An old concept, revamped

This "essay" was originally posted on my Live Journal, 10/10/06. Reposted on Facebook 11/4/2007. I can't help but still feel this way most of the time, so here I am reposting it again.

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So, I've been getting this question from my guy friends for years now: Why do girls always seem to fall for the asshole guys who'll treat them like shit instead of the nice guys who will treat them like royalty?

Well, the answer within closest reach is that a lot of girls/women/those-of-the-feminine-persuasion have self-esteem issues, and thus being treated like royalty makes them uncomfortable.

Personally, I know that when I've been in relationships where guys have "put me on a pedestal," it's made me worry that either they were being dishonest with me, or that I was being dishonest with them. When how you see yourself doesn't match up with how the other person perceives you, it makes you feel like maybe you're acting in ways you normally wouldn't in order to please him. I know for a fact that I've been guilty of that. I've been pedestalized (which was not a word up until this moment) in the past because I was being who my boyfriends wanted me to be, and not who I really was, or am.

On the other hand, what if your perceptions don't match up because he's just telling you what you want to hear instead of what he really thinks? The problem with self-esteem issues is that no matter how much reassurance someone gives you, it's never quite convincing enough. You might trust the other person, but you don't trust yourself to live up to his vision of you, so you assume that no matter what he says to the contrary, you're still inadequate. I still have my self-esteem crises now and then, but the one thing I've really discovered in the past few years is that no one will ever be able to convince me that I'm good enough. I have to convince myself. When you're in a relationship with someone who tells you all the time how great you are, you end up relying on him to estimate your own self-worth, and thus, you never build up your own self-confidence.

Okay. So now I've discussed why being treated like royalty, or put on a pedestal, or (to not use a metaphor or simile) being held in high regard makes some women feel uncomfortable. But why would a woman want to be treated like shit instead?

To be quite frank, some of us are just masochists. I'll admit it. There are a lot of women who won't. Shit happens. But, I also think there's more to it than that. For women with low self-esteem, being treated badly by the men they're with reinforces how they already see themselves, and in a sick and twisted way, builds their self confidence because they can say, "Well, at least I'm right about how much I suck." It's nice to be right about something when you feel like everything about yourself is horribly, horribly wrong.

For the confident women out there, though, maybe it's nice to be taken down a peg every once in a while? It's probably also refreshing to be challenged on occasion. Chances are, if you're confident, you're more likely to stand up for yourself when someone treats you badly, and maybe there's something attractive about the thrill of defending yourself. [That's just a guess, though. I wouldn't know, but I have a feeling most confident women wouldn't stay in relationships where their partners don't respect them.] If there are any really confident women out there who would like to add to that thought, by all means... [I've been waiting for someone to answer that call since I first posted this in 2006.]

Now that I've shared my thoughts about the downside of being treated well, and the upside of being treated badly, what in the bloody hell led me to write this cheerful little journal entry? I shall tell you.

Some men are assholes. Some are very nice. Some men obviously fall in between the two extremes. That should cover everyone, right? WRONG. This has dawned on me before, but someone reminded me to think about it again today. To begin with, I've decided that for myself, the men who fall in between the "asshole" and "nice guy" polarities are most likely to be friends. This leaves me with two options regarding the men I can date, right? WRONG!!! It leaves me with four:

1) Men who are assholes.
Bastards, plain and simple. They care only about themselves, and will trample anyone else in order to serve their own selfish needs. We've all known a guy like this at some point in our lives. He's the guy who drives by your apartment at 2am honking and screaming at the one and only pedestrian to "get the fucking hell out of the fucking road" because he wants to turn right on red. [The thought being: if he's an asshole in his everyday life, why would he behave any differently in a relationship? The world revolves around him and no one else really matters -- especially not you.]

The upside is... um... he'll treat you like shit if you want him to, and even if you don't. No questions asked.

2) Men who are, on the surface, assholes, but who eventually turn out to be a whole lot nicer than you ever would have thought.

These are the assholes women fall for - the James Deans, the Danny Zukos... the bad boys, with hearts of gold. They'll charm you, win you over, and then they'll break your heart. They'll cheat on you, or leave you for other women, or tell you they were never yours in the first place. They won't tell you how pretty you are. They won't buy you flowers, or gifts, or remember things like when your birthday is, or how long you've known each other, or what your friends' names are. They might not even remember what you're studying at university. They might even disappear and not contact you for days, weeks, or even months. But you'll love them with all your heart, and it'll hurt like hell.

