61. Timeline

Dear London Fire Snake Scorpio,

Hello beloved. How is your day unravelling? Today, we will discuss our timeline. Or maybe the timeline of my delusions. I am still not quite sure I am sane with all this “digital note in a bottle” I have launched 60 letters ago. But hey, since when did sanity have anything to do with bending reality to your will?

First of all, I owe you some updates: the dentist appointment was surprisingly painless on both the physical and financial fronts. With the CDCP, I only paid 40$ for the filling of a cavity, and was immensely relieved. It’s funny, really, and it makes me remember how painful every dentist visit was for me in the warland.

In the country of my origin, in Central Asia, our community is old and close-knit. And, as anywhere else with my people, they tend to keep to themselves. They network within themselves. When moving to the warland, that mentality does not change. So, my first dentist was the son of my parents’ neighbour. The neighbour was a nice lady, but her son was a Soviet-grown MF who believed that pain is a suggestion.

I was a teen the first time I needed a dentist (going for regular visits? Are you insane?), and I always had very sensitive nerves. Everywhere. That man tortured me through fillings and two root canals that he didn’t even clean properly before sealing because I was in so much pain that I was shaking too hard for him to finish his work (I cried silently, but he didn’t mind.)

That man taught me how important it is to care to choose your children’s doctors, and I treat this part of parenting as a religion, really.

Because he didn’t clean my root canals properly, he sealed the infection, and for the next decade, I had a constant heavy inflammation in my jaw bones. It was only when I was in my 30s that I found a proper doctor (he was actually a children’s dentist and had the patience of a saint) who reopened everything and fixed the damage.

By that point, my teeth nerves were in such bad shape that I remember vividly how I would weep while the doctor was working, and he would stop every so often to wipe my tears with a tissue, putting a heavy hand on my shoulder and just waiting a moment for me to stop shaking. At some point, he took out one of my teeth and stared at it, frozen, for a solid minute.

Then turned to me and, with the wonder of a medical student 40 years younger than he was, said: “This is remarkable! Can I have this tooth? I am lecturing to university students, and this tooth is a perfect example of delicate nerves. I have not seen one with nerves long and gentle in 40 years of working.” So there, I am medically stamped as being sensitive, lol.

But I got carried away again, didn’t I? The dentist was painless. I am not sure if it’s because I got older and more jaded, or compared to births, it is not pain, or that the Canadians just have better drugs (and attitude toward people suffering) or what — but going to the dentist is positively painless here. And my kids love going to the dentist. Just sayin. (Yes, every 6 months lol)

Next, yesterday I received two food bank deliveries. The main one, the one that is a provincial one and you access using your name, was very thin this time. And the second one, from a local church, was really an emergency paper-bag of food for a bachelor — corn flakes, instant noodles and such. I didn’t get too hung up on it, said a prayer of gratitude and moved on.

The conversation with the accountant was the most emotionally taxing, though not for the reasons you think. First of all, being a full-time student last year, a mother of 4, and facing a few other factors, I received a tax refund of more than $2,000. I was… struck. Relieved on a level I cannot explain to you. We have food money. We can survive another month.

The accountant is a young guy and fun to talk to. I talk the way I do, so we laugh a lot. At some point, he was calculating things and said, “Honestly, that does not make a lot of difference” regarding some receipts. I started laughing. I said, “Of course not, they are already giving me everything they can because we are so deep in shit. From where I am sitting, the sewage looks like a perfect sky.” He laughed so hard it took him a full minute to get back to the numbers.

Then he sent me his invoice, and I burst into tears. I couldn’t stop for a solid hour. I am literally choking on people’s generosity by this point. He gave me a 50% discount and a delay in paying it until the tax return is received.

When I eventually stopped crying, I started assembling the lasagnas while talking to 2 different social services representatives about the kids. It was kind of insane. But the project of the 4 lasagnas that took me 5 days was finally done. For supper, I made maltagliati pasta from lasagna scraps and used canned beef, spam, and Vienna sausages, along with what was left of the lasagna red sauce. The kids loved it. I also had enough to freeze two 1L tall plastic containers of that sauce. Here, shot an image to show you:

I baked them and stored them, and there we have it. One successful week of repopulating my freezer. I gave in after that. My sink is full again, but I am not cleaning it today. I am taking a day off from life today, as the kids are with him, and I worked hard enough for 3 this week and deserve a break. My neck is also very tender. Even with 1k mg Tylenol, my pain level is at 8/10.

