I’ve spent the morning speculating as to the reasons behind her need to tell me that she thinks I’m overweight, considering fluctuations in my weight, my apparent eating habits, and cultural background.  I’ve been chit-chatting with friends, discussing what I should do, being generous and thinking about how much of her advice I should heed, and commiserating about what it is to be made to feel insecure over something that wasn’t a problem.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter that I do eat sensibly, get exercise, and like my body.  There will always just be some people who don’t know this, think otherwise, and presume that it is valuable for them to tell me so.

At least there is a path.  Five years ago, I didn’t have one, and life felt meaningless and empty.  Now I have direction and meaning, and it all feels impossible.

What I’m clinging desperately onto these days is my curiosity to know how the stories end.  Do certain initiatives begin to pay off, or do they continue to suck me dry?  Will I reach the next milestone?  Or any of the ones after? Will this effort all have been for naught, or will I someday reap the rewards of the pain that I currently endure?

Only time will tell.  I just wish I had a spoiler.

Mr. Right and I were getting to know each other by going out for coffees and drinks, talking away evenings on the telephone.  Then one evening we went on our first real date: dinner, a show, and drinks afterward.  The night ended, we kissed passionately at my doorstep, and said goodnight.

Prior to meeting him, I had booked a flight to somewhere to sing at something.  It was my first solo vacation, and I was really looking forward to going alone.  I hadn’t expected to meet Mr. Right.  He was new in my life so I wasn’t going to invite him on my trip.  Nor did I have any real inclination to ensure that I saw him before I left or upon my return.  I did ensure that he knew about the trip.  We had gone on one date.  That was it.  Knowing I was going away, in my mind, was all that was required of me, all that seemed appropriate, and all that I was comfortable with.

In order to prepare for my departure, I put in a lot of extra hours at the office.  I wanted to ensure that everything would be in order during my absence.  The evening before my departure, I got home from the office around 10 p.m.  I went straight to sleep.  I planned to be back at work early the next morning so I could finish off a few things before my flight.  I awakened the next morning to notice a voicemail.  I had missed several calls from Mr. Right.

Where are you, honey?  I was thinking that since you’re flying out tomorrow, we could spend this evening together, but it looks like I didn’t catch you.  Okay, so tomorrow morning, we’ll go to your favourite breakfast place.  It’ll have to be really early, I know. So, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll meet you there at 6am.

I didn’t go to the breakfast, nor did I bother calling him to let him know.  I went straight to the office that morning, finished up the few things that I had planned to do, and then left for my trip.  I had a great time and never gave Mr. Right a second thought.

Mr. Right and I never spoke again.  I didn’t call him upon my return.  I know I eventually responded in an email, but I can’t remember when, why, or how.  I venture to guess that it was at my leisure with the intention of ensuring he not contact me anymore.

I learned a lot from Mr. Right.  As intrusive, pushy, and controlling as that one voicemail seemed to be, I had to take responsibility for the fact that I misled him, even though it was not intentional.  I expressed interest, but I never discussed with him what I was looking for, and what I needed.  My only defense – albeit a fair one – is that getting to know someone new is complicated.

We try to look for signs and meaning: signs that our feelings are reciprocated, and meaningfulness in every tiny action directed to us.  What does a stare mean?  A long gaze in each other’s direction?  How about chats online?  Telephone calls? or the lack thereof?  Occasional gifts, surprises? Saying hello/good-bye?  Having tea together?  Not making time?  Not responding to messages?  What does anything mean?  The answer is simple: you can’t know how meaningful an action is or isn’t until you know the person.  Where Mr. Right went wrong was in ascribing greater meaning to my actions than was actually there.  I now try to just instigate explicit dialogue when I am confused (even if it is like pulling teeth).

