Journeys

I really should be sleeping. After seven hours sitting uncomfortably on a bus with a severe case of nausea and an aching tailbone, nothing seems more sensible than to lie down and revel in a state of blissful unconsciousness. Have you ever been so physically uncomfortable in a situation that you can’t imagine your body ever feeling pleasant again? Then when you finally reach a state of comfort, it seems surreal that you were ever uncomfortable? Like it was all an out of body experience, and that maybe you were just watching yourself from outside of your body from the extremely satisfying and contented location that you currently hold? That’s how I feel right now- like the seven hours of hell was all just a bad dream. I also feel that I could float off to dreamland at any moment, but of course, after seven hours with nothing to do but sit and think I could not possibly go to sleep without properly documenting every thought and experience I’ve had during the last three days. It is against all my better judgment as a writer to do what seems logical rather than to write. So I write.

Now that I’m safe and warm in my bed, listening to my parents laugh at Jay Leno and flip through every commercial with the exception of the Canadian heritage commercials, I am thankful for the chance to finally be able to quietly reflect on the events that have taken place over the last 72 hours of my life- the first of 2007. It started when I decided to make the trek to Cape Breton to spend New Year’s with Shauna. I think I ruined my whole weekend before I even arrived, having such high expectations for the New Years celebrations we had planned. On the bus ride up, I squirmed in my seat trying to reach some level of ease though failing miserably. My fall down a flight of stairs three weeks earlier now meant that sitting for more than an hour made my tailbone feel as though it were going to violently shoot out my ass and then eat my body. It’s not a pleasant feeling. I started to question my decision to travel by bus almost immediately.

We put ourselves in awkward positions and situations with the expectation or hope that our destination will be worth the troubles and sacrifice along the way. It is all part of the human condition. To have faith, to believe, that by enduring tough times and rough patches, we will be rewarded in the future. That by taking a shitty bus ride to Cape Breton, the parties and celebrations will outweigh the crappiness that was the voyage to get there. But what if you get to the end of the rainbow, and instead of a pot of gold, there’s only Sydney?

I arrived at dinnertime and after trudging off the bus with my oversized purse in tow I waited in the endless lineup for my over-packed duffle bag clearly indicating my affection for Molson Canadian. I felt the embrace of a little gremlin from behind and knew immediately it was the Caper roommate I had traveled to meet. There’s something about the accent of a Caper that automatically makes me smile, especially Shauna’s. It doesn’t matter what she says, it just makes me laugh. We got into her friend’s cousin’s car and I got my first look at what Shauna likes to call the Cape Breton ghetto. The thing I love the most about the Cape Breton folk, is that when they talk about people it’s always somebody’s aunt, or somebody’s cousin, or somebody’s neighbor… or somebody’s dealer. Anytime they see someone skinny they tell me they’re on the Cape Breton diet, which consists of booze and cocaine… charming. But nonetheless, Cape Breton seemed to have a small town appeal about it that made the sharp cold and dreary weather that much more pleasant.

After a few stops to cousin’s and friend’s houses, we arrived at Shauna’s and immediately started to prepare for the evening ahead. Even after I messed with my over processed curls and plastered on an obscene amount of makeup, I still did not feel like I was ready to go out. I hated how I looked, I hated what I had on, and I hated that I felt like a needed to get drunk in order to have fun and to forget that I hated those things. It is amazing to me how an entire night can be ruined by ones own lack of confidence and extreme self consciousness. On a much larger scale, it was an indication to myself that my journey to really being comfortable with who I am was not yet finished, no matter how far I feel like I’ve come in the last years of my life.

But back to the story at hand, after stops at friend’s houses, we reached our pre-drinking destination. Immediately there was a tension in the room, another contribution to my disastrous night of epic proportions. Through no fault of her own, someone’s presence made me feel incredibly awkward. Through random connections I found myself in a room with the roommate of someone who clearly despises me, thanks to that past of mine that always seems to find me in one way or another. Luckily, she was seriously friendly, and I over compensated my awkwardness by being loud and obnoxious and laughing at everything everyone said or did. I hate being that person who makes others uncomfortable; as I’m sure it was awkward for her too. She had always seemed very nice to me though and not surprisingly she made it very easy for us to be in each other’s presence. I think that a demeanor such as that says a lot about a person and the journey that they are on in life; when they make a conscience effort to be pleasant and make the best of a situation when they really don’t have to.

