this is not a love story.
Hello Lovers!
Firstly! Below is my submission to 1888Center’s Why We Write project, a roadshow which will be taking authors’ texts around Orange County soon! Check it out!
Secondly, I am currently recording a podcast! It shall be called Running Wild with Christine: Sex, Success and other Slippery Rabbit Holes! If you want to submit questions, themes or be part of an episode, please email! I want to hear from you!
(Also, Book Two – Chapter Two is in the works, I promise to get it to you ASAP! )
Hope you enjoy the read!
Here’s the little cover reveal video that I taped for your amusement. I hope you are enjoying the site as it is growing. Thank you for sticking around if you’ve been a long-time follower.
I really hope you join me on this path towards success as a published author. The words still sounds weird coming out of my mouth. “I’m a published author.” Thank fuck I have just over three weeks to practice!
As you will notice, you can now join our mailing list to be kept in the loop regarding the upcoming launch of Just Bad Timing in an undisclosed London location on March 8, as well as our Avant-Premiere Party in Geneva, Switzerland. Details to follow.
For all things JBT, please share your email address with me; I promise I won’t spam. Or follow me on the social icons above. I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on the book, so do not hesitate to pre-order your digital copies on Amazon and Kobo now.
Seriously, let’s make it to the other side of this #selfpublishing craziness, so we can all enjoy more adventures, wine and written words.
All of my sincerest love,
Christine.
xoxo
It has been an interesting time, coming into 2018. Just Bad Timing is becoming a physical thing in less than a month and I think I’m going to have postpartum after it does.
As you might know, Christine is my pen name. Except that some people now know that I am Christine. I’m having a hard time coming to grips with that. A lot of people have asked me if it’s changed people’s behaviour towards me, the facts they’ve learned here. Of course it has! Mostly in a good way. I get to have deep and meaningful conversations with more people than ever! Yet sexually, it’s done something a little odd.
I did this insidious thing: I connected my personal Tinder to Christine’s Instagram. Talk about a way to get views and warp your gender stats! So now, on top of five super strategically angled pictures, Tinder dudes have access to justbadtiming. “Maybe I can be your next chapter?” I never thought this would be a recurrent pickup line!
To be honest, I’m a little over the whole Tinder, ONS craze. I will never really be over it as long as I don’t pick a place to settle down, because you know, a girl’s gotta eat. I do however really feel tired of the whole game. I know I can pick up, I know the sex can be surprisingly good (or bad). It’s feeling like the same night over and over again, with slight variations. This is the problem with the game. Once you have enough market research under your belt, you spend your nights waiting for someone to surprise you.
After trying so hard to be calculated, to be smart, to market myself over the past couple of months, I sit in front of this blank page again, drinking cold coffee, deeply unsatisfied.
I don’t even know what to think anymore. Throughout the editing process for the book, I have had to go over my life, my decisions, my mistakes, over and over again. The rollercoasters, I’m told make for great story-telling. “Tell us more about that fight”, I’m asked. What is it about human misery, or about someone’s ability to take shit, that is so relatable?
I have also had to prepare real people for some of the content in my book. No one prepares you for these conversations, especially when you didn’t expect to have to have them. In these conversations, I have had to defend myself, defend my choice to tell the story, defend my plea for vulnerability. How do you do that when you are presently uncomfortable with your own weakness? You push through it. You have to, no one else will.
So you go home after a long night of explaining why you don’t have a house, why everything you own fits in your suitcase, why you have no money in your bank account, why you want the world to know your secrets… You go home and you sit there in front of a screen, ready to further the cycle.
And all you can think about, while looking into your reflection, is how you wish someone was there to stroke your hair, to kiss your shoulder or the top of your head, and whisper: “you can do this.”
It’s a stupid thought really. It’s not like I have anyone in particular in mind. And even if I did, what would I really do about it? Stay, go, leap? I’m craving those instant perfect connections which don’t really exist. The ones that do, they take a long time and building skills. I’m not that girl yet. I’m the girl with the suitcase, waiting to be swept of her feet in some hidden corner of her brain. Yuk, why?
Why can’t I wish the rollercoasters away? I am trying really hard to be grateful for the glimpses of happiness, for the moments of connection. I am trying to take them as signs of hope, that it’s not so hard to find someone to connect with, that these people who get me, exist. But I’m failing. I’m failing, because I’m tired. I’m tired of having to go the hard way around. I’m tired of being one of those people who will have to go through hell to deserve what some people just stumble upon.