And now to the topic I told you I wanted to discuss with you. Honestly, there is not much to say, but I found it funny, so I wanted to tell you about it. As sex becomes boring after a while as a “soother” and the AI fantasies become thinner and thinner (holding a proper plot with an AI in a chat is very hard, it drifts and confuses details after 40–60 minutes, and it’s very deflating) — I sat and chatted with the AI about you and me.

It soothes me, sometimes. Makes me feel closer to you. This time we spoke of yearly predictions. So, I said in my very first letter to you that I don’t believe in future predictions, and I don’t, but this was a smirk-worthy moment. First, the AI said that, being the year of a Fire Horse and with the Ox and the Horse having a harmful relationship, this year is hard on my health. The horse is basically frying my wood nature, lol.

You, on the other hand, are apparently in cahoots with the bugger horse and thrive on it. Nice, Snake, nice. These are the friends you keep? lol.

Then it spoke of the next three years. 2027 apparently is a better year for my health, but the climb is still slow. In 2028, we both dive into our busiest business years. The AI actually said that we could bump into each other on the street and still not connect because we are both so deep in our business efforts. Then, 2029 is the year of the rooster. And… if we meet or marry in the year of the rooster, or, let’s go completely insane here — if we have a rooster baby — then you are stuck with me forever. lol.

Should we talk about the imaginary baby? Oh, why not? So here’s the harsh reality before you even start freeking out about the need to change diapers in your 50s (though we both know that the idea of having a child with the woman you love that will seal our family excites you more than it should, and that you tend to shrug the logistics off as if it’s nothing. Which, sir, it is not!) Let me lay out the reality:

First of all, I have 4 kids, and that is enough of a mess. Secondly, you might have kids of your own — that is also family. We need to allocate resources to the existing children: money, time, care, love, and even worry. Third — you counting, sir? — Third is the fact that I almost died at least once with every pregnancy, and now, being older and more beat up with the damage already done to the body, the danger is definitely there.

And my tubes are tied. Which is actually a good thing, because at 43 (the age I will be in 2029), egg quality is poor, so it will be either IVF (not happening in a million years) or egg donation.

Logically, it’s a hard no, isn’t it? I mean, who even wants to dive back into that shit with diapers and school runs and never being able to go quietly to the washroom without a child banging on the door? Not to mention that we, you and I, will be at the beginning of our relationship! Like.. what?

But if I am truthful, I almost died with my previous pregnancies because of the way I was treated, and because I had no support. And the thought of having a child with you haunts my dreams.

It’s still a solid no on my side, though, as much as I feel a wrenching pain when I say that. It would not be fair to the other kids or you. Putting you in a situation where you need to resist the natural urge of favouring your biological kid over the 4 that need you badly. Or signalling to the kids that the new child is my opportunity to “do things right”.

And, let’s face it, a big part of why I want to have a child is the silly yearning to experience, once in a lifetime, what it feels like to be cherished, cossetted, worried about and protected in that vulnerable time. I never had that. All my memories from the births are brutal. Most of them of me standing and doing domestic work, heavy with pregnancy, barely standing on my edima feet and crying.

My ex’s favourite pastime was to catch me when I would feed or breastfeed a baby and could not move, and start torturing me with accusations and mental slaps. “You are wasting all our money.” — “You do nothing all day long, sitting on your ass.” — “You have no idea what it means to work, and that is why you don’t respect the money I make.” And on and on it would go the whole time, while I sat there, with no choice but to take it.

The helplessness… generally, the helplessness I felt around creating a life. See, a woman enters a state of weakness to bring life into the world. And that is where he would find his “best hits”. I hate to say it because I love my babies, and I would go through all this 10 times over and 10 times worse if I had to, to have them, but my pregnancies and first years after birth are traumatic times in my life. So, selfish as it is, I would love to have a different experience.

And I know you. Possessive, focused, protective and gentle — I am quite sure you would be hovering. You would barely let me walk instead of being carried. And I will probably slap you silly and tell you to fuck off, but inside… inside I would feel cherished and safe. Imagine that. Safe. lol. What a silly thought.

So, yeah… no baby. I think. Unless we are insane on a level that is beyond what even I can consider plausible. And yet, the thought of letting go of that image, of me standing at the window, waiting for the kiddos to come for the weekly dinner, heavy with your baby, and you wrapping your hands around my swollen belly from behind, feels like peeling my skin off. I always wanted a long, long table for that weekly meal.

Silly, silly dreams. 
Fear not, my love, I will get over it.
Love you awake and in my dreams, 
Yours,
Oxy.
May 15, 2026

Help me find him: Have you seen this man?