Dear Vincent, Everyone is one with the birds except for me.

Dear Vincent,

Everyone is one with the birds except for me.

Inside

my

recycling box

remnants of coconut cream

rot along the ridges

of the can.

I have a saying that goes, “When I ask for mercy, mercy comes.”

And

if mercy isn’t here yet,

then,

you just have to keep waiting.

Mercy can be a poem,

a sandwich plus a nap,

or,

a translation contract about a sexologist

or annual furnace maintenance,

both reasonably effective at

alleviating the guilt of

not being much of a human, and

not writing something magnificent about

dying in a wishing well,

or squirrels,

or attachment trauma,

or some other redeeming topic.

Or

mercy can be a row of toddlers flailing across the sidewalk in their multi-coloured marshmallow snowsuits as they all barely grasp the same leash.

Or the flat vibrant faces of real estate agents on cardboard, their teeth impossibly long and impossibly white,

and their hair impossibly large.

Or when one of those weird blow up snowman or Santa lawn ornaments deflates and lies dead across the snow.

Or,

if mercy isn’t here yet,

then,

you just have to keep waiting.

Love, Erica.

Send your letters to Vincent and/or Erica to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

What is the missing piece that stops you from real life?


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Deep Unyielding Depression, Part One
Dear Vincent, This is what the Dead Inside Man says about killing yourself
Professional, Depressed

Dear Vincent, Some things we might just have to deal with for the rest of our lives.

Dear Vincent,

Some things we just might have to deal with for the rest of our lives.

It’s possible I will always be

A relatively terrible cook

Someone who struggles with lunch choices, livelihood, self-confidence,

And the phrase, “This is supposed to be fun.”

And maybe I will forever long for how safe I felt when I was with my first true love, the Boatman.

When I was four years old, I remember crying so hard that I gave myself a headache. The reason for the meltdown had something to do with tobogganing. Only one of my parents was coming and it wasn’t the one I wanted.

“Why does your head hurt?” my sister had asked that evening.

“I was screaming,” I replied, and in that statement, I had the distinct realization that such displays of emotion were not going to be permitted for my entire life. Crying until your head hurt was moderately acceptable when you were four, but eventually you had to grow out of it. And yet, despite my young wisdom, the big tears followed me to grade one, grade eight, first-year university, the first day of many jobs, walking home from therapy, and remembering the wrong memory some moment between two and four o’clock in the morning.  

Maybe you have chronic pain, maybe you struggle with depression, or disordered eating. Some of these things you may have to deal with for the rest of your life.

When I heard this, I was cleaning my friend’s shower. The speaker was Michael Stone and he is now dead. Last summer, he took fentanyl by accident. Once a week for almost six years, I listened to Michael Stone’s podcast about yoga and meditation and how to wake up to your life. All the questions were so enormous and yet the answers were so simple. Intimacy, relationship, taking care of things. Laundry, your body, the cashier at the grocery store. You could become intimate with anything. Even a terrible mood.

Michael Stone

I was in a terrible mood as I cleaned my friend’s shower and considered all the things I’d need to deal with for the rest of my life. My friend and I had met at my roommate’s party. He’d brought his girlfriend who sat on the couch across from us as I blabbered on and on about transcending the side effects of Prozac, and victoriously humping my pink and purple polka dot duvet two times a day all before 9 a.m. When it got close to my bed time, I invited my friend to join me as I flossed. As fate would have it, his relationship was sexless and open, and because I’d so elaborately described my masturbation practice, my friend thought that flossing meant precursors to humping his thigh and/or other body parts.

Months later, although we’d transcended the flossing misunderstanding, I was pissed off because I’d explicitly told my friend that I no longer cleaned with toxic products that dried out my face and inhaled poison. But instead of buying vinegar, my friend had gone to the Dollar Store and spent fifty dollars on Clorox, Vim, and similar items whose odours evoked hospitals and cancer.

One more time, Mood Sports. Some things in life, we will not and do not transcend.

And yet, knowing this is not necessarily bad news.

In fact, no more fighting could be a fucking relief.

This is just me

And I suck at lunch,

Professional boundaries,

Closing cupboard doors,

Lighting matches,

Staying up past 9:30 P.M.

And punctuating bulleted lists.

But I’m really good at

Morning Routines,

Folding laundry,

Walking obscenely long distances,

Mopping, and cleaning up other people’s messes

Taking out the recycling,

Buying toilet paper before it runs out

And

I’m the best pen pal you’ve ever had.

January 1, 2018
(written on the wall in smelly markers)
My goals in life are Creativity
Service
deep love for all of my cells
Buy a new roll of masking tape
A cleared and clear and generous heart
What is a cervical orgasm

Using Clorox only once will not give you cancer.

