Hello, fellow proles!  

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome. 

Now let us just sprint earnestly towards straight-up business: here’s where I do the obligatory, can’t-help-muhself introduction where I talk about how I used to write blogs, how I’ve started a brand–new blog, what this blog’s purpose is, and of most self-aggrandizing importance, who I am and why I write.  Ready?  Like to hear it? Here it goes…

Like many people who had the opportunity to be very much alive (and a young adult) during the rather-unusual-but-normal-and-innocent-in-retrospect 00s, I became a firm believer in Blogger, and had at least two active blogs going at once, possibly even three.  I wish I could tell you their names—I think one was called A Harridan’s Tale—but I somehow weaved my way through the cyber warren of Google and managed to get them permanently deleted off the internet about ten years ago.   I have no idea how I pulled this off, but it involved tenacity, research, and embarrassment.  I don’t think you can do that anymore, can you?  Can you get anything pulled off the internet by speaking to the manager?

At the time, which was twenty years ago (choke), I had adopted the stage name / nom de plume / alter ego of Neuron Rush.  I was going to be a rock god, a famous writer, and an inadvertent headcase.  You will likely never guess which of those three avatars achieved success during my twenties, and then did a comeback tour in my forties.  

(You can be certain that I’ll dedicate some of my scribblings on here to my old identity Neuron, because when I think about it now, the notion of adopting an entirely different persona–in fact, not just leaving it at a name, but carefully fleshing out aesthetics, career arcs, and origin stories–is really quite remarkable, and needs to become a trend or a meme or a Tik Tak or whatever it is the kidz are doing)  

Now, one thing I do regret is not backing up all the many, many blog posts that I painstakingly composed over the span of a few colourful years, neither online nor even burned onto a CD.  There was some decent writing on there, if I recall; being young and fresh out of university with an appalling degree in English, all I did was write.  I was actually very self-confident, and I mostly didn’t care what anyone thought, and I rarely censored, edited, or criticized my output.  In fact, I thought it was great.  What a mindset to have!  Can we bottle up that sort of unwavering self-belief?  Uncork it when need be, and inhale a massive lungful during our most despondent and self-loathing of times?

At any rate, I just deleted everything, and I mean everything on those blogs, not even considering that I should preserve them for posterity, or for a meander down Memory Lane when the Orwellian landscape we currently live in gets to be too much (spoiler alert: it does).  I doubt I could ever recapture the sort of mental acuity and creativity that I possessed back then, and it would be quite nice to revisit, but alas, here we are…in our forties and wondering more often than not how it all went completely pear-shaped.  

*   *   *   *   *

Oh. So I’m Nadz Vera, as I’m sometimes known among those close to me.  I’m in my forties, which I mentioned a few times above somewhere, and I’m in the cuckolded country of Canada.  Things could be worse here, I suppose, but they could certainly be a whole lot better.  For one, there is an enormous housing crisis straight across the board.  If you actually, miraculously manage to find housing—in the case of many, this means a rental unit—you’ll be paying howlingly unreasonable rates that don’t come close to being justified.  Now, I’m nowhere close to being a lucky woman, but I absolutely got lucky (i.e., timing, which is what often comprises luck) with my situation: a cozy one-bedroom flat in a lovely, verdant part of otherwise-ridiculous downtown Vancouver, where I happened to move many years ago when rent was decent and affordable.  Rental increases were reduced during the halcyon John Horgan years, and frozen during the confounding COVID years.  I’m now essentially grandfathered into my place, and the typical rent for a 60-year old, bare-bones little pad such as my own is now steadily inching towards the $3000/month range.

 I don’t necessarily want to stay there, but when I say there is nowhere to go, I mean it.  

When I say I am paying cheaper rent than I would if I moved into a dodgy basement suite in Abbotsford or North Surrey, I mean that, too.  

When I say that nearly every major or minor city in the country–along with several medium-sized towns–has very little in the way of housing, and whatever happens to exist is exorbitant and in high demand, well, I really mean it.   There is just nowhere to go.  

While I’m vouching for my own emphatic nature here, I could also add that wages in British Columbia, particularly in Vancouver, are shamefully and infamously rotten, meaning that we feel the cost of living in our organs, our veins, our, uh, Neurons (RIP, girl), our central nervous systems.  Nothing is affordable.  Nothing.  Not groceries, produce, shower gel, a pair of socks, gasoline, extensions cords, ball-point pens, pet food, or even second-hand clothes.  Being rich is the only way to survive in Vancouver without constant struggle and frustration, unless you’ve spent your entire adult life figuring out how to successfully get by on very little money. I most definitely have, which is why I could actually make a million bucks go a very, very long way here.  It’s really why a great number of people in Terminal City are moody, grumpy, unfriendly, distant, sour-faced, resigned, and quite often, either tottering on the brink of or bluntly face-planting into mental illness and / or substance dependency.  

