So literally less than a week after M left, I had a really bad day at work. I was on the ambulance and got a call to take this elderly woman home. Her home was outside our city and we got printed directions online, confirmed the directions with her family and then proceeded to drive her "home." I repeat the family CONFIRMED the directions. The daughter and granddaughter decided to follow us in a car right behind and we took the confirmation of route and the fact that they followed us the entire way (with a cell phone in the car) to mean that our directions were correct.
Well, the directions were not correct. Did the family try to wave us down? Flash their lights? Call us on the cell phone? Call our dispatch center on their cell phone? NO. They followed us, twenty miles, the wrong way to the same address in another town name, which was the town they agreed to and we were told to go.
We apologized profusely and they led us to the new address. Did they take any of the blame for confirming the wrong directions that I asked them if were correct? NO. Instead they got on the ill-used cell phone and called up every drunk relative they had to be at the house when we got there. When we got to the house, they verbally abused us, jumped into our ambulance, threated us and called us names and accused us of being "racist," which was of course why I had driven their grandmother/mother/aunt all over the county. There were weapons and there was alcohol and there were threats.
We, as calmly as possible, carried the woman into the house and deposited her into bed. We drove home and I was majorly depressed not only because of the fear for our well-being and accusations and stress of being on such a long (wrong) trip in the first place, but because of my personal situation more. I was thinking about how I was continuously unhappy with or without people being nasty to me.
I decided to do something drastic. It had only been a week since I had seen M, we hadn't even discussed his address yet, only a phone number. I knew that if I told him I was coming he would tell me no. I went directly home, used www.whitepages.com to "reverse look-up" his new address and then yahoo mapped out my route. It turns out I was 725 miles, door-to-door from M.
I was going to Canada.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Great Depression
When M went back to Canada I was lost. I was working as a Paramedic at the time. I would go to work fine and then in the middle of the day at random times I would just start crying. I couldn't really control it. I had never missed anyone like this before in my life and didn't quite know what to do with it.
I worked with my best friend on the ambulance and she was helping to cover my complete inability to adapt. She would send me off to the bathroom when I started to cry and could make me laugh when no one else could.
M and I were still talking every day but it was difficult to coordinate. He had gone back and immediately started staying with one of his old friends. Being with friends and not in his own place made it difficult for him to access private phone time to talk to his little 'gori' girlfriend.
He had taken with him a little picture book that I gave him from our six months. There were a ton of pictures of he and I at the park, at the river, him looking up at me, me taking pictures of us together holding the camera away from us, us at the river. I had bought the little book for his going away. I thought it was fitting for it to be decorated by maps.
I worked with my best friend on the ambulance and she was helping to cover my complete inability to adapt. She would send me off to the bathroom when I started to cry and could make me laugh when no one else could.
M and I were still talking every day but it was difficult to coordinate. He had gone back and immediately started staying with one of his old friends. Being with friends and not in his own place made it difficult for him to access private phone time to talk to his little 'gori' girlfriend.
He had taken with him a little picture book that I gave him from our six months. There were a ton of pictures of he and I at the park, at the river, him looking up at me, me taking pictures of us together holding the camera away from us, us at the river. I had bought the little book for his going away. I thought it was fitting for it to be decorated by maps.
Going Away
On July 3, 2004, M went back to Montreal. I begged him not to go. I told him that I didn't think things would be okay with us if he left. He was very cryptic about not wanting to leave, but he had to, that was where he belonged. He was a citizen there and his time here was up. He kept saying he wished he had "known me longer." He never mentioned marriage, but I could tell that was what he was talking about. He kept telling me that things would be different if we'd known each other longer.
We had met only eight months prior and had only been dating for six months. M wanted a ride to the airport, and I wanted to take him. He stayed at my house for the last three days and my mom went with me to drive him the two hours to the airport. My mom fell in love with M that day too. She watched me trying not to cry and M wiping away all my tears as they fell. He would watch me and keep talking and kept wiping away my tears. He pretended I wasn't crying.
When we got to the airport, my mom took care of the car and M and I went inside together so that I could say goodbye. M took me into the giftshop and bought me a Beanie Babie. It was the softest puppy, made after the character "Odie" from the Garfield movie. It looked nothing like Odie, but it made me feel so much better. It was tiny and soft, and I knew I was going to need something on the way back home. I knew I would be crying and I knew he was not coming back for a long time. I thought I knew this, but I really had no idea how long.
I had never been outside the country before, and had no idea what Canada was. I felt like I was losing my best friend.
We had met only eight months prior and had only been dating for six months. M wanted a ride to the airport, and I wanted to take him. He stayed at my house for the last three days and my mom went with me to drive him the two hours to the airport. My mom fell in love with M that day too. She watched me trying not to cry and M wiping away all my tears as they fell. He would watch me and keep talking and kept wiping away my tears. He pretended I wasn't crying.
When we got to the airport, my mom took care of the car and M and I went inside together so that I could say goodbye. M took me into the giftshop and bought me a Beanie Babie. It was the softest puppy, made after the character "Odie" from the Garfield movie. It looked nothing like Odie, but it made me feel so much better. It was tiny and soft, and I knew I was going to need something on the way back home. I knew I would be crying and I knew he was not coming back for a long time. I thought I knew this, but I really had no idea how long.