Or is there such a thing as stumbling upon happiness? Do we just portray ourselves that way, not to let people glimpse into the hardships? After witnessing two “perfect” marriages this week, in their fifth decades of common living, I started to think it was just a relic of the past. Then, I spent more time talking to them, delving into said “perfect” relationships. Both of these women went through hell and back with their husbands. Liam and I’s relationship looks like a walk in the freaking park next to those. That made me feel even more defeated, a coward crippled by egotism.
I can feel that “expected disappointment” rearing its ugly head and I don’t like it. I am sick of feeling like I need to reassess my decisions, my choices, my life. Can’t someone just want to fit into it? I know this wishful thinking isn’t helpful; I can’t help myself. Doesn’t everyone go through this?
What are these glimpses for? What do these hyper-fast connections mean? What am I meant to learn from them? Fuck. Can’t one of them just surprise me, and be at least close to my level of crazy? My life feels like driving an old manual car in traffic: stop, start, stall, stop, start, stop, stall, start, stop, sigh. When’s the highway? When do I get to stick my hand out the window, play with the air, feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, while I grin stupidly, thinking: “how did I ever get this lucky?”
“Why did I meet you now?!?!”, exclaimed the last perfect crush. He seems so perfect for me, it hurts sometimes. Dude, I don’t fucking know. I ask myself that on a regular basis, about many of you. Of course, I didn’t say that. I just asked when he would have wanted to meet me. “I don’t know. Earlier?” Well, yeah. But that doesn’t help does it?
Just when I’m okay with being alone, just when I decide I don’t have to have sex all the time, I can take a break, that’s when I make an impulse decision to take a chance and end up on a perfect date with an impossible guy. Or am I the impossible girl?
I’m sorry, you’re catching me on a bad day. Most of the time lately I’m good. I’m strong and ambitious and convinced I will succeed. The other twenty-five percent, fine, forty percent of the time, I’m pushing through. I’m putting a smile, my reading glasses and my brave face on.
“Let’s do this, let’s conquer the world,” I say to myself, as though talking in the plural makes me less alone. I have to be mindful of the intention I’m gonna set for myself this year, it might just come true.
***
Welcome back my darlings, thanks for still reading. Watch out for the upcoming pre-release of Just Bad Timing, and for cool marketing stuff. 2018 Christine is here to get more naked than ever!
Yours with all my heart,
C.
He undressed me as the wolves looked on from the distance. It all seemed too unreal. I was feeling numb for days until his tongue hit me like the sun hits your eyes on a summer morning through the mist, unexpected and unforeseen. So many unsuspected eyes might have been preying. My head was hanging off the wall, while my hair danced over the abyss. My lower back rested on the big bricks at the ledge, where his head played to music only he and I could hear. I was naked under the stars, as he toyed with my emotions, with my goosebumps and my heart, all confounded by the signals of my clitoris. He was as free as I was; it was part of the thrill. I could feel my back grinding into the stones, but I couldn’t ask him to stop. It was too good. Until the wanting was too much to bear. Swiftly, I was on my knees, with his perfection in my mouth. My hands were everywhere on him, around him, inside him. He pushed me onto the concrete floor, to nibble at my neck, while our bodies rubbed against each other in nonsensical rhythms. I finally slid him inside me, as my knees scratched on the rubble. I caught a glimpse of the wolves, as my eyes rolled back into my head. He was so perfectly thick, and slender, and nimble, and slow. He grabbed at my shoulders, he clawed at my waist. He stopped to look at me. “Should we take this to my place?”
***
I promised myself I wasn’t going to go out. I promised myself. I even stopped at the pub straight from the train station with all my shit with me, so that I would have to go home. That’s when April invited me over for wine.
“I’m so tired honey, I’ve been working like crazy this week and I have to be up at 8 am tomorrow.”
“No sweetie, you don’t get it. You have to come to my house tonight. We aren’t going out on purpose, we’re just chilling,” she said.
“I’d love to, honey. But that’s how it always starts.”
“When I tell you, you have to come, I mean it. There’s gonna be a guy there, you have to meet.”
“Alright, here we go. Who is it?” “A friend of mine. See?” She said, holding up her phone to my face. I have to admit, he was looking pretty delicious.
“Fine, twist my arm. I’ll go home to shower first, I’ll pick up some wine and I’ll come over around 9.30pm.”
Of course, I only got there around 10 because the guys were home so we caught up, and then I chatted with the girls at the wine shop. They picked out this “natural” more-than-organic Chardonnay for me, and I was weary because I really don’t like Chardonnay.
