Girl and City

Today was my first day of class. School hasn’t started yet, not officially, but I have an early class this week.

Being back in The Business School was weird. I had been excited to see my classmates again, to hear about everyone’s summer internship experiences and to share my own crazy stories, but once I was actually there, I realized that The Business School was the cause of so much of my problems. The high expectations, the competitive spirit, the over-inflated egos, the “playing-adult,” the constant trying to one-up each other.

Sure, I can handle stress. In fact, I love stress. I thrive under stressful conditions. I create these conditions because they make me who I am: an overachiever. But it didn’t preclude the possibility of side-effects.

I had been looking forward to sharing some of my crazy work stories, but now I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to make myself a target for backstabbing now that recruiting season was commencing. I’d learned my lesson the first time.

All I can say is, I can’t wait to graduate.

When I fell in love, I wrote that it felt like I was suddenly seeing the world in colour. Like I had been ignorant all my life of the brilliant yellow sun and the dazzling blue sky. This is it, I thought. This is what I’ve been missing all my life.

I thought I’d never be able to live in black-and-white again. But unknowingly, the colour in my world began to fade, and before I knew it, I was once again living in a black-and-white world.

I want colour again. I want to love again.

This past weekend, I went on a mini-break with my parents. We visited a few provincial/national parks/conservation areas. We brought our dog, packed some food, and hiked some trails.

My parents stayed at my apartment in University Town for the weekend (because it was near the provincial parks), but my roommate had moved out of my apartment, so I had no furniture (except the furniture in my bedroom), no internet, and no TV. My parents slept on the floor on an air mattress. We made makeshift tables out of cardboard boxes, we listened to the radio, we drank wine out of plastic cups, and I cooked with a rice spatula because my roommate accidentally took my stir-fry spatula. It was ghetto living, but it was fun. My parents laughed more this weekend than I’ve seen them do in a long time. And when they drove away on Monday, I cried.

I’ve never been close to my parents. I think the last time I felt emotionally attached to them was when I was 11. When I was 12, I spent three months away from my parents and I didn’t miss them once. I have never cried out of homesickness. And yet, after a mere weekend together, my 21-year-old self bawled cried as I watched my parents drive away and I was left, literally, in an empty apartment.

I cried because I finally realized the importance of family. No matter what, my parents will always love me, put me first, care for me, worry about me. They would die for me, but more importantly, they live for me. They are utterly devoted to me whether I recognize it or not, whether I thank them for it or not. A few months ago, I resented them for being emotionally closed off. They never said things like “I’m proud of you” or “You did good,” and I resented them for making me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Be that as it may, there were a lot of things I never said to them either. “Thank you,” “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.” Perhaps my inability to open up emotionally is still “their fault,” perhaps I am very much the product of my upbringing, but all I could think was “I should have known better.” Knowing them, knowing myself, I should have known they were proud of me even if they never said it. I should have known they loved me even if they never told me.

I am so silly.

I was so focused on finding someone who cared about me, when I had two people who lived and breathed for me right beside me. Instead of embracing them, I was pushing them away and then desperately looking for a relationship (or friendship) to fill the gap.

I have so much growing up to do.
(more…)

I went to karaoke last night with a group of friends¹. Someone selected this song, and as we were singing it, I couldn’t help but notice how much it applied to the way I feel these days.

Last night was the first time I’d been out with a group of friends since the MFL-breakup. For the last two weeks, I’ve been going through an anti-social phase. It’s not like I haven’t gone out, but a lot less than before, and mostly for one-on-one girlfriend time. There are only two girlfriends who I’ve talked to about the MFL-breakup. It’s hard for me to talk about it, even to my closest friends, because then I have to think about it and analyze it, the last thing I want to do.

That’s the way I deal with difficult things, I realize. I may act as if nothing happened, as if I’m not affected, but I’m not being strong. Emotionally, I completely shut down. Physically, I want to run away.
It’s not that I’m pretending to be okay. I’m not trying to pretend anything, shutting down is my natural (?) reaction. And it’s not like I can force myself to sit there and talk and cry when I’ve subconsciously closed the gates already.

That’s why I couldn’t blog for a while. I felt guilty about abandoning my blog for so long when I normally write several times a week, but every time I tried to blog, all the energy in my body disappeared. I didn’t want to wallow in the bad feelings; not only did it seem whiney and unexciting, I’d rather not force my mind to think about it. Finally, this morning, I convinced myself to write something, anything. If I blog about the good times, why shouldn’t I about the bad times?

I hung out with WAF on Monday; it was the first time I’ve seen her since that night. She said she was embarrassed after that incident, so she’d been avoiding me. Hearing this made her seem more like the girl I knew in high school, but it didn’t redeem her completely. She has her own apartment downtown now, so I went to visit and we had a bottle of wine while I told her about MFL. We got more drunk than planned, and I remember pacing on her roof patio and ranting. It was the first time I said aloud all the things I thought about the MFL-breakup. I realized then how much I miss him, how it feels like there’s a glaring hole in my life without him. It took all the strength in my body not to pick up the phone and dial his number. It didn’t help that WAF kept telling me to call him. She was rooting for us to get back together. I think all our friends are.
But I can’t.

It’s hard to deal with the pain of losing you everywhere I go
But I’m doing it
It’s hard to force that smile when I see our old friends and I’m alone
Still harder getting up, getting dressed, living with this regret
But I know if I could do it over
I would trade, give away all the words that I saved in my heart
That I left unspoken

P.S. Thank you to everyone who offered to listen (via email) and be there for me. It’s nice to know that some of you have gone through this kind of heartache before, even nicer to know that even if you haven’t, you worry about me. I hope you understand that I’m not the kind of person to reach out, even less so when I’ve shut down. So if I don’t email you, please don’t take it personally. I do want to be closer friends with all of you, but maybe under different circumstances. I love you all~ ♥

1. Asian karaoke is not open bar, it’s all private rooms with a sound system and flat screen TV. Pretty swanky, but the ones in The City aren’t nearly as upscale as the ones in Asia. [↩]

Last Friday, the other assistant at my office quit.
She’d been thinking about it for two weeks, but she didn’t have the guts to tell LawyerMan until Wednesday night. She had actually found another job, at a much less hectic (and more professional) law office, and she was to start on Monday.

No matter what things I said about her – screwing up so many times, having the most ridiculous short-term memory of anyone I’ve ever met, not being able to multi-task if her life depended on it – she was a thousand times better than the assistant that replaced her. At least she cared about her job, she wanted to learn as much as she could and would work overtime almost every day (and come in on weekends) to catch up on work that she wasn’t able to get done. At least she recognized her shortcomings and tried. She tried so hard.

The new assistant who replaced her, whom I shall call ABB, is the opposite. She does not care about this job at all. She is chatting on the phone, as I speak, with a client, bad-mouthing other clients¹. This is what she does. She just chats all day, with her friends, with clients, with whoever she can drag into a conversation. Including me, when I’m not on the phone².
She is ridiculous. She doesn’t know how to do anything, she has loads of work to do on the cases that she took over from the previous assistant, and she spends all day chatting. When she’s not chatting, she tries to get up in my business, bossing me around despite not knowing anything. I am now carrying the weight of this office, and yet she treats me as if I’m her assistant.
God, I hate her.

When you talk like a bitch, walk like a bitch, and smell like a bitch, you know you’re a bitch.

She is a bitch.

1. Which is completely unprofessional and downright unethical. [↩]
2. And I have loads of work to do, let me tell you. [↩]