991008 : Let's just get out of here

Most common reaction: "What the hell is in Canada?" Followed by something like... "Why don't you move somewhere more exciting?"

What I fear the most is, of course: "Oh you're just trying to get away from him." Which is probably true on some really sub-sub-sub-conscious level that only comes to me in dreams or bad post-relationship cliches.

What I fear second is myself. At the moment, I'm in a terrible mess, financially, everything else. Twenty-three days till the taxes are due and I don't remember where I've put my group certificates. Meanwhile, credit card companies are charging me $17 a month for god know whatever service I don't remember purchasing and I can't be fucked calling them up.

No. Move the second to the first. Strike the first. Cross it out. Double-cross.

So then I have to pack all the little things I've come to own and love into cardboard boxes and have them shipped, hoping they won't break. Waiting for them at the other end.

I have relatives there. Dozens. Well, two, with families that have multiplied. My grandfather in Toronto has lung cancer. My aunt has breast cancer. She lives in Chicago with a husband and no children, her parents were stressed when they realised she didn't plan to have any. Her younger sister eloped with a man the family disapproved of, because he'd cheated away his propects. Now they live in a tiny apartment allocated by the university, their child is adored at least, even called a genius in my presence.

The youngest sister, in Toronto but often not on speaking terms with her parents, married someone pre-arranged, I remember the festivities when I was six or seven. I saw a barbie doll for the first time in a window display next to the restaurant and I wanted to buy it as a wedding present for my favourite aunt. We couldn't afford it of course, but she promised that I could buy it for her the next time she got married. Which she did, about two years ago, but I didn't. I liked the other husband better.

The only son. The prized son. The eldest boy loved most. He married someone who didn't have a PhD nor any aspirations to obtain one and thus was looked down upon by his parents. He was expected to carry on the family name, but he had a daughter and only a daughter. She would spend the better part of her life summoning up the courage to go against the family she'd been born into. Once when she was thirteen she told them she wanted to be a filmmaker. They took her aside and told her she'd be nothing.

We have hid all this time, away from them. But now it seems I am heading back into their midst.

What will I do? Who would hire a sucker like me?

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