I got to April’s and because I knew the others already, I assumed the last guy was Sebastian. He didn’t look quite like his profile picture, but he was cute. A little less manly than I usually pick them, but cute. To be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed. For about 15 minutes. When he guessed the Chardonnay without looking at the bottle, I was sceptical. I mean, I was already thrown to like the wine myself. When he started talking, I felt myself smiling more. He was surprising me with real talk, and comfortable body language. He oozed confidence, in the weirdest of ways. Later somehow, they all did a bit of drugs and decided to go to the bar. So much for staying in tonight. I was definitely not going to jump on that bandwagon, but I wanted to know more about this guy. I sat across from him at Smiley’s and got him talking. Very openly. Upon discovering his investigation into the pleasures of the male G-spot and his reluctancy to hiding the fact that he was supposed to be on a different date tonight, I was a little hooked. We had the most bizarre conversation and didn’t even notice that everybody had gone back to April’s for more drugs by this point. We then silently decided to pretend we were going to go check up on them. That’s when we detoured by the walls.
It was strange, I felt like I had already kissed him when he kissed me. I felt like all night we had been touching, when we actually hadn’t. I guess the assumption that it was going to happen sort of took away from the mysticalness of that first kiss. It did not take away from the heat though. He kissed me and grabbed me by the little hair I had left at the top of my neck. We were almost eating each other’s faces out when his phone rang. I told him to pick up, it was his date. “Go on, cancel.” I teased. When I took mine out to check it, I had a message from one of my prospectives I had told I might see that night. I had forgotten about him. When I texted to cancel, he called. Sebastian and I looked each other in the eye as we both told people we were supposed to be fucking that we were “tired” and “going to bed”. It was such a turn-on, the blatant honesty between us. It’s a little fucked up that I felt special that I was given the curtesy of truth whilst accepting the assumption that all the others got lies. It made me feel good in a way that we both felt it was special enough to tell each other we were liars, in demonstration.
Because I couldn’t bring anyone back to the house, I had to be creative. When I hung up, he was still talking to her. So I kissed his neck, stroking his arms, grabbing his ass, hovering my hand past his zipper. He pulled at my hair and kissed me passionately when he hung up. He took my hand in his, and motioned me to take a walk with him. So we strolled around the walls, and where the pathway is usually closed, it was magically open that night. The buildings up above would be the witnesses to our wilderness, as the unsuspecting strangers walked under us, past the bridge to the port. I didn’t even know he had a place until my knees were officially broken, and my head was fucked up from the art installation that had sprung up around town. The artist had placed random black sculptures of wild animals everywhere around town; it was incredibly spooky. When we euphorically walked back to his, I couldn’t believe the sweetness in him. It almost didn’t make sense, and that’s what he was running on. The total understanding, the likeness of our beings, but the chaos and the madness that reigned. I had to have more, I had to know more.
The passions were soaring. Before the door was even shut, our clothes had flown off. We did it everywhere in his house. We fell off the sofa and continued climbing each other on the floor, contorted between the couch and the glass door that led onto the patio, where we later smoked, seeking each other out in the darkness. There was this silent, unbreakable, unwavering tension when we looked at each other. It was almost like hunger. We broke his bed, and swam in our puddles of sweat. He promised to teach me yoga one day. I promised we would dance one night. A few hours later, I couldn’t hide the bruises under last night’s clothes at work. A few days later, we would drink wine on the walls, feeling the beats of our hearts speed up as we played with the space between our bodies. I was soaking wet for hours, from his words in my ears, from his kisses on my neck, his hands off of my body. The touch was one of real intimacy, one of mutually wanted romance, without fear. Without fear, because we were the same peas in two different small pods. The road was unsure and adventurous, and of course individual. Yet there was this admittance to mutually restored faith, faith in connection, faith in realness, faith in two spirits singing the same tune. I think, to a certain degree, that we both silently admitted that the lives we chose lacked a bit of love, and we uncovered a source in each other that wouldn’t sour, like milk and feelings do. The rules were simple, because we both knew, that rules are obsolete.
I drank a bit of the red wine he had picked out, looking at the sea, thinking there wouldn’t be a better way to remember this person and this moment. Until he held me under the running water, so I wouldn’t collapse as my legs gave out from under me. The orgasm he gave me in the fifth and final hour of our bodies speaking in tongues, it shook me. It was the small, subtle noises of his pleasure, the bruises on my ass cheeks, and the strength with which he pulled my hair, combined with the wetness of the shower, that took me out. If there are no further memories to be had with him, then he will always be the one suspended in time and space, the one that made me feel like I was flying, or falling, never quite tied to gravity. The big bang I needed, to finish the last chapter, and start with a whole new book, where timing would be irrelevant.