There are no universal indicators of interest, and even when someone is interested, it doesn’t mean that anything should or will happen.  To help facilitate things, it genuinely is a pleasure when someone you’re interested in is open enough to help you understand them.  Otherwise, getting to know a person feels like a crap-shoot: blind throws with hope for the best, exciting small wins throughout the quick-to-accumulate net losses, and a growing feeling of helplessness.  If you’re not a gambler who gets a thrill from always only almost-winning, I’m not sure how you remain motivated in these sorts of situations.

Interest makes inaction tragic, but acting on interest is a big investment.  Be sure you can handle the level of risk before getting into the game.

Anyway, that being said, I didn’t always feel this way.  I used to feel as though I had done something wrong, or as if there was something I could have done to make him happy and to make things work.  Once Upon A Time captured the short-lived existence of this youthful, romantic, self-deprecating girl.  She’s dead and gone, and the memory of her makes me sick.

Destined to err… fine.  Doomed to bear the burden of my folly?  No longer.

I remember hitting 16 and knowing where exactly it was that I wanted to go – no more random crap shoots.  Most popular were all of the major malls that were on subway lines: Eaton Centre, Scarborough Town Centre, Yorkdale Mall, and Fairview Mall.  Then there were all of the parties that everyone would hit up.  Primarily I think I went to Jamestown.  As I grew older, I’d meet more and more people who could drive and had cars so my string of small radii that dictated my hangouts (i.e. subway stations) collapsed and then expanded… but until that time would come, this was it.

It was on a subway ride that my sister and I were first flashed.  I say ‘first’ because it would turn out not to be the last time that it would happen.  And of all of the possible times that it could have happened, I would never have expected it to have been on a nearly full train during the evening rush hour.  Sitting side-by-side in double-seats at the back of a train, the flasher seated himself in front of us, held up his coat and suitcase to block us from running and to cover himself as he masturbated while staring at us.  Because of the way we were seated, we couldn’t reach the emergency strip – it was over his head.  We just waited it out and ran when we got to our stop.  I considered running off the train earlier, but experience has taught me that running off a train because of someone following you on it only creates the potential of being trapped alone on an unfamiliar subway platform with that person.  On the train were tons of people and attendants and potential help if he tried to touch us, and at my subway stop, I knew where to go.

Anyway, we’ve seen and experienced a lot by taking public transit.  This is just one example of one of the kinds of things that you can encounter when you’re a teenage girl on the subway.  Fortunately, we were neither raped nor killed.  I used to wonder what we could have done to prevent these things, such as not dress provocatively, but we didn’t, so I don’t feel guilty.  We were just two young females and we let him get away with it.  That’s why it happened.  I stopped letting people get away with their offenses, and they magically stopped happening.

//

For work, I rent out a parking spot south of my office.  It is 2/3 the cost of parking at my office.  The hospital that my dad is in is several blocks away from this parking spot.  I haven’t wanted to pay for parking downtown that’s closer to the hospital partly because of cost, but mostly because I already pay for parking.  So, I’ve just been dropping off my mom at the hospital so she wouldn’t have to do the grueling walk in the cold, then walking to and from the hospital from my parking spot.

Yesterday, on my walk to the hospital from my car, three men asked for my name and number.  The first one made it a point to note that he sees me often and wants to know where I go every day.  The second was polite.  The third tried to grab my hand.  This was when it was bright outside.

I have typically walked over alone to get my car when we leave the hospital in the middle of the night.

I wasn’t before, but now I’m scared.

I was 13 and my grandmother was 78 when she passed away.  It was a December when the ambulance came in the middle of the night to take her away.  She was unconscious and remained in the ICU for a couple of months.  I remember spending Christmas in the ICU.  When the money got tight because of all of the extra taxis getting home (we didn’t own a car), we took the bus.  And when we could no longer afford even that, we walked.

She was really weak and had been losing her memory for perhaps a year prior to her going comatose.  I remember being about 12 when she was no longer able to do all of the things that she liked to do on her own, such as garden and cook, and even longer since she’d done things that she didn’t like to do, like walk me home from school or play with me.  She was so serious.

