discomposed

My mum recently got her Canadian citizenship. I bought my mother her very own beaver. With a bikini line razor. Because it’s my mother’s beaver.

Give me your best beaver jokes. And pussy jokes. And basically let’s just get dirty with this. For memories.

For two years now there have been three extra-large garbage bags in my closet that I’ve been procrastinating on dealing with. There’s also been a laundry basket on my bedside table for that two years, filled with a blanket I forgot I owned, and linens that aren’t even mine.

I started at 7am. I took numerous breaks. This is the result!

I own clothes I completely forgot I’d owned Three loads of laundry left to do when the washer is free. Three bags of clothes and a box of items for goodwill. One whole bag of recycling. Five whole bags of garbage. Two different cats photobombing my progress pictures. Closet space! I have closet space! I filled it with seasonal storage!

I finished at 9am. Two hours and my room is almost clean. I have one or two more goes to do this evening and I’m finished. Done. It will be almost spotless! For the first time since moving in two years ago! I am so proud of myself!

So for those of you who don’t know me and/or haven’t clued in, I suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder. I also suffer from Bipolar I Disorder. I happen to be a tad bit loopy at the moment, or at least that’s what my psychiatrist says.

Usually I cannot ride public transit. At all. No buses, no skytrains, no seabuses, no going out alone beyond a one and a half block radius from my home.

When I’m loopy, this funny thing happens. All of my social anxiety disappears. Every last bit of it. I become confident, very confident, I talk with strangers and I smile and dance in the street and passersby compliment me on being so smiley and bubbly. They love me and I feel like I am doing a service to them by smiling at them whether I know them or not because it makes them happier when somebody smiles directly at them. But that’s not all that happens when I’m loopy.

I get these urges.
Serious urges.
.
.
.
.
To ride public transit.

Yes I know, of all the things for one to do while they are loopy, my brain of all things wants to RIDE ALL THE THINGS.

So today was Tanya’s Transit Adventure. I rode the skytrain along three different lines (Millenium, Expo, Canada), I rode on the Seabus and ended up at Waterfront Park, I took a bus to get home. I made stops in New Westminster, Burnaby, Vancouver, North Vancouver, and Richmond over a six hour period.

I told Mormon missionaries I wasn’t into that whole magic underpants thing. I talked with some random girl on the skytrain about oh god everything (if you’re a redhead who worked at Starbucks in North Vancouver at some point, you were actually really awesome and I like you! It was a fun seabus ride! Thank you!). I talked with a woman about a fat, fluffy dog. Some old guy with a cane talked at me, but I had my headphones on and couldn’t hear a word he was saying and didn’t much want to because he stank of chlorine and had bird poop on his baseball hat. I took a picture of a statue that’s supposed to look like some dude I think crouching but instead just looks like a giant penis.

And whether I’m loopy or not I’m so, so thankful, because once in a blue moon while I may blow all my money on cigarettes and mountain dew, while I may pace until I can barely walk anymore, while I may occasionally even appear to be a crazy person, ever so infrequently I get a brief reprieve from my social anxiety and that to me means the world. Depression sucks, social anxiety sucks, even mania sucks sometimes, but today I got to ride all the things and I am, for now, the happiest girl alive.