Thursday, September 21, 2006
Restaurants Connected To Gas Stations
Ah, Moose Jaw.
Non-stop complaints about the health care system, doing lunch at the gas station on the highway, boarded up storefronts and wall to wall people in the walmart. It is my hometown and I come here to heal and I come here to feel safe, but I drive around this town and it makes me feel sad and small. I look at myself changing my mind every other day about what I want to do, pacing my mother's basement apartment, hoping that something - anything - miraculous will fall into my lap at any second and make it all okay. I look at myself acting like this and it isn't that I think I am too good for Moose Jaw in all its small town simplicity, it's the opposite actually. It is that I am years behind the occupants of this place. These people have spouses and jobs and children and bowling teams and rider's games and new pickup trucks. They know what they are and they have a plan. Even if it is a simple plan, it is a plan. Sad and small is how I feel tonight. Sad and small and alone.
Yet, mostly I am happy, I think. That is a strange sentence, isn't it? I am happy, I think. But it sums up perfectly how I feel. For the most part I am enjoying my visits with friends and family and am at peace with the exploratory nature of my life right now. I have faith that I will find work that will get me enough income to support my exploration and I know that when I am healed and 'ready' I will fall in love with an amazing person who will love every single inch of me and build me a magic cottage where we can grow old together. I've got good friends and an awesome apartment waiting for me in the prettiest city in Canada. I am happy. I think. Kinda like being a canvas covered in this brilliant hot pink paint with a small blot of black right in the corner. It is this blot that doesn't want to go away and leaves me feeling like, under the happy, I could fall apart at any second. Inside this blot rests all the tears that my heart still wants so badly to cry.
Sometimes I think that that is how everybody feels. Almost happy. Happy, they think. Content, except for. I acknowledge that this may be because we are all scared that if we let go completely of the pain, the angst and the drama, we would no longer be interesting or interested. Because let's face it - who wants to hang out with someone who is always happy, all the time? Maybe the black blot is okay. Maybe I just need to focus instead on all the hot pink.
I send you 1987 Buicks with flat tires in front yards, greasy poutine with a half bottle of ketchup, toques in the middle of September, falling asleep in the sympathetic arms of your snoring best buddy, greys anatomy premiers as the highlight of your day and 8am appointments with mechanics named Mike.
Non-stop complaints about the health care system, doing lunch at the gas station on the highway, boarded up storefronts and wall to wall people in the walmart. It is my hometown and I come here to heal and I come here to feel safe, but I drive around this town and it makes me feel sad and small. I look at myself changing my mind every other day about what I want to do, pacing my mother's basement apartment, hoping that something - anything - miraculous will fall into my lap at any second and make it all okay. I look at myself acting like this and it isn't that I think I am too good for Moose Jaw in all its small town simplicity, it's the opposite actually. It is that I am years behind the occupants of this place. These people have spouses and jobs and children and bowling teams and rider's games and new pickup trucks. They know what they are and they have a plan. Even if it is a simple plan, it is a plan. Sad and small is how I feel tonight. Sad and small and alone.
Yet, mostly I am happy, I think. That is a strange sentence, isn't it? I am happy, I think. But it sums up perfectly how I feel. For the most part I am enjoying my visits with friends and family and am at peace with the exploratory nature of my life right now. I have faith that I will find work that will get me enough income to support my exploration and I know that when I am healed and 'ready' I will fall in love with an amazing person who will love every single inch of me and build me a magic cottage where we can grow old together. I've got good friends and an awesome apartment waiting for me in the prettiest city in Canada. I am happy. I think. Kinda like being a canvas covered in this brilliant hot pink paint with a small blot of black right in the corner. It is this blot that doesn't want to go away and leaves me feeling like, under the happy, I could fall apart at any second. Inside this blot rests all the tears that my heart still wants so badly to cry.
Sometimes I think that that is how everybody feels. Almost happy. Happy, they think. Content, except for. I acknowledge that this may be because we are all scared that if we let go completely of the pain, the angst and the drama, we would no longer be interesting or interested. Because let's face it - who wants to hang out with someone who is always happy, all the time? Maybe the black blot is okay. Maybe I just need to focus instead on all the hot pink.
I send you 1987 Buicks with flat tires in front yards, greasy poutine with a half bottle of ketchup, toques in the middle of September, falling asleep in the sympathetic arms of your snoring best buddy, greys anatomy premiers as the highlight of your day and 8am appointments with mechanics named Mike.
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