My sister and dad suffer from the same core of afflictions as my grandmother.  Perhaps about a year prior to my grandmother’s admittance to the ICU, my dad had been going through the worst case of his eczema.  At the time, it was the first I’d ever seen it flare up at all.  He couldn’t move without making his skin crack.  I’d seen it with Marlene throughout our childhood, and it was a real surprise to me when I saw him with it.  Anyway, after a while without any improvement, our doctor had him hospitalized.  He was eventually able to come home and we all took care of him.  The doctors had been unable to pinpoint the cause.  All we knew was what we always knew: that it was an allergic reaction.  We blamed his work.  He worked in the factory of a printing company.  The company paid out disability for a while, but eventually stopped.  He wasn’t sick enough to get Ontario Disability Benefits, but was not well enough to make it through a full work day at a new job without being sent home because his employer could see that he couldn’t handle it. This after years of OT and hauling himself across the city by public transit to get the bills paid.  He was only in his 50’s, and he didn’t know how he would make it to retirement.

My mom couldn’t do much better.  She had been laid off from her job years earlier after she took bereavement time to attend her brother’s funeral in the Philippines. She returned to be laid off.  It made for an awkward situation for my sister who would wind up – by a twisted stroke of fate – doing her OAC Co-Op term in our mom’s old department with our mom’s former co-workers.  Anyway, my mom was well into her 50’s by then, so being hired for a long-term continuing position was difficult.  She wasn’t physically equipped to do labour, but she could do a lot of things, and I know she always tried.  Primarily, she did temp work in accounting.  And she put her crocheting skills to work making kippot for some evil man she called “Barrack” who was so rude to her and made her cry that even though we needed the money, we begged her to stop making them.  She even did call centre work in the evenings – there was no shortage of call centre work.  Out of an eagerness for workplace resiliency, I learned to do it myself.  I learned a lot of things from my mom.  Because who knew?  Maybe there would come a time when it was the only opportunity I had at my immediate disposal to make ends meet during times of crisis.  (For the record, such times existed.)   So she applied for hundreds of jobs and got a lot of interviews.  It was hard to watch her.  She was the sort of person who identified herself by her job.  And with every failed opportunity came more and more frustration.

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment things became irreparable for us as a family.  There were hints of self-destruction much earlier than this.  However, I do remember being 12 and being proud as the low-points brought us closer together.  And then I remember turning 16 and writing The Dancing Princess.  It’s scary now when I look back and read A Peek Through Tinted Glassed and The Days of Grey – words I strung together when I was 18 and 20, respectively.

I’m fine now.  My biggest problem then was that I couldn’t control anything.  Now I control everything.  It’s exhausting, and I get really frustrated on days like today when people assume that just because I’m the younger daughter, that I hold no responsibility.  I’m irritable enough without having to deal with ignorant people thinking they have me and my situation pegged.

[Today, today is a special day.  Today I posted explicitly how I felt about something.]

I started out this post with the intention of discussing the large discrepancy that exists between one’s online persona and his/her face-to-face one, but instead managed to veer off into the ugly world of regret, where some of my most shameful moments reside.

Warning!  Wheels have been set into motion.  There can be no going back…

I’ve been focusing my energy on finding the perfect balance between being easy-going, open-minded, and having a ‘take no shit’ attitude. That is, I have to defend myself (so as to never become bitter), but also know when to step down (so as to be fair).  I have to be ready for life as it comes (and be easy-going), and not reject it when it’s not what I hoped it would be (because it’s so easy to be hard on people for not giving you what you wanted from them).

It’s the only way to go forward that makes sense to me.  But it’s hard.  Sometimes I don’t know if I’m being unfair when I’m defending myself, or letting people walk all over me when I don’t.

Anyway, considering how I feel about poor punctuality, I suppose it isn’t a surprise, then, when I say that I feel similarly about  unresponsiveness. Although, I suppose, I do understand that there are other reasons, besides being irresponsible, why one would not respond to me.