No matter how pleasant she was, I still felt like I was the elephant in the room, in more ways than one, and for some reason my alcohol choice of beer, coolers and tequila was not making me feel any better about the situation. Nonetheless, I tried to have as much fun as I could and by the time we left for the Curling Club I was in a moderately good mood. When we arrived I couldn’t help but smile at the how stereotypical this party was. A hall with some tables and a dance floor, some finger food and a few streamers. Just what I would have imagined a Cape Breton party to look like: two hundred Cape Breton twenty- something’s who cared about nothing except the fact that there was a DJ and a bar, which we headed straight for. Only moments earlier I had put mine and Shauna’s coat in the coat room, and I still have the image of the last place I saw my coat burned into my memory.

After the countdown and a few drinks, we decided to head out to the bar that everyone was going to for the rest of the night. We walked to the coat room to find only mayhem, and no coat. I immediately had a sinking feeling, and despite Shauna’s encouraging words that “it must be in here somewhere?, I knew that it was gone forever. After flinging through people’s coats and muttering every curse word I could think of, Shauna and I finally decided to give up and leave. More than I was pissed off that I had to walk to the bar and spend the rest of the weekend with no coat, I was livid at the fact that somebody was stupid or ignorant enough to take someone else’s coat. While standing in the middle of the coat room, displeased and on the verge of tears, the always helpful and resourceful Shauna drunkenly managed to slur out the suggestion of taking someone else’s coat. I’m not going to lie, I considered it. In the end though, I would just be making someone else feel as horrible as I did at the time. Making someone else unhappy wouldn’t bring my coat back, and perhaps somewhere along my journey, karma or God or whatever anyone believes in will repay me for walking two blocks in the freezing cold with no coat yielding questions from drunken people as to why I wasn’t wearing one.

We arrived at the bar and Shauna and I went again, straight for drinks. It didn’t matter though, by this time, I was in no mood to drink. Shauna got herself her usual and I decided to save my money and sulk instead. I was trying my best to stick it out for the night, but in all honestly all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed. I followed Shauna around for about a half an hour pouting and trying to convince myself that I was going to have fun soon. I left her for a moment and ventured to the bathroom, holding back the tears I knew I couldn’t cry in the middle of the bar on New Years. When leaving another bump in to someone who seriously dislikes me pretty much pushed me over the edge. I couldn’t handle it anymore. Between the loss of my coat and the constant reminder that I was a terrible person I made up my mind that it was time to go. Shauna walked me to the door after an argument about her coming with me, which I won. I would have just felt guilty if she had left her friends to take me home. I was perfectly capable of going alone and truthfully I preferred it. I needed to go to bed and decompress.

I walked outside in the cold and called every cab company the operator could give me, and got only busy signals. After thirty minutes with no progress, I was freezing and desperate. I walked up to a car and knocked on the driver’s window. She and her passenger side friend looked confused but nevertheless she rolled her window down to hear what I had to say.
“I will pay you twenty dollars to drive me home,? I begged.
“Get in.?
I will admit this may have not been the safest move on my part but I didn’t care. It was 3 am and I was going to bed at any cost. That night we were supposed to stay at Tasha’s, but my makeshift cab driver had no idea where her street was, so I resolved to just go to Shauna’s alone for the night. We drove around looking for my destination for quite some time until I recognized Shauna’s neighbor’s Christmas lights and sobbed quietly with joy. The couple, who turned out to be very nice and talked me through my drunken breakdown, refused my money and waited until I got to the door and made sure I was in alright. I did have to ring the doorbell and wake Shauna’s mom up, but she didn’t mind and the evening was over and that’s all that mattered.

I stayed for another two days, wearing Shauna’s mother’s coat and being overfed by everyone’s aunt and mother and friend’s friend. Hearing the Cape Breton gossip about who it was that got shot down the street and sitting in the back seat of Tasha’s car fearing for my life, as she is the only driver I know who is worse than me. Shauna and I watched a six episode Flavor of Love Marathon, and Jackass 2, which may have killed brain cells I couldn’t afford to lose. What’s done is done though, and I will always look back on my Cape Breton New Years as a tragic evening, but something I learned from.

Maybe when it comes to journeys, the bus ride wasn’t the important one at all. Perhaps the real journey began when I arrived. It was a journey of having to learn that not everything is going to turn out the way you expected, and that loss is a part of life- whether it is only a coat or something much larger, like pride. It was about learning that if you’re going to have a shitty time; it is best had by the side of your true friends, and being thankful for them even when you’re not thankful for your night. It was about learning that you cannot run from your past, because sure enough no matter where you go you will always be reminded of it. More importantly though, it was about learning that getting to where you’re going isn’t half as important as what you do when you get there.