The decision fell, almost exactly a year later. The plan is set in motion and we are doing it. We are really doing it. I cannot believe it is actually happening and will probably wait for something to screw it up before we are on the plane.
Yet, here we were! In FRANCE! Can you believe it? We moved to France. What a sigh of relief. I felt like a little kid the night before Christmas. I had two weeks until my new job was due to start and we had to deal with the unbearable bureaucracy that all who have moved to France are all too familiar with. It was challenging but it was blissful. We had gotten ourselves out of our rut in Vancouver, sold everything we owned, and shipped only a handful of suitcases. During the first days, we walked around, tried to get a bank to accept our application, struggled to get a phone plan, and enjoyed having some time to ourselves.
On a particularly sunny day, we sat down at the only beach bar open in January and drank rosé with our happy feet in the sand and cigarettes in our hands. This bar was a little hut, literally on the beach, in Juan les pins. The waiters were handsome and smiling (a feat in France) and some awesome electro-chill beats were playing. The sun was strong even though it was soon setting. I could feel it hit my skin and could have sat there with my eyes closed until the end of time. We smiled at each other like blissful idiots. I’m not sure it if was the vitamin D, the sweet sweet wine, or the surreal actuality of the situation, but it felt like we had succeeded at life, like we had gotten it right if just this once. There was another couple there, and the four of us seemed to be the only ones in on a very important secret in this world: the secret of the little things in life.
I will always remember how we looked at each other in the car at the first sight of the sea arriving on the riviera and sang our lungs out. “I’m so proud of us bébé; we made it!” We had made it this far and were so confident that it was going to be amazing, super hard but amazing. We picked out an apartment that was too cliché to be true, with colourful tiles, an arched hallway, creaky doors and high ceilings. I could just picture us dancing there, to some jazz, in our beautiful kitchen. It was one of those kitchens with a big white farmhouse sink and an old gas stove. It looked onto a small courtyard, where a old palmtree died and a orange tree grew. It was just like a movie. We lived above a tea shop for fuck’s sake.
We spent those first couple of weeks eating on patios, strolling down pedestrian cobbled streets and watching old men walk around with baguettes under their arms. It was the dream come true and I couldn’t wait for life to unfold, for us to meet our new French friends, for us to go dancing, for us to live the lives we thought we were destined to live.
I eventually started my job and Liam ventured into town on his own, texting me to inform me of the new words he had learned. “Une autre bière, s’il vous plaît.” Amazing stuff. My job was alright, intense. I was working from 8am to 8pm to sustain him not having a job for a while. It felt odd working that much when all I wanted to do was explore the scenery and revive the passion we had somehow lost in the incumbrance of the stuff we had accumulated in the past. But it was all worth it, as it allowed us to live out the dreams we had made up for ourselves.
To be perfectly honest, it was all a bit surreal. Everyone in Switzerland thought I was mad to move to France. “You got it the wrong way around my darling. In this day and age, there is no money to be made in France!” Yes, I know. Thanks. We picked it because it allowed him to get a visa rather easily and it allowed me to finally see some sun. The French Riviera… The dream! I get to live inside the same city walls within which Hemingway drank and Picasso painted! How do people forget this? How does society not allow for those kinds of musings to matter, for art to become an integral part of your life, for money to come last? As I have said before, I can handle a lot, as long as I see my happiness indicator moving up. No matter how hard it was going to be, I was ready to take it on. I was ready to work as hard as physically possible, because we were creating a life worth living for ourselves. In that instance, I was so proud of us.
I was proud of how easily we de-cluttered, of how committed we had become. We were unhappy with our lives in Vancouver and we did something about it. Everyone warned us; this was going to take a lot of effort. He was a man who was going to depend on a woman. I have to admit it bothered me that in 2015 this was something that I had to worry about, but they were not wrong. It was part of a bigger thing that he would have to face. Just as I had been faced with all of life’s uncertainties in 2009, he would now have to face his internal music and create something that he would be proud of for his own little self. I thought it was magical that he was brave enough to do that, regardless of his age and status. It was no big sacrifice for me, but admittedly we are not made from the same cloth. It was a huge achievement for him. I knew it was going to make us or break us, but I had been preparing to take that risk. Taking the risk is what made us in that moment. I could not be more excited.
“- I love you bébé. – I love you too. – I can’t wait to see what this year has in store for us.” With those words, I fell asleep peacefully and dreamt about champagne glasses and passionate kisses.
***
March 1st.
