Also: While we're all venting, and Dink is here to remind me of my neighbors to the north...heartbreak sucks.
Allow me to impart upon you all the rest of the story...of the Canadian.
Get a snack, this is gonna be a really long one...I never get to wax romance and heartbreak anymore, so I feel compelled.
In 2002, via the old-schoolest of e-journals, DEADJOURNAL, I met a young lady whom I shall refer to by her hippie middle names as Dawn Love. We were friends for a good 2 years, constantly talked, kept each other happy, daydreamed of world domination, etc, we were as good of friends as two people a country apart could be. On one particularly shitty weekend in September of '04, when it was just myself, Momma Box and my 2 younger brothers as my stepdad had been incarcerated for a little while over some retarded mess, she and I struck a deal that she would, at long last, come to visit. There were no plans outside of that, just the two of us and a weekend of dysfunctional happy hoppy chaos. She ended up staying the week, by the end of which, we were already completely in over our heads for one another. Not in the goofy, doomed teenager way, I mean we had both been beaten up and down that road before, and we were completely hooked on one another. It would be a couple of months before we made it officially official as the whole vast distance thing made it a bit complicated, but neither of us had any doubt we bolonged to each other. She came for another week in November, and the back on the 19'th of December to spend the entirety of the holidays. On the 22'nd, at around 2:30 in the morning after a night of Tool and terrible, terrible things, I put a little christmas bow on my head and offered myself and my complete and utter allegiance to her, and she almost-tearfully accepted. It was a fucking holiday fit for a holiday movie. Trips to NYC to see the family, upstate to Uncle Noel's epic house in the mountains, Manhattan and the Rockefeller tree, and horrid, horrid sobbing upon her departure back home. I had a really, really bad feeling when she left, but I ignored it out of blissful loving ignorance. I wish I hadn't.
As time went on, everything she'd put off in the name of our time together came back to bite her, so she ended up having to pick up a job in the city, which more or less destroyed our ability to see one another, and my mother's blatant refusal to let me venture out there myself until the school year was over put the nail in the coffin. Things went from hopeful for a light at the end of the tunnel, to desperate for any good sign we could get, to me sinking into depression without her, and her sinking into resentment because I couldn't make it to her. It was over. 9 days later, she'd already found a new prospect of hope to fill her life with. I didn't blame her because I knew it was madness to attempt what we were attempting in the situations we were in to begin with, but it was easily one of the most crushing experiences I'll ever have in my life. I didn't let her go, as hard as I tried to get my life back together and get this moving right for college, adulthood, etc., she was still cemented into my mind and heart, and she knew it. On the rare occasions we'd talk and catch up, it would always come up at one point or another. Eventually, the talking ceased, and I assumed she'd filled her life. I was half-right.
October, 2007, 3 years to the date of our original meeting, OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE while I was fixing the wreckage that was my life after that psychotic whore I mentioned in the earlier posts and putting all my Boxy pieces back together, as if good had FINALLY gotten better, she pops in out of the blue, and we talk and talk and talk ourselves right down the rabbit hole. Turns out she'd disappeared because she'd hooked up with...well, after everything imploded again, I'd find out later he was a total, legit dangerous lunatic, but at the time, he was simply described as a really bad deal...and now that we'd both grown up and had our own lives and such, she was still very, very much interested in seeing me again and finally getting back to what we'd started. Ladies and gentlemen, with the exception of any happiness and/or joy brought about by my soon-to-be-wife and daughter, there has never been a point in my life that brought me more pure, unadulterated happiness in my life than the day she said she wanted to mend the bridge. Were it not for my family of today, that feeling would still haunt my fucking soul to this day. But anyhow, I got on a Greyhound, went to Toronto, killed time the night before our night by nyquil robotripping through the city and taking in a hockey game at the bar, and the next day, October 30'th, at the...I forget the name, some combo of Queens and Quay, it was a club out on a pier not far from the Skydome and Cradle Of Filth was there...for the first time since that night she left, there she was. We were both scared and uncertain as to where we were gonna take this, and we hadn't made up our minds whether or not to take it slow or just say fuck it, but at least we were together again. Went back to the bar (and did some shots while the house band provided us with the awkward moment of playing "Sexual Healing"), went back to the hostel...said fuck it...and the next day, I could tell she thought she'd made a mistake. She played along, kept smiling, tried to hide the worry on her mind, but I pride myself on knowing when someone's bothered, and she definitely was. She'd later tell me that it wasn't my fault, it wasn't that she didn't want me back in the picture, she was just terrified of what was going to happen if she was stuck between me and the psycho, but that was much later.
First, I went home, we kept talking, about all number of amazing things, but again, as time went on, she got more and more tense, though we'd already talked more than enough about our future to make me firmly believe it was really gonna happen this time And I had been planning the most epic rescue of all time, complete with an ultra-fucking-super redux of our christmas together, but in Toronto instead of New York, at that giant 40-story Holiday Inn next to the CN Tower instead of a teeny hostel, and with the intent of planning a relocation, with complete family support, and delivering the news that I was a mere month away from having the means to move to Toronto to be with her and get her out of that fucker's grasp.
I sent her the message with all the surprise details 3 days before christmas. The 22'nd. Another anniversary.
The next day, she emailed me back and told me, in no uncertain, very hostile terms, that she was pulling the plug.
I gave up after that. And it will always haunt me...the only reason I've told this giant story is because, even though I've got the life I want and need, and I'm long since moved on from all that transpired that winter...it still fuckin' hurts. Everytime my brain is foolish enough to think about it. Not once, but twice, I watched that dream die. And every winter since, without fail, I feel a little bit more weighed down than any other time of year. Every time that damn cold wind blows, part of me remembers what it felt like, the devotion, the lull of feverish hope, all the pretty, heartwrenching moments and profound promises...
And you know what the craziest thing of all is? I now live no less than 100 feet away from the gazebo in the middle of town where me and my mom picked her up in the middle of the night the first time she ever came to see me.
We don't talk anymore...she ended up with a really upstanding higher-up from the office she worked in and also became a parent, and thankfully, we slowly etched out of one another's worlds on good, friendly terms, but...I stopped looking for her, and she stopped looking for me, and I think if we ever did talk again, we'd both know it'd only be to the detriment of our respective lives. I can't talk to my woman about it because, well, that's just not something you talk to your woman about, and none of my friends back then were really all that understanding as they were all young-ish and had their own soap operas to deal with but now...now I can ramble and actually have ears that hear me and eyes that see where I'm coming from.
And it helps...a lot.
i am cool with myself now (ever since then actually; it was the wake-up call from hell) but what a price to pay...
. That's fucking rough, man...
