I INVITED A PARISIAN STRANGER TO STAY WITH ME FOR 2 WEEKS.

My friends would describe me as random. Not rub my butt and buy me tacos ~ random ~, but more “you did what?” and “we are concerned about your behaviour” random. And let’s be honest, the last 5 months have been…difficult?

Straight up depressing is more like it.

If I wasn’t starting my owns fires every week, I was putting out someone else’s. In fact, as I write this, I am wiggling my toes in my hospital merch socks. I have two different colours and I decided to wear one of each today for whatever reason.

The title is completely true. But how did we get here?

Let’s rewind, shall we?

It’s October. Okay so, September was bad, but October, October was messy. I can’t remember one single good day during that month. When you tell yourself you don’t give a fuck, you really start to believe your own bullshit. After a day of causing arson on my own life, as mentioned above, I was lurking Instagram as one does. I came across a tattoo artist and I was immediately impressed with the photos posted by this mystery person. Well, curiosity killed the cat and I was on my last leg anyways, so we got to talking.

Honestly, the story isn’t interesting. We shared a few messages fawning over each others work before we decided it would be easier to talk in person, considering there was 5,344 miles between us and a 9 hour time difference. 2 days later, he sent me a screenshot of his flight leaving Paris to arrive here in Vancouver, February 1st. That gave me 3 or so months to stop being depressed and get my life in order to be able to properly host a stranger and be the best artist I could be.

So what did I do?

Doing the right thing is hard.

I, myself, you, me, we, we got drunk. Of course. Then we got hungover. Then we are sleeping till 4PM. Then we aren’t answering texts and calls. Then we’re fighting with the whole world. And it’s so cold out. Everything’s dark at this point too. Life blindfolded is what it felt like. What’s the point of stabilizing normal reality then? Let’s lose days into 2023 since Christmas sucked so fucking much.

Next thing you know, the month has slipped away from you. By you I mean me, by the way. Unless you to experienced this as well, then I apologize. I was set to have a person I didn’t know start sleeping on my couch in a few days and I was out getting my back tattooed and micro needling done all the while ignoring my crumbling mental health.

I am good with priorities. I pre drink for priorities.

In my head I was treating this like a “stay-cation”. I would enjoy the mindless vacation headset of being a tourist, just with the pressure of showing Canada to someone who’s never been to Canada before. It’s like I wake up and choose violence every morning. But the excuse of vacation day drinking would be heavy in my favour.

All stories have a beginning, middle, and end. The middle of this story would have an upbeat montage of friends (new and old) running around the city having fun, paired with a song matching the rising positivity in the story plot. Like in the movies. With a good ending.

This one actually has a good ending.

I failed to see what was around me the last months. Instead of rose coloured glasses, I had on those dark tinted gas station glasses we are all wearing now. Nothing seemed good enough, or it all just seemed fake and no longer tangible. When you only start focusing on the bad, the good seems impossible to pull back into frame. And when you’ve gone so far down your pickle back slamming, churches chicken at 4am, glass table littered in empty white claws, rabbit hole, what’s the point in climbing back out.

Apparently, there is a lot to climb back out for. Seeing my life through a visitors eyes was…eye opening. It felt for the longest time like I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t help myself with the bad or the good, and it didn’t matter which was which anyways. They all melted together at 4am and the bad always felt good. This story wasn’t so much about the visit, more so, about me. Because let’s be real, how can I make this about me?

The day my visitor departed the sun was shining, spilling into my apartment through the blinds. For the first time in 5 months I envisioned what it would look like to put my pictures back up on the walls, then I had a really good day.