I sit here, on my so-very-cliché patio, drinking wine in the dark. I am trying to decipher the words that best describe my current situation. Let’s see…
Single? Yeah, that one definitely applies.
Unemployed? Yep, that one too. I quit my job. Out of desperation and exhaustion.
Aimless? Yes, absolutely. Perfectly, decidedly, aimless.
How could this have happened? What’s next? Oh my poor heart. The carousel never stops turning. My life currently looks like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and Bridget Jones has become my spirit animal.
So I take another swig of that delicious red wine and light yet another cigarette. I watch the amber as it shines through the darkness, perfectly still and shivering all the same. I have been here before.
Sometimes life eats up all of your creativity.. It soaks it dry. I am working on giving you the best of me. The truest of me. I promise I will do better. In the meantime, she is making me remember Christine. So while I say see you later, you can see her now. Now, she is me.
I was sitting across from him at dinner. We had not spoken a word in the last 30 minutes. He was on his phone, looking up cars that he could never buy. I was twirling my fingers, looking out of the window onto the street. It was a quiet night. The wind was moving the leafs around and you could tell it was about to be fall. I gazed onto the street, watching passersby walk their dogs and live their own lives.
Fingers running through my hair.
I shiver. I look at him still sitting silently, ever so distant. We are doing well. He looks up and smiles at me, and I can see the love in his eyes. It has just been a while since we have had the occasion to be intimate. Something always comes up. We ate too much, the dishes need to be done, he needs to finish that excel sheet for work. Wait, do I have enough change to do a load of laundry when we get home?
The humidity of a tongue, gliding on the side of my neck, as fingers run down my chest, past my stomach, nearing my zipper. Long, passionate kisses in the dark, making me wet.
Why am I thinking about this right now. Look the food is here. It is an ordinary steak, with some mashed potatoes, laid out in an overstated and overpriced plate. His eyes glisten over this and I am only happy that it means I will not have to do any dishes tonight. How is this my life?
My eyes and hands mapping out his abs, I cannot believe what is happening. I only met him 4 hours ago, and here he is in my bed at 5.30 am. My hands are undressing him, performing the sort of par-court that I was only discovering.
Don’t get me wrong, this routine makes me very happy most of the time. The way he says “Welcome home!” when I come in through the door, after a rough day. Liam is one of the few people who make me smile nowadays. He holds me and the voices in my head suddenly silence. For some reason however, my insides wonder if his are the last parts that I will get to know.
The man in my bed is handsome and rugged at the same time. I can feel his passion inside of me, grabbing at my gut and pulling me towards him. He is the most handsome creature I have ever had the pleasure of putting my hands on. His hair is dark and soft, to match those perfect green eyes of his. And there he is naked, in my bed, beside me, intruding my privacy in glorious ways. He picked me. He has been getting to know me for the past four hours, looking into my eyes. The desire he was projecting made me feel like I was the only thing he had ever wanted.
That night happened what seems like a lifetime ago. He was one of my first real one night stands, whom I would only run into for a split second years later, one memorable Saint Patrick’s day. All I can think about is him kissing me, touching my breasts, feeling his growing self through the denim, on my aubergine leather love-seat. Years later, I would watch him on TV and find fan pages riddled with shirtless screenshots of him. That may be why I am thinking of that night, the night the handsome actor picked me out of all of the girls at the club.
***
I walked into the club with my Serbian friends, ready to sing out loud and dance all night. The last thing I had on my mind was picking someone up. It often works like that, doesn’t it? When you least expect it, there he is, picking up his coat at the end of the night. I was joking with the coat-check lady, and he laughed. After a few quick words, I proceeded to head outside and light a cigarette while I waited for the rest of my entourage. I thought how funny it was that he was taller than I had expected. Granted I had caught him staring at me from across the bar a few times, and since it was a Serbian party, he would have been standing between 6’5 ft guys. Suddenly, there he was again, right in front of me. “I need your number.”
– Hum, excuse me, I don’t just give away my number to strangers, just like that.
– Yes, but you see, I have to drop my friends off at home now, I was the DD tonight, but I need to see you again.
– Well, if fate has it, you just might…
– I’m not taking that chance, I need to see you again.
– Is that so?
Christine! Let’s go!!!!!
– So, what do you say?
– Oh fine, here you go. The ball is in your court. Bye, now!
Luckily I was able to contain my friends’ inquisition rather easily, and soon I was home.
*1 new text message*
I need to see you.
Well, maybe you will. You got home alright?
Yes, where do you live?
Okay, I’m curious about this guy but am I really going to tell a stranger where I live?
On campus, and you? Why do you ask?
