#it's easy to blame him for shit cus he just accepts everything and wallows while my mom gets defensive and denys everything

[onemattwolf]

I'm moving in with my Dad when i'm back in Toronto, which is a mixed bag.

On the positives: it's my childhood neighbourhood; I'm back next door to India town; his neighbourhood is absolutely gorgeous in the summer; he just leaves me alone and lets me be for the most part, I can do whatever and all he wants to know is whether or not i'll be home for dinner; he didn't put up any fuss about me bringing my cat like I thought he would; and, working on fixing up the basement will give me something to focus on.

Also, living in my Dad's house i'd be back to being considered a member of our housing co-op, which means i'll be fast tracked in the housing waitlist. I'm on a bunch of waitlists for subsidized housing in my city but they're super long, and while the co-op waitlist could still end up being long, I MUCH rather be in the co-op then in government housing. And I much prefer a co-op to paying a landlord. It still follows the usual subsidized rules for low income indv and families (which is 30% of your income), so it's kind of the same deal as what i'd be doing somewhere else, with the added benefit that I grew up in this co-op, and, it's a scattered unit co-op but all the houses/apartments are in my childhood/my dad's neighbourhood, and my dad's not just a member but on the board I think as well, which maybe has perks? I dunno. While living with him i'd start having to pay part of my ODSP too, but I don't think it'll be the full 30% as I'm not the main resident.

Oh! And! I just found out a family friend is pregnant, and I think she'll most likely be living with her mom who lives next door to my Dad. Like, her husband is in Cuba and I really don't know how to ask if he's immigrating or if he's staying there, or if she's planning to raise the baby in Cuba? Cuba is Not doing good right now, like it sort of feels like the country is imploding, so I really hope she's staying in Canada.

So, assuming she will actually be here, and most likely staying with her Mom as support at least in the early days, I'm gonna drop SO many hints that she could ask me to babysit whenever. I love babies! I have very limited opportunities to hangout with babies, and my career after graduation will focus on older kids. I have noooo idea when I'd ever be in the right place to have kids of my own, so in the meanwhile i'm just putting out "i'm available for babysitting" vibes so I can live vicariously through others.

Her mom is like my second mom so I'm over there a lot anyways for tea and such. I could be a good third in terms of child care help, I don't know if her husband will be traveling from Cuba, so, I think help would be appreciated.

On the negatives: my dad can be kind of be a dick and he tends to wallow in his depression; he never cleans so the house is a mess; he seems to have some energy now and I really appreciate how proactive he's being in helping make sure i'll be settled at his place, but once he crashes again it's gonna be a bit of a struggle; we're probably gonna talk about hard stuff and how we used to be close before i transitioned and all that shit and he's gonna cry and that'll make me cry.

Also, he's been experimenting with drugs again and i reeeeally can't handle my dad when he's any kind of high. like maybe if he offers to share the shrooms he bought that'd be another thing. i like shrooms, and I much rather be high with him then dealing with him sober... Wow what a weird sentence to write. sometimes i start talking about my dad to friends and i look up and find they are staring at me absolutely floored. And then people act like i'm airing out his dirty laundry, when the dude doesn't even know what self discretion is.

He did a homily at his church where he's a deacon when the fucking bishop was visiting about how he converted to Catholicism after a bad acid trip. He goes to a Ukrainian Catholic church, and, sure, priests/deacons can be married in the Eastern right, but that's where the more liberal-ness ends. like... Who tells the Ukrainian Catholic bishop that you converted to catholism on an acid trip...? furthermore, why did he decide he wanted to be eastern catholic after that? He's fucking cuban.

I'm a very curious person, and I've always asked a million questions about everything I didn't understand or wanted to know, and as a kid I liked my dad's directness in answering and how he didn't try and dumb things down for me. i'd ask what thunder was and he'd just answer the question like I was an adult, like actually give the scientific explanation. I'd ask a lot of questions about him and his past too, because I'm curious about people as well, and both my parents love to talk about themselves and their past lives and I loved their stories. But, I learnt from an early age that if i ask my dad a direct question i'd probably get more then i bargained for. At least when I was quite little he had the wherewithal to say "i'll tell you when you're older," and that would be my queue to drop it.

He's... He's a weird guy. But, I'm also very weird. In similar ways to him, cus like, genetics. Our differences in weirdness mainly lie in the fact that we had very different upbringings. All in all, he's emotionally open, and he's very honest (too honest sometimes), which is the exact opposite from my mom and it's exactly what i need right now.

Mixed bag all around! i do feel lucky that I had a place to go all the same