2002-09-22 - 11:28 a.m.

Hmmm where to start?

I slept in quite a while this morning. I didn't wake up till 8:30 and I didn't get out of bed till 9:30. It's 10:30 now and this entry is usually written and posted by 8:00 :oP.

Yesterday was a very full day...

(hand cream is required...)

Ok, yesterday was my big "Volunteer at the AA fall assembly" day. I got there at 8:00 am with absolutely no idea of what the day would hold. I wandered in, shook some hands, and got pointed to the kitchen as the place to help.

Perfect! Little did they know, I had years of experience in restaurant kitchens so I felt right at home. :o) I was put to work straight away making a fruit platter and things didn't slow down until 4:00 pm after I had prepped a bunch of food, cooked hamburgers for everyone there (some 50 people), prepped lettuce for monstrous bowls of caesar salad, and so on and so forth.

I had a lot of fun in that kitchen... I'd always sort of missed my cooking days. Not in the way that I would want to do it again, mind you, but in the fond sense of remembering something that was sort of a decent part of my life. I have a bit of mixed emotions about my cooking past.. it was definitely a love-hate sort of thing. I do love to cook, and a well-stocked restaurant kitchen is the best place to do it, but the stresses and difficulties of the job can be overwhelming.

That reminds me, I have to install "battlefield 1942" because I need to bring Paul's CDs back tomorrow. I'm thinking I should just bring them back to the office then burn them. Yeah. (oh, the reminder was putting down my OJ on the CD case, btw)

So yeah I cooked and chopped and diced and shredded and boiled and cleaned and did all that fun stuff. I made some friends that day.. Dave, the guy who's responsibility it was to get everything ready on time, really appreciated me being there, seeing as how every other volunteer barely knew which end of the knife to hold when cutting things. He thanked me by giving tips on making pie crusts and by telling me if I ever needed to call someone at 2am he'd be more than glad to take the call. A very heart-warming thought but not something I would ever take him up on :o)

So lunch and supper were great successes. It felt nice to be so usefull and necessary to so many people. It's not like they couldn't have managed without me, but I was more than glad to give a hand and make things easier to handle.

Stephanie showed up in the evening, and that turned out to be an interesting part of the night. Stephanie is a girl around my age who is very much like me in her attitudes and personality traits and so we've had the same difficulties with the AA program and process. I've only seen her at two meetings, but in the second one we talked quite a bit. It was the first time I went early and I think I'll keep doing that - there are many good conversations and friendships to be made before the meeting starts. I mentioned that I was volunteering for the assembly during our chat and found out that she was too so I was looking forward to seeing a familiar face.

She helped to get dinner started and we sort of chummed around in the kitchen, helping each other out with stuff. I really sense an easy friendship between us and I hope it grows because I need more friends badly. I was also alert for subtle signs of attraction for many reasons. Firstly I've always been bad at knowing when girls are interested in me. Secondly, I feel somewhat of an attraction to her, and that is something to be very on guard about. Thirdly, because of the second point, I'm very wary of developing any feelings for anyone at this horrible time in my life. The point being that I shouldn't and won't and need to very carefully guard against that happening because probably my biggest failing is an inabilty to stop myself from getting into wrong situations.

After we finished cooking everything, we went out to line up for dinner. Stephanie and I were at the end of the line together but then she decided to go out for a smoke. She stood around for a second after she said it and then walked off. I thought afterwards that she may have been waiting for me to ask if she'd like some company. She didn't show up again for quite a while, but meanwhile I had gone back into the kitchen to see if any caesar with bacon was being made, rather than have the non-meaty version available. hehe. When I got my plate full, she was already sitting down at a full table. I have to say I was disappointed that I couldn't sit next to her, and that lead to more bad feelings because I'm shouldn't be wanting to sit next to a girl right now for those reasons.

So I sat at another table, had a fine meal and conversation with the people there, who I knew. After supper I was quite tired and sat there with my eyes closed for a minute, resting, seeing as it had been 12 hours since I'd gotten there, I had worked straight through, then had a huge meal. Stephanie walks up, sits at the table and asks me if I'm sleeping. So now I'm all surprised because the signals don't make sense or line up the same way. And I'm internally chastising myself for even considering things like signals. Argh.

