With friends like these ...

Veronica: “What are you doing?”

Shannan: “I’m lying in bed drinking strawberry milk.”

Veronica: “How much strawberry milk?  It’s not a 2 litre bottle is it?”

Shannan: “Nooooo ... I’m not THAT pathetic”.

These are the sorts of conversations that good girlfriends have.  They make sure that when you’re ‘eating your feelings’ that you’re really not going too overboard, they encourage you to have a drink to forget a bad day but they’ll also tell you to get your fat ass out the door and go running.

It’s a fine line sometimes with honesty in friendships.

Recently Veronica decided to break up with her boyfriend of about 6 weeks.  She had been a little not so sure about him at the start but Betty and I had encouraged her to pursue it.

We’d said all the right things:

“He seems like a nice guy”

“I’m sure his dreadlocks are very clean”

“He has a 4 year old kid? Fantastic, you like kids!”

“Dude he has a job and can afford to buy you beer, he’s ticking all my boxes!”

And he was a lovely guy and they were having a nice time but she just didn’t feel like he was the right fit for her.

She said to me, “But everyone’s met him and they all like him”

“You haven’t asked me what I think of him”, I said.

And so she asked me.

And without even pausing I said,

“I think he’s beige (boring) and I don’t like his teeth”

BOOM!

There it is.

Friendship at its finest.

And also its scariest.

It’s that awkward moment where you’re being incredibly honest with your friend because you really want the best for her but you know that what you say might totally backfire in your face.

Recently I had kept a secret from a good friend of mine.  And she had read my blog and contacted me and said “We need to talk”. 

I waited until we all went out on the Saturday night and we’d had some shots and drunk some beer and played a very dodgy game of pool before I said …”alright, let’s have this conversation”.

The reality is that as a good friend she already knew what was going on and she knew what I was going to tell her but then I had created this other issue by not telling her and admitting that I was fearful of doing so.  

Because good friends will tell us the things we often don’t want to hear.  And most of the time the advice they give is stuff we already know but unfortunately sometimes we have to hear it from someone else (often multiple times in my case) before we make the change we need to.

And then there’s friends like Anja.  Who will turn up on my door step on a Sunday morning with hot coffee and Kahlua, lie on my bed and laugh at my stories and then point out the ugly hair that grows out of the mole on my face.  “Oh look, it’s a whisker!”.

And as I reach for my mirror and tweezers I know deep down she has my best interest at heart.  Because I wouldn’t want a friend with a hairy mole either!

22 Boys

I counted and I have 22 boys phone numbers in my cell phone.  You might think that sounds cool but I just kind of think it’s a bit pathetic.

There’s a reason why I don’t delete the guys from my phone, a girl at work recently had an old date start messaging her and she had the awkward moment trying to figure out who he was.  She also has a crazy stalker but that’s another story, a story best told with a glass of wine.

Some of the guys I have renamed, like “Herpes Mike” and “Crazy Trevor” or “Tattoo Matty”. I don’t know if Mike actually has herpes but renaming him that in my phone made me feel better. And Trevor is actually crazy so I feel ok about calling him that and Matty, well he has A LOT of tattoos (like the all over body up the neck kind of tattoos).

There’s a few guys that I honestly can’t remember the details about, apart from their name.  I’d like to say I don’t know how I collected them all but that would be a lie.  I went through a period of chronic insomnia earlier this year and I’m pretty sure I gave out my number to any guy who asked.

“Insomnia: helping Shannan meet boys”.

You have to remember that these are only the guys whose phone numbers I have.  This list doesn’t include all the weirdos who emailed me.  Like the guy who wanted to go on a date with me and then if he felt like we clicked wanted to have sex and that would be the start of our relationship.  That’s actually how he phrased it to me.  How could I say no to that?  Actually, quite easily.

I thought I’d go through the list purely for your entertainment (and mine of course) and try and remember anything I could about the boys.  Some of the stories you may have heard on other posts but I’ll try and keep it short and sweet.

