The parts where I reunited with my big blue bike and started to unlock all the rock-hard muscles that lay beneath the mush of winter. The parts where I decided I would conquer the Bathurst and Dupont hill by the end of summer — I never did and there is no shame in walking up that steep, 90-degree fucker. I think my brain skipped right to the parts around mid-May and before late June. Before I accidentally locked myself in foster dog prison for 2 months, caring for a very well-meaning Mastiff Mix, with the most irritable bowels of all time. I do not miss his diarrhea spraying on my neighbours’ lawns at 1am, 3am, and 5am nightly, but I sometimes wonder about Major. We shared a bed for a while. It wasn’t his fault he pooped the way he did.

Spring is big stakes for me. Particularly as someone who dies a quick and traumatizing death each autumn. Every year, The Frost invites me over for a “Cuppa” and an evening of seasonally appropriate TV (think: Normal People, Gilmore Girls, The Chair, etc). Just as the night is coming to a close, and we’re embracing in the front doorway, giggling about how nice it would be to fall in love in Sligo, and making dinner plans for next week, The Frost leads me to the end of the slightly moist, leaf-covered driveway and curb stomps me. Time of death? Usually shortly after my birthday (October 25th - send gifts!) and Halloween.

I lean on spring to repair my life, make me rich and buy me a seaside property. Bar-the-lona? Dorset? Maybe Orange County? Spring is where I begin to dream of this year’s SHEIN bikini purchases (I’m thinking silver metallic, stringy, thong-ish) and decide on my summer mantra. Some notable mantras of summers past include: “Summer of Thot”, “The Summer of Yes”, and “Hoe-vid 19”.

As a Scorpio baby, I am perpetually cheating on my birth season of Autumn — craving, anticipating and lusting after the Goddess of Summer. The winter feels so deeply painful for me. Not like losing a family heirloom or getting shamed for being fat in elementary school. More like the pressure of new leather shoes against my bunion. Or a toothache. The kind of pain that is present, but you can still get through 3 good hours of dancing in. You didn’t realize exactly how bad it was until you took your shoes off. Or got your tooth pulled. Now you can breathe.

This kind of pain reminds me of something I realized from having braces in Grade 11 and 12 (removed just before prom, the same week I got my driver’s license — an objectively good week). I always felt a little bit ugly with braces, but was still largely kissable — maybe due to my choice of getting clear ceramic braces on the top row of my teeth. More of that “normal” teeth look. I kissed many people with my brace-face, but I still had braces and therefore still landed somewhere in the Venn Diagram of ugly. There were moments where I felt hot, sure. But you know when I was actually hot? Without braces. Without winter.

Since my last newsletter about death, I’ve been ruminating on my hatred of cold and grey. How the trees are really only called to the stage for five months of the year. (Do they feel upset about this?) And how this is a largely unsustainable hatred to have in South Western Ontario (I feel like only meteorologists refer to this part of Canada as such). And so I read Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. Firstly, I have never felt so seen in my Leave of Absence (LOA) journey. May’s LOA is the inspiration for the book, and throughout it, she perfectly describes the guilt and love for non-work that I feel— like she plucked it from my brain. She calls upon mythology, nature, and the traditions of countries cursed with cold to look for comfort in the darkness of winter. Like, for example Scandinavian sauna culture. Apparently, in Scandinavia, you are a stupid idiot if you do not live and die by the sauna. The sauna hosts your sad little body in winter. The sauna cures all.

This book reminded me that I am a tree. I am a bear. I must hibernate. But, don’t worry, I will bloom again. Every year. “I promise".

I also think my hatred for winter is woven into my depWession. If you re-read the portion above about braces, I think it could serve equally as a metaphor for Coming Out of Depression as it could for Moving Into Spring. I recently boarded the Wellbutrin boat, because I decided I look better without braces. I am now just over 3 weeks into these little pills and I am reflecting on the winter of my life. Big winters and small winters. And if I really think about it, summer still felt a little bit like winter, sometimes.

I realized that for the better part of my conscious life, I was just floating around, with braces and a toothache and an inflamed bunion from my new leather platforms, waiting for the winter to turn to spring. And I never really knew if spring would come.

When I see Tik Toks about Wellbutrin, everyone compares the feeling to being a goldfish. ”No thoughts, just vibes.” So I guess for now I am a goldfish. A sweet little medicated goldfish. A goldfish who realized they are swimming in water.

It is so easy to forget about the water.

Thank you for sticking with me for another volume. I get such lovely, thoughtful messages when I send these out — truly my favourite part. Always feel like you can tell me how pitter + patter sat with you. I want to know.

With every volume, I get a few more subscribers to share my life with. What a gift! If you feel like spreading this gift into the great unknown, I humbly encourage it. Send pitter + patter to every friend, cousin, neighbour, lover, enemy, or (sexy) co-worker you can think of. God thanks you.

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Also, I am working towards a little advice mini pitter+patter between volumes. Email your problems to shuli@substack.com and I will try so hard to not guide you off a cliff. (I can also keep you anon if that feels good...)

Okay, we have ZHUZH’D up this little section where I share things I have read, watched, listened to, eaten, looked at, or rolled my eyes at since the last volume.

Enjoy these silly little things:

TV Show:

I am a die-hard Spanish television whore and Elite is my drug. I always say I need my teen shows to tell me I am ugly. But this show will call you ugly and poor. And it tastes so good. Season 5 is here and I just need to share the following costumes the Las Encinas students wore to Patrick’s (pictured below) “No rules, no clothes, anything goes” party. Pure sex.

I cannot emphasize how explicit this teen party was … Patrick said specifically (in sexy gay Spanish) “If you were gay before, no you weren’t. Everyone is every sexuality for tonight.”

This is the raunchy teen show of my dreams.

Book: little weirds by Jenny Slate

Excerpt from the short story “Deerhoof/Dream Deer”

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

And in the aftertaste of what my mother says, I know she means, “Well, you were the person who planted the tempting grapes and then moved to New York and didn’t get a home phone and makes us call you on your cell phone, which is only supposed to be for emergencies. You did that.”

There is a feeling that by doing the natural thing of growing up, I have carelessly waltzed away from a mess. It feels that I have disowned my tribe by choosing to believe that the world is full of creatures and spirits rather than predators and ghosts.

When I go home, I sit and talk with my parents for hours. I love my parents. But now, especially now, when I go there, I hold in my pee and let out my sweat and squeeze my eyes tight because I am afraid of a ghost that is mine. It reflects my will to be wild, my inclination to plant roots, my hunger for treats, my fear that straying too far from the pack is what I must do but perhaps at a large cost.