At this point, I want to explain to my future self that I'm not particularly thinking of this girl for a future relationship and that I wasn't exactly chasing after her that night or anything. I'm going into so much detail about my thoughts and mentioning her so much because I'm desperate to find out where it is I go wrong in the love department. I need to fix my mate-searching tactics because I've failed miserably so far in my life at picking the right girl.

So this girl is now sitting at my table, and she stays there throughout the long and difficult-to-maintain-focus-on speech of a last-minute guest speaker. This guy reminded me of Dr Hasegawa, my lecture-challenged computer science prof, because he mostly mumbled through a half-open mouth. Through the course of talking nonstop for a long period of time, a small gob of white spittle foam formed in the corner of his mouth, Hasegawa and speaker alike, and the resemblance was so startling I found it hard not to recall the many hours I listened to my prof drone on barely above the level of intelligibility and scarcely with a recognizable thread of thought. Yeah, so we're both yawning and stuff.

After the speech, they close was a traditional prayer - ack - but to my surprise everyone starts holding hands (I hate when they do that) and Stephanie, who happens to be next to me, grabs mine. I can't deny it was nice to hold her hand :o) Hehe, I do think she's a nice girl and all and it was quite a surreal experience. They were trying to make the entire assembly hold hands in one continuous line, so Stephanie's other hand was freed to be joined to the longer line, leaving us holding hands together lol. So we shuffled over to my left so I could hold the hand of the guy with the mic, but since his hand was full I put my arm through his. Whatever, it was all fucked up.

It was so strange to be holding a girl's hand. Just that simple contact made a big mess of my brain wires and I couldn't help but think there was some mutual attraction cause we didn't keep our hands totally still and it didn't feel akward (at least to me).

After this, the dance was set up, the lights went down, some tables were cleared. I saw Stephanie helping clear the tables so I gave her a hand, bringing handfuls of garbage to whereever she was in the room since she had a garbage bag. Obviously I was sending a signal of interest. She's not dumb. So anyway, after the cleanup the music got louder and it became a dance. I saw Stephanie with her coat in her hand and was hoping she wasn't leaving but figured she might just be putting her coat somewhere. I went and had a cup of water and stood outside for a bit to be by myself. It reminded me of all the other dances I'd been to.. a bunch of people having a great time and me feeling like I just wanted to be alone.

I wandered back in, went into the dancing area and had a look around. I didn't see her around, so I stood next to some friends, and then eventually sat on a small raised platform at our end of the room because my feet were so tired. I figured I'd wait a bit in case Stephanie was just outside having a smoke or in the bathroom or something. There really weren't any other people there my age, considering the friend's I'd gone to stand with had just walked out shortly after I sat down.

This is the part of the night that is clearest... sitting near the dance floor, watching the coloured lights bouncing off the floor, with silhouttes of people's legs flitting around back and forth as they danced. It was one of those "alone in a crowd of people" moments and I literally sucked it up, storing it away for future reference. I sat there and immersed myself in my feelings, lost to everything around me. Very typical.

All I could think of was Michelle.

For most of the day my mind had been too busy with things to do. For most of the evening, I had a new friend to concentrate on and occupy my mind. But starting from that minute break outside my mind reverted to its normal focus these days: the fact that I was alone after 3 years with the woman I love.

A lot of thoughts crowded in my head.

Wistful thoughts of Michelle and I at a teen dance when we were first dating, one of the few times I'd actually enjoyed myself at a dance.

Thoughts of my stupidity for acting like I did in the evening, completely unable to approach someone who I wanted to befriend without showing interest in more.

Thoughts of how I didn't want to even be interested in someone, and sadness at myself for letting myself think that way when really I have no room in my heart for anyone but Michelle.

Thoughts of doubt, of whether it was right or wrong to wait for Michelle, of whether I was wasting my time, of when I would ever feel single again.

