Congratulations to me: I have been in Canada for one whole week, and I have managed to get sunburned.
I think it’s going well? I built a desk chair two days ago. My adoptive Canadian mother drove me to and from Walmart, where I obtained a chair for the local equivalent of ‘not much money at all.’ Every time a payment goes through on my Canadian debit card I experience an absolute convulsion of relief. Having spent last weekend waiting for my funds to wire-transfer their way into the country, I am experiencing a hoarding impulse which I know (I do know!!) is deranged; I want to sit on the money like a horrid little throne, so I can be sure that it is there. This morning I woke up from a stress dream and reflexively checked my mobile banking account, to make sure nothing terrible had happened while I slept.
Nothing terrible had happened. The worst that’s happened so far is that I’m still waiting for my Canadian SIM card to get to me in the mail, so I can finally be free from the cruel and expensive yoke of international roaming.
I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to let me do this. I am anxious and I don’t like to go outside unless I have to. I will worry about the least little thing you put in front of me until it is in pieces and I am in pieces with it. My credit score is terrible here. I’ve put down deposits so that I can have services like ‘internet’ and ‘phone.’ What if my credit score is terrible forever? What if I signed up for a bank account wrong, so they won’t let me have a credit card? I shouldn’t be worrying about these things. I should be outside, where the sun is out and the breeze is pleasantly high. I barely understand anything that I am doing. There is a very real possibility that I am fucking things up in ways that I don’t even know about yet, and I am waiting for the consequences to come due in just the same way that I am waiting for the goddamn SIM card: I want them to hurry up and get here, so I can figure out what to do next.
Opportunity is wasted on me. I am sheltered and inept and I coast by on nothing more than charm. Just the other day I was scared to use a Canadian washing machine.
Last night I walked home after dark. This would not have been a big deal in Oxford. In Halifax, it felt momentous — though obviously it was fine, and I made it home unscathed. A new city on a new continent, and me with a deeply inconvenient assigned gender! Absolute (as they say) (I’m they) scenes.
The thing is: a new city, in its own right, would be fine. I would have no hesitation at all about a new city. I am, I think, actually okay at assimilating new places — I have a knack for situating myself, and from there it’s easy enough to figure out where I am going.
The problem is the country. Perhaps the continent? Maybe both. A new English city might be weird and elusive and slippery, but its premise would at least be familiar to me. I would be able to find purchase on it. Here, I feel as though I am barely clinging to the surface of the earth. I am doing the non-vehicular equivalent of aquaplaning. Canada is beautiful and it’s being incredibly kind to me; I am just painfully aware, all the time, of being one questionable turn away from skidding out of control and crashing the car.
Because I would, I suspect, crash the car. I might be able to salvage it if I knew the landscape better, but I don’t. I’ve been here a week. This is not, objectively, a difficult place to be alive; but I am unfamiliar, and I don’t like being unfamiliar, and so everything feels acutely terrifying 90% of the time.
Obviously this will pass. I am going to learn the ways of Canada and it’s going to be fine. Hopefully a month from now I will be amazed that I was ever worried about phone number or credit card acquisition! But oh my god that point cannot come soon enough.
Good news, because this newsletter got very overwrought very quickly and I promise I’ve been having fun:
I had my inaugural poutine! It was delicious. Good job on the cheese curds, Canada.
Last night (before the walk home) I went to a bar with some local writers and drank some local cider and had a genuinely wonderful time. Next stop, refrain from ghosting everyone because going outside is existentially draining.
I am slowly mastering the art of casual elevator chat with people in my building. Today’s conversational gambit: ‘which of the two elevators will reach us first?’ Two days ago we had a half-hour-long downpour of rain, and let me tell you, I have been dining out on that topic ever since.
Isaac gets here on Saturday night!! Today I went to the grocery zone and acquired the necessities of life, so he can actually eat something when we get back to my place at 1am.
I’ve gotten into Pokemon GO again… unfortunately it is very good to be in a new place with a wealth of new local Pokestops. Hit me up if you want to be friends on that, I guess? I will send you virtual postcards from the Maritimes.
The walk home was actually really pleasant. I like walking after I’ve had something to drink; it clears my head, and since my head becomes unclear at the speed of light when exposed to alcohol, I value the opportunity to become gently windswept. I passed two whole cemeteries, and I did not get lost, and I thought contentedly about writing while I walked. My legs were a little stiff today, but that’s good; that’s how you know you are using your muscles right. Living here is going to be good for me one way or another, given time.