I hated Calgary. I hated it more than I hated anywhere else I have ever lived. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I was just stopping buy until we got the cross border thing sorted out so I could continue on to Calgary.
A lot of shit happened in Calgary, my sister's asshole boyfriend physically assaulted me, after having called my parents in a drunken rage to bitch about their loser son, after having called the girl in California to bitch about her loser boyfriend, etc.
The only work I had managed to find was as tier II telephone tech support for cable modem users. I did not really have any friends in Calgary, just my friend Andy, whom I got to see exactly twice in all my time there, my sister, and some cousins I was not close to. Work was not indicative of making friends... I made it to one social event, the Lord of the Rings premiere with some folks from work, but that was the extent of it.
All I really had was the promise that things would be better once I made it to California.
It didn't really work out that way at all.
Sometime around the time that I got assaulted , the Californian girl decided that "for my own good", we needed to slow it down so I could get settled. I didn't get a say in this, it was one of many decisions about our relationship that were made for me. What I found out later was that what she really was wanting was a guilt-free way of starting a new relationship with a guy that she thought was "normal" as opposed to someone like me, I guess. She told me she had made a new friend, but I was too blind to figure out what that meant.
She and I had met because we did internet journals, we started a torrid and intense long distance relationship. She had started blogging under another name... and finally sent me the link just before Christmas... like days before Christmas... in it she talked about how happy she was in this new relationship with her normal guy. This was how I found out... needless to say, I fell apart. I was inside my tiny one-bedroom apartment with non furniture, a crappy little tv, my computer and an internet connection... oh and a bed... I had actually bought a good bed when I got my job.
I had no one to talk to. By this point, my sister had chosen the asshole boyfriend over me, and I was alone, scared, broken-hearted and angry as fuck. I cried for days. I would go to work at 6am, and then come home by 2:30 each day... I would get into my lonely apartment and I would cry, for hours until I fell asleep. I felt betrayed, and told her so... she didn't see it that way, she saw it as her having told me all about her new guy and that we were on a break anyway so I could sort myself out, so what she did was just a natural and normal consequence of my horrible situation.
I didn't even know how to take that response. All I could do was cry, and hate everything about where I was. I hated my job, I hated my home, I hated the city, I was terrified of my sisters boyfriend, my best friends were in Newfoundland and Winnipeg and another part of California respectively.
I didn't know where to turn, or what to do. After spending Xmas alone, and working, and New Years Eve working and having to work at 6am on New Years Day, as I walked to work in the -40 Celcius temperatures in my business casual clothes, I made the decision to turn tail and run.
I ran home, I had nothing and no idea where to go, all I knew was there was friends at home and I could do the same job I was doing at the call centre there, rather then in the bleak winter world of Alberta.
I hurt inside and out and as soon as Air Tango announced they were flying to NL, I bought a ticket. I moved back to Newfoundland in February, which should tell you something.
The whole reason for this post is I I have never really told anyone the whole story... and I guess I am still not telling anyone, because I haven't updated this in so long, I doubt I actually have any readers.
The other thing I will tell you is - even with all that has happened since, there is not a single day that goes by, that I don't think of her. Some days it still breaks my heart, some days it still makes me crazy, some days it fills me with regret... and some days it just makes me feel kinda meh...but it is every day, every single day. And I both love and hate that.