I only sat there for 15 minutes. Then I got up and left.

On the ride home, I thought of the time I was in Terrace Bay two weeks before. I saw Michelle's face, so close to me, saying "Carl, I don't want to be with you."

I remembered some of how I felt on the long ride home. The emptiness and desolation. The feeling of being deserted.

I thought of how good most of the day had been, and how quickly I had gotten depressed by the dance.

I wondered how Michelle was doing and what she was up to. I figured she was getting drunk and stoned to try to have fun and forget about me. I wondered why in the world I would still want to be with her. But then I forgot about those thoughts as I just remembered how much I missed her.

During the day, in the kitchen, the cook Dave's wife showed up and they reminded me exactly of me and Michelle. They bickered about meaningless things, but you could tell they really loved each other. The smallest thing would set them off, and they seemed to have absolutely no patience for each other. With the benefit of hindsight, I realized it was because both of them had internal problems that they weren't confiding with the other, and that both were sick and tired of themselves, and automatically took it out on the person closest to them, the person that they knew they could abuse because they would never leave. The person that they felt to their core they would spend the rest of their lives with.

I kept wanting to say something, to tell them there was nothing to fight about. But I knew it would be no use. I knew that it wouldn't have helped me if someone had told me that 2 months ago. I knew that it was something that could only be realized from the inside.

It's something I think Michelle still doesn't know. Either that or she's known it from the very beginning. It's often like that.. I think Michelle doesn't get something but really she got it all along and I was the one who was slow.

So I got home. I was 10:30 when I rolled onto Jean street and I realized that exactly 2 weeks before I was rolling out of Terrace Bay. What a shitty feeling. To be thrust back into my memories like that, injected into the worst part of my recent past.

I wondered how I'd ever been able to think that things were ok lately, that I wasn't depressed.

The house was empty. I went and poured a bath and brought my guitar in the bathroom. It was comforting. I thought of Michelle some more. I sat in the bath and thought of her. I thought of what I would write if I were emailing her.

I went to bed and sat there, playing my guitar. Then I laid down and played my guitar; hugging it close to me and plucking the strings quietly to hear and feel and suffuse myself with the calming harmonies. I played till my arm was too tired to move and pluck a string.

I put the guitar away, grabbed my teddy bear.. the one Nikkie sent me, and the only one I've kept, and laid down to sleep.

..

This morning I just turned my alarm off and went back to bed.

The second time I woke up I just lay there. I thought of the dreams of the night before.

Suddenly, I remember there were a lot of them.

I drank last night in my dream. Just one drink, but it was really potent. I remember a joint being in my dream at one point.

I hugged Michelle in my dream last night. She was sitting on a big comfy chair and I was sitting on her lap, facing her, and we just hugged. I loved her and she loved me.

There were storms in my dreams last night. At one point the sky went all weird, with weird stars appearing.. such a strange sight, totally unreal, and then there were orange coloured clouds and almost black vertical columns and tornado-like features. Much later, as I watched the sky it clouded over. No, it is more precise to say it was eaten by fog. The world closed in and I had the feeling not so much of a violent storm coming to wreak havoc as a blanket of silence coming to snuff the life from a city. A looming void erasing things as it approached.

Neither of these storms actually came, it was just the foreboding.

I can't remember much else from my dream. Oh, one thing. I dreamed I had mental powers. Something very recurring, very familiar. Used in a different way this time at one point. I sat at the office and charged my mind, then unleashed a huge bolt of energy at Smyk and he was blasted back onto the floor. I did it a couple of times. He looked pissed at me, and like he didn't understand why I picked on him. I felt guilty and didn't understand either.

Much later, a girl was feeling saddish and wanted something. She was heading toward a candy rack. I asked her what she wanted and she said "I think I'd like some candy" So I focussed my mind, and you could hear the little crank turn and the candy drop out, and I turned around and said "there you go" as I walked away.

Feelings of power. Hmph. Sure. I wish.

I'm done now. Not done as in finished this entry, although I am. Done as in spent.

Things can only get better.

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