PipesDreams

The weather is perfectly reflecting my mood at the moment, which is a bad sign. Today’s forecast: a cold front of drizzly depression with a heavy cloud cover of indecision. If you’re on the road, things are moving slowly due to the thick fog of doubt and uncertainty. Drive to conditions.

People passing me on the sidewalk as I sludged up Bay Street today must have thought that my headphones were piping in Henryk Gorecki’s Third Symphony (nobody does morose and elegiac like the Polish). In reality, my poor little mp3 player was doing its best to pump chipper vibrations into my brain with an unrelentingly perky playlist of things like Katrina and the Waves’ “Walkin’ on Sunshine” and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. Whatever it takes to get me to work.

“Lovefool” by the Cardigans was perhaps a poor choice for the ‘Pick Up Your Leaden Feet and Walk’ playlist, as its upbeat tempo and catchy vocals conceal a really poor choice of lyrics for my present mindset. Dear, I fear we’re facing a problem; you love me no longer, I know and maybe there is nothing that I can do to make you do. Mama tells me I shouldn’t bother, that I ought to stick to another man, a man that surely deserves me, but I think you do! So I cry, and I pray and I beg… It gets worse from there, but you get the idea.

I received e-mails from both Justin’s mother and her fiancee yesterday, which have left me with mixed emotions. I have both a burning desire to reply and the knowledge that to do so in haste would be a very bad plan indeed. I know myself too well – writing here, in this journal, I have the awareness of an audience to keep my comments relatively lighthearted and my temper in check. In private correspondence, especially to such an involved party, the temptation to cut loose and divulge some of my more unpleasant feelings about the situation would be irresistable. And Uli and Paul deserve better than that. So I will follow the advice of my good friend , who on many occasions has seen me spew piercing, vitriolic words onto the page while in a rage of personal angst and has always advised that I should take a moment before pressing “send.” I must remember that my terrifying command of the English language should be treated like Peter Parker’s spidey-sense and ability to shoot silly-string from his palms; it’s both a great power and a great responsibility, not to be used for evil.

Everyone keeps remarking on how calm I seem. People don’t seem to grasp that I’m in deep denial here. It’s like I’m on an extended sleepover at my Mom’s, but when I go home everything will be okay. I had to register for a new Blockbuster card in Oakville yesterday that required me to give my home address and I just stared dumbstruck at the page for a few minutes, then started giggling hysterically. I don’t know my mother’s postal code. I couldn’t even remember her apartment number. I started to write “no fixed address”, then sobered up and wrote my Weston info, sighing in defeat.

A sizeable deposit of money from Justin showed up in my account two days ago. I haven’t had any correlating correspondence to explain what it is for. It’s about the right amount to cover the cost of our queen-sized mattress which I paid for and he’s sleeping on, but we haven’t discussed anything yet in terms of finances, so I don’t understand what I’m supposed to think this random money shit is all about. Alimony? Payment for services rendered?

I promise, tomorrow I will write about something completely unrelated. Books. Or food. Or running. Whatever it is, it won’t be this.

Well, I fixed the transit issue, but may have lost yet more of my dignity in the process.

The nice Customer Service people at GO told me I could change my Weston pass to an Oakville pass for the balance of the month. I just needed to go see a counter person and ask for an “upgrade”, then pay the $70 difference. When I went to the counter and explained, the man said “What, you not living in Weston anymore? Why?” so I replied, “No, uhh, no… there was a… domestic dispute…” and then trailed off and just stood there like a moron, tears dripping off my chin. He processed my paperwork pretty damn fast after our awkward moment of weepy silence, then said “Sorry” and gave me his best basset-hound face as I put my credit card back in my wallet and walked away. Yay, humiliation! In front of a customer service representative!

My lovely new 35-minute commute sure gives me plenty of time to mull. I tried thinking WWVMD, “What would Veronica Mars do?” but quickly realized she would probably have already committed arson and/or tazered her offending partner to death by now, so that line of thought was not helpful. Then I thought about what the hell I’m supposed to do with my “I (heart) Justin” socks –my brain is pretty scattered right now, there are many random segues– and then I thought about Justin’s tube socks and how he likes me to roll them down and scratch the pressure-marks where the elastic was. Then I started looking around for a rubber mallet or a 2×4 or something hard to knock myself unconscious with, to no avail.

When I got into work, one of the Managers told me I looked under the weather and asked how I was feeling. My first instinct was to reply flippantly, “Oh, you know, case of the Mondays”. My second instinct was to give her the real answer; “Tired. Sad. Alone. Empty. Slightly dead inside.” But luckily I went with instinct #3, which was, “I feel single.” She asked, “Was it your call?” and I shook my head, and she muttered “Bastard”, then went to her office and gave me a fistful of bubble wrap to pop.

I no longer wish to wake up and try to act normal, please and thank you.