Some things, we might just have to deal with for the rest of our lives. On Wednesday, the temperature goes up to minus 9, and I get to see you and I can’t wait. Happy New Year, Vincent.

Love, Erica.

Send your letters to me and/or Vincent to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

Happy New Year
Love, Erica


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Dear Vincent, This letter is about saving a begonia. Love, Erica.
What does it mean to be home.
Mourning, Wailing, Yearning, Wake up

Dear Vincent, This is what the Dead Inside Man says about killing yourself.

Dear Vincent,

This is what the Dead Inside Man says about killing yourself. Last fall, along with the Married Man, the Dead Inside Man was one of my texting boyfriends, following five to seven solid fucks and leg humps in Toronto. The Dead Inside Man has been seeing the same therapist one to two times per week for 31 and a half years. One rainy day, I sent him a blubbering text as I blubbered in my red rain coat after a session with you last October or November of 2016. It didn’t like the system I’d come up with for dealing with my organism and with me life could ever be made viable. And whatever it would take to reprogram the system, I certainly did not have. Also I’d awoken that day between three and four o’clock in the morning. For whatever reason.

This is what the Dead Inside Man texted back:

As someone who has stood on a bridge, contemplating suicide more times than I can count, I keep coming to the same conclusion: just keep going a bit longer because why not.

T’es important. Suicide n’est pas une option. That’s what it says on a poster along the hallway that leads to your windowless office. You are important. Suicide is not an option.

“I’m sorry, but it is an option.” That’s what you, Vincent, said on Thursday, January 4, 2015, two years after my ex-ex boyfriend Simon threw himself off his 23-story apartment building and died in a parking lot between Coloniale and de Buillion street, just north of Sherbrooke. “But it leaves a fucking mess for whoever gets left behind.” Blood on the pavement and an excruciating silence. Everyone always says something about this mess, but they forget that the mess is never just one person’s fault.

Dead Inside Man:

You can do whatever you want with your life.

You owe no one anything.

If you want to travel the world you can. If you want to live on the street you can.

If you want to commit suicide, you can.

But not all of it is easy.

The day that you admitted that suicide was an option, I knew that I could trust you. Last Saturday evening, I went to a meditation class and as I sat in the circle, it occurred to me that almost absolutely the teacher to my left had thought about killing themself. Who meditates without thinking about this? The only solution is to pretend that you’re too busy. Build your plastic empire, build your plastic house. Build your plastic house which soon enough will float away to the massive plastic continent somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where maybe some business savvy rich guy will try to build a condo development.

Dead Inside Man:

Getting better is hard.

Really hard sometimes.

And if you want to give up in a year or two years or five you can.

But it's worth trying to get better. The option is always there to quit.

Life is changing because now when I weep somewhat delicately at the stand-up corner of a popular café and I see the woman behind me has a full box of Kleenex and I ask if I can have one, she says yes and she does not bat an eye. In the new world, strangers offer Kleenex for your grief and they do not bat an eye. The people who weep somewhat delicately at cafes for no apparent reason are not quite aliens. Not anymore.

Dead Inside Man: Think of it like this: you're in a crowded theatre. You start to panic that you're trapped. You look to the exit and just knowing it's there fills you with reassurance.

Doesn't mean you're going to use it. Just means you like to know there's an escape.

Don't kill yourself. But don't beat yourself up for having suicidal thoughts."

For Simon just the exit sign wasn’t quite enough. We can be angry at him for leaving us with the image of him crashing down on the pavement. But the mess was not only his fault. Though he could have had one more good day, or even ten more mediocre to alright years, probably it wouldn’t have been enough. I respect his choice.

Stored on my phone, I keep screenshots of the Dead Inside Man’s texts.

Don’t kill yourself. But don’t beat yourself up for having suicidal thoughts.

In the new world, everyone knows all the options. And they bring Kleenex.

“Do you need one more before I leave?” asks the stranger as she put on her coat.

“Oh, I’m okay. Thank you,” I say. After she leaves, I weep delicately one last time, and then I trudge out. I remain in the income bracket of people who use toilet paper for Kleenex. But life is always changing. I know all my options and I love you. Outside the world looks so sunny and fresh. It is unimaginably cold, and, you’d think that the air would be so clean, but really it is not clean at all. No, in fact it is not clean at all.

I know all my options and I love you.

Erica.  

Send your letters to Vincent to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

Happy Face with Onesie.


