Prelude

The woman who would become my grandmother was barren. She was 30 years old, and married at time where she was already considered an ‘Old Maid’. She did not marry the man she loved; she married the man who came along after the man she loved moved on without her.

She was second last of eight children, born to a British WWI veteran and his common law wife. In the days of the great depression, and being second from the bottom, there isn’t much love left to go around, and so adapting, my grandmother was cold, stolid, reserved and unfettering.
She spent four years serving her country during World War II, lost her parents very early and committed to never repeat the past.

After two years, and almost a dozen failed attempts to successfully hold a pregnancy past the first trimester, she resorted to adoption. First, an abandoned baby boy from a remote Northern little community of Fort Nelson; second, a baby girl, from the Métis Indian Reserve in Yellowknife, Yukon. The baby girl would be my mother. Subsequently, my grandmother would effectively conceive not one, by two children. Separated by only one year, the sibs would ultimately come to begrudge my mother.

Biologically, my mother was born of French Canadian father, Cree mother and both of them, raging alcoholics. In 1952, and on Native Reserves; Mumps, Chicken Pox, Measles and Tuberculosis swept through these peoples lives, which their healers knew nothing about and by which vaccines were short to come on a Canadian First Nations Reserve, as well as small Canadian towns. My mother was affected greatly by Tuberculosis. Having been misdiagnosed on and off until she was eight, the clincher was when she was finally diagnosed (misdiagnosed) with Rickets.
The only course of action in 1960 was to be body cast for a period of up to one year, and intense drug therapy. By the time my mother was nine years old, she was a narcotic drug addict. She never grew taller than 4 feet 11 inches, had to re-learn how to walk, how to sit. Her spine is perpetually crooked and possibly, her brain cooked to pulp.

My grandmother coddled and indulged her. Whatever her fancy, my mother was embellished.
Without a shadow of a doubt, my mother received more than 110% of my grandmother’s attention. Whether or not my mother milked it at this age is my mystery, but the other children will only see it their way.

My grandmother’s other children were thriving. They were intelligent and did very well at school, were quite active in sports in the community and by all accounts were flourishing in their social development having more than their fair share of peers. It did not go unrecognized by most, with the exception of my grandmother, who was too preoccupied to take notice.

By the time my mother was 15 years old, she was involved in local ‘gang’ activity and numbing down her emotional pain with illegal drugs, as the pharmaceutical kind were no longer at her availability. Hanging with the wrong crowds, befriending boys who were not fit to socialize with my grandmother’s daughter. Using her strengthened manipulative ability, my mother could easily persuade my grandmother to look the other way at many times.
My mother was pregnant for the first time when she was 16 years old. Somewhere, somehow, she met a young man who was with the American Navy and posted at a Vancouver, BC port. His family expressed interest in adopting the baby and raising it themselves, but my grandmother would not hear of it. It was a disgrace what my mother was bringing to her family, but the Salvation Army would take care of it, with their wed-less mother’s adoption program.

One can only ever imagine how my mother felt about all of this.

Between the birth of her son, at 16 years old, and her second pregnancy at 21 years old, my mother turned to a life of prostitution to help her fund her drug habit. More than just smoking marijuana, my mother was a full blown heroin addict and I was born a bastard.

My grandmother had not seen my mother for five years and was shocked but relieved to discover her alive yet horrified that she would show up at her doorstep with a six month undernourished, drug addicted baby. The baby’s wrists were red, raw and dented from having been tied up to the radiator, under the window in the bedroom of her mother’s apartment which she shared with three other people, one, presumably her pimp and the baby’s father. A confession my mother donated to my grandmother in a plea bargain conversation, to again manipulate and guilt her way into yet another convoluted request. My grandmother accepted the appeal with attached conditions.

My mother would come back for the baby in two weeks, after she sought solace with a Women’s Drug Addiction Counselling program.

She returned two years later. I was alone.

Purple

When I was with him, I always felt like I was floating between red and blue. Suffering laboured buoyancy on an ocean of intense emotion. Yet, the water in this ocean was flat – a straight line connecting the extreme spectral colours of our lives – it was my line of purple. Simple red or basic blue will trigger anxiety or restlessness, unless the undertone is clearly defined. My ocean of purple takes on the characteristics of its undertone.

