I’ve been in bed for four days. After an extremely emotionally trying week, my body finally succumbed. CC has been trying to nurse me back to health. Ze’s been patient, kind and loving. Only to be rewarded by sickness.

I’ve been thinking about your last post. I’m the same way. New Year’s has always seemed overrated to me. This year CC and I had a few friends over, ate food, played games, said Happy New Year and then goodbye. Nothing over the top. No fireworks or drunken stumbles. My kind of New Year’s.

She’s been on my mind lately. I don’t know what triggered it but she’s been on my mind. I stand at the bus stop across the street from our old house and look up, half expecting to see that pink lamp shade by the window. I see her everywhere recently. I almost waved at someone the other day… not her.

I’ve been running everything over in my head. Why did I leave that apartment? Would things have been different if I hadn’t? Narcissistic, right? But it pulls at me. When I’m by myself. Sitting there with my thoughts and the blame. Whatever loose relationship I had with her family has disappeared.

I haven’t seen or talked to many people since this past summer. It has been hard to keep touch. You were right. Keeping in touch gets harder and harder. Even with those I love. Before she went away it didn’t bother me to not keep in touch with you for awhile. I knew that when we saw each other things would be the same and that was comforting. But now… I don’t know if I can confidently say the same thing.

Yes, they said.

Ok, I’m going to bed. Happy New Years.

It was 9pm when this conversation occurred. By 9:45 I had read some of the book I am reading but not enjoying and turned off my light. They were right, it was still 2011 when I woke at 5:30.

I’ve never been a fan of New Years. I’ve never really seen the point. We don’t drink away October 31st and welcome November 1st. Or June 2nd to June 3rd. It’s just another day, really. And I take no mind of its seeming importance.

When I was a kid, I remember being so excited to stay up until midnight. Around 10:30 my excitement began wavering as I became more and more tired. Hold on, Cailey, I thought. It’s going to be great. It’s going to happen soon. We started counting. Get ready, I thought. Don’t blink, you’ll miss it. 3…2…1…

That was it?

I remember being so disappointed at my first New Years. I remember my brother kissing me on the cheek. I remember everyone cheering and not understanding why. I looked down. I was still the same. The house was still the same. I must have blinked.

The next New Years, same thing. But instead I was old enough to bang pots outside with my friends who lived around the corner. We screamed and hollered. Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Wake up! Wake up! No one woke up who wasn’t already awake.

No one else seemed to care.

I banged the pot so hard I dented the bottom.

Another year I stood outside and stared at the stars. I must have been doing it wrong. Surely, my roof, my walls, was blocking the wonder of New Years. If nothing happened in my living room after the ball had dropped, surely, surely, it had to be outside.

I stood outside, alone, while everyone else was inside. I could hear them counting with Dick Clark. 10…9…

I craned my neck to the sky. And waited. 3…2…1….

Nothing happened. Again.

I kept staring at the sky for a few more minutes, taking inaccurate time into account, until my mother told me to come inside.

I’ve never forgotten those disappointments. I went to Nathan Philips once in high school. I vowed never again.

This year I made it until 9:45, and greeted the new year on my own terms. At 5:30am and a cup of coffee. It seems much more civil, this new relationship  New Year and I have. I wake when I wake, nod my head and we understand each other. Hello, I think. 2011, it can’t be any worse…

I remember one Christmas where my cousins and I went to go watch The Faculty. But that’s all. I remember Josh Hartnett, Usher, Elijah Wood and that curly haired guy in the Justin Timberlake video “What goes around”. Oh, oh! And that girl who replaced Rebecca Gayheart in Dead Like Me.

I hope you are enjoying your favourite season. I wish I had more stories to share with you.

I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you when I was home. I actually just ended up spending most of my time at my cousin’s place which was awesome. Played a lot of mariokart and talked. One of my cousin’s is dating someone that I’m not too fond of. Her relationship with him is apparently putting all her other relationships in jeopardy. So it was good to talk to my other cousins about it. Okay… gossip about it.

Things are busy here, as you may have guessed. I have two weeks to write two papers or I’m gonna be kicked out of school. Boo. I’m not so much sick of school as much as I prioritize everything else before it. But today is a working day. It is a day I work. I will work today. Work. Work. Today. Yes. Maybe. Yes. Work.

There’s been so much to do on campus in terms of organizing. Can you believe how involved I am? Who am I? Where is the girl that you met in second year who would spend 15 hours in Mac-Corry? I don’t even know. I still get confused when everyone starts talking about student government stuff though. Some friends are heavily invested in what happens to student government here.

