It never fails

I had an incident at work yesterday that made me so mad, by the time I got off the phone I was literally shaking. I know I have felt this indignant at other times in my life, but it's been so long I honestly can't remember the last time I've been so angry. Once the adrenaline wore off, I was exhausted. And it was only noon.

That morning I had packed all my gym stuff planning to work out on my way home. But when it came time to leave I was looking for any excuse not to go. I was pooped. So I made a bet with the elevator. If we stopped twice on the way down from the 11th floor then I would go to the gym. It didn't even stop once. It was a message from above. I totally played work-out hooky.

That evening I had a few phone calls to catch up on, one to my dad and one to a friend of a friend who works as a speech language pathologist in the area. I was so drained I could barely be sociable with my roommate, let alone try to make a good first impression with a stranger on the telephone. There was only one solution to my conundrum.

Yoga.

So I put on some Sigur Rós, plugged in the white Christmas lights strung across my ceiling and unrolled my mat. It had been weeks since I'd done any yoga, but it never fails to make me feel better. After an hour of zoning out, stretching and quietening my racing thoughts, I was good as new. I felt as physically different as you do walking out of the chiropractor's office. I was readjusted, realigned and back on track.

My conversation with the SLP went very well. So well in fact I will be shadowing her for a day in May. So exciting.

Mad as a Hatter

"Have I gone mad?" asks the Mad Hatter to Alice.

She replies, "I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are."

I don't think I entirely agree with Alice's statement - we would first have to decide on a definition for "best" as it applies to people. But I will readily concede that, somewhat less ambiguously, all the most interesting people are off their rockers. Normal is so boring.

Sometimes I question my own sanity. I'm currently at a life crossroads. I've begun to negotiate the maze that is the path to grad school and have started to figure out how to relocate not only cross-country, but across country borders. It is indeed time for me to move on from my current job (grad school has always been on the table) and I'm ready to explore a new city full of possibilities. But I would be lying if I tried to tell you with a straight face, that this isn't in large part due to a certain boy in Vancouver.

So I've been consulting with friends and family about my big plans. Over the weekend I had breakfast with a high school friend of mine and I asked her point blank, "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"Yes," she answered, but she didn't follow up with Alice's reassurances. Instead she continued, "depending on how it all works out."

Well this got me thinking. No one likes to be told in all seriousness that they're out of their mind. So I took some time to ponder whether I thought I was crazy. I couldn't entirely rule out the possibility - not being able to foretell the future and all. But I was struck by a profound realization. It would be crazier not to embark on this adventure. It would be insane to stay in my dead end job, passively letting life take its course. Imagine how bonkers it would make me to realize years later that I had missed my chance to shape my life into the life I wanted to lead.

The way I see it, crazy is a moot point. No matter how your life goes, you're going to be faced with some difficult choices and that only have quote-unquote crazy solutions. How safe, how small would a life be that only stuck to the sane, narrow, limited path? In my book, a sense of whimsy and adventure, a little zaniness, will only serve you well.

But wish me luck any way!

The stuff nightmares are made of

Escalators.

Stop laughing; I know you are. Ok, so I'm not as terrified of them as say, a loved one getting sick, or dying alone, but as far as concrete day-to-day fears go, yes, escalators top my list.

To be fair, it's not without reason. When I was five years old, my mother and I took an ill-fated trip to the big G-Fox department store in Hartford. (On a side note G-Fox went out of business shortly thereafter. I'm sure it had nothing to do with me, but the store's demise quite pleased my vindictive little five-year-old self.)

So anyways we're at G-Fox. I have no memory of the outing up until the time we were leaving, but my memory is crystal clear as we step onto the escalator down to the ground level. All of a sudden, 3 steps from the bottom, something is very wrong. Mommy is yelling, people are running frantically and I'm looking bewilderedly around me. The escalator has stopped. Looking down, I discover I can't see half of my right foot. It is trapped between the grated metal step and the side wall of the machine. My shoe and sock are gone. I was not ok with this!