I had never been outside the country before, and had no idea what Canada was. I felt like I was losing my best friend.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
After Applebees we were inseparable. I discovered a few things about my new friend.
That strange accent that I mentioned before, a hybrid mix of growing up in Pakistan, learning English from British tapes and books, and immigrating at 25 years old to French Quebec and then traveling all over the east coast of the United States with a brief stint in Louisiana. I guess that I should have expected no less of an accent with that history. The funny thing is, I think he adopted more aspects of the French in QC speaking English than anywhere else.
M was a lot of fun. He was funny when you least expected it and he was so cute that it overshadowed imperfections. I think the thing that always got him out of trouble was the dimple strategically placed just to the left of his lips, situated to perfection and showing every single time he smiled or laughed. I loved to see him laugh and you could always tell when he was happy. It was fun to watch the way he related to his friends and the way that he made them laugh and how happy that made him.
I started seeing him after work several nights a week. He would feed me curry of all different types. He taught me about daal and goat meat and naan. Trust me, these are not things that women from my area of the country are familiar with. In fact, one of my first college friends, from Bangladesh, was shocked to see me eating curry in pictures. She remembered the days when I would order chicken wings and french fries as Chinese take-out (another habit I have thankfully broken after meeting M.)
That strange accent that I mentioned before, a hybrid mix of growing up in Pakistan, learning English from British tapes and books, and immigrating at 25 years old to French Quebec and then traveling all over the east coast of the United States with a brief stint in Louisiana. I guess that I should have expected no less of an accent with that history. The funny thing is, I think he adopted more aspects of the French in QC speaking English than anywhere else.
M was a lot of fun. He was funny when you least expected it and he was so cute that it overshadowed imperfections. I think the thing that always got him out of trouble was the dimple strategically placed just to the left of his lips, situated to perfection and showing every single time he smiled or laughed. I loved to see him laugh and you could always tell when he was happy. It was fun to watch the way he related to his friends and the way that he made them laugh and how happy that made him.
I started seeing him after work several nights a week. He would feed me curry of all different types. He taught me about daal and goat meat and naan. Trust me, these are not things that women from my area of the country are familiar with. In fact, one of my first college friends, from Bangladesh, was shocked to see me eating curry in pictures. She remembered the days when I would order chicken wings and french fries as Chinese take-out (another habit I have thankfully broken after meeting M.)
Sunday, October 12, 2008
SuperBowl 2003
M and I talked every night. He didn't get off work until after midnight and I had to be at work every morning at 9am, but I still waited for his call every night at about 1:00am. I was so infatuated with his conversation that every night I would listen to his cooking, sizzling vegetables for curry or whatever he happened to be cooking. We would talk until 3:00 am and I would sleep like a baby after that until 8:00 when I got up for work.
Our first date was February 1, 2004, the night of the infamous Janet Jackson "boob" incident and three days after my 23rd birthday. We had scheduled to go out for dinner, but 6:00 rolled around and no call. Then 7:00, 8:00, 9:00. . .he finally called around 9:30 pm. He apologized and said he just couldn't get out of work until later. At this point I was livid. We'd had about three cancelled dates (none of which he had called to cancel, just never showed up.) I told him to just forget it, and he sighed heavily. He said, "No. I really want us to go. I really cannot get out right now, but I will come soon. Is that okay?"
I still don't know how in the world I swallowed my pride enough to take so many stalls and starts, but at 11:30pm I found myself sitting straight across a very thin Pakistani man at my local Applebees. Don't diss Applebees. . . at least it was open late enough for him to have his orange juice and me my chocolate fudge cake. And don't diss the chocolate fudge cake either, I mean who waits until 11:30 pm to go to dinner?
I liked the way that M talked to me. He was still shy and embarrassed, and had no idea what to order from an Applebees. Frankly, he only ate halal food and wasn't comfortable trying to figure out which dishes might be safe for him. The orange juice itself seemed like a monumental risk. I finally did talk him into a bite of my cake, but only one. And even through my own ignorance for the meaning of "halal" food I remember it did not contain whipped cream, so we were okay.
I fell in love with M that night, and it was the weirdest thing in the world. He asked me what I had done all day. Keep in mind that I was working a few jobs, I had taken the day off to schedule our date. I told him that I had gotten up late, read a book, took a nap and now was visiting him. What did he say to this?
"You were a lazy ass."
You could see from the shock in his eyes as soon as the words escaped his lips that this was not meant to come out loud. You could see that it was not something he would have normally said to a near stranger. You could see that he was completely mortified and I had to laugh. M had just accidentally shown some of what is his trademark humor. While it sounds simple and silly, and I guess you had to be there, when I started laughing I just said, "Yes, I was definitely a 'lazy ass.'" It reminded me how unlike me that was, and how I really, really liked this guy.
