October 1987 Matt remembers the sun still high in the heavens and as red as Vogue lipstick.  That was the beginning of things to come.   He was homeless for a while a school friend was taking care of someone’s home and Matt asked if he could stay with him for a while until he could get enough money together.  He wanted to get his place living in someone’s garage close to an after-hours dance hall was not his idea of living.  He saw his doctor as she was the only person he trusted and had a crush on.  He had very little money so he asked for the cheapest prescription to control his asthma.  He would wake in the middle of the night as a child and times were so bad that a trip to the hospital was always the result.  That fear remains to this day and always has a stash of inhalers against an attack.

Matt had found a job at a pizza hut and made enough to put a first and last month’s rent together.  What he ended up getting was a room on the second floor of a house.  The owner’s son lived in the basement with three cats which Matt was very allergic to but decided to stick it out.  The discovery of the son of bitches living standard was under a blanket of fucking flees discovered when Matt had to do laundry in the basement where the asshole lived.  He could feel them crawling up his legs and would stay until he killed every one of them once the laundry was done.  He never went down again. 

By 1989 his addiction hit rock bottom he was spending more money on drugs than the cost of his Haldol and Perphenazine for the month.  Every day, every minute, every heartbeat, every sound, every rustling of branches in the wind began to cut through him again.  Some part of him wished he was being poisoned and that death was imminent.   He smoked and in the same breath he would take a hit of chronic holding his breath till consciousness would give him up to the dark.  Sometimes he would open his eyes and his cigarette had burnt to the filter and the joint had gone out.  He had his little space in the damp basement where once he used to write poetry.  A place his father had built and let Matt take it over. 

It took some time but his mom had enough of watching her son slowly waste away in the smoke of his sullen spirit and took him to the doctor.  The doctor recommended he go to the hospital upon leaving the office they did there was no waste of time for Mom. 

There were a few days of detox, a visit from a social worker, and an interview at a 28-day treatment program.  It was here that sobriety began.  Little steps around big fucking hazards that threatened him constantly.  He did twelve-step meetings and within that never mentioned how scared he was even of those who befriended him and how he felt they wanted to take advantage of him.  This is how unworthy he feels about who he is. 

Then, some practice live and let live.  Don’t get involved let’s just have fun watching people suffer because they think their suffering is more worthy of their internal attention.  And they did.   Matt had been dressed very fashionably (gay) but didn’t believe he was.  He went to Tim’s where his brother, sister-in-law, and niece were having a treat.  Matt decided to share their table and he hadn’t been there five minutes they all excused themselves and left him there staring out the glass as if on a drive through the north wilderness.  He sat there.  He couldn’t move.  He doesn’t remember if it was five minutes or a couple of hours but he was hurt and everything was better when it was all numb.  Dead inside. 

You know after a person is treated like shit by his family parents are not included and everybody else.  There’s no wonder shit gets redirected to those around us.  Or the oblivion we observe when acquaintances start getting too close.  It’s no wonder there is fear about everything even when it feels so good the aftermath sets in like a catastrophe.  The years of smoking weed and the side effects from its long-term abuse to hide the emotions of hurt get twisted into paranoid inventions intertwined with the possibility of the present reality.    The worst years were before his father passed away.  First year of college and that February it was the great loss that pushed Matt over the edge.  But it took two years for the edge to cut through…

December month of snow and friends called allegiances divided by the scent of patchouli and THC wetting the dreams of things to come.  The wild in body expressions of the new year called the wolf in the distant ice fog rolling in the cold.  The shadow of concrete replete with echoes of forest tinges of wilderness runs into a barrel of coals red witnessing the warmth of the thinking gone into distress.  They followed me as far as they could but most drew back a long time ago.  The fear they sensed was their own for the weary soul colliding with her inner self.  Matt looked as healthy as all his peers but her soul rammed against the vicious carcass, he called himself HE tortured her. 

She cried, she screamed, she tore at the seams, she shook him from the inside, and only took breath when he gave in to her.  The more he gave in, the more she fought, and the harder he fought sometimes he would just push her the fuck down so that even HE saw darkness in the middle of the day with his eyes wide open.  The walk in the hood would shatter any skeletons brought into the foreground he only had peace for a few hours or until sleep at least.  The dark dreams hadn’t started yet but they were under construction.  Christmas was dark and raining hard on the day itself.  When the holidays were over, He was hungover and stoned headache from being so high dealing with a neighbor who was just as paranoid as I was.  He was also on the move to a new not flee infested room east of the city.

And then she started again.  He got all moved in and tried to relax just going to do some grocery shopping then he had to leave the store and leave everything behind to catch his breath on a Saturday afternoon.  Walked to a room he didn’t even consider to be home.

He remembered the treks to Kingston Market in the city.  He felt bare and stranded in a place he couldn’t fit in.  He didn’t know how and she hadn’t let him either. There was no growth until she was released and he feared for her and did everything he did to protect her.  As we all know FAGS should all be lined up and shot.  To him that’s what he felt to the core of him as he heard so many of his so-called friends repeat the same animosity towards the superior of his kind, he wasn’t gay he was a transgender woman trapped in a small binary idea of the world.  He stopped in at a cheese shop where he was able to buy at a decent price the cheeses he liked and would walk out with a few free samples.  Then the nausea would come on slowly.  The mild headache was a warning to get home and by the time that would happen, he was in a full anxiety attack and swallowed it painfully to preserve his dignity.

