Carter's Time In The Rain

Under the fortunately placed canopy of the Beacher Cafe, young Carter was trapped by thunderous rainfall with somewhere important to be for the fourth significant time in his young life.

The first such time was coincidentally in the same area of town, back several years earlier when Carter was a teenager. He had agreed to meet a girl he was sweet for on a date at a coffee shop near her house in that same neighbourhood, next to the old Fox Theatre. But the intense rain rinsed that plan away quickly. Protecting himself from the downpour in a streetcar shelter, Carter borrowed a cell-phone from an impatient transit passenger and called his potential squeeze, informing her of the situation. Instead of irritation, which younger Carter expected, she was extremely impressed by his 'courage' to even adventure to her part of town at all. Her parents were away for the night and so she invited Carter over to her house as a substitute for their failed date. It was perhaps the most lucid and enjoyable nights of younger Carter's life, as he and his 'potential squeeze' at the time became fast friends and planted a friendship the older Carter often kissed the stars for.

His second significant moment of being trapped by rainfall was not as happily memorable for Carter. He was now a few years removed from high school and eager for new opportunities. After two months of hard work he'd managed to clinch an interview at a high end marketing company on Bay Street. It was a lucrative position, though challenging, but one that would allow him to move away from his parents home and out on his own within a month or two. He spent three days prepping himself for any potential questions, didn't drink anything remotely smelly for a week and got a solid nights sleep so to wake up three hours before he'd have to leave.
And so he did, fixing himself a quick dirty breakfast of fried eggs and leftover french fries. He walked out the door with a grin stronger than Heath Ledger's Joker (a character he would later sympathize facial expressions with). The rainfall began instantly once he left his parent's house on Bayview. The streets quickly flooded, buses stopped running, and poor young Carter was left to stand under a crappy bus shelter (which was crappy enough to leak drops of water onto his head) while the minutes of his dream job ticked before him in a flash, and then disappeared. Numbers and incompetent bureaucracy... poor Carter fell into a spell (fueled by particular intoxicants) for a period that shattered his belief in positive outcomes happening to him.

The third significant moment was many years later. Carter had rented a basement spot in East York (kinda Cosburn and Linsmore) and was eager to meet a lady he was sweet on at a pizzeria. He walked a solid hour west to get there, paranoid that transit would let him down again, only for a heavy rain to assault him once he locked his front door. He attempted to trek through it for several minutes but it was too much, so he took shelter under a gazebo in a parkette near Danforth and Pape. There was an older gentleman in tattered clothing there as well.

'This is quite a downpour! Don't see too many like this anymore...'

'Yep, that's for sure...' Carter replied, scrolling through his device to find an album to play.

'Yep yep... a real storm it is... you by chance grow up in the city, my boy?'

'What? Um, yeah. I did. Sure.'

'City boy! Yep yep. Grew up in Richmond Hill myself, moved here at sixteen to make it big! Yep yep.'

'And how's that working out for you?' Carter asked, casually but with cruel sarcasm.

'Sometimes life doesn't happen the way you expect... it's just a bend in the story, is all.'

The man stepped out from the shelter of the gazebo and into the heavy downpour. Realizing his rudeness, Carter called out to the man to come back but it was too late, he had disappeared into the haze of the storm.

Now, it was nearly two years later and Carter was once again trapped by rainfall, with somewhere important to be and someone important to see. But this time, he didn't feel any agonizing impatience. This time, he would let the rain tell the story.

The Dip In The Road

There was a time of night he would always go out for a walk, a specific hour for his specific path, with a specific jacket to warm him from the imprecise breezes. Often these walks would last no longer than ten minutes, no less than five. There was never any real destination, he would simply step out in his specific jacket, walk up his street until he reached a dip in the road and hastily turn back. He never considered venturing beyond this dip, instead happy to remain a creature of eccentric habit.

One evening he had returned from one of his repetitive strolls and discovered a hole in his specific jacket. It was the pocket that normally contained his watch, and sure enough it had surely fallen out at some point. Instead of heading back out again to retrieve it, he was reluctant to disrupt his specific routine. He would wait until the next evening to search for it, despite the relative certainty that the watch would then be gone by then. 

