Interesting day. Very interesting.

I started today off fully intending for it to be an art day. It turned into anything but, I never touched pencil to paper.

First of all, our house was FREEZING this morning. Which is a change from I'm-lying-in-my-underwear-with-window-wide-open-and-fan-full-blast-and-still-dripping-sweat. Last night was very cold, so I wasn't too surprised and had prepared for it with the ultimate fuzzy blanket. I mean ULTIMATE. So I woke up and I was warm and cozy but my nose was cold and my room was cold so I had to do serious battle with myself to even suggest getting out of bed. I compromised with myself by wrapping the blankets around me and half-walking half-dragging myself over to my dresser (which is only like, 2 feet from my bed) out of which I pulled a super cozy bath robe and slippers. I wrapped myself in those amidst much cursing and whining to myself, and then gathered up warm clothing and ran to the shower.

After single-handedly causing  a water shortage in Canada (and also digging into my roommate's wallets for the next utility bill) with a 25-30 minute long, piping hot shower, I snuggled up in my warm clothes, forgot what I actually had to do today, and went downstairs with sketch book in hand, ready to draw. I ended up huddled under a blanket, too cold to do anything, watching a movie on my laptop and trying to budget for the end of this month.

At which point in time I got a phone call from my mother.

Alright. So this is a very important side story that you may have known had you caught my overly-depressing post that I ended up deleting 2 hours after I posted it. If not, this is important. A couple (?) of weeks ago, I attempted to notify my mother of my depression problem and anxiety disorder. It did not go well. She screamed and cried about how I shouldn't say stuff like that and how it panicked her and how I didn't know how serious what I was saying was. What could I possibly be depressed about? So I went through a small breakdown/setback over that and moved on with my life without her help, as is normal.

So today as I was going over my budget, huddled under this huge blanket wearing warm clothes and fuzzy slippers, I get a phone call. And while my first instinct was to ignore it because authors have been calling me nonstop for two days for character sketches, I decided to glance and see who it was. It was my mother.

Not really wanting to deal with her, but not wanting to have to call her back later, I reluctantly answered. I was greeted with an apology and explanation as to why she'd been so defensive over my mental health. She asked to hear more about it, and wanted to hear what was going on in my life. I was surprised at the sudden support, but sometimes it does happen from her end and it doesn't last very long. So I talked a bit with her, though as is bound to happen when I talk about it I got a little emotional and we ended our conversation right around when that happened because I hate talking on the phone when I'm bring a girl all over it.

After I hung up, I got some huge surge of inspiration and typed out thousands of words worth of novel before I suddenly just really wanted to play the drums. So I played the drums. And I played them LOUD. And it felt great. And then I wrote some more. It was crazy productive.

So then I realized that, in short time, I was due to meet a friend from high school that I hadn't seen in MONTHS (probably over a year) for his birthday, along with his family and some old high school friends/acquaintances I hadn't seen/even spoken to in years. I don't know how I forgot about it, but I panicked and put some presentable clothes on and booked it out the door in time to catch the bus.

Once there, I realized that half the people were squinting at me. They knew they knew who I was, but they didn't really know exactly who I was. I have changed a LOT since graduating high school, which was about 5 years ago or so. I've lost about 100lbs (serious), I cut off 3/4 of my hair (it used to be past my waist, is now just to my shoulder blades), my hair is natural colored (used to be bright pink and orange, is now red-blond), my lipring has been reduced to a teeny stud, my hair which was ALWAYS straightened before I let curl, I wasn't dressed in a ratty t-shirt and huge jeans, and I actually learned how to put on makeup. So I had to do the awkward "Hi, it's me!" thing about 6 times, and everyone was like WOAH WTF HAPPENED?! and it was cool.

But then my former best friend showed up! Her and I used to be attached at the hip for the first two years of high school. It ended a little roughly and not on good terms, and she is very good friends with one of my first roommates which also ended very roughly and messily. So I was very shocked to see her.

Turns out, she's an artist too, now! She took a fine arts degree in university and works as an artist in a nearby city. So we found some common ground, naturally, and had an excellent talk.

And then she mentioned my old roommates. Well, actually, I asked how her friend was. Him and I
used to be super close, but the roommate breakup kinda ruined that. And then she said he was doing very well, and that he had actually recently (within the past 2 weeks) mentioned that he actually harbored no ill feelings towards me, which surprised me very very very pleasantly. I was so relieved to hear it.

I was also relieved to hear that the other roommate that I was never friends with flopped and learned a hard life lesson. Not that I wanted him to suffer, I just wanted him to get a serious reality check that would set him on a straight path to being a real adult. He was very awful when he moved out of his parents' house, didn't shower, never worked, was broke, let the carpets in his room mold from leaking juice containers and scraps of food lying around, didn't know how to work a laundry machine, ate nothing but microwave dinners and Coca Cola, and played video games/watched porn 24/7. I ended up abandoning him alone to himself after he failed to come up with rent and he almost ended up homeless because of it.

He still hates me, but he's had a few other smacks upside the head courtesy of life and reality, and I think he's going to be okay. In a few years.

So dinner went well, and turns out guy-whose-birthday-it-was wasn't as awkward as the last time I saw him! Because the last time I saw him he was in love with me and cleverly conned me into going on a date-that-I-didn't-realize-was-a-date-until-halfway-through-the-movie not a month after I had broken up with my fiance (who I had been with for six years). It was awkward because the feelings weren't reciprocated, as bad as I felt. But today he was totally chill!

So that went well.

And then I came home to an e-mail from my mother that was an attempted apology for some parts of my childhood. Which, though she has done small steps like this, was very very welcome and made me cry. Again.

An excerpt of what she wrote:

"I may not have always done a great job when you were young, and I'm so sorry for that. I think sometimes the way I responded to you was hurtful and I wasn't there for you suppporting you like you needed me to. At times, I more compared my life and childhood to yours and thought you had it pretty good. But with age, comes some wisdom. I realize how wrong I was to be that way. You and your world and problems matter. I have no right to compare anything ever. You feel what you feel and I respect you for that. I hope over time you will feel like you can open up to me and I won't diminish your pain or heartache you feel. I WILL listen without judgement or minimizning. I know I did that when you were growing up. Goes to show just how much growing up I needed to do to realize what it took to be a good mom. I don't always make the right or best decisions but I NEED you to know how much you mean to me. Listening to you today, all I could think of was "how can I fix this for my baby", she's hurting so bad." 

Which shows why I cried. Yeesh. I was just not expecting this to happen at this point in time. My soul is a little bit happier. Though, like I said, she has sent things like this before and does not always follow through, sometimes she does really try to fix what she did. Sometimes she sidesteps the issues, like when she said "sometimes the way I responded to you was hurtful." She has yet to recognize the PHYSICAL hurt she caused. Though sometimes I seriously question whether or not she's actually mentally wiped the physical abuse from her memory...

Anyway.

Now I'm here! Exhausted after an emotionally heavy day and wanting to go to bed but brain is still full of writing stuff and I WANT to get it all down but am too exhausted to do so.