Several needles and a Vaudeville hook

Making peace with a health crisis; seeking enlightenment in Montréal.

It was on the banks of Lac Beauvert, barely a year ago, that I celebrated my 30th birthday. Dinner beneath the Rocky Mountains, which I wrongly believed to be the evening’s climax, preceded a surprise party with cake and decorations and gifts and music and the best colleagues I know, even those I am sure disliked me.

I became characteristically melodramatic. No one demanded a speech, but that did not stop me from reciting Sonnet 29 for the packed cabin to hear. Celebrating the restorative love of others—less the jealousy of another man—was the only appropriate thanks I had to give.

Everyone assured me life does not end at 30. They all said from experience, as I was still the youngest of the group by a fair margin, that my best days were yet to come, that the show, if you like, was only just about to start. We retired in the early morning with reluctance and renewed solidarity. Life was good.

How things change over the course of a year. My friends are steadfast and charming as ever, but I am not as I was.

Nick Carraway’s words, which had taken up temporary residence in my thoughts on that occasion in Jasper, are now never far from mind: “I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade... Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair... And so we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”

30’s promising start has given way to several chronic diagnoses. I knew, even then, I was not quite healthy. Visits to the hospital had become something of a pilgrimage for the nearer half of the last decade, but I refused to take care of myself. I did not follow medical advice nor doctors’ orders. Such decisions bear consequences, as it turns out.

Even now I can rationalize my inaction. I am young; I am invincible; I am well-off; I was once a model of physical fitness, and surely my robust constitution lingers (although those days are far behind me). But denial is a treacherous companion and the truth of my inertia is somewhat different. I am very depressed, very lonely, and frequently unable to perform the most basic routines of normal life; tasks such as cooking, cleaning, returning texts, and, yes, staying in contact with doctors and pharmacists are insurmountable. There is vinegar in me still, but also a worrying share of nights and days where I find myself yearning for the promised moment when all turns to silver glass. It is hardly a shock to find myself where I am in light of the contradictory, wasteful life I’ve led.

It is for this same reason I cannot bother to ask the obvious question: “Why me?” Why me? The gods—capricious, indifferent, immaterial—shrug in reply: “Why not?” Worse than that, as I have said, my case is not the result of randomness. I brought this on myself, at least partially. Through carelessness and self-destruction I taunted Olympus to strike and their aim was true. I ran from this conflict too long and now, like Hector outside the walls of Troy, “Deiphobus” deserted me, and she has given Achilles another spear.

One of my doctors tried to dissuade me of this conclusion. They were wrong, but I understand why they tried. “Think of all the people who speed on the highway,” she said. “It’s dangerous, everyone knows it, but most people do it, and only a couple actually get into serious accidents. You cannot blame yourself.” She apologized for the bad analogy, but I assured her it was a good one.

In fact, the analogy is almost too good—which is precisely why it fails. The metaphorical speed limit for systolic blood pressure is about 130. Mine was, for years, riding high at 200, driving itself to death in a huge car with the windows down and a bottle of whisky in hand. I am the exception to the good doctor’s observation, and I know so. It felt warm, however, to receive words of comfort from a medical professional, a welcome contrast to the recent hospital stays and tests and appointments through which I’ve been ushered as bovine for processing.

All this to say that major life changes await (or have already begun), and only a handful of my own volition. There are many drugs. Some adjustments are well and good for their own sake, such as improving my diet and laying off the drink. Quitting cigarettes has been the easiest transition by far, you may be surprised to learn. Ignoring the stuff is mercifully effortless. I suppose that makes me lucky.

I write all this from Habitat 67 in Montréal, the rush of the St. Lawrence river in my ears, nestled in a cube on a cat-sitting errand for brilliant people who only really know me through mutual friends and because my ex-girlfriend, for a time, also sat their cat. She is the better of us as far as that’s concerned, I have no doubt. The exercise of writing this personal piece—presumably for public consumption—gives me pause because I could write it anywhere. Shouldn’t I be out there enjoying life? Shouldn’t I be frolicking along the cobblestone with the little time I have?

Behind my failing eyes flash beguiling spectacles directed by Sally Rooney, perhaps my favourite modern novelist, with her surrogate Alice, a disillusioned writer who shuts herself away on the Irish coastline after a mental health crisis, as well as the young Frances of Conversations with Friends, who wallows: “Suffering wouldn't make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn't make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful.”

There is far too much in Montréal to do and see than one can expect to experience in just over a week. I learned that lesson last summer when I visited la belle province the first time. Anthony Bourdain’s spirit vibrated in me then, not merely because the first meal I enjoyed during my stay was of Martin Picard’s creation, but because of what Bourdain himself said of the place: “Without Montréal, Canada would be hopeless.”

Hope is in short supply. At best, careful management and discipline will prolong the wait before things get significantly worse.

My 31st birthday will assuredly not resemble the last, but this brief Québécois respite may be exactly what I need before I thrust forward into the uncertain future. The path ahead was always finite—it is for all of us, regardless of what any god-botherer tells you—but the undiscovered country has come into view earlier—though not at all imminent—than expected. Here’s to spending the intervening time in an intelligent and ironic way.