But enough about life in Canada, AKA the passive-aggressive capital of planet Earth.  I’ll likely be writing plenty about this country (or, I guess, British Columbia, since Canada is enormous and really does seem to be a collection of republics as opposed to a unified nation).  Back to some obligatory introductions!  

While I will reveal more details about myself with each post, I’ll mention straightaway that I am in recovery: from alcohol, from a depressingly toxic relationship, and from teaching ESL.  Make no mistake, my new friends, most of us are in recovery from something.  Being in recovery doesn’t necessarily have to be from debilitating addiction; it can be anything that negatively consumed your life, and which you found extremely difficult to extract yourself from despite several attempts.  However, once you actually hear that click, and your mind floods with fresh light and insight, and change begins to really, truly take root, that’s when you must wrap your arms and legs around that momentum and never let up, no matter how painful or bumpy the ride, although bumpy sounds like the better option here.  That’s right: hump that bumpy momentum and hope that it humps you right back.  

Momentum is the mot de l’année for me.  It will come up again and again in this blog.

* * * * *

Recovery from alcohol is really something.  I will save the deep dive for subsequent posts, but I will say that I’ve never fought this hard (and lost many, many times) against something so very sinister, dangerous, seductive, and life-ruining, and yet it’s just a…thing.  I’ve met plenty of people with those particular characteristics, but never a dumb, insentient, innocuous-looking liquid sitting in a bottle.  Just a thing, a silent fluid, yet what we choose to do with that thing can literally mean life or death.  

After you’ve battled active alcohol addiction—tenuous but hopeful sobriety, proudly counting clean days, startlingly easy and shameful relapse, falling into the hole for days / weeks / months, nightmarish horror-movie withdrawal that needs medical treatment, back to the hopeful sobriety, rinse and repeat this cycle a billion times–it’s difficult to believe that booze is legal, readily available, and sometimes even encouraged.  It’s the one addictive, pernicious drug where, when you tell people you don’t drink, you are frequently asked to give a reason to the inquiring mind in front of you.  But

“I don’t do heroin / fentanyl / meth / crack / bath salts / opioids / cocaine / molly /acid.”

“Why not?”

…is an exchange you will probably never have.  And if you do, you might want to take a harder look at the company you’re keeping.  

It’s also the one addictive, pernicious drug (well, alongside benzodiazepines such as Valium, Xanax, Ativan, Clonazepam, etc.) where, when you’re hooked strong and long enough, you can actually die going through withdrawal without medical supervision and the right pharmaceuticals.  That’s right, you can seizure and potentially croak.  Not all people with a history of seizures will permanently pop their clogs, but many, many do.  Also, around 5% of extremely heavy drinkers go through DTs (delirium tremens) and it’s not often you’ll make it out alive through those, too.  

I’ve repeated these dire facts to countless people with no knowledge of how truly dangerous and fatal alcohol detox can be, and they had absolutely no idea. “Not even withdrawing from heroin?”  No, not even withdrawing from oxycontin.  You’ll get brutally dopesick for a few days if you kick it cold turkey—sweating barrels, one minute burning hot and the next minute ice cold, moaning, screaming, feeling close to death, fluish, feverish, shitting, puking, body jerking, the literal “kicking” of the legs hence the slang terminology for smack withdrawal, no sleep for three days or so—but you generally will not die.  

Going cold-turkey from alcohol can kill you.

I’ll write a whole lot more about my journey with ethanol, as I said, but those are just a few bricks to lay down the foundation of my alcoholic history, indulgence, slavery, war, and then eventual recovery from the grain, the grape, and the spud.  I will conclude for now, though, by saying: man, that stuff is evil.  You really don’t need it.  You’re not a wine mommy.  It’s not wine o’clock or Miller Time or cocktail hour or pre-gaming morning.  It’s not sexy, it’s not cute, it’s the opposite of cool, it is delusional false confidence, being a drunk is not romantic or counterculture, being hungover is not a badge of honour, and how much you guzzled last night is nothing to brag about.  It’s a horrible, stupid-making, wildly addictive toxin, and anyone is capable of becoming an alcoholic.  Anyone.  You might as well saunter on down to the Chevron station, pick up a pump, shove it down your throat, and start gulping down the petrol.  It’s literally the same thing. 