The next evening, at the specific hour wearing his specific jacket, he set out on his stroll. He came upon the dip in the road after the usual allotment of time and a few metres ahead was something shiny by the curb of the road: his watch. Forgetting his habits, he went forward for the watch, stepping into a section of the street he'd never tread upon before. He picked up the watch and noticed both the hands were rotating erratically. Trying to wind it back did nothing, so he put it in the pocket of his specific jacket and turned back for his home. The watch fell through the hole in the jacket and landed back on the curb of the street. He picked it up again, saw the hands were still erratic, and put the watch back into the same pocket, only for it to fall through and land on the curb again. 

The watch never stayed in the jacket, the hour never changed, and he never left the dip in the road. He repeated this exercise of disarray for eternity, having broken one of his precious habits yet unable to break the other.

2016

Hey 2016... I feel like I speak for almost everyone when I say... go fuck yourself on the shit train you fucking rode in on.

Now that I got that out of the way.... how was 2016 you ask? Well...

Alongside the many tragic musical deaths 2016 brought us (I listened to nothing but Bowie for a month, honestly), 2016 was soul-crushing for me in multiple other ways. I began the year unemployed, but with two terrific people close to me whom I could always count upon to be there for me in times of despair or devastating loneliness. Few questions asked.

My financial misfortunes took an astonishing turn for the worse in 2016. My crippling OSAP debt (Merry fucking Christmas to you too) intensified, Toronto Hydro threatened me multiple times with disconnecting my service (which in the winter months is apparently illegal, Merry fucking Christmas thanks) and I still owe the University of Toronto thousands of dollars in unpaid tuition fees because again, OSAP loves me. They even stole hundreds of dollars from my bank account and would have kept doing so if I hadn't ordered my bank to stop them.

But I've been in this shitty situation for a while. 2016 began and I was wading in it. But 2016 is a truly piece of shit year not just because of my unsolvable debt problems, but because it was a year when everything I'd attempt to rise above the shin-deep sewer of feces I was in, I'd end up with shit on my face every. Single. Time. I was overweight in February (about 210 pounds) because I was sad, unemployed and bored. The weather got better and I knew my baseball season was gonna start soon, so I worked out hard to get myself in better shape. I ate better, I went for jogs by the beach, I did 50ish pushups a day, all because I didn't want to let my team down. I was coming off back-too-back off seasons (maybe because my head wasn't in the right place, who knows) and I wanted this season to be my comeback. Where I showed everyone this is who I am, when I work hard I'm unstoppable. I lost 20 pounds in a month and a half (which shows how shitty my diet was then) just in time for the season to start.

And I fucking sucked.

All the hard work, all the effort to get myself back in decent athletic shape, was pointless. I had the worst season of my life, and one of the worst in league history. I had one hit in twenty at-bats. Which in baseball terms... is 'find something else to do' level. My defense was excellent (as usual), I worked intelligent at-bats and drew a ton of walks (as usual again) and frankly, I hit the ball hard when I was up there. You don't go 1-20 in a season, yet only strike out twice without a severe slash of dreadful luck. And during one of those two strikeouts, I was having a severe panic attack and chased a pitch 2 feet off the plate. 2016 is the year the concept of luck died.

But as discouraging as the sport I love treated me (I was honestly ready to quit and never come back... sorry boys) losing those two people in 2016, whom I held so close, was harder. One was a tight friend, someone I could go to in any moment of crisis... and his smart perspective would always lift me up. I'd think something was the end of the world, we'd chill together, and everything wasn't so dire or tragic. Just like that. Our friendship felt apart suddenly and instantly in a single night, in perhaps the stupidest way imaginable. I still wonder how these events combined to create this moment in time. But that's 2016.

The other close relationship I lost was much, much deeper. I don't want to drag up personal details here, but all I wanna say is that loneliness stabs just a little bit deeper since we stopped speaking to each other. There's something missing in every moment that I can't share with her... guess I just have to adjust to that feeling. 

On this upcoming Sunday, 2016 is over. I hope you join me in a toast, casting aside the shittiest fucking year maybe that ever was. Did you know Donald Trump was elected President of the United fucking States? Yeah, 2016.

But I want to be optimistic. I have to be optimistic. It's a defect in my nature, perhaps. I can do better than this, I can be better. We can do better, my friends, we can be better.

Let's stand up for one another, especially now. Peace and love.