well, it took a month for the finality of the shift to really assert itself, but it's finally sinking in. i am now living in windsor, ten hours from....

...well, from what, exactly? memories, most of them not so good.

i'm an introvert. i suppose not all introverts have strong social problems, but i'm one of the ones that does. in the months leading up to my departure, i was behaving in a way that was unusually social. i've been through multiple brief periods of existing within a social group, but it's definitely not the norm for me. the norm for me has been having one or two close friends and no acquaintances except the friends of those friends, really often even having nobody i could call a friend, and going through periods of weeks or even months without engaging in any kind of social interaction, or even engaging in any kind of actual conversation with anybody except my father. my real friends have usually been books, cds and names that exist only on a computer screen.

i remember one period around '09 or so when my dad and i weren't talking. i was in school at the time. i went in to talk to a prof and was stuttering so hard he asked me if i was

"on drugs...or..."

*brief pause*

"...do you have MS?".

in actuality, i just hadn't spoken a word to anybody in something like three weeks and was having difficulty with my vocal muscles. i'm expecting the stutter to return over the next few months...

i've posted a ton of pictures of things i'm doing in my place, but what's windsor actually like? from the perspective of an outcast by choice, a hermit, windsor is really not a lot different than ottawa. i kind of feel like i'm living off bronson, because the sewers are being replaced on wyandotte. oddly, the next major street running parallel is the italian district - preston. and i'm surrounded by arabic and east asian businesses.

when i need to take the bus somewhere, i take the 2. fancy that.

so, life actually hasn't changed much at all. really, it's the similarities that are more jarring than the differences.

there's a large river a few blocks north, a bike path that runs across it and a city with a different culture on the other side of it. i haven't been over yet.

a lot of the shops are boarded up along a few of the main streets. but, really the only businesses that exist are restaurants, pawn shops, beauty salons (there's an absurd amount of them) and speciality grocery stores. all of the bigger stores are located in the suburbs. like, there's no mall downtown sort of thing. right now, that's been annoying as i've needed things like coffee makers and had to take the bus way out to get them, but as i settle in i think i'll get used to that. i'm not a mall person, anyways.

almost everybody under 40 is either a hip-hop kid or a punk, so i look a little out of place (although i'm not actually). the frequency of large, attack type dogs is a little unsettling.....but i suppose it's connected to a deficit of pigs, so maybe i shouldn't complain. scooters and bicycles are both very popular here, which gives the city a sort of a late 50s feel. how much that may be connected to the area's punk, garage, mod legacy? i don't know. it's quite normal to walk down the street and experience the smell of marijuana coming from several different houses at the same time.

safety? i think i'm ok. there's one house a few blocks up that i got some gross stares from, but then their parents came home and that stopped. kids that think violence is cool can and does happen anywhere. where i grew up, there was a street where average annual income jumped abut $150,000 and it was the rich kids that were more dangerous than the poor ones.

here's an interesting quote: "can you answer me a question? why is it that you sound like a man, and look like a sexy woman?". i was getting trolled, actually.

so, those are the differences.

from where i'm going to be spending the vast majority of my time, though, it doesn't matter very much. to me, the only substantial difference is the cost of rent.

with that, i'll stop posting about the move. well, i have a lot of little things to build, still. but i feel the transition period is over.

...and in more than one way. the last month has seen the end of two years of no fixed address, two years of my dad fighting cancer and two years of occupy-related correspondence.

today is also three years on hormones.

it all ended just as abruptly as it started. i'll probably look back on this period as the worst period of my life, but also as a sort of a portal from one phase of existence to another.

tomorrow starts right now.