Some of them I’ve changed their names because it makes me feel less like a nasty cow for talking about them.

Mr. A.  He wants to marry a brown girl and he’s moving to Alberta.  He was also really young, I won’t cough to actually how old because you’ll laugh.  Sometimes I laugh just thinking about it.  He’s a nice guy though.

Crazy Trevor.  He was so enamored by my Australian accent he kept talking about it, which actually really annoyed me.  Yes, I have an accent but there’s so much more to me than just that!  I think he may have had some form of tourette’s as we’d be in the middle of a normal conversation and he would insert an inappropriate weird comment.  He insisted that I didn’t experience the real Vancouver because I lived in a nice neighbourhood, but as I pointed out where he lived wasn’t exactly living in the Ghetto.  He seemed quite keen to talk about his ex-girlfriend and frankly I was happier talking about her as she seemed much more interesting than him.  The conversation came to an end when he asked why it had been so long between boyfriends for me and asked why I couldn’t get turned on.  *shudder* 

Pete.  Mr Blinky the magician.  That’s enough really to sum it up.  He’s messaged me a couple of times and once I even saw him on the street and swiftly turned the other way.

Andrew.  *sigh*  I’ll give you the abridged version (which makes me sound like a 13 year old).  He liked me & I liked him, he moved away, he stopped liking me, I went to Australia, he liked me & I liked him, I came back to Vancouver, I stopped liking him.  Then I think he may have liked me and I liked him but I’m not sure, it got very confusing.  Here’s the reality: he climbs rocks & scales mountains and I can’t even climb a ladder!  He moved to Alberta.

Rob.  This guy was as keen as mustard last year to meet and then lost his job and decided that I was too much work.  And then a few hours later decided he wanted me to cheer him up.  What do you think my response was?

Anyway he got back in touch with me earlier this year and we were due to meet up again and then I pulled the plug as he was moving to Seattle.

Herpes Mike.  Just a giant douchebag who talked about pooh on our first date.

Ian.  Super super sweet and really shy.  I just want to hug him.

James The South American.  He paid for our meal on his work credit card and expensed it.  He told me I should do my MBA because “it’s easy” … I didn’t have the heart to tell him I never even graduated from high school.

Jason.  Thinks his life is similar to that of Jesus. Need I say more?  I knew that I would never see him again so I insisted on paying for our date.  He thought it was fantastic, I just knew it was the right thing to do.

Jay.  He was really into me & particularly fond of my Australian-ness (which of course makes me uncomfortable).  Until he found out that I’m not “one of those” Australian girls.

Justin.  No idea.

Ladner Matt.  I got lost in Ladner (which is in the middle of nowhere) not helped by the fact that he doesn’t actually know his own address which was probably due to the amount of marijuana he smokes.  He also talked about pooh on the first date and told me a very embarrassing sex story which also involved pooh.  Another story best told over a glass of wine or 6.

Lee.  He has heated floors & a long couch and he’s a jerk.

Matt.  There are way too many Matt’s and I can’t keep up.  He was probably an ass.

Patrick.  He sent me a photo of his junk!  I, of course, showed my girlfriends, laughed a lot, and never communicated with him again.

Mark.  He told me about growing up in Brooklyn NY and how he used to carry a gun and some of his friends got stabbed, and then in the same sentence asked what was in my fridge. “Nutella and strawberry milk” was my response, which apparently tells him a lot about the kind of person I am.  

Yeah, um, I’m the kind of person that DOESN’T carry a gun.  

Nice guy but a bit intense for me.

Mike.  He was super duper keen, called me, said all the right things and then *poof* he disappeared.

James.  A fireman *sigh*

Shane.  He seemed nice enough but he spelt my name wrong so I lost interest.

Luke.   EEEEK! I can’t remember.

TattooMatty.  Really nice but also really shy, he got in touch with me on a few different occasions and we somehow had an argument before we had even met.  I have to say I think he’s a bit weird.   He also sent me a photo of his junk so that was pretty much the end of it.