* * * * *

Now, speaking of toxicity, there’s the recovery from my last relationship.  It took me almost twelve months, but I’ve finally reached the ultimate peak, the goal, the pinnacle of radical acceptance and indifference.  At least, I am pretty sure I have.  I don’t want to write or talk about it, truth be told.  It’s over.  It’s nobody’s business.  So far, though, he seems to have nothing but contempt and merciless judgment for me, based on his tireless reams of correspondence (yes, he has been blocked for a while, but he finds a way), and any day now I expect his “graphic memoir,” as he calls it, to be released to some sector of the public as a bizarre form of catharsis or straight-record-setting on his end.  I just know it’s going to paint himself as the tender-hearted, romantic, innocent, blameless victim of a raging, crazy, abusive, vodka-gulping maniacal freak who made his life hell–despite him wanting to marry me and whisk me away overseas, mind you–and, gee whiz, really, why does he keep attracting these women who wickedly screw him over?!  Poor him!!  Seems to be a totally unfortunate series of nasty coincidences!  He’s just such a nice guy!  

…okay, yes. I am being petty here, mostly because I’m thinking about it in a way that I haven’t in a while.  I don’t have years of healing behind me quite yet, so ruminating on this is resurrecting not-so-great emotions and resentments, which isn’t doing him or me any favours, even though I really have nothing to do with him anymore.  Generally, there was nothing unusual about our split.   All of this blather is merely a semi-fresh post-breakup scenario and hetero binary code as old as intercourse itself: he’s an asshole, and she’s a crazy bitch.  It’s just that it was supposed to work, and it didn’t.  And when you get to be the age that I am–and he’s quite a bit older–these things hit quite a bit more severely.  You’re supposed to find your Person To Settle Down With, and when it doesn’t bear fruit, well, there you are now, aren’t you? Past midlife and wondering what the actual fuck to do now.  

I probably won’t write about this Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride of a relationship, so we’ll leave it here for now.  In fact, we’ll just leave it at the sobering admission that I spent most of 2023 recovering from a romantic relationship that only lasted about eight months.  I knew him for nearly three decades, but the “love & sex” era was less than one year. The origin story of that love is partly strange, partly neat, and partly preposterous. 

Okay, yes, fine, then. I’ll talk about that in the future, and I will do it with no disrespect.  The guy did mean a lot to me. Generally and genuinely, I wish him well, and I wish myself well, but I mostly wish it hadn’t happened at all.  

* * * * *

And last but most certainly not least—and possibly the worst of the three—is recovery from being an ESL teacher.  My God, where can I start with this one? By George, I know! I just remembered that I started and abandoned yet another blog about eight years ago, when I pulled a real take-this-job-and-shove-it move from the industry. Let’s rummage around in my first post…ah, yes. Here’s but one small, and I mean miniscule fragment from the white-hot vitriol I posted there. You can honestly smell the embers all these years later:

The reality is that ESL teachers, despite requiring an expensive undergraduate degree and a training course, are nothing more than employees of the customer-service industry.  We are representatives of the richer-than-beyond-my-comprehension owners, the faces of the company, making customers happy and getting sacked at the loss of any customers who just aren’t pleased enough with the service being provided.  There is very little educating going on in the classroom, really, apart from the grammar lessons that are token indications of some kind of learning taking place–we are there to make our international customers happy through entertaining, joking, game-playing, and behaving like an overstimulated puppy at all times.  Attending an ESL school is an experience for them rather than a necessity.  The only thing differentiating this occupation from a server or clerk is the fact that we do not make tips, and we do not (not to my knowledge, anyway) have to wear polo shirts with the company logo emblazoned on the breast.  I would venture to guess that a Starbucks barista makes at least as much as an ESL teacher, perhaps well beyond, and from what I hear about Starbucks, medical / dental benefits packages and opportunities for career advancement are not unheard of.

Right. So we’ll get to that eventually. But for now, I think I’m going to wrap it up and make it look like I’m doing some actual Work at work. And you know how you do that? I’ll leave you with a pro-tip if you’re a desk worker like I am: have an open file folder on your lap full of documents (doesn’t matter what, just…documents), clench a pen between your teeth, and squint at the screen as though you’re both confounded by and trying to sort out a very intricate task. Click the mouse around a little bit, too, as though you’re highlighting or scrolling or trying to get to the bottom of whatever it is has your full concentration. Your boss will glance at you and see that you are engrossed in Work, and leave you mostly alone to keep Working.

Until next time, nice to meet you. C’est moi. And no, I’m not bilingual. I’m just Canadian.

(Reach me at nadya@nadzvera.com)