I've realized that there
is a scale for me to determine how depressed I am. There's the sort of sadness where I only want to listen to sad songs, or watch sappy movies. Then there's the sort where I sit in the dark because it matches my mood, or the sort where all I want to do is to eat tubs and tubs of ice cream (first choice = strawberry Häagen-Dazs). And then there's the sort where I don't want to talk to anybody or to do anything, where I feel as if I am surrounded by a shell of invisible plastic that prevents the world from touching me. ... But tonight, I seem to have found a new low: tonight, I was so desperate for solace that I almost talked to a misogynist ex. (Don't worry. I didn't.) It's fitting, though, that this would be the case — after all, the two times that I began casual intimacies with him, in both cases, it was because I was distressed.
So, what has caused me to slip into such despondency? Well, I suppose we should start at the ‘beginning.’
The beginning of course, starts with my bikini line.
.:Cover your eyes, boys:.
I had to get it waxed. I was going to swim training and it was ridiculous. So I went down to Spa Aesthetique to do just that.
.:Open them again.:.
I had never seen the parking lot so full before. There were about three (certainly no more than five) spaces left, and the one I really wanted (based on it facing out of the parking lot) had the lot's security guard standing in it, so, rather than waste the time it would take getting him to move, I took the next best one. I was on a strict time schedule — it was 2:10 and I had to pick up my brother at my house at 2:30 to take him (and me!) to swim practice. I quickly backed into the parking space, between two cars (
how I kick myself now for not checking to see that there was no one inside! I think there was no one inside, but I can never — will never — be sure!). I ran into the Spa, made my appointment, and was back out of there by 2:25. I know because I checked my watch. I was a little behind schedule by this point, but not doing too badly at all. The trip could have been said to have been a success. I unlocked the doors, opened the driver's side, sat down, and closed the door. Then the left rear passenger window fell into the car with a resounding crash, like a cymbal, or the sound of Hell welcoming the dead. The window was smashed, shattered yet still mostly together. I say “mostly” because there were splinters everywhere. And, worse, in turned out that three of the bags that I had left in the car were missing. Even worse, one was my mother's handbag.
My mother, of course, is the sort of woman who carries
everything in her handbag.
Everything. Health insurance cards, credit and debit cards, bank book, cheque book, deposit book, car registration and insurance, prescriptions, passports... If she might need it at some juncture in the near or distant future, it's in there. If not, it's in the car. It was funny; I was just telling her earlier today that she needed to clear out the back seat, that the level of junk was getting to be intolerable.
Of course the police took forever (about 1.5 hours) to come. I don't even think that the policeman who finally arrived was meant really for us, despite my mother's calling the police station (5-10 minutes away) three times and threatening to report them to the Commissioner of Police. The police stations, in truth, are simply under-equipped to handle the level of crime prevalent in Jamaica nowadays. I think that the policeman who stopped had to have been stopped by the security guard. The policeman himself asked, after all, why we hadn't just driven down to the station if the car was drivable. Concern about destroying evidence? Pshaw. According to the police, there was nothing to see.
Anyway, I drove the car down to the station and filed a police report. The constable didn't even come out to look at the car until I described it to him, even though he could have seen it himself. I was supposed to drive it to get fingerprints taken tomorrow, but Mum, who is thoroughly disillusioned with the Jamaican justice system and constabulary force, had us clear the car of all the items in it tonight, so that if someone drives the car away in the night, having gotten in through the broken window, “at least she'll have saved some of her stuff.”
Mum is at the end of her tether. She spent most of the evening lying down, too depressed to move. To make the whole situation worse, she just realized on Tuesday that she's accidentally put her bank account into overdraft, and so without credit cards / anything, everything that needs money must be put on hold until Wednesday, when she gets paid. Furthermore, the lost visas, passports, etc. and a car window that needs to be fixed will make her economic situation even worse. She's tired of scraping around for money and the fact that my father just published in one of the newspapers a piece about him being
a fab dad, when for so many years he wasn't, has only made her more bitter about the situation. She feels used, living off of scraps, when before she met my dad, she had a house and a car, which she sold to help buy the house he's living in now, and he, when they met, had nothing.
I feel terrible about the whole thing. Some people have said, “Oh, there's Jamaica for you,” which is terrible in its own way, but worse has been realizing how disillusioned both my parents are about this country. Dad has always been a bit cynical about Jamaica's (and particularly Kingston's) chances at rehabilitation, but this has totally got Mum down. As she put it, it's the first time she's ever seriously considered leaving Jamaica for good. And she loves it here; up until last year, she wanted all her children to move back here. Off course, the only person whom I even considered calling was Ajayi. He would have known all the right things to say. But he was out, so I called Dad instead. It's a pity about Ajayi and me, really — it might have worked, were it not for all the other stuff. But, on the other hand, the way I've always seen it is that the ‘other stuff’ is also probably what formed him into the sweetheart he is, so it might have been a no-go without it anyway.
So neither ice cream nor Ajayi being available, and as I don't particularly want to reopen a line of conversation with Tosin, I've settled for a rewatching of
Notting Hill (apparently, the two moments that stuck with my most forcefully after my first watching were really the two best bits in the movie (by far), but I like Hugh Grant, so hey) and for eating some "Healthy Harvest: Blueberry Delight" applesauce, made by Mott's. It wasn't bad.
May it get better than this.
Love,
Katherine
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