I told you, I need to see you! Downtown, btw. 😉
Now?!?
Yes, now, if you’ll have me.
Ok, ok. That is a bit forward, even for me. What I am going to say? Am I really going to invite this man to come over? It’s 2.30am! By the time he gets here, it will be at least 3, and that is a clear invitation. What if I actually do not like him? What if this is all just the attraction of the unknown? Oh what the hell, let’s see where this goes.
He knocked at my door and my heart was pounding. He was standing there wearing ripped jeans, a white V-necked T-shirt and black chucks. Now I realize this is cliché after the whole “50 Shades” thing, but I promise you that is what he was wearing that night. He sat on my couch and I offered him a drink, thanking the heavens that my room-mate had not drunk all my wine. He just sat there, and talked. I was so comfortable that I put my legs over his – after all it was a very small love-seat. He stopped talking, and went in for the kill. He leaned in, staring me in the eyes and kissed me softly, but intently. I was never a big fan of dry-humping. Yet that night I felt a passion I had not found since Joe. I remember being extremely aroused, and my knees being very chafed the next day.
I find it interesting how I also remember clinging to him, like to my other handsome nightly hobbies, as if to cheat intimacy, trick my brain’s chemistry with flesh and proximity. The actor was handsome, sweet, gentle and caring, yet a stranger. I would never know where his intentions came from. He would never know that I did not orgasm. We were just strangers, passing time, faking it all, most likely because loneliness is terrifying on a summer night. I remember this feeling, the addiction to the thrill of getting that penis to enter me. I know that feeling all too well, convincing myself that I was getting to know others, creating connections, when in fact it was all just pretend.
Liam may not jump me in dark alleys (yet). He may not make my knees chafed with desire. I have not had sex in two weeks, and though I may be slightly worried about it for the sake of our relationship not even being old yet, I do not feel that unstoppable need to mount and be mounted. I know that what we have is true intimacy. I know that he picked me and not for a night. I know that we have and will share countless nights of passion, whatever shape passion takes these days. It is an interesting transition for me, and I wonder where the thrill comes from. I wonder what the future has in store for us. That uncertainty is somehow more terrifying than the one I had been used to in my single years. Back then, it was only uncertain who would be the next stranger. That, I could deal with. Now, anything can happen. There is a certain magic to knowing someone is ready for anything, with you.
The blank page, a writer’s worst enemy, today stares at me impeccably mirroring the state of my life. “So what’s new?” “Nothing, I hate my job, my life is bleak and I want to run away…” I have been hearing myself repeating this over and over for the past 6 months. I feel like I am being strangled, and I need to physically cough it out. I cannot believe where I am sitting and the ordinary nature of it all.
In fact, there have been a lot of changes in my life recently. And no, it is not Liam hurting me again, but thank you for the assumption. In fact, our relationship is going better than I ever could have expected. We are happy. Liam and I have been living together. We met each other’s families on two separates trips. Yes, we get on each other’s nerves and yes, we could be having more sex. Relationships are never perfect, but this is pretty close. The trust is being re-built every day a little bit more and we made space for our respective personalities. I also officially graduated, moved to a downtown apartment and started wearing suits. A lot is new in my life.
Yet here I am, gasping for air. I have not written a single word in over 7 months. I am working at an HR company, Monday to Friday, 8-4. It is eating my soul away. I have reasons for this pitiful job, with its pitiful pay. It would go great on my resume, and allow me to get my immigration papers sorted. Yet I cannot come to terms that this would be my life. Your twenties are for trying things out, exploring and being broke, they said. Well here I am, in the midst of them, and that is not my reality. “Do whatever you want” really means find a job that you can survive at. It means find a job that shows progression in your life. Do not stall! Grow!
Fuck that. Let’s do the math together shall we? As a recruiter, I cannot seriously consider candidates with less than a year at each job for simple retail positions. That means that in my last 5 years of my twenties I have 5 things, 5 jobs, that I can try before my body clock starts ticking louder and I start considering life choices that I will not longer selfishly be at the heart of. Wow. That is not soul searching, that is bullshit. I want to waste away the time with loving every minute, and that in our day and age is not sustainable.
I want to go back to school. I want to travel. I want to drink the day away. I want to sit in a hammock and look at all the freedom I have left to spare. Instead, last weekend I spent two days trying to think of a place where I could go sit in the sun, write, drink and smoke in peace, and even that seemed impossible on this damned continent. I had no money to go away, and if I did, I would not even be granted the time to do so. That summer in Croatia spent living seemed so unattainable and I hate feeling this way. This is not growth; this is stalling. My T4 may be the only thing showing improvement since all I do is work, but my heart and soul, I can feel them shrinking.
