How do I say, when a person reaches their maximum ability to cope with stressors! This is a coping strategy. Canada allows me to go out and change my environment to cope. If I stay at home and with the same social circle, I will fall in depression. It is a must to go on picnic and enjoy the outdoors every now and then. Canada enjoys incredible nature.

I already had like three jobs, so I wasn’t sleeping enough. I was overworked …trying to keep pushing myself forward to the point where I almost broke down. Right? That’s why I I got my new job …. But that’s was too much like I was physically impacted by the depression. I’m saddened, depressed. No, I barely walked. I couldn’t speak.

So and they put it kind of there is a wood behind kind of frame …, so I hang it on the wall .and I see it all the time and it gives power. It really gives me give me power. Like when I look at it, when I come back from work, when it’s hard …, day outside and come back to see just relax you and you feel power…I don’t have any family here, …So, you know, the relation between a father and son.

Give me back about a lot of memories that yeah … It’s memories, but you’ll find it that everything is different, even if it even if it’s similar. But no, everything is different.

…these are the stuff that I needwherever I go, and they’re always in a box because I’ve been here for four years and I can’t say that I found my home. So I’m always in that mindset like I might find a more convenient living situation somewhere else. This is a temporary place to be. I don’t have the comfort zone to unpack everything. 

I go …to this library it’s nearby near my home I go here and study it’s very quiet .. it’s very uh relieving to be there… looking at myself sitting there …makes me feel good makes me feel confident  that that it makes me feel confident that I’m able to accomplish whatever I want.

It’s a mix, … I wasn’t satisfied there …About work, I was working well there. So I’m moving somewhere, so I don’t know about my future career, …another thing I’m changing my life. I’m moving away from my family, … If I were to visit like Syria, …to see my family…my mother …really wasn’t happy …to see me travelling away. And now, three months ago, she passed away and I didn’t have the chance to see her.

Almost every week I was trying to make a kind of party or dinner invitation for my friend just to be with people because, you know, loneliness, it’s very hard to, especially COVID because it destroyed every dream for me.

Yeah …so this photo represents what I feel now the most which I consider my biggest problem here in Canada which is I feel lonely when I was in Egypt I had lots of friends …coming here and leaving all that behind it kinda make me feel something I haven’t feel before which is lonely and it kinda make me afraid to talk to anyone new because I don’t know what the results will be.

So that makes you feel a bit annoyed. And why are you discriminating me because of my accent or my lack of English?

Because it’s a very tough, hard environment full of stress and you’re always underpaid. However, after the pandemic, the wages really got a little bit more because there was no staff. … it’s also unfair to go to the labor market with all your experience to be blown away and you have to prove yourself in a new industry from scratch where you are like almost 30.

I take this photo from my shadow. And because, uh, I had a during that time, I had it kind of attack every, ….because I feel that I will die soon and because I, you know, and especially with this gray hair and my head and my beard. And I take this photo too to my shadow, too to prove to myself that, no, I’m still young.

I recently got an old car that drove hundred and a bit, the meaning and metaphor is that days are passing by. I felt sad when it reached this number not due to the car we are aging, and time is passing. When we are youth, opportunities are much more in comparison to when people are above 45.

I don’t see a retirement for me, I. Because starting from this age, you lost, for example, like 20 years of the pension plan or retirement plan. So. I don’t believe that reaching to our time of retirement, that will be enough to survive.

…I’m in this phase of my life …I have to focus on my, my physical and mental health. So the gym is not is not something extra I’m doing. It’s essential because after 35, your body starts to go down and I’m almost 30 and it went so fast. I, like my entire life, […]…I didn’t have the time to go to the gym. I didn’t have the time to think ….

I applied to work in homedepot to work. …and I had a language barrier …I did not get recruited. …feeling down and upset. Again with the language barrier obstructing our efforts. Why we are being tortured with the language unable to learn and what is the reason. …Those wood pieces in the middle of the track represent our English learning journey. We are standing on the first 4 or 5 tracks and we have all those … tracks in order for us to work here like proper human beings.

I can imagine, yeah, so just, yeah, so this is like people they become older than they look like so they are younger but look like older” […] good language but you don’t have money and he don’t have time for certificate he work now with delivery, I am too the same, I work, I have ten thousand, ten thousand more ten thousand delivery in Canada with Skip, Door Dash and uber eats . . .

When your language is limited, it makes you vulnerable” … I looked for work a lot and tried working. Work needs strong language ability. A person is protected if they have a strong language. If one’s language is minimal “half in half” or less, then you are exposed to everything, exploitation, and persecution. This is why I am doing this part time job, because it does not require too much English.

Waiting the bus to move, to. … I didn’t have a vehicle, so I had to leave early and get two buses so that I can arrive at the time. And I felt like at 5:30,. …It was the only job I could find at that time with doesn’t like it didn’t. They didn’t ask me for any English or anything.. …They don’t care about the language, they just want some people to stand behind a machine and do some stuff.