i woke up one day

today i've been thinking about ian. this happens to me every so often. not just with ian, but with all my boys. all the boys that i've ever loved.

when i say 'boys i've ever loved', i don't mean i dated them all, or slept with them, but for one reason or another, sometimes just friendship, i loved them. and each person i've known in my life - not just my boys - as a friend, as a lover, for a brief moment in time, has come back to me at one time or another. i don't mean physically either. more of reminders that i once shared time with them. every new person that enters my life, sometimes in unexpected ways, has somehow changed my perspective on life.

there was that guy that came into sam's in brattleboro one night when i was working until 9 pm. i was stocking shelves, probably the water bottles or the coolers, anyway, i was in the camping department that night and he was looking for a cast iron cauldron. during the course of our search we struck up a conversation. he had just gotten back into town after being away for a couple years. he was working up north and felt he was becoming complacent where he was. this complete stranger looked me in the eye and said, 'i just realized one day that i had stopped growing as a person'. i nodded with an, 'uh-huh', glancing at my watch out of the corner of my eye as the minutes ticked past the 9 o'clock hour. thinking to myself, 'when is someone going to come and rescue me and tell this guy we need to close?' and still he continued, 'so i packed up my car and moved back down here...' this went on for another couple of minutes until my manager finally came to check on me.

as i drove home that night i couldn't get this guy out of my head. i couldn't even remember what his name was, but what he said stuck with me for the next couple of weeks.

there i was, living in this tiny green house that was making me physically sick, in the middle of the woods, on a dirt road in vermont. i had been working as a cashier/merchandise returns/visual merchandiser making $7.50 an hour, and that was after two years, in the sporting goods department of a little local department store chain. i couldn't even get an interview with a social service organization, so finding a job in my field was proving to be a dead end road. my husband had been laid off from his job with little to no prospects in site as video production isn't considered big business in vermont.

then i woke up one day and made the decision. i had wanted to move back to ohio since about six months after we arrived in vermont. this was no secret. i had spiraled into depression in the fall and winter of 1998. the house we were living in was full of mold, and i was sick constantly. our landlord was the town sheriff, so there was little repercussion for him if he just left it alone, and he did - in my closet, in my shoes, in the floorboards of the room that i slept in. i'm convinced this was a major contributing factor to my depression that year.

we didn't have the money to move. we didn't have the money to pay the gas bill half the time, let alone pay first, last, and deposit on someplace else. thank God for my coworkers and my mother-in-law, if it weren't for them kindly giving us venison and chicken to put in the freezer, I don’t think we would have seen meat all season. there were days that i skipped breakfast and had half of a bagel for lunch and the other half for dinner. i lost fifteen pounds that winter. i looked and felt like death warmed over, and that was on my good days. don’t' get me wrong, not every day was like living in Hell, but when i look back at that time in my life, i feel sick to my stomach. it all seems to flow together as just one big ugly feeling.

the discussion had been had many a time.
'i want to move.'
'so do i.'
'ok, then let's go. what's holding us here?'
'i don't know, i'm just not ready yet.'

this went on until the day i woke up. i made the decision, i was moving and catfish was welcome to come with me, but that was his decision to make. i set a date for the end of may 1999. my parents switched cars with me, so i drove my mom's mini-van around town for several months while i got my house in order, gave my notice, and looked for work in ohio.

it took catfish very little time to make his decision. but just as we were getting ready to go he landed a gig. he was first ac on a low-budget horror flick that was being shot close by. after that he would go to massachusetts for eight weeks on a low-budget drama. and in the first weeks of august, he would be back in vermont as an instructor at a film camp.

it all worked out for the best in the end...i think. i stayed at my parents for the summer. they weren't there for most of it anyway. and when catfish was finished in Massachusetts, he came out, found us a place to live, and the rest is for another day, another story.

the point is that on the day i woke up, it was the day i realized i had stopped growing. and that if i didn't do something about it, i would die. and it was that guy, that random guy in the store, that was the catalyst. and that guy will never know how profound that moment was for me and still is to this day. when i start to feel complacent, when i start to get too bored, or too comfortable, i think of what he said. and i think about the day i woke up and had the courage to stand on my own.



...maybe tomorrow i'll tell you about ian...maybe not.