And then, one day, they'll shock the hell out of you. They'll call you out of the blue to tell you that they love you. They'll suddenly impress you with an astonishingly accurate and dreamily reminiscent description of a day that you'd shared together once upon a time, which you had completely forgotten. They'll apologize for hurting you, and they'll actually mean it. [They might even start calling you long-distance every evening -- "just to say goodnight."]

On the other hand, one day, you might decide to leave them. You'll do your best to disappear, and make it very clear to them how serious you are. They'll say things like, "FINE, then," and "To HELL with YOU." A couple weeks will go by, and then they'll suddenly have left you a message on your answering machine saying, "You mean so much to me. I don't want to lose you. Please call me... "

These are the moments for which we live. It's not a power trip, I swear. It's just that it's comforting and fulfilling to find out that these people who seem so tough and indestructible can be brought down by love -- especially when they can be brought down only by your love.

3) Nice guys.
They wouldn't ever do anything to hurt you, and if they somehow unintentionally do hurt you, they will apologize profusely and cry about it and whine about how they "didn't mean to" and ask you to "please forgive" them. They might also tell you how much you mean to them, and confess that they're afraid of losing you. Eventually, you will walk out of the room, saying, "I just need to go be alone and think for a little while," and they'll scream after you, "Please don't leave me! I'm so scared! What if you don't come back?! I'm not sure I can live without you!" The real question is what a nice guy can possibly do to hurt you, the answer to which is that he can make you feel crowded and overly essential to his existence, and just pretty much annoy the hell out of you. I'd venture to say that 9 times out of 10, the nice guy gets dumped because of how nice he is. [See also: "needy," "boring," and "overly sentimental."]

There's a upside, though. The nice guy will treat you like a princess. He'll be loving and devoted, and he'll buy you your favorite flowers and remember your birthday, and quite possibly also your anniversary. He'd never be unfaithful, and most likely, he won't break up with you out of the blue. So, you know, if that's what you're into, go for the nice guy.

[Addendum: Since I first wrote this, people have occasionally pointed out to me that "nice" does not necessarily equal "smothering." This may very well be true. But I write based on my own experience, and in my own experience I have never dated a truly "nice," decent, caring guy who wasn't also totally obnoxiously clingy. So while they may exist (and I really hope they do), I've never had the pleasure of dating any of them. That's also not to say that my friends aren't decent guys -- I know they are. But I'm not dating any of them, am I?]

4) Men who come off as being "nice guys," who turn out to be assholes in disguise.
These people are the absolute worst.

4a) Sometimes they're aware that they're assholes pretending to be nice guys. A man like this is the definition of "a wolf in sheep's clothing." These men are dishonest, conniving, and they'll get what they want from you by deceiving you into thinking that they'd never hurt you. They act like nice guys, and think like assholes. They'll convince you they're in love with you, and you'll fall in love with them. They'll buy you gifts, and flowers, and remember all the important things PLUS all the unimportant things. These boys have done their homework. They'll supposedly leave other women for you, and they'll talk a lot of nonsense about spending your lives together, getting married, having children [blah blah blah], etc. Then, they'll suddenly disappear. You won't see them. You won't hear from them. When you finally do reach them, they'll either tell that you they're leaving you for someone else, or start a fight with you about how you've drifted apart and it's all your fault. Possibly, they'll do both. Either way, they will compile for you a complete list of everything they think is wrong with you, and everything you've done to hurt them. You will suddenly realize how horribly astray you've been led and will call them on it, and they will (of course) deny everything and call you "paranoid." You'll go back and forth defending yourselves and offending each other until you finally give in and let them have the last word because it's just easier that way. You'll never speak to them again.

4b) The worst kind of all, though, are the "nice guys" who turn out to be assholes, and have NO idea that they're really assholes. They do all the same things as the aforementioned wolves, but they actually truly believe that they're sheep. They'll break up with you unexpectedly and give you a whole list of bullshit reasons why, but they'll actually believe that they're being honest with you. At least a wolf in sheep's clothing knows he's a wolf. These guys just have some sort of collective identity complex [see also: "delusional"]. [Nota bene: Much like generic asshole #1, assholes of varieties 4a and 4b think everything is about them, whether or not they realize they think so -- i.e. "an asshole is an asshole is an asshole."]