I’m currently watching Hoarding: Buried Alive. Mainly out of fear of one day turning into a hoarder. Sometimes I feel like CC and I are on our way … so I freak out and do a major cleanup and dump a bunch of my unnecessary belongings. I’m also trying to see what my life would be like if I don’t buy so much stuff all the time. I’m the worst with clothes (mainly underwear). I just have piles and piles of it. It seems easy to become a hoarder so I’m trying to keep an eye on our stuff. I don’t want to get to the “I don’t know how this happened” time.

Anyways… I miss you. I hope you’re doing well and are excited about school.

I did something to my back. My lower back has always kind of bugged me because of my crooky spine, but now… I’ve done something. I think I strained a muscle (or a few…) between my shoulder blades. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. I just know I woke on Saturday with the feeling of a knife in my back.

Plus I had the joy of working all day Saturday, walking around like a zombie so as to limit the motion of my neck.

It kept me awake most of last night. I’m a roller. I toss. Turn. Kick my legs. And each of these movements caused back pain and I awoke, cursing the clock, and Hank, who has taken to sleeping with me in the latter hours of the night.

He snuggles up against my legs, pushing me further and further off the edge. I kick him to move over, but he lays there, snoring and snoring. He keeps me awake too. But I love him, so he can stay. I do not love back pain.

I had to recertify my first aid today. It was in Oakville… right near the church. I did a double take when I realized where I was. I was the only one in my class today because everyone else canceled or rescheduled. They ran the class anyway and the instructor and I were done in 3.5 hours as compared to the 9 they had scheduled.  She talked about suicide and first aid in the beginning. I shifted nervously in my seat.

You share my hatred of showering, which is something few others understand. I love it, they say. How can you not? It’s so relaxing and wonderful and clean.

Patooie.

I hate it.

If I could, I would shower once a month and live in the woods. Alas, my life brings me to the city where society deems I must be clean to be a productive member of society. It’s so much effort for something that I’ll only have to do again tomorrow. Drying my hair is the worst, which explains why I’m sitting here with wet hair, watching it curl as I drink my tea.

Daylight savings has screwed with me. I want to jump into bed and sleep… but it’s only 6:30. One hour back? Really? Feels like 5…

I understand what you mean about the convocation. Her mom emailed me and wondered if I wanted to drive up with them. I had to work Thursday to Saturday. 2 days notice wasn’t enough for me to switch so many shifts.

I told her I was upset that Queen’s notified the family so late about the date. Upset that because of this oversight, I would be unable to go.

That’s what I told her.

I’m unsure whether or not I would have gone, had I not been working.

I think I would have, but would have told no one I was going. I think I would have snuck in the back doors after the ceremony had started and slipped out just as quietly when it was over. I would have raised the collar of my wool coat and walked down University Ave., a cold rain just starting to fall. This is how I pictured it. It also had an appropriate soundtrack playing.

The 3 hour drive to Kingston would have been too much with them. I do not think I could stomach the talk of this degree and how much she wanted it. My tongue would have bled with kept words. Who am I to tarnish their last image? Who am I to utter such truths.

I’m sure Mrs. met up with the chem eng. Took them out to toast and remember, like when they moved everything to Oakville. I, like you, do not care for their imposition, for that is what I feel it is. Let us grieve in our way, we’ll let you grieve in yours, but do not pretend it was more than it was, your friendship with her. She tolerated them in doses. Colleagues not friends. But who am I to take from them what they think it was?

Another reason I could not have gone with Mrs. and Erin. How could I have sat through that night, washing bitterness with beer?

I must go dry my hair. Alas. Alas…

“Put your fists up. This don’t mean nothing if you ain’t doin’ something.”

It was that kind of hip hop. I’m exhausted. I mean, dance until past midnight exhausted. But happy.

On another note… I got a note from one of her “friends” the other day. Asking if I was going to her convocation. The exact words were…”I just wanted to message you and ask if you are coming to convocation on Oct 29 to see [her] get her Master’s degree.” As if she were still around. As if she would magically appear on stage to receive a degree that caused so much stress on her. As if I haven’t listed the thousands of reasons for her being gone, among the top of the list being the inability to please her parents through her academics. I almost lost it after receiving that message. I think I’m particularly upset by the constant facade I need to put up whenever I have to deal with people I knew she wasn’t really friends with. Just when I think I’m getting by… turns out, I’m not.