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Guillaume, Part Two
Dear Vincent, It seems no matter who I'm having sex with, I ugly cry every other time.
Professional, Depressed
The Magical Rock Vagina Cleanse

Dear Vincent, Three things that happened in my thirties were vertigo, and plumber's butt, and the voice that comes with a hand that's ready to slap.

Dear Vincent,

Three things that happened in my thirties were vertigo, and plumber’s butt, and the voice that comes with a hand that’s ready to slap. On Friday, October 6, I wrote a terrible poem about a squirrel, then opted to pop 2 mg of Abilify, and 10 mg of Celexa. I waited until after the full moon but I could not wait until after Tuesday, October 10 when Jupiter is supposed to move into Scorpio, or the other way around, or however that works. I could not wait any longer.

Ten days later, there are turmeric stains all over the fridge. I’ve decided that having an orgasm is more important than pharmaceutical sanity and/or medicated forgiveness. This is to say, I canned the drugs and this might go as terribly as the Squirrel Poem, “Dear Squirrel, I will not steal your peach.”

Dear Squirrel, I will not steal your peach

Sunday morning, on the branches of the tree outside my window I saw two squirrels, fatter than ever, humping and pawing and nipping at each other. It was the first time I’d ever seen squirrels engaging in anything that resembled fornicating slash oral sex slash picking crumbs or bugs out of one another’s fur. In India, the monkeys were fucking all the time, all over the place and very fast.


Where have all the squirrels been fucking all this time?

On Wednesday, October 4, 2017, I crouched at the end of the ABB to FIE shelves of the Mordecai Richler library next to my Abilify and Celexa, and a cardboard tube I’d found in someone’s garbage and a pulp novel by Laurence Brock called Borderline.


I texted my friend Benjamin Tracy a photo of the Abilify, and the Celexa, and the cardboard tube I’d found in someone’s garbage, and the pulp novel by Laurence Brock called Borderline, plus my fungussed toenailed foot, shod in a Birkenstock.

Abilify + Celexa + Garbage Tube + Scorching Pulp Novel + Fungussed Foot in Birkenstock

“Do you want some Abilify?” I wrote to Benjamin Tracy.

To my right were the remainder of the works of Laurence Brock, the novels, “Getting off,” and “Hit Me,” adding to “Borderline” which I think might have been written before they invented personality disorders.

Benjamin Tracy knows a lot about therapy. And drugs. In May of 2009, I went to Toronto to visit him on a sex trip. Once Benjamin Tracy declared that in return for sterilization, the government should offer incompetent people $35 plus a free doughnut of their choice.  Any kind of doughnut you want. Just please never ever have kids.

Benjamin Tracy recommended I keep the Abilify for myself.

I told him that for me zero orgasm and obesity equal dealbreakers when it comes to the drugs.

Benjamin Tracy said that neither of these things are as bad as crazy,

“Depends on the crazy,” I said.

“You’re contemplating long-term disability,” he said. Then, “Don’t be pessimistic”

I feel very pessimistic, but I’m hanging on by an orgasm and a recipe for golden milk.

Dear Vincent, Have you ever tried golden milk?

Dear Vincent, Have you seen the squirrels fucking?

Dear Vincent, How are you crazy?

As for me, I really struggle to leave a feeling unexpressed and without an audience. And I realize this is amazingly self-involved, borderline narcissistic, highly strenuous, masturbatory, inconvenient, inefficient, and, unlucrative. So too agrees the voice with the hand.

I would not accept a doughnut to restrict access to this womb. Doughnuts are notoriously difficult to digest. Also, I tend to boycott surgery. Also, this womb is already inaccessible. Also, my prize of choice would be an extremely high-quality microfiber cloth, or seven.

My mother has given me six reasonably good quality micro fiber cloths. You might call them fuchsia, or else magenta. When they get wet, their dye runs onto the walls, leaving bright fuchsia and magenta blobs. These blobs go pretty well with the turmeric stains.

Three things that tend to take over are, turmeric splotches, vinegar smells, and glitter. Plus the voice that comes with the hand that’s ready to slap. Four things.

Tumeric stains plus magenta has to be enough coherence for today. Next time I see you, I will likely have turmeric stains beneath my fingernails. I cherish your professional help.

Love, Erica.

You too can write imaginary emails to Vincent. The project is called "Mondays without Vincent" and the secret email address is: ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. Vincent will be delighted to hear from you. He will write back as soon as he can.

Much love, Erica.

I went to the Slow Dance and was reasonably pleased with my outfit.


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Rideshare, Sterilization and Doughnuts
Dear Vincent, This letter is about saving a begonia.
Dear Vincent, Thank you for responding to my hysterical phone call.