I've just realized that I don't seem to have a conclusion for this... erm... essay. In typical fashion, I didn't mean it to end up being this long. I guess this is just my own personal long-overdue response to an age-old question. I think what I really wanted to say was that it's not necessarily as simple as "girls always fall for the assholes and leave the nice guys in the lurch," because it's not just a matter of the two extremes. It really all depends on what floats your boat. So there you go, boyses -- you know who you are. I hope that this might be in some way helpful to you in your relationship quests [or at least perhaps serve as a darkly humorous summary of my own exploits].

I have some (obvious) personal bias because of my own relationship history. Perhaps another woman would say differently than I have, and if so, I hope that she does. I guess what it really all comes down to is that this has been the public justification of my own personal habit of falling for the asshole guys and breaking up with the nice ones. When presented with all the options, guy #2 doesn't seem so bad, right? Right?

Oh, god, right. Blog.

So... I was re-reading my last post (from almost a month ago) and the first paragraph really made me laugh. It's true, though -- on September 23, when I wrote that, not much was happening in my life and not much had been happening (other than the mice).

But within days after that post, A LOT HAPPENED. Basically, it all started when I decided to leave the house one day -- actually, two days prior to that. I ventured into Charlottetown, despite much trepidation, to attend a "meet-and-greet" for a group called the Lovely Witches Club. I gathered this was a group of artistically-inclined people, but I knew no one and had no idea what to expect. Within a couple hours, I had made some new friends and found myself involved with their major event at the end of October -- The Witches Ball (which you should attend if you are on the Island). A couple days later, I braved the social scene again, feeling a little more confident for knowing a few people. And then things began spiraling... in a good way.

Over the summer, towards the end of August, a friend in Toronto had brought to my attention a job posting on the Orchestras Canada website. It was a call to replace the General Manager of the PEI Symphony Orchestra. By the time I found out about it, the deadline was almost up -- I had about a week. I had initially moved to PEI thinking I didn't want to do anything with music for a while, but the day after I arrived here I started subbing in the pit for "Anne of Green Gables," and then this job opening came up, which (not to sound presumptuous) felt like it might have been tailor-made for me. Seeing it as a sign, I threw out my notions of trying to live a "normal" life and applied immediately.

A month later I still hadn't heard anything, so I had pretty much assumed they weren't interested. And then I left the house one day. And all of a sudden, I was making friends and I was involved in exciting artsy Halloween-themed projects. There was even a boy for a while, who I thought might have really liked me (and I him). But alas, it was over almost as soon as it began. Oh, and I started taking a quilting class that week too.

And in the midst of this whirlwind of social and artistic activity, I was suddenly called in for an interview with the symphony. And a few days after that, I was offered the job. And a few days after that I got right to work preparing for the first concert of the season, which happened today.

So that's where I've been lately, and that's what I've been up to. This coming week is filled with meetings, rehearsals and social activities, and ends with another concert (though I don't have to do any prep for this one -- it's not mine).

Meanwhile, I've been reading through some of my old writing, and I'm amazed that things I wrote 3 or 4 years ago still sound totally reasonable and relatable to me. I'm not sure if that's a positive thing, but I still quite like some of my old pieces and may edit/update and repost them here just for fun.

(Side note -- what do you call journalesque pieces of writing that you originally shared on LiveJournal and reposted on Facebook when you're talking about posting them on your blog? Entries? Essays? They're too long to be snippets... It used to be so simple. Teh interwebz are confuzin.)

Also, I am aware that "journalesque" is not a word. Nor are "blizzardous" (a weather condition) and "re-shevel" (to put oneself back together from a disheveled state), but I'm trying to bring those into at least as common usage as "Kerouacian," "Vonnegutesque" and "Steinbeckian" -- incidentally, 3 of my favorite words *and* authors.

Oh boy. It's been a while.

I want to say that a lot's been happening and that I've been really busy so I don't feel so bad about not having replied yet to everyone who's e-mailed me to see how I'm doing. And so that I have an excuse for not having updated my blog in over a month. But it isn't true. Pretty much nothing's been happening.

Shortly after my last post, I had a couple friends here visiting, and then right after they left my mom and her cats headed back down to the States. So within 2-3 days it went from 4 people and 3 cats in the house down to just me and Chloe. Chloe's been pretty stressed all summer because of all the moving and change and people coming in and out. She was getting kind of skittish and hostile even while we were still living in Toronto (of course, so was I...) but it got pretty bad over the summer. After the house cleared out we spent about 10 days unwinding and milling around and getting used to it just being the two of us again, but our settling-in process was sort of interrupted with a trip down to the States at the beginning of September.