In such cases, he was the type that self-medicated with a long draw from a joint and holding his breath nearing the moment of black-out.  The spinning stumbled him through a fog mind compartmentalized into a chunk of reality that almost began something more they were just what he was willing to deal with and getting high was one compartment.  He was creating a character called Rake Butcher a dark figure always roaming the projects an unearthly time trying to get himself killed painlessly.  It never developed to be that but the times not sheltered against early morning rains and snow blown through that fog of his left the rest of the world seen in a shadowed in the ephemeral elements of those moments. 

There was a plan one day to meet up with friends to celebrate New Year’s.  Only three days to go and he was looking forward to that evening.  In the thirty-six hours to come several attacks would wash over him and the feeling that he was being poisoned by the neighbor’s chimney when the wind blew his way.  It was the beginning of something that would be full of anxiety, fear, sadness, regret, and isolation.  In the meantime, getting into that fog had its blinders attached to prevent too much sensory input from stressing him out.  That was failing him as well but was well in good use until the New Year’s celebrations.

The time arrived and the three of us were well loaded for the night and made our way to city hall to celebrate the New Year.  However, what my friends did not register was the fact that my mind’s emotions and concepts of what was happening were on the edge of collapse.  We were hollering and howling like wolves.  Matt even received a compliment for his powerful howl in the crowd of the celebration.  There wasn’t any in his heart.  It was just another way to get high.  They got as close to the stage as possible and found a bus shelter that they climbed to sit atop.  When finally got up there he left his leg to rest and kicked someone in the face by accident with his heel.  He felt very bad and went back to the celebration with John and his friend.  He may as well have been alone.  It was John’s friend who discovered that John had puked in the thermos canteen full of beer and just a smell Matt had enough for the night he stuck to smoking pot and cigarettes.  The evening was a blast as he can remember Sheryl Crow performed that evening. 

The next thing anyone knew we were at 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!!!!!  Then we were on the subway riding our way home to Coxwell station and then a walk north to where I now lived.  It seemed to have been whisked from me.  The celebration that is.  The happiness that the season brought to everyone.  That did not exist for me not like I saw in others.  It wasn’t long after the New Year was three days behind us and I was at a friend’s home enjoying some quality time but the break in my reality was very near.  She performed for me Tracy did, all the characters from Winnie the Pooh.  (I was Laughing My Ass Off.  I just had to capitalize that remark.)  She was a friend from George Brown College Matt was second year at the time.  Tracy knew there was something very wrong with him but there was nothing she could do but laughter lightened his spirits.

It happened one day he had been having problems like he was about to jump out of his skin.  Matt got ready to go to the hospital as what he was suffering made him feel like he would lose touch with all of reality.  Afraid he would harm himself or others.  She never let that go past him.  So, the shaking began again.  Matt was about to just go lay down the internal was vibrating.  He got up put on his winter gear and headed out. 

He loved the outdoors and so did she.  They seem to be both at the same time taking a deep breath.  They felt so good and the cold air seemed to help with the internal crawling of maggots against his chest cavity.  Matt felt so good that he decided not to turn to the hospital but to go do some grocery shopping first.  He had this smile on his face and she did not like where he was heading.

She shook him from the inside and hard this time scratching her nails against his rib cage which to him felt like maggots crawling and shaking vibrating he turned and went to emerge feeling completely lost and beaten.  He just went to the intake nurse and when she asked, he answered “I feel like I’m going to lose control of my mind.”

She took a good look and began the general intake and it wasn’t long that he was in an examining room where the primary physician talked to him and then recommended a crisis worker which Matt readily agreed to see.

It was a few days later on chlorpromazine sleeping on the couch in a hospital gown that his landlord’s wife came to visit.  It’s funny that Matt remembered this years later she had been there because her breasts were hurting from breastfeeding.  Her husband said there was nothing wrong with breastfeeding but the doctor said to her you are done breastfeeding you are not producing any milk.  We found this amusing because it was just funny.  She was a nice person she also was worried because I hadn’t been home in a few days it was more but this is how we remember.  So, she decided that since she was there, she would check and see if I was there.  She found me and we visited.  She felt better because she knew I was being taken care of her husband couldn’t care less.  They were born-again Christians and I think she was only because she loved Him.  Matt didn’t think that was going to last. 

He sat and watched her leave and it seemed that as she moved away from him time seemed to crawl past him and the next thing, he knew he was watching blindly the program on television in the smoking room.  He thought about how all this was happening and why was he so scared that he was being poisoned.  It’s funny that at 27 years of age, he fell from the average grace to the mentally afflicted.  He had this feeling of a snake sliding out of his mouth and the shivers go through him like nails on a chalkboard.  The internal disgust along with her hurt anger shook him into submission and to bed curled wanted unconsciousness.  He wrote a little poetry when in hospital; well, she made him. 

A few weeks go by and an outing with accompaniment is accessed and tried but the world got so big it didn’t last long.  Matt felt like the world was going to swallow him up. 

A few weeks later Matt’s mom showed up as he had made a call and the worry, she had for her son was a mother’s love.  The call had been made on one of Matt’s weekend passes after he had gotten acclimatized to being out on his own.  They had an appointment with the doctor and the one question that was posed to her was do you notice any changes in your son she denied anything was wrong.  Was that an indicator that there was so much silence about things in the home?  You can’t know about the rape of a seven-year-old and deny it can you?  Brothers were nowhere to be found.  Dad threatened the perpetrator in my presence.  Where were all the teachers when I was in that dark hole in the wall?  Why did the teacher make it a topic of discussion when she found out?  I denied it.  I denied it.  It didn’t happen to me.