October 18–December 18, 2002 — These corrosives do their magic

October 18 was a Friday night, and I was working the second day of a five-day stretch returning unwanted home furnishings. I was dreading the next three days, and it was cold out and raining. A cashier offered me a drive to the subway station, but she made me uncomfortable, so I refused. Twenty minutes later, after walking across the overpass between work and the nearest bus stop, I stood inside a bus shelter, dripped onto the pavement and watched in the distance for the large, distinctive headlights of a bus.

The bus shelter was on the northeast corner of the intersection. Northbound cars sped by me whenever they had a green light and sometimes when they didn’t. A car turned left, not noticing a northbound car on its way through the intersection. The car turning left knocked the northbound car off course, towards the sidewalk and the bus shelter.

I knew that there was a telephone pole and a garbage can between the oncoming car and the bus shelter, but my heart was racing and I couldn’t move. Everyone else in the shelter screamed and ran outside. I stayed inside, telling myself that if the telephone pole didn’t stop the car, it would probably fall over, and if it did fall over, I wanted to be inside the bus shelter.

The telephone pole didn’t fall over. Both drivers got out of their cars uninjured, but one of the cars had to be towed away. A Pizza Hut delivery driver owned the car that hit the pole. I offered to stay behind if he felt he needed witnesses, but he told me not to, so I caught the next bus.

Johnston and I came to Toronto expecting to see a car accident at least once every few months. After more than two years in this city, I had finally seen my first accident; Johnston still hasn’t seen one. I was shaking for most of the bus ride to the station, working the adrenaline out of my system, but I knew Johnston would be happy to hear my story. Or, failing that, that I would be happy to tell it.

I also told myself this was a sign that things were going to change. I’m not superstitious, but I needed a change, I needed something new, and if I could convince myself that a car hitting a pole was a sure sign of exciting things to come, then all the better.

The next night at the same bus shelter, I saw a girl from work crossing the street. I had only spoken to her once, and it was about a customer who needed to make a return. Still, I had told Jeff and Amy about her, and she was the only girl at work that I was attracted to. I became very nervous.

She didn’t join me in the shelter. When the bus finally came, I let her get on ahead of me. If she had sat anywhere but in the seats furthest to the back, I would’ve had to continue walking. But she went all the way to the back, and I sat down beside her, leaving one seat between us. I waited a few stops, trying to work up the nerve to introduce myself. (I already knew her name: We have a board at work with the names and photographs of all our co-workers on it.)

After talking with her for a few minutes, I learned that she lives near me, so we took the same route most of the way home. She said she was working the next day and that she would see me then. She also told me that her shift would end at 7:00 pm. I was scheduled until 7:30 pm, but I promised myself that I would be on the same bus as her.

The next day I feigned sickness and finished twenty-five minutes early. (To be fair, I was sick, but I exaggerated more than I otherwise would have so that I could leave early.) I thought she might have caught an earlier bus, but I ended up leaving before her. I waited at the bus stop.

Over the next few days, we found reasons to see each other everyday. I asked her to pick up some items from her department that I knew were arriving on one of my days off, and she said yes when I made a pathetic and non-committal attempt at asking her to a movie, giving her plenty of opportunity to say no without hurting my feelings. (“...but you’ll probably be tired after work, so I’ll understand if you’d rather not.” And so forth.)

We didn’t kiss until a few days later; I was terrified of having misunderstood her, and I held back when I shouldn’t have. She didn’t push me away, though. I couldn’t stop shaking.

All of this was new to me. Especially new was having a girlfriend separate from the Internet. We’d never spoken online, she didn’t know about this web site, and I didn’t want to tell her about it. Amy and Jeff told me that I had to tell her, though, despite my insistence that she was better off not knowing.

Telling her was very hard. I tried to joke about it, asking her why she’d never said anything about the cameras. It turned into a very awkward conversation. She told me that she didn’t want to visit the site and that she didn’t want to be mentioned by name. I said I was fine with these conditions.

A few weeks later she read some of my journal entries, and part of me panicked. I felt like I’d been caught, like she would see how different the person I am online is from the person she thought she knew. She told me that I had nothing to worry about. I still worried.

I went to Ottawa for four days when things between us were at their best. I called her everyday while I was there, and we missed being with each other. But things were never the same as they had been before I left.

The next month made me feel heartless and empty. Nothing phased me. I wanted to sit in my room and type, and I didn’t take notice of the people I was hurting or the friendships I was neglecting.

I found a note one day. It was dropped through the mail slot after She finished work. She said that she didn’t feel like she was in a relationship and that we needed to take a break, to reassess things. We took a break and decided to keep trying. But nothing changed, and I became more distant; I didn’t know how to help myself, much less her. I could only make things worse for her. I was very good at it.

She said, “I don’t think you’re going to let yourself get better,” and I agreed. She said she would wait for me anyway, but I wouldn’t let her. She told me that it was my decision, not hers. That I was ending things, not her.

I didn’t cry, but I felt a bit like I was choking.

A week later we gave each other our favourite books for Christmas: She gave me The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and I gave her Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti.

I miss the weeks when things worked, and I wonder why she doesn’t hate me more.

My conscience can’t tolerate hurting another person. I need to force myself to be alone. But I am weak. Or maybe just human, as friends will tell me to make me feel better.

Both seem poor excuses to me.