It was a fantastic trip for me, but maybe not so great for Chloe and my mom's cats. Chloe and my mom's calico aren't exactly friendly and they had to share the house without us while we went out to California to visit family. They dealt with it, though, and after Chloe forgave me for leaving her we headed back up to the Island.

I'll be honest. Since we got back, I've done pretty much NOTHING but play computer games. Yesterday I never even got dressed. And my schedule has reverted back to a 3:30am bedtime and breakfast at noon. I keep trying to go to bed earlier, but... we've had mice. It's not the mice themselves that keep me up all night. It's Chloe. With the mice.

There was a mouse hole behind the refrigerator that's been there for years, and we've never seen any mice or any mouse droppings so we never bothered to do anything about it. But last week, mice suddenly started coming out from behind the fridge in the middle of the night. The first mouse came as a complete surprise to me -- seriously. I was sitting at the computer (of course), and Chloe showed up next to me and started playing with something. I thought she had brought over a toy for me to throw for her, which is our usual routine, but when I leaned down to pick it up I saw blood all over the carpet and realized it was a live mouse.

It was still pretty spry. She'd injured it, but not intentionally. She kept letting it go and it would start to run and then she'd hop after it and catch it again and pick it up in her mouth and carry it around. And this continued until I finally managed to grab it myself. I took it outside and released it in the yard, which in hindsight was probably not the greatest plan because if it didn't die it probably scurried right back into the house.

Anyway, I figured out it had come from behind the refrigerator because Chloe spent the rest of the night sitting there waiting for another one. And within 36 hours we'd repeated the whole experience with 2 more mice (though she's been getting better at catching them without hurting them and I've been getting better at taking them away from her). She was spending day and night in the middle of the kitchen floor staring at the fridge, and I was staying up all night with her, knowing that if she caught another one she'd try to bring it to me wherever I was (even if I was asleep in bed). I finally caved and went to bed one night while Chloe was still stalking the refrigerator, and was relieved the next morning to find her (and only her) on the bed with me -- not a mouse in sight. Until I came downstairs, and found a dead one on the living room floor. That afternoon, a friend came over and set out a couple mouse traps (the killing kind, I am sorry to say), and that night I heard a terrible *SNAP* and knew we'd caught another one. After that I moved Chloe's food and litter box upstairs and started closing off the kitchen at night.

So eventually, our contractor came over and boarded up the mouse hole for me. I left the traps out for a while (hoping for several reasons never to catch anything in a mouse trap ever again) and after 3 mouse-free days I put the traps away, brought Chloe's food back downstairs, opened up the kitchen again and went to bed early.

And about 15 minutes after I got in bed and turned out the light, I heard Chloe's "mouse squirk" (a series of short, high-pitched "blrrrps") from the hallway downstairs. Slightly concerned, but hoping for the best, I called, "Yyyes?… Chloe?… What's up?…" and was answered by more squirking from the staircase, and then the upstairs hallway. At that point I jumped out of bed, turned on the lights and went running into the hallway just in time to see Chloe, mouse in mouth, bounding back down the stairs. It took about another half hour of chasing (chasing the mouse with Chloe's assistance, chasing Chloe with the mouse in her mouth, keeping Chloe from chasing the mouse while trying to get him myself) before I finally caught it and, uh... released it outside. :P

So now I have NO idea where they're coming from, since the only visible mouse hole in the house has been boarded up, and neither does Chloe. She's back to sitting in front of the fridge all evening, even though I pulled the whole thing out to prove to her that there's no hole back there anymore. So I'm back to closing off the kitchen at night, and waiting to see where and when the next mouse will appear.

Meanwhile, Michael J. (the fox) has moved from one plum tree onto the second, and now the third, and I still see him almost every day. Last week he even came up on the deck and peeked in the windows at me. And I also suspect that either he or a skunk is eating the apples in the front yard. Not to be outdone by foxes or mice, there is also something living in the ceiling -- not the attic, not the chimney, no, the ceiling between the first and second floors. No idea what it is or how it's getting in and out of there, but... yeah. It's pretty creepy at 2am to hear something walking around above you when you know there's no one else in the house.

So that's what's been keeping me busy (or at least entertained) lately. Well, that and Oblivion. Somehow I have this funny feeling that I'm going to have a full menagerie this winter...

You'll Never Outfox the Fox

Wow. It's been 10 days already since my last entry and I feel like I have so much to write. But I will have to summarize now and catch up later because there's only so much time in a day and I've already exceeded today's limit.

