Typically for Elias, weekdays were ceaseless and interminably wearying. Nothing Instagram Post worthy. Not even a Snapchat story. Despite what he would attempt to paint online, he would feel as if he was sentenced to live the same day over and over again with exhausting and suffocating predictability. Like being in a prison whose rigid walls were constructed by an unpliant daily routine. But as the clock struck five and he began his trek through the dusky city streets, the walls of that prison were being dismantled.
Elias suddenly noticed that he was carrying his gym duffle bag. He had no recollection of him gathering his workout clothes in the morning. But three years on autopilot leaves a mark. He had just quit his job and he had no patience to see all the same worn-out faces in the same worn-out place. The people at the gym would make him feel like an imposter for some reason. Unintentionally. The gym itself felt so alien, so suffocating now that he strayed out of an old familiar world.
Luckily, he had what was left of his weed. A celebratory session at High Park to collect his thoughts was in order. Novelty begets more novelty. More life!
As he walked throughout the city, Elias thought it wise to begin preparing for his looming conversation with Tilly by turning over different scenarios in his mind. The different scenarios of how to effectively break up with Tilly while taking the path of least resistance when doing so. His task was difficult. He wanted to balance two competing, and seemingly contradicting, interests. The first was that he wanted it to be a clean breakup, amiably executed, like a cardiac surgeon's splitting of two hearts in tandem. The second was that he did not want to regret things left unsaid. He wanted to avoid those hauntingly regretful moments of 'I wish I had said so and so.' It was a delicate situation that required both finesse and diplomacy.
The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky as it lazily blinked behind fleeting clouds as if flirtatiously winking at the people in High Park – sun, shade, sun, shade. Under this strobe light effect of the sun and clouds, Elias sparked his joint. He took a few deep drags on the secluded bench that overlooked the pond until his eyes drooped and he began to sway like a reed in the wind. Life felt like it opened up and he found himself thinking, obsessively so, 'why did I accept this for a long time?'
But he did remember that there were fleeting moments of rebelliousness during his dreary morning commute to work. Moments throughout the past three years where he found himself wondering whether there was something more to life. But he had always ascribed his frustrating questioning to the intolerability of depression. Something his therapist was all too eager to validate and even to attempt to medicate away. The usual suspects; Lexapro, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Prozac, Celexa...key ingredients of a well-balanced diet of your everyday millennial. Unfortunately, the void of depression subsumed the efficacy of such pharmaceutical tools. Elias's state seemed to be much more profound than psychology; it was more of a philosophical malady than it was psychological; occurring at an existential state.
The abrupt absence of warmth and daylight was recompensed only by the fire of the sky in the half-hour that preceded twilight. The skyline of towering buildings looked like black silhouettes in the foreground of a dimly simmering sky that was faintly burning orange. The city itself was transformed into a city of shadows. And then suddenly there was red. The small pond at High Park reflected the red sky. And they both reflected the panic that was bubbling.
Elias, fully in his own head, forgot he was holding the joint that slipped from between his fingers to the ground. His mouth, parched like sandpaper, moved twice without any sound. Thoughts rose from the depths of unexplored places in his mind like a raging sea. For the first time in his life perhaps, there was stillness. Real stillness. He could hear his own thoughts: 'Why did I accept this?' But if you stifle that internal voice, once it finally gets to speak it won't shut up...driving you mad. Torturing you with the pent-up energy that you've stifled.
The leery eyes of people jogging past him in High Park made him feel like he did something wrong by quitting his job. They were judging him. They thought he was crazy. Uncertainty and doubt about everything foundational about him.
He lamented all those days that had died without knowing what it was to be alive. Until each day seemed to be giving birth to yet another stillborn day...already dead on arrival. The whole of it simply becoming an act of letting go, an act of repetition. He wanted to be a writer and travel the world and read for pleasure. His breathing was unsteady and intensified. His head was growing too heavy for his neck.
Life was happening all around him at the park and he was in the heart of a picturesque urban oasis; the entire city in autumn for that matter emanated smoky undertones and looked as if it smelt of vanilla and tasted of pumpkin spice. Despite it all, he felt a harrowing hollowness permeating his very being. As if he was not there, not really. He simply couldn't see it. What if heaven and hell are mere states of mind. And being in hell is simply being in heaven but unable to see it.
Guilt, anxiety, and sadness about himself that he neglected, his parents whom he doesn't call enough, about Tilly whom he could be more empathetic to, about Francis...about the misery of mankind...in the loneliness of all there is, and all that was and all that will ever be, Elias wept. For the first time in as long as he could remember he allowed himself to cry.
Self-doubt rocked him to the core and would not let go of him. His mind was without an anchor shifting through thoughts at the speed of light. Tears followed more tears that dropped like rain onto the paper of his journal that he now hoped to be an anchor.
Pension, House, Work, Money, Tilly.
Rationality and madness went to war on the battlefield of his journal. Pension: he was twenty-five years old, there was more than enough time to recompense his pension for his year off. House: he was twenty-five years old, there was more than enough time to recompense his savings for his year off. Work: he was twenty-five years old with three years' worth of professional experience and contacts, there was more than enough time for the opportunity to come back to work after his year off. Money: he was twenty-five years old and had saved more than he needed for hostels around the world. Tilly: they were twenty-five years old, he didn't waste her time, and there was more than enough time for her to find someone else.
Out of the vapor of this madness, an insight was distilled: everything was going to be OK. Veering off the planned path required change. And change begets the hard work of having to adapt. He was willing. He was able. Everything was going to be OK.
There were tears, then a burst of serotonin, then sweet relief. Like the clearing of clouds past a full moon in the cool of night, hints of a smile surfaced on his face. He could breathe. And was breathing differently. More freely. The stillness that was at first uncomfortable had suddenly become elegant. A balanced center in his mind. He could hear his own thoughts...and it was beautiful. Reading his thoughts on paper was even more beautiful.
Time betrays those who take it for granted,
an ageless truth inevitably lamented.
The impersonality of life means no offense,
to those robbed of youthful innocence.
Tears that delight in distant memory,
conjure the stillness of heartfelt reverie.
No prayers answered, no fancies resigned,
forever playing in the theatre of the mind,
recreating some distant beauty of a kind,
symbolically void and emotionally blind.
A lossless sense of beauty reframed,
of all things that will have waned.
Paradise lost; paradise regained.
But there was much more healing work to do. First thing's first. Now that he had taken care of his work situation, there was still the matter of Tilly to resolve. Despite his sincerest hopes to heal together, the journey of his own healing needed to be done alone.
He straightened himself, stood up, and stretched by the bench. In the wake of this bad yet insightful trip, his appetite hadn't been satiated since that lunch with Francis. So, he elected to treat himself to something sweet in the sanctuary of his trusty coffee house. He deserved it.
Although it was a brief and typical ten-minute walk to the café from High Park, something was different. Toronto was different. This city, where art and commerce and finance and religion and entertainment coincide. A compact area where athletes, actors, financiers, evangelists, workers, students come to find fulfillment or come to meet their ruin. The outcome of which depended a great deal on luck. If you were afraid of the lack of control you have over luck, the city might not be for you. Toronto, the beautiful. Toronto, the promising. As he made his way, he looked at it as it is seen for the first time or the last.