Our first date was February 1, 2004, the night of the infamous Janet Jackson "boob" incident and three days after my 23rd birthday. We had scheduled to go out for dinner, but 6:00 rolled around and no call. Then 7:00, 8:00, 9:00. . .he finally called around 9:30 pm. He apologized and said he just couldn't get out of work until later. At this point I was livid. We'd had about three cancelled dates (none of which he had called to cancel, just never showed up.) I told him to just forget it, and he sighed heavily. He said, "No. I really want us to go. I really cannot get out right now, but I will come soon. Is that okay?"
I still don't know how in the world I swallowed my pride enough to take so many stalls and starts, but at 11:30pm I found myself sitting straight across a very thin Pakistani man at my local Applebees. Don't diss Applebees. . . at least it was open late enough for him to have his orange juice and me my chocolate fudge cake. And don't diss the chocolate fudge cake either, I mean who waits until 11:30 pm to go to dinner?
I liked the way that M talked to me. He was still shy and embarrassed, and had no idea what to order from an Applebees. Frankly, he only ate halal food and wasn't comfortable trying to figure out which dishes might be safe for him. The orange juice itself seemed like a monumental risk. I finally did talk him into a bite of my cake, but only one. And even through my own ignorance for the meaning of "halal" food I remember it did not contain whipped cream, so we were okay.
I fell in love with M that night, and it was the weirdest thing in the world. He asked me what I had done all day. Keep in mind that I was working a few jobs, I had taken the day off to schedule our date. I told him that I had gotten up late, read a book, took a nap and now was visiting him. What did he say to this?
"You were a lazy ass."
You could see from the shock in his eyes as soon as the words escaped his lips that this was not meant to come out loud. You could see that it was not something he would have normally said to a near stranger. You could see that he was completely mortified and I had to laugh. M had just accidentally shown some of what is his trademark humor. While it sounds simple and silly, and I guess you had to be there, when I started laughing I just said, "Yes, I was definitely a 'lazy ass.'" It reminded me how unlike me that was, and how I really, really liked this guy.
Friday, July 11, 2008
What does it take?!
So M didn't call for a week. I continued about my business. I would go to the store I saw him at, almost daily to get fuel for the ambulance I was driving, but I wouldn't go into the store.
Eventually I gave up even that pretense and went into the store, "to get Aquafina." He, to my surprise, was watching me walk around the store and apologized for not calling me and told me he "lost my number." He seemed very serious and I did not believe him. He asked for the number again and we made an appointment for him to call, which he broke.
Let me make a long story short. We met in November, he took my number in December, and it took until January for him to call me. When he did finally decide to call, it was my first night out to a birthday party. He called and I was not home. I called him back and we made another appointment for him to call me when he got off work, "after midnight."
This time he called. We talked for almost three hours. I listened to him cook, we talked about my school, his job. . .we talked about what he liked to eat, we even hit the "do you drink/smoke/streetwalk for extra cash." Oh, wait, not that last one, but everything else.
He made me laugh and we decided to keep calling each other. . .so, I had a date, every night after midnight, for a phone call.
Eventually I gave up even that pretense and went into the store, "to get Aquafina." He, to my surprise, was watching me walk around the store and apologized for not calling me and told me he "lost my number." He seemed very serious and I did not believe him. He asked for the number again and we made an appointment for him to call, which he broke.
Let me make a long story short. We met in November, he took my number in December, and it took until January for him to call me. When he did finally decide to call, it was my first night out to a birthday party. He called and I was not home. I called him back and we made another appointment for him to call me when he got off work, "after midnight."
This time he called. We talked for almost three hours. I listened to him cook, we talked about my school, his job. . .we talked about what he liked to eat, we even hit the "do you drink/smoke/streetwalk for extra cash." Oh, wait, not that last one, but everything else.
He made me laugh and we decided to keep calling each other. . .so, I had a date, every night after midnight, for a phone call.
M
M was interesting to me. He was kind of a mystery and I think that was why I liked him. In the beginning, I would only see him at the store where I met him. He would ask me questions, and I would go about my day.
Eventually he asked me for my phone number and I had a moment's hesitation before giving it to him. I mean, who gives a guy they meet in a gas station their phone number? I just thought that it wouldn't make a very good "meeting" story, and would sound kind of funny on the news: "22 year old Paramedic killed by man she gave her phone number to in a gas station."
It was not a headline I thought my mother would appreciate reading. When I hesitated he had this look in his eye that won me over. He looked so,
innocent?
hopeful?
sweet?
honest?
I don't know what it was in his eyes, but I did give him my telephone number, and he told me he was going to call.
He didn't.
Eventually he asked me for my phone number and I had a moment's hesitation before giving it to him. I mean, who gives a guy they meet in a gas station their phone number? I just thought that it wouldn't make a very good "meeting" story, and would sound kind of funny on the news: "22 year old Paramedic killed by man she gave her phone number to in a gas station."
It was not a headline I thought my mother would appreciate reading. When I hesitated he had this look in his eye that won me over. He looked so,
innocent?
hopeful?
sweet?
honest?
I don't know what it was in his eyes, but I did give him my telephone number, and he told me he was going to call.
He didn't.
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