The first couple days after I arrived here I can barely even remember now. I had nothing much to say then. But after two days of downtime I was suddenly swept up in a whirlwind of action. I arrived last Monday night (i.e. Tuesday morning) and on Tuesday evening my mother and I went into Charlottetown to pick up my music for "Anne" and to have dinner. I have no idea what we did on Wednesday, but on Thursday I began driving into the city every evening for work. The show is three hours long and Charlottetown is an hour drive from here. I like to be a little early so I've been leaving the house at 5:30pm and returning home after the show at 11:30pm. The commute alone has sort of left me with limited hours in the day, but I also relish each hour of "me time" in the car. I have been remarkably (and uncharacteristically) tired by the time I get home, though.

A funny thing happened as soon as I got here. My body suddenly decided that after many many years of being practically nocturnal, it would instead like to be in bed (and preferably asleep) by midnight -- and we're an hour ahead of Toronto here so when I got here midnight felt like 11:00pm to me. Getting up in the mornings is still challenging, but by that I mean that setting alarms or being woken up by my mother at 8:30 guarantees me out of bed by about 9:15 or 9:30. My schedule, even up to the night I spent in the motel before getting here, was bed between 4:00-5:00am and waking up close to noon (on either side, depending on the day). So for such a drastic change to happen so suddenly and without any fuss is baffling to me, but exciting.

I have so much to say about work, moving (the movers came at the end of last week), and so many other things. But they will all have to wait because it's already almost two hours past my new bedtime. The thing I want to tell now is the story of our fox.

We have three plum trees clustered together in the backyard and the yellow plums have become very popular with one of the local foxes. Pretty much at least once a day there's a fox hanging out under the plum trees, happily munching on plums. My mom told me about him before I came and tried to get pictures, but he runs away if you get too close or make too much noise so she had to take them from the house, through the window. A few days ago I managed to get to the edge of the deck with my camera before he noticed I was there, and then he was satisfied to let me take pictures while he kept eating plums -- as long as I didn't come any closer. I've been shouting and waving to him now every time he shows up in the yard, and today when I left for work he stayed by the trees (about 20 feet away) until I got into the car and turned it on. He's getting so tame, by next week maybe he'll just eat the plums out of my hand.

He's become such a regular visitor that we've even named him. My mother said something to me about him the other day and I heard, "Michael the Fox," though where I came up with that is still a mystery. It turns out the only word I heard correctly was "fox" and for the life of me I can't remember what she actually said. But we decided that Michael was a totally adequate name for him and so that became his name. It wasn't until a day or two later that the humor of it suddenly hit me. So now that we've become aware of the joke we inadvertently made through our miscommunication the fox's official name is Michael J.


I also realized today that another fantastic fox name would be "Guy." Oh, well.

Next time.

Change of travel plans = 12 hour drive

But I'm already home!

Today was a LONG day and full of the unexpected. To start, Chloe and I slept through 3 alarms and finally woke up at 11:00am -- checkout was at noon. I frantically showered and got dressed and started to pack up the room and in the midst of putting on my makeup spilled it all over my black shirt. So I re-dressed and tried again. We got out of the motel fairly smoothly after that, and stopped for coffee and gas before getting on the road. Shortly afterwards I nearly missed our exit and had to cut across two lanes at the last second. Thankfully there was no one very close behind me (and in Quebec they apparently expect you to pull moves like that).

A couple hours after leaving Brossard I was passing through Lévis and started mulling over the whole motel mess. I had initially booked my motel stays for this trip a month ago, back when I was still convinced there would be some way for me to haul all my stuff in a trailer behind me. I would normally make this drive in 2 days with an overnight stop in Lévis, but decided to extend it to 3 to give myself extra allowance for any trouble (or just slowness) the trailer might cause. After I realized the trailer wasn't going to work and hired a moving company I tried to cancel both my motel reservations so I could go back to my 2-day travel plan. I successfully cancelled the 2nd night (in Fredericton, NB) before realizing that my reservation in Brossard couldn't be changed. So last week I re-booked my reservation in Fredericton -- or so I thought.

After an 8 hour drive (and pretty much nothing to eat) we pulled into the Comfort Inn in Fredericton and I went inside to check in. They couldn't find my reservation in their computer but apparently had one for last weekend that had been a no-show. I went to the car to grab my printed e-mail confirmation and sure enough -- the reservation I made was for last week and I neither cancelled it nor showed up. I know exactly what happened, too. On their website, if you search the availability for a date and then choose a "bargain" price it resets the date on the next page. I know this because I've done it many many times. But this time I seem to have forgotten to re-change the date. I confirmed it, they sent me an e-mail, I printed it, and I even looked at the reservation receipt this afternoon before arriving and I just NEVER caught it.

