October 17, 2004

Even though I am aware of the exact date upon which I am next scheduled to get dumped upon, I’m actually very much at peace with it.  (The only caveat being is that fate may have a few tricks up its sleeve that I’m not aware of and it is possible that the next regularly scheduled dumping may be sooner than I think.) 

When it all hit the fan last week, I was incandescent, astonished and completely demoralized but then I began to recognize that what I initially saw as the most unfair and completely gratuitous injustice in recent memory was actually gigantic bitch slap from the universe. 

God help me if I’ve misconstrued it. 

I guess then I’d just be depressed and suicidal, eh?  Good thing that I’m inherently delusional.  What a relief!

I’ve decided to pack in law completely and try to make my living as a writer.  This poses some problems (leaving the question of talent aside for a moment) – the most immediately pressing of which is where I’m going to get the money to pay the rent, but I’ve been poor before and I can do it again.  I’ve never been into having stuff except music and books so that should ease the transition. I’ve worn the same pair of jeans since Grade 10.  I’m wearing the same boots I bought for hiking in Connemara 5 years ago.  I can’t remember the last time I bought myself a sweater.  I won’t feel deprived if I can’t go out and buy a pair of expensive shoes, because the idea that I needed them would never have occurred to me in the first place. 

Still, I can recall all too vividly the sense of awestruck wonder I felt to open my wallet and discover a twenty.  Ah, memories.

That being said, my meds cost a frigging fortune and where the money is going to come from is a somewhat more pressing question.  It’s not like I can do without this stuff and my drug plan saved me tens of thousands of dollars a year so this is going to hurt. 

Luckily, my doctor is fond of my conversation (we have the same views on the evils of globalization) and in the past has hit up the drug companies to supply me with free meds.  I don’t want to impose on him more than I already have, but the poor man enjoys a challenge and appears to be starved of engaging repartee so the least I can do to repay him for his kindness is stay alive.

Besides, I get to look forward to the thrill of anticipating exactly what’s going to kill me, and that’s always energizing. Will my lungs or brain explode from the clots in them?  Will I bleed to death from Crohn’s?  Have another seizure at the top of the staircase? Will the last two functioning bile ducts in my liver finally atrophy?

I’m spoiled for choice. It’s just too fabulously scrumptious.

Oh just ignore me.  I don’t know what I’m moaning about – it’s been a while since I’ve been anointed and even longer since I was the guest of honour at a formal dress function.  Purple has always been one of my favourite colours and of course, I find the idea of the Catholic Church forgiving me for MY sins to be deliciously ironic.  I laughed through the whole thing the last time.  I don’t think you’re supposed to do that when you’re receiving a sacrament but I figured God would get the joke. 

Still, the meds are going to be a problem.

In fact, it may well come down to either buying my medication or eating. 

But hey – eating’s overrated anyway.  Besides, there’s always a silver lining. Since I came to this particular crossroads (it’s been long time coming but I think it’s fair to say that I actually arrived at the intersection about a month ago after a journey of several years), I haven’t been able to keep anything down anyway.  This just saves me a step.  Why bother with the tiresome business of chewing and digesting just to provide fodder for another bathroom-mishap column? Haven’t we done that to death?

And I’ve never looked better.  Despair is so much more palatable when you’re smoking hot,  so the way I see it, apart from having to worry about less than ethical morticians, I’m home free.  (And that would be my bloody luck, too.  Just ask Natalie.)

October 18, 2004

And so today I quit. 

And I will never, ever, ever take another job in law.  And not, I hasten to add, because my employers have seen to it that I’ll never work in this town again but because it is a soul- destroying occupation for me – and it is an occupation, in the ugliest sense of that term.

It felt like I was stepping into an abyss, but it also felt right. If I was going to be obliged to nosedive off a cliff, it certainly is cheering to know that I jumped instead of being pushed. That part of it was empowering. Coming home to discover that Revenue Canada had refused to consider my accountant's figures and were insisting that I owed them a fortune was not so cheering. But to hell with them - they're wrong, we'll appeal and if it all continues to go wrong, well, you can't get blood out of a stone. And I have bigger things to worry about.

So what now?  Well—obviously – poverty, but I’m more used to that than you might suspect.  Luckily, I’m not acquisitive and since I’m down to size zero, it’s like I’ve already got a brand new wardrobe.  See? Silver lining again.  Sometimes it’s kind of hard to locate but it’s there if you dig. 

And the best part?  I’m writing, I’m writing, I’m writing, I’m writing, I’m writing, I’m writing.

God, what a benediction.  More necessary to me than breathing.

And if it turns out that this and music is all there is, it’s more than enough. 

Maybe I deserve more, but this is all I need.

Till next time,

Morrigan

PS   Thanks to Nelly Furtado for persuading me that I’m not a one trick pony.