John.  The bad Monday night date who shoveled nachos into his gullet while I tried not to look shocked.

The reality is that the guys above aren’t horrible and they’re not bad people and I guess they’re not all jerks, they’re just not right for me and / or I’m not right for them.

Except for Crazy Trevor - that guy is straight up, legitimately insane!

Mom and Dad

I’ve actually stooped to a new low.  I have had a conversation with my Dad about a boy.

When I went home to Australia at Christmas time my father (bless him) told me specifically he didn’t want to hear about boys.  So I kept my trap shut.

I’ve not been feeling so great about things in general for the last week.  I know that I have this fantastic opportunity coming in September when I start school but I’ve been feeling a bit anxious, a bit panicky.  This week I’ve been having mini panic attacks and stressing out.  I start to think about my future and my finances, I feel alone and then all I want to do is call my Mom, which of course I can’t do because, well, she’s dead.

Tonight I went to dinner with a friend and we sat near the water and talked and ate and laughed and shared.  And it was fantastic.  But I felt this uneasy feeling and I know what it is.  It’s the feeling I had at the end of last year, the one that saw me run home to Australia at Christmas time.  I am scared and I want to run away.  I want to run home to my childhood bedroom and hide under the covers with the dog.

So I phoned my Dad on the way home and we talked about my mortgage and about the weather and about the dog.  And I told him I was feeling anxious and that I wanted to come home and he, of course, didn’t understand what was wrong because my life should be so fantastic.

After I danced around the subject a bit I finally said to him “Dad, there’s this boy ...”.  And we went from there.

And he did so well!  If there is a score for how well my father took me telling him what I did I would give him an 8 out of 10, only an 8 because there’s always room for improvement.

I sat on the side of the road in my neighbourhood and I cried and shared with my Dad and he just cared for me in the best way he knew how.  And he asked questions about the boy and gave me suggestions on what I could do.  And even though the advice was things I already knew, somehow having a blubber down the phone to my Dad just made me feel better.

Ideally these are the things I would share with my Mother but even if she were alive I’m pretty sure she would have given me some tough love.  Mom was really hard when it came to those things.  She would have made me stop believing that a boy may have feelings for me because she would see that as making me weak and vulnerable and open to being hurt.

Mom and Dad weren’t really romantic people.  When I asked my Dad how he ‘got’ my Mom, he laughed and said it wasn’t like that.  He said that they ended up being the only 2 single people left in their group of friends so it just kind of happened.

To me, that’s THE MOST horrific story of all time.  And I’m angry at both of them for not being dreamier and creating a more romantic story (if only to be able to tell me).  But that’s Mom and Dad.  They’re very realistic people and they see things in black and white.

But the problem is that they ended up with a daughter who sees everything in multicolour.  Who daydreams when she’s at work and still makes up stories in her head.  Who could sit under a tree all day and stare at the sky and talk nonsense with her friends.  Who loves people she knows she shouldn’t and would give her last $10 to a stranger.

And it’s not that my parents aren’t generous.  My parents are awesome in their own way. 

When they got married they did it in a restaurant called ‘La Fondue’ ... Yes, my parents got married in a fondue restaurant.  And they didn’t have any family there because they were in other parts of the country and overseas.  And my Mom didn’t wear a traditional wedding dress, she wore this ugly (sorry Mom) dress with a hood on it, but it was a dress that she adored, a dress that we still have at home, a dress that doesn’t fit me but I still pull it out when I go home to look at it.

I think the thing is that all these changes are happening in my life, good and bad, and my Mom isn’t here.  And it sounds so bloody stereotypical but it’s true.  A lot of the time I don’t think about her because it’s really hard to do that, but sometimes the thought of her catches me off guard and it shocks me.  There’s still part of me that’s confused that she’s dead.  Part of me that doesn’t understand how someone so amazing is not here but instead waiting for me in heaven.  And that’s the thing that keeps me going, knowing that one day we’ll be together again.

It’s Mothers Day on Sunday and I miss my Mom.