(The most frustrating part is that I had a similar bout of idiocy back in April on my way to Maine. I thought I'd made a reservation for my stop in Brossard but the day before I went to print the confirmation and realized I'd never received it. And then I realized I'd never actually booked it. I'd followed the booking process through to the confirmation page on the website but never actually clicked "Confirm.")

In any case, once we got there the motel was completely booked and from the looks of it so was the other pet-friendly motel down the street. So after a quick phone call to my mother we decided that since I was only about 4 hours away I should just keep driving, making my arrival time in PEI between 1-1:30am. I got home a little before 1 (because I was the only car on the road in the middle of the night) and within an hour had broken 2 things and been offered another gig.

So now we're here. We're home. And everything was pitch black when we got here, so I didn't get the usually spectacular first view of the Island while crossing the bridge. But I did get to see stars -- lots of them. And a fox ran out in front of my car and startled me (and more so probably himself)! But I saw him and stopped in time. And if I didn't know so well where my driveway was I could totally have missed it in the dark. But we made it. And tomorrow we'll wake up in our blue house, surrounded by green land and red dirt and the ocean and an overwhelmingly vast sky.

I moved away from Toronto today.

My mom asked me a day or two ago how I was feeling and I said, "Name an emotion. I'm there." It's pretty true. I know I'm going to really miss people, and despite all that annoyed me about Toronto there are things I really loved. But right now I'm not feeling sad. I only had a real moment of sad today when it hit me that I wasn't ever coming back to my apartment. I've spent the last few weeks packing and getting rid of everything and the last two days cleaning. But even when there was nothing left in any of the rooms, the space still didn't feel empty. It seemed very strange to me.

Moving into a new place has always carried with it a sense of excitement and revival. For me it's always been centered around making a space my own -- painting, furnishing, living. I don't like feeling transient so I settle in almost immediately. Even while travelling I make a motel room feel a little like more than just a place to sleep. I don't bring my own decor or anything (scenes from "Best in Show" come to mind), but I always carry a "smudge stick" with me.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a smudge stick is a bundle of white sage which is believed (by Native Americans and neo-pagans like myself) to have the power to cleanse spaces, objects and people of any residual energy. Plus it smells good. It's like the Febreeze commercials where after spraying a room the homeowner walks in over and over again just to smell it and smile. Or when you really thoroughly clean your house and it just feels better to be there afterwards. Sage is like a bonus clean. Because I travel with Chloe we have to stay in smoking rooms. The downside is that the rooms always smell like smoke, but the upside is that it means I can burn sage without any repercussions. The sage serves 3 main purposes for me: 1) it overpowers the leftover stale cigarette smell, 2) it cleanses the room so I don't inadvertently absorb any of the previous guests' emotional baggage, and 3) it makes the space seem more homey and familiar to me.

I haven't moved a lot in my life (despite having lived in a few different states and countries) so leaving an empty apartment isn't a familiar feeling to me. I guess I thought it would be more surreal -- more like arriving at an empty apartment only backwards. But it just felt like I was leaving for a vacation and taking everything with me. It only hit me when I set the keys down inside and closed the door for the last time that I will probably never set foot in that apartment again. I spent four years there and I had little routines and patterns incorporated into my existence that I didn't even notice most of the time. But this past week I've noticed things like how there's a rhythm to how I lock and unlock the back door and that there are marks on the wall from where I hang my keys. And when I left I turned off the light but not the ceiling fan in the kitchen because (since I never use it) it just didn't occur to me that the lightswitch was there. And here I am still speaking in the present tense even though it's all over forever, like when someone dies and it takes a while for the reality to set in.

I wonder if after the shock wears off I'll start to grieve for that apartment the way I would a person, or the way I sometimes still do for my childhood home.

People have been asking me lately if I'm excited about moving. I am, yes, but I'm not feeling it yet. I don't think I'll feel it until the moving truck arrives next week. I'm moving into a fully furnished home which in the summers I share with my mother. So it's a little like moving back in with my mom, except that for most of the year she won't be there (and I'll be paying the bills). I'm bringing a lot of my own stuff, but my car is packed almost exactly like it was when I spent the summer there last year. The movers have everything else so the house won't seem any different until they arrive.

Like moving away from Toronto, moving to PEI feels right now like I'm going on vacation -- I just won't be leaving to go home at the end of the summer.