Girl and City

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. [↩]

Peking duck and xiao long bao¹ in Chinatown
French wines with regional names I cannot pronounce²
Red, white, and rosé wines drunk out of order
These are a few of my favourite things

Chocolate mousse cake for a decadent dessert
21 candles on the 21st day
POP goes the champagne and a toast to SG
These are a few of my favourite things

“To SassyGirl!” they cheer, their smiling faces
Aglow with happinesss for their childhood friend
My face mirroring their smiles and laughter
These are a few of my favourite things

Surrounded by old friends, joking and laughing
Drinking too much wine and playing strip poker
Spilling half a bottle of wine on my clothes
These are a few of my favourite things

Sleeping over at LaserDodgingBoy’s place
Stay up talking and bonding until 3am
Wake up very hungover and late for work
These are a few of my favourite things.

–

I am 21! Thank you for all the birthday wishes – you’re right, it did turn out into a much better day than it started. :)

1. Steamed soup dumplings. [↩]
2. OBF had carried them back with her from France and had been saving them for a special occasion – they really were great wines. [↩]

Next Tuesday is my champagne birthday¹. I am turning 21 on the 21st of July.

I had wanted to do something special for this day. I have always made a big deal about birthdays, so my 21st, of all birthdays, should not go uncelebrated. I didn’t want much, just to have some champagne, maybe some cake, and be surrounded by good friends.

But, from the way it seems, next Tuesday will pass unnoticed.
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1. Definition: when the day you were born corresponds with the age you are turning. Source: Urban Dictionary. [↩]

One of my favourite books by Sophie Kinsella is Can You Keep a Secret?. The reason is simple: the heroine of this particular story has some secrets. Mostly derived from a few little lies. Ok, maybe more than a few. See? I do it too. But who doesn’t?

We all have secrets, from little lies that we tell, or what we don’t tell. We already know there are plenty of things I don’t tell. Here are some more.

Secrets from my boss:

• I told the CEO at Not-A-Real-Job that I wasn’t doing anything this summer other than this internship. Complete lie. As you all know, I am desperately secretly searching for another job.
• He is obviously going to find out when he receives a call from places I have applied to because I put him down as one of my references. I probably should have told him that he is one of my references. I also said I’d been an intern with him for two months. Slight lie, considering I started last month. Hmm…

Secrets from my parents:

• My parents think I have never bombed a single course in university¹ and that I am awesome at science. Neither of these beliefs are correct. I did bomb a course (Cell Biology), which just goes to show I am not awesome at science. I just left the field before it became obvious. My parents desperately want to believe I am awesome at science because 90% of the people in my family are serious scientists, and they want me to join their ranks. Imagine their disappointment when I went to business school instead.
• My mom thinks I am trying to lose weight. Not because I said I was on a diet or anything, just because she thinks I should. So it’s really her fault for making assumptions. When she is not home, I eat ice cream. Lots and lots of it. She also thinks I go swimming every other day. I do not.
• That stain on the bathroom rug that my mother loves? The dog peed there. But it was because I locked the dog in the bathroom when she was getting really annoying. My parents think the dog just went crazy on her own (which does happen sometimes) and I’ve never corrected their notion. It’s not like the dog is going to tell on me.
• One time, my phone dialed my home number on its own while I was out clubbing at 2am (it must have been pressed against something in my purse and hit speed dial). All my parents heard on the resulting answering machine message was “loud noise” (their words, not mine – my guess is it was very loud music). They called me back and when I saw that “Home” was calling, I didn’t answer because I was drunk and I didn’t want them to know I was still out clubbing. They thought I’d been kidnapped or something terrible had happened to me and the recording was all I could get out, so they called the police. I never told them the truth. I switched phones after that incident.

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1. The Asian definition of bombing: getting below an 80 – or a 3.7 out of 4.0. [↩]

I’ve always dreamed of spontaneous road trips to exciting cities with equally exciting friends. This weekend, my dream was realized. Early Saturday morning, my friends and I piled into SRB‘s car and headed to Montreal.

Montreal, one of the largest French-speaking city outside of France, the city of smoked meat and designer fashion, Canada’s cultural capital, and the birthplace of the Montreal bagel.
For us, it was a city with all this and more. It was a city where you can buy wine and beer from any dépanneur (convenient store), of which there were many. Suddenly, we were no longer constrained by the short hours and sparse locations of the LCBO (the only licensed retailer of alcohol in Ontario) when we felt like filling up with wine instead of food. It was a city where you couldn’t turn right on red lights. It was a city where we were immediately identifiable as aliens because we spoke English¹. It was a city where there was a boulangerie (bakery) on almost every street, and every single one was better than any bakery I’ve ever walked into in The City. It was a city where people were better dressed, better dined, and better wined.

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1. Although most people in Montreal are bilingual, certain parts of the city contain more English-speakers than others. We only encountered one waiter who couldn’t speak English almost at all. Nonetheless, French is the preferred language, and some locals treat Anglophones (especially tourists) differently. [↩]