Liam and I went to visit my family in Europe for two meager weeks and I was very happy for those brief 15 days. I did not foresee that they would invite sorrow into my soul. I had these plans after university, to write and live off bohemian positions, earning enough to get by, somewhere in the world. I had this vision of myself in a long flowy skirt and sunglasses, sitting at a frail patio table. Liam would come to meet me for an aperitif after work and we would revel in fresh summery foods. I could see him walking towards me from a distance. He would take off his sunglasses, just to put this little soft kiss on my lips. “Hi bébé, how was your day?” This could be my life.
Instead I am living in Vancouver, working to be able to stay, not knowing whether that is something I even want. Liam and I are talking about uprooting ourselves, living in Europe, where that easier life can be found. Something always comes in our way. I want to be able to come back if I so choose, thanks to my university and not a shotgun wedding. That requires time and a real job, and so much paperwork. He wants to see if that promotion will happen and try to finish night school. Things would develop one way or the other in the next 6-8months, but what if they don’t?
This is not how I want to live my life. “Oh, I see what you are going through,” said Sam. “You’re in post-university crisis! During those four years, everyone had been admiring your brains. Your grades served as approval, congratulating you on your efforts. And now, you’re on your own honey! It’s not the same.” Thank Sam! I knew I could count on you. She was right. Life was telling me to shut my pretty little brains up and keep my head down. This politically correct pretend game was the boa constrictor to my soul.
– Good morning! How are you?
– Amazing!! How are you??
– Well, let’s see. It’s 7.30a.m on a Tuesday and I’m at work. I am awake; I showed up. That’s all you’ll get from me.
You can imagine this does not go well in the corporate world. After being called out twice in four months for negativity, I sincerely started wondering if I was being negative. It seems that my critical skills, that I spent so much time and money perfecting, were now coming across as negativity. Granted, I hate being there so it probably shows to a certain extent. More worrisome to me, is the fact that even in my worst bartending gigs, I was always complimented on my bubbly personality. “How do you manage to smile like that all the time? I don’t know Hun’, maybe it’s just seeing you! What can I getcha?”
It seems that now, even the little things I used to do have lost a little bit of their sparkle. I used to sit at my kitchen table at UBC looking out the window, smiling as people walked on by beneath me, wondering what their lives were like. That nerdy guy with the backpack, did he have a girlfriend? That girl I saw everywhere, why did she seem so sad? I was curious and still am. I just seem to have lost that little Christine thing and it is scaring me. This is also why I am anxious about waiting to see how plans pan out. What if I have in fact become this boring and negative woman, permanently unhappy? I can handle being broke. I can handle heartache. I can handle Sudbina being thrown at me. I cannot seem to handle idling. I have by all first world standards absolutely nothing to complain about. Yet, I feel that this cannot be it. My life has to hold more sparkle than this; there had to be more bliss in store for me.
I cannot even bring myself to talk about these things with some of my friends. Fucking brat, is what Lola* said to me. Lola had that Irish twang that made everything sound that much harsher. She had a path. She was working as an interior designer, after having studied just that. This is what she had to say when I showed up at her door, crying about my job: “Granted the pay is shit but I love my job!” She always had just the words, that bitch. She was very realistic and told me how lucky we were to have the possibility of hating our jobs. Most people had it much worse. I said I was not most people. Lola looked at me like, poor puppet with her big girl problems, and buried my head in her enormous, comforting breasts. Lola is right. Yet even she knows that I am supposed to be doing other things, things that make me happy. That’s the key isn’t it? If you have all the necessary means of survival, it seems that happiness is the ultimate luxury. Yet a part of me knows that toying with the ability to survive, taking chances that may see you losing it all, brings you that much closer to a faster heart rate and a bigger smile.
I am struggling to choose what story to tell you next. How could you possibly understand what it is in my poor soul that stops me from letting go? For someone who floats along life, letting it happen and living at the rhythm of her desires, how could I explain the control freak in my brain that refuses to live in that moment? I am struggling with either telling you a nonchalant, fun story that will allow you to escape your drab reality, or telling you more about mine? Looking back to the things that led up to my unique moment of loss, and ultimate gain, I realized all the fantasizing that I had written up in my head.