I edged on Tyrian blue the majority of the time and in this behaviour, my chronicle of self sabotage continued and feint the relationship. For me, blue happened in times of perceived desertion, abandonment and hopelessness. All blue periods, were superficial. Dependency exaggerates the illusions in my mind and a histrionic disorder of me was comical, still chilling at best.

The occasions of red, were scorching, fiery and vehement. It was because of the red, I spent the entire relationship euphoric but resolute and obsessed to keep to me, what I considered mine. Whispering to my mind and understanding with my guise, I was in ownership of more than a colour. It was what I pursued from the beginning of a search I never knew I started. I wish I could have laid it out in lavender.

Never knowing a father of my own and having had my grandmother’s husband die when I was still quite young, I was elucidating what I subconsciously thought a powerful positive male figure in my life should be. Idealistically he would be my cloak of safety and would envelop me so that no harm could penetrate through to me. I would be swathed in his armour of love. I was completely ignorant of the disparity between paternal love and the lust of a sexually charged adolescent relationship. What a romantic notion. What a delusion.

My purple interfered with the relationship.

I was covetous, invidious and mistrustful of any other woman who would speak with him. I was obsessive, jealous and possessed. I would monopolize all of his time, and I would insist he do either the most mundane or daunting tasks. From sitting in obscene silence or ride his bike an insane distance from his home to mine, for no other reason than to keep both eyes on him, lest another female be within breathing distance.

**edit due**

Some friend you are...

I do not have regrets about what I said.

I thought it through quite carefully and I fully expected the outcome. I am not surprised by her comments and her defensive attitude.

She is a complete control-freak. She must have her hands in everything, she must express her opinions on everything. She is a know-it-all.

She has alienated herself.

She's not genuine. Rather, she's insincere.

She cannot feel the happiness for others, she is so bitter.

She will never be more than a shell of woman, because of her selfish thoughts.

She is not the only person to experience grief of pain. She just thinks she is.

She is a lonely mess.

She is not a friend.

I wish her luck. She will need it.

I do not have regrets about what I said.

Friends

I have a tendency to avoid the word best when referring to friendships. It seems a short, curt word to describe a being who should be more than illustrious and grand and above all other comrades.

Researching other words for best, I have come to dislike: top, finest, greatest, unsurpassed, paramount, preeminent, most excellent and, superlative. These expressions seem inferior or condescending when describing how I truly feel about my closest of friends.

I do not surround myself with umpteen mates. I find it hard to keep up. I'm not well organized that way. My time management skills are not exceptional and I lack the energy which I believe is required. Don't misinterpret this for laziness or selfishness. Those I hold as close chums and pals are regarded with obeisance, respect and love, yet all are aware that I hold each at arms length. I am wary of attachment as I am mindful that friends are not eternal. Friendships, even close ones, can be altered, transformed, eroded - even shattered entirely.

My earliest memory of a friendship was with Jann. She was my confidant. She was my ever-smiling, overjoyed, blithe-clown. In my world of elder parenting, death and detachment, Jann was my one constant for a decade of delight. We would run the slough of despond from one end to the other, we would climb trees, and we would play dolls and run amuck in each others yards. We bowled, and drank root beer through straws of liquorice.

My grandmother adored Jann. She was the ying to my yang.

There were other girls and boys whom were regarded as friends at the time. There was Barbara D., Eddy and David L. And Debbie or Karen and her sister Charlene. There was Grace and Crystal. There was Jenny. There was Vinny and Trish. There was Janice and then David and Chris. Eleanor and Nikki. But none of them were Jann.

We moved effortlessly through elementary school, though Jann was a year younger than I and full grade behind me, our friendship surpassed the social serpentine meanderings of pre-adolescence.

But the year my grandmother moved me to Vanderhoof, our companionship changed. A failed test through absence that never recovered. The vast emptiness and time apart from each other was the beginning of our slow deliberate parting. Upon returning to my home-town and through junior high, we came and went from each other. Common friends reunited us at intervals, but the friendship was tarnished silver. Through senior high, Jann had become someone I didn’t recognize and I forced myself to invade her space and time and find out where the old Jann went. I wanted my ying back, but the smiling bubbly cherub became a distant ghost of a shadow, reaching out for attention through her appearance, her prose and her art. She was expressing herself in ways which I never new she possessed the skills to. For this, I was selfish friend for not knowing the darkest of secrets Jann possessed for more than a decade. I had never asked.

I lost Jann and I was heartbroken.