I’m glad we had the talk. Wasn’t the most ideal time, but I guess we had to have it at some point. I was working under the assumption that we had an unspoken agreement. I don’t try to change your mind about being a cop, and you don’t ask about specifics in my organizing and politics. But I was wrong. We needed to talk about it. So that we could both be clear about who we are and what we’re willing to compromise. You are such an important part of my life. Our relationship, whatever it may become in the future, is not one I’m willing to let go.

I love you.

It was magical… and I acquiesce that they are right. The cast members (for that is what all staff is called…) tell you to have a magical day and you kind of smile, laughing it off to yourself, but hours later as you’re eating ice cream in the shape of a mouse’s head and grinning madly as it’s ‘chocolatey coating’ drips down your fingers, you admit it. It is magical. And they are right.

We went to Magic Kingdom on a night they performed their fireworks show (it’s every night in peak season, aka summer, but only so often in off season). Tinkerbell flew across the sky and I stood just below the safety wire, squinting my eyes to the darkness so that it was as I remembered as a child. A fairy flying into nothing, into everything. Disappearing into night, into one of the stars?

They spend the GDP of a poor nation on this show, I said. Just for 15 minutes of my happiness.

The mother in front of me laughed, then quickly quieted, knowing she had been caught overhearing.

It was true, though. And I looked around, at the hundreds, thousands of people nearby. At the $15 lit balloons their children waved, tied safely around their wrists. At the light swords and novelty hats, and dollar signs flew across the lighted sky in lieu of Tink.

The first crack of strontium and iron flashed near the castle and I looked up, mouth agape. Tink was Tink again. And I forgot everything before…

Such manufactured environments, and emotions… how easy it is to buy into their vision, into their happiness. There’s still children screaming and crying, outraged parents verbally assaulting poor staff in a language they don’t speak until their hands shake as they take my credit card, and thoughts of money put to better use.

But it’s nice, to see what they see, even if just for a few days and the price of park admission.

Of course I must end with this. It would seem obvious if I omitted it. I’m sorry our meeting didn’t go as planned. It was nice seeing you, it was. I was just caught by surprise and all these fears and panics came to surface. My “mental health” day the Friday prior also began in a parking lot… funny what strangers must think. A coworker thought someone had scratched my car when she saw me. Those customers at BP probably wondered if my pizza was undercooked. I think I much prefer the sanctuary of the floor in a kitchen or friend’s bedroom.

Things will continue as things do. You told me that I wouldn’t get away that easily, and I assure you, the same goes for you as well. Tooth and nail, or however it goes.

Love you always.

There are kittens in my life. Two of them. Both adorable and hyper. Almost 4 months old. They make me happy.

Things with CC are as good as its always been. People are really starting to get used to us as a couple and I guess realizing that its not just a fling. I’m thankful for that, considering all the crap we went through in the beginning of our relationship. We’ve been apartment hopping between her place and mine to give both our roommates a break from us.

I went to lots of weddings. Makes me not want to get married ever. But certainly makes me want to throw a large 5-day party in honour of my relationship. Hahahhaha! Low-key. Lots of playing guitar, laughter and food. That’s all weddings are good for. FOOD.

CC and I talked about moving back to the Bagot building in May. She asked how I would feel about it. I lucked out. I don’t hold emotion to places as much as I thought. I said it would be okay. That I would be okay. And I think I will be. It’s still a lot to think about. But the emotions I felt a few months ago at her death has been dulled. Either dulled or has gone away. I’m constantly afraid that it will creep up on me. A tidalwave of emotions I didn’t properly deal with. I heard from her high school best friend the other day. She added me on facebook and I don’t quite know what to do with that. We suddenly have everything and nothing to talk about.

I’m coming home this weekend. Do you have any time? Saturday, maybe? To hang out. Watch a movie? Have lunch/dinner? I miss you a lot.

AK is tracking me down for my RA work and my thesis. I think she’s starting to regret her choice of having me as a student. Story of my life.

I am in major roles in four organizations on campus that’s keeping me so busy. That, and I seem to keep getting sick. Probably from a mix of overwork and lack of sleep.

Now, I’m at the goat. Waiting to meet with the coordinator of one of the organizations with a mix of hip hop, sam cooke and instrumentals playing above.

I thought of how busy my week is, even though it’s only Monday and things keep getting added. And how things are only going to get busier in the next few months, which made me think of OPC, and school in general… and of course, the next logical thought was of you.

I listened to you for a bit on the radio a few weeks back. It took me a few minutes to really believe it was you. You have a radio voice, different from the one I know.

I hope you are well, and think of you often.