My business has been stagnant for some time now, so long that some people argue it can’t even be referred to as a business anymore. As the staunch lady who does my taxes put it after looking at my 2023 sales, “that’s hardly a business, that’s more of a hobby.”

I stared back at her, speechlessly forcing a twitching smile, distracted by the mental image of a knife twisting under my rib cage, “All’s I’m saying” she continued as my guts began to sever, “is your sales were sixty-five dollars and your expenses were over a grand, that’s gonna look bad to the CRA. I wouldn’t even claim it if I were you.”

After our uplifting little pow-wow resolved, I got back in my mother’s car quietly as to not jostle my damaged insides. I could see where the woman was coming from, my sales were near non-existent; but I can’t deny reality, even if it does look bad. It feels bad too, the truth of our shortcomings has a way of doing that.

I could easily not claim it, it’s only ‘on paper’ after all. So why does it feel so demoralizing? The thought of recounting my mistakes to an auditor and paying the price is much more bearable than the thought of wiping the existence of the business I still put my heart into every day, even if I don’t have much to show for it, even if it is only in a fiscal sense. I was still funding the website on a monthly basis and buying materials here and there; making pieces rarely, but thinking about it constantly and planning my next moves for when I was ready to come out of the mental abyss I had dug myself into.

When I was finally able to commit myself to getting sober last November, I also unknowingly committed myself to the path of an unrelenting and annoying adaptation of truth in every aspect of my life. Now I’m much more aware of how significantly the small compromises we make to our convictions matter. Even if no one really knows but me. Even if it is only regarding the boring details of tax season.

“How’d it go?” Mum asked innocently before making our way to our favourite fine-dining restaurant, Red Lobster.

“Not good,” I responded, “let’s get the hell out of here.”

I gave her a cheerful rundown loaded with sarcasm, then let her change the subject to cheesy biscuits so I could sit in the silent anger that was simmering through my upper body like thick clam chowder. My lips tensing as they held back self-deprecating mutters, my eyebrows furrowing like an old man about to tell someone to get off their lawn, and my hands trying to discreetly wipe tears under my sunglasses as though the area around my eyes was being pelleted by sporadic, gentle itches.

I let myself wallow for exactly twenty-four hours, one of my standard rules when I enter a steep decline into self-pity. I’ve felt disappointed in myself before (more often than not, in fact), but looking at the harsh realization that my business was currently a failure left me feeling an almost tangible sense of grief, like I broke my own heart. Luckily, I revel in this kind of dramatic self-induced pain and the truth is, I missed rolling around in it. At that stage in my recovery, I still didn’t know how to be motivated by anything but remorse and shame.

“It DID exist and I WAS still trying goddammit!” I later yelled to myself in the privacy of my asylum, I mean apartment, before researching movies about underdogs. I decided not to follow her advice and gave the go-ahead to file away my measly hobby of 2023. Symbolic choices may be foolish or ego-serving, but I strongly believe that acting out of alignment with our dreams has consequences. Avoiding the truth delays the adaptation of responsibility and robs us of thirst for change; whether it’s just internally to ourselves, or externally to anyone that advises you to because they’ve “been in this business for thirty years, sweetheart.” She didn’t actually say ‘sweetheart’, but it adds to the kind of no-nonsense chain-smoker energy this tiny, short-haired accountant was evoking.

As I queued up Forrest Gump, I rhetorically wondered how I let things get to this point. The tumultuous parts of the past fifteen years of my life revolved through my mind like ponies on a deranged carousel; here comes depression, frozen prancing in mid-air! Here’s agoraphobia and addiction with their saddles chipped and faded. Here comes death, grief, and bipolar disorder; impaled by insufferably hot metal poles with warped reflections and dirty fingerprints. Here’s therapy and medication in the weirdly claustrophobic double-seater that everyone chooses last. Here comes the heartbreak horsey with a missing limb, followed by another turn on manic-depression and addiction; hop on and ride them all! I’m bobbing ‘round and ‘round as I’m trying and failing, progressing and regressing, over and over and over again as eerily cheerful circus music blares from a tinny speaker overhead and I’m unable to form any thoughts other than how much my head hurts and how tight my chest feels.

The disturbing clarity that came with sobriety is that I’ve been the deranged conductor all along; making it go faster, turning up the volume, and watching it decay. The beautiful clarity that came with sobriety lies in the exact same truth. I can stop the carousel and turn off the creepy music; I can touch up the paint, I can clean the tarnished metal, and I can fix the broken limb. I could burn the whole thing down and never look back if I wanted to, but that would be the same as refusing The Lost Weekend existed for a year just so I don’t have to ride a difficult truth. You can’t burn down the disturbed parts without eviscerating all of the beauty that came as a result of them.

Ironically, my business held about as much stake in reality as my metaphorical carousel; but for me they were both out there somewhere, circulating in the ether of my mind, leaving fingerprints in existence from time to time, waiting for the ride to slow down so I could unfreeze myself from mid-air and prance on forward to the kind of life I’ll never be asked to deny.