I got my first kitchen job at 20 at a busy restaurant in Yaletown. I’ve worked in three different kitchens throughout Vancouver over the past 5 and a half years. Due to my issues with my mental health, this chapter of my life has closed. I tentatively stare at the skies ahead: my lens is clouded, I feel like a wayward sailor. There’s beauty in the anticipation of an unknown future, but I still glance over my shoulder with fondness for the good times I had. I’ve gone from a fresh-faced 20-year-old living with his dad, to a 26-year-old who never shaves and lives by himself. If that isn’t progress, I don’t know what is.

My final chef Greg, at my final restaurant, The Alibi Room, was someone I sincerely enjoyed being in the presence of. We worked long prep shifts shoulder to shoulder, made each other laugh on a daily basis, and he taught me numerous lessons on how to be efficient, pragmatic, and proficient in the kitchen. As a father of two and with a couple decades of life on me, he occasionally managed to impart some poignant yet plain-spoken wisdom to me, maybe without even realizing it himself. I’d like to think the situation was mutual, even in spite of me constantly using “five dollar words”, as he dismissively referred to them. Those who know me know I can be a little verbose, labyrinthian, and pedantic at times, so maybe he was right about that too. (That sentence costs about $15 if you’re keeping score.) Seeing as I generally have no problem being open and upfront with my issues, there were certainly enough to fill a shift or two, maybe even three, or perhaps who knows, maybe even four (this is me trying to be funny). Once there was a series of months where I was, to keep it simple, not working up to the standard expected of me. Expected by my employers of course, but also the standard that I would hope to hold myself to. I approached him one day to breach the topic, and we ironed it out in minutes. Trust is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t come cheap. Invest in friends: The real ones will more often than not greet you with understanding, even when we don’t deserve it. Second chances are not a guarantee; sometimes they run through our fingers like water in a cupped hand, sometimes we open the cupboard only to realize we’ve finally run dry. I don’t know if I ever was a great cook, or even a good one, but I’d like to think I was a good person, a good employee, and hopefully an honest and true friend.

I know I made some — friends that is, even if I don’t see the vast majority of them any more. When you wake up bleary-eyed, hungover, nauseous, and sleep-deprived for a Sunday morning brunch shift, the horrible relentless grating of the alarm emanating from your cell phone sounding like a gatling gun, the only thing you can rely on is your friends. The immediacy of a heavy rush, being “whited out” or “in the weeds” as we put it, and the teamwork required to get through it bonds you to your coworkers. I really should reconnect with some of them.

Sean Courtney was the first friend forged on the line, there were many in between, and I have no idea who the last was. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time, but I know I treated them as well as I could and was the receiver of something equally meaningful.

People are powerful. I met so many interesting, varied, colourful, deep, complex, warm, and hilarious people inside Vancouver’s culinary realm. Behind the line looking at out at the regular people with regular schedules who look forward to Friday nights. Humans aren’t all practically equal: We are born into and come to develop many differences. But if you look at someone directly in the eye and hold your gaze long enough, you might be struck by the flicker of humanity that exists behind it.

Something I’ve learned over my 5 and a half years in restaurants and my 26 years on this planet is that the beautiful people are not exclusively projected onto movie screens, plying their trade in stadiums surrounded by tens of thousands of people, or segregated by the commas in their banks accounts. When we were closing up after a long day and a harsh rush, sharing a drink, a laugh, and a sigh of relief we were the beautiful people. Maybe just then, maybe just there, but standing tall, so tall in fact that if one were to catch us from the right angle bathed in the incandescent light, we looked like the giants we’d never guess we’d become. I still feel love in my chest when I think about some of them.

So when my sickness reared its tenacious head yet again, it hurt. It hurt to think of my doctor calling Greg and informing him that not only will I not be able to come in for that day’s shift, but that I can’t make any of my scheduled shifts, nor will I be able to work again at any point in the near future. It affected me. I knew what would happen. My fellow coworkers would have to work long, unforgiving 16-hour shifts, forfeit their days off, and make sacrifices that very well might end up affecting the entire restaurant front to back.

I’m being melodramatic, but I’m also being honest. The tears I shed as we left my doctor’s office on our way to St. Paul’s Hospital weren’t for me, my illness, or because I saw myself on the precipice of another horizonless stretch with no job. Knowing that I was letting my coworkers down, my friends down, letting Greg down, left me with tears on my phone screen as I apologized profusely, trying to evade the moisture with my thumbs.

Then something truly spectacular happened as I sat in my mom’s car: my phone came to life. Person after person, coworker after coworker, friend after friend, sending messages of support and solidarity. Telling me not to worry about the shifts, just to focus on my health and being the person they’ve always known me as. I’m not nailing myself to a cross when I say the hardest I bawled that whole long day was due to being so utterly blessed by companionship and camaraderie from such exquisite human beings. What a lucky guy, what a wonderful world filled with precious powerful people, and what a fucking lovely Alibi.

I love so many of you. It’s been a magnificent 5 years. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you. When I was a teenager, a guidance counsellor made an ignorant comment about me “flipping burgers when [I’m] 30”. She doesn’t know, because she never has, and as far as I’m concerned, she never could. The kitchen would chew her up and spit her out like so much cooked hamburger meat, while we just stepped over her, covering her station without missing a beat. Our shadows casting a velvet blanket over her frame and her opinions. Don’t fuck with the people preparing your food.

Photo and editing by Tim Abdulla.