Now I join in the panic. Security guards are talking over the screaming, trying to figure the best way to free my foot. A sales woman gives me a baby doll in a lavender plaid dress and I clutch it distractedly. I can't feel anything, like I'm numb all over. But I still can't see my foot. One of the security guards has procured a crow bar from who knows where. He wedges it in the crack between the step and the wall of the escalator, near my foot. He leans heavily on it and finally, with an ugly mechanical creaking, a hole appears between the once flush walls of metal. My foot is released, miraculously whole.

It was red and soon to be swollen, but there was no blood. My shoe and sock were nowhere to be seen in the gaping insides of the escalator. I was quickly scooped up and bustled into a waiting ambulance. As it turns out I was fine, no missing toes or broken bones. My mom even made me go to school the next day with my right foot bundled in a slipper.

But yeah. I'm not a fan of escalators.

To sum up

So there you have it. I credit my current outlook on the world and perspective on myself to those four experiences. The obvious theme that ties these experiences together is that each is an instance of me underestimating myself - underestimating my abilities or other's opinions of me.

On the one hand you might think that's a depressing theme that so often plagues young women today. But the good news it that I have always been pleasantly surprised. I have never let myself down nor do I expect to in the foreseeable future.

4.

4. My summer abroad in Italy: A couple weeks before I traveled abroad, I was on a family vacation in Hawaii with my dad and step-mom. The islands were breathtaking and the weather was a welcome relief after a Montreal winter. But, looming over me was the knowledge that within days of the trip's end I would graduate from university and then fly off to Europe on my own. I was terrified. I had several meltdowns, much to the consternation of my dad and stepmom.

But the summer that followed was the time of my life. I discovered that my Italian was far better than I gave myself credit for. I was more resourceful and independent than I knew and I was more capable of being flexible and spontaneous than I had imagined. The tripped proved that I was capable, self-reliant and apparently very attractive based on all the positive attention I got from the locals.

The morning I was to leave for home, I found myself alone in the empty lobby of my hotel. I needed to catch a cab to the airport to make my flight to Boston. It was 5:00 am and no one was around. I couldn't check out, but figured they had my credit card info so I tried to leave. The automatic door would not open. I jumped up and down in front of the sensor. I attempted to pry it open with my finger nails. I tried the phone at the front desk, but there was no one to call. Finally I sat down on a couch in the lobby and took a few deep breaths.

If I missed my flight I would just have to find another way to get home. It would be a pain in the ass, but it wasn't like I wouldn't be able to get back. Three months earlier this situation would have had me in tears, panicking, beside myself. But now, though I wished things were working out more smoothly, I was composed and resolved. I would find a way to make it work. After an hour, another family came down and found an emergency button on the wall around the corner that opened the door. I bolted out of the hotel, stole a cab from a couple waiting at the train station down the street, and caught my flight as it was boarding. But had I panicked or lost my cool, who knows if I would have been composed enough to pull it off.

3.

3. Breaking up with my long-distance boyfriend as I started my second year of university: My first year at McGill I had a long-distance boyfriend from my hometown. He was attending a school in Massachusetts an 8 hour bus ride away. We would talk online every night from 10:00 to midnight. That is not an exaggeration. In case you didn't connect the dots, this also meant I never went out; my social life was non-existent. It's also worth noting that the flip side was true for him as well. Basically, the relationship wasn't a good thing, but we were each other's safety net, a constant thing to count on when everything else was new and scary. I did two things as a freshman: 1) I excelled at school and 2)I missed my boyfriend. It was a long torturous year.

Half way through the following summer, I had decided there was no way I could go through that again. We both deserved more from our college experience. I was terrified of what it would mean to not have someone else to rely on, but I was convinced it was for the best. It took us a while to finally break it off, but by mid-september, now back at school, I was totally on my own.

Much to my surprise I made friends. I went out. I partied. I flirted with boys. They flirted back. Second year was a blast. I found out I didn't need someone else to tell me everything was going to be alright. I was just fine on my own.