I wrote a script, back in 2007, before I ever knew I was going to be writing this. I wrote about a night in a man’s bed. He was a decade older than me. He told me about movies and art and the seventeen year old that I was, was hooked. Ses baisers sont légers, incertains, fragiles. It was a night that really happened, and the words I used to describe it are filled with insecurities, tainted with fear and naïveté. The most noticeable to me, is that I lied. I lied to my own self, describing multiple orgasms I knew too well never happened. The shallow self-awareness I was expressing in the parts about knowing him was heart-warming, yet still encumbered by the lies all around it. I wanted so much to fit in; I wanted so much to be a certain person.
Today, I sit here staring at who I really have become. She may not be the best woman I can be, but this girl in the reflection of my computer, she is real. She stopped romanticizing (mostly). She stopped wanting to fit in. She lives her own little life, trying to be true to that gut feeling that has always commanded her choices. I think the first time I saw pieces of this woman, was another night, back in 2005. It was one of those nights you spent hours, weeks and years envisioning. He was my first. He was my first love, my first kiss, my very first boyfriend. We met when I was eight and he was nine. We saw each other every summer after that. It was like my holiday home, my beach boyfriend. To this very day, he is one of the dearest persons in my life and I will love him forever. He was the sweetest, most caring boy. Year after year, each summer was a new benchmark. That particular night had been long coming.
Like every first time, it was far from spectacular. Drab is the word I am sticking with. There was no fighting reality with romance. It was reality slapping you in the face, giving you a preview of what love was going to feel like: sharp pain, want, sadness, fear and intimacy. He was gentle; it was not his first. He looked me straight in the eye. He held my hand every step of the way. I wanted for that first second to push him away. I was overwhelmed by the pain, sharp and so deeply personal. I wanted him to disappear and for no one to ever touch me again. Then he was in and it became bearable again. The whole ordeal lasted about a minute. No, it was not glorious like some will have you think. It was overrated and underwhelming once it was over. But yes, I was left wanting more. I wanted to persevere, see what all the fuss was about. It is so far in my memory it saddens me how much I forgot. I do remember the stray cat bursting through the door of the basement of my house. I was staying there for a week because the rest of the house was rented out. There was a bed, a fridge and a toilet. No shower, no furniture but a couple of plastic patio chairs. Romantic as hell. The fucking stray cat scared the shit out of me and broke the little “specialness” this moment was to hold. After he managed to kick the cat out, we laughed a lot, loudly.
Those are all the things I have left from that over-romanticized moment: pain, a new intimacy, the cat, the concrete walls and his eyes. I realize now, writing this, that again, I am struggling with the words to express what I truly do remember. It is a very mixed feeling, at the pit of my stomach. It is a feeling of something being over and done with, and an open door. The loss and the gain. Language is universal. We have rules, grammar and undertones that are supposed to be used in the same way by all. But life! Life is far from universal. Each word is used contextually for each and every one of us individually. Life is nuances. The woman staring back at me is smiling, thinking of him so dearly, wishing she could hug him. She knows he was part of creating a little bit of her that remains. She is also wishing that this control issue in her head would stop. I do not like to lose control. It is for that reason that I do not do drugs. See you can snap out of being drunk, if something happens, if something needs you back to reality. I like knowing that I can be in control (to a certain extent) if I need to be. Yet I like the unknown; I love travelling for that precise reason. You can however think through the unknown, you can ensure that you have thought of possible scenarios, and escape routes, even if the reality often exceeds anything you would have ever predicted.
Consciously renouncing all control is something I struggle with. It would be like taking away the universality from language. It would be removing all structure, on purpose. Even if I trust the person in front of me in that moment, there are so many things in my life that demand my attention, in my own head, at all times. What if? is not merely a question for regrets. It is also what if I forgot the stove on, what if I did not attach the file to that email, what if he is not turned on by this particular position… Suddenly I am filled with sadness. The beauty of simplicity I am able to enjoy in so many other moments and instances in my life… Life is nuances and contrasts and contradictions. Ecstasy might escape me still; she might be but an acquaintance. She might be the one choosing when she wishes to meet me next. It is out of my hands, so why can I not let go? I struggled with deciding what story to tell you because the truth is, it is all one big story. It is my story, my shades of grey, my insecurities and failures, as much as my unexpected moments of life’s glory. Most men reading this by now will think I think too much, that I should relax. Most women reading this will finally feel like they know me a bit better, understand the complexities and perhaps identify with me, more or less. Still I do not think my overanalyzing—let us call it that—is a gendered issue. It touches each individual differently. This is why I am choosing these words for you right now. In a society that so easily edits and creates time lapses, for all of our faults to be hidden, it feels good to create room for them. The sadness has left. The woman I see in the reflection is now smiling, feeling something like hope; she sees an open space for the nuances in her personality, a space for her soul to breath.
