Last Christmas was an ugly hat

Christmas last year was a bit of a bummer. A couple months before, I finally broke up with my ridiculous ex-boyfriend. The apartment I had found for us to rent (on my own, since he was too scared to search for a place in case it was run by a slumlord), turned out to be run by a slumlord named Bertram Okeke. The boyfriend left before the mice did. Both were extremely difficult to get rid of.

My aunt Ellen, a strong lady who I hadn't seen in years, came busting in to rescue me from my depression. I went to live at my cousin Sandra's, a nice place in the armpit of Calgary. 2 hours to work each way, to my job scrubbing suites at the swanky seniors' community, but at least I'd get some reading done if I wasn't too tired. That was it. It was going to be the end of my boyfriend days - each man had been worse than the one before. And this is coming from a girl who smoked various things, drank, wrote terrible lyric poetry on a daily basis AND insisted on reading it to them. Yep, I was no catch, but catchier than the boys I ended up with. If I was a pothead, they had to be dealers. If I drank a couple times a week, they had to be alcoholics prone to DUI. If I wrote bad poetry, they wrote worse and often set it to music. Then there was fraud, theft, gambling, pawning, gambling, pawning some more, paranoia (this last one had me under surveillance, sure I'd cheat on him like his ex did), insane roadrage and the usual cheating. I didn't participate in these, was only implicated their results.

Emotionally screwy, I have never been good at turning off the emotions and staying protectively cynical no matter how badly my love life has gone.

Last Christmas time, in the sensory lonely of one completely unused to being alone, I believed I had made a connection with someone who perpetually impressed and delighted me. In short, I had a crush on him. We went out once and I thought it had gone well. In retrospect, it went horribly: nervous, I insisted on paying, drank too much, chain smoked, and when I got a call from an old guy friend on my cell, I thought it would be fun to let them talk to one another rather than saying sorry, I'm busy. Then he gave me a lift back to the armpit of Calgary and I hugged him awkwardly. A night out like that, how can a guy not call you back? Yep, I should have known better than to hope. I had acted like a total slob.

Meanwhile, the owner of the company I worked for, having made so much money from the exploitation of rich seniors, gave each employee a $100 gift card to spend at a particular mall. By that time I had done most of my Christmas shopping, but I felt like spending the card money on family and friends. Sick as a dog, I was hopped up on Benelyn and echinacea by the time I arrived through the big glass doors. Bought some things for Granny, some accessories for my thrift store Company Christmas Party dress, then thought it would be amusing to buy something from my impressive delightful friend who happened to work there, the one who hadn't called me for the couple weeks since we went out. (Never mind that he'd considered it a 'non-date', for one thing..). Anyway, I couldn't find anything whatsoever in the mall that I thought he would like. I ended up getting him a moronic card and an ugly hat. If you squinted your brain it made a kind of sense. I'm blaming Benelyn and echinacea. To make matters worse, his sister kindly suggested I give her the gift so that she could sneak it under the family Christmas tree. So here I was, this horrible chain-smoking chain-drinking bad poetry girl who lives in the armpit of Calgary and works in an ol' folks home, in a way crashing my friend's family Christmas with my terribly chosen gift. Way to go.

Needless to say he didn't reply to my embarrassed, apologetic phone call either. I've never felt so low in my life. Maybe it was partly because without someone else around being much more ridiculous than I was, I was forced to reckon with my own ridiculousness. That's my Margaret Lawrence analysis. It all still makes me cringe with embarrassment when I think about it.

**

Christmas time is here again and I'm in a significantly different position. This past January, an old friend came to visit from Winnipeg. We spoke about our lives since I had lived in Winnipeg. Suddenly he declared that he wanted to keep all the assholes away from me. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. In February 06, I went to visit him on his birthday and he asked me to marry him. A few days later, with a duffle bag of clothes and his guitar, he got on the bus and came back to Calgary with me. A straight-edge vegetarian with no bad habits to speak of, a strong moral centre, and an admirable artistic output, Gareth has been a clear departure from what my life had been from about 1999 when my parents moved from Ottawa and I'd decided to stay there on my own, and 2005, the culmination of those 6 years of escalating unhappiness. We now have our own place in Sunnyside, and while we're not exactly thriving financially, we both have decent full time jobs and plans for the future. He doesn't care how ridiculous I am - either I've managed to tone it down, or he doesn't mind. I'm laying off the bodily pollutants (except for occasional celebration),and concentrating on what I can accomplish rather than lamenting about what I can't. I'm not as paranoid anymore that all the educated writers think I'm lame. I'm fairly convinced by now that even people I admire are lame in their own way.

But for some reason, it being Christmas and all, I can't help but think of that goddam ugly hat. For an equally unknown reason, the closer it's getting to Christmas, the more I find myself reliving last year's embarrassment, feeling inexplicably sad, and continuing to care about what the person in possession of that ugly hat (if he wasn't smart enough to burn or regift it) thinks of me. In a way he was the last person to see me giving in to every possible lapse of willpower before Gareth found me all crumpled up and picked me up and dusted me off. It's like if I could redeem myself in the eyes of this person, I could be sure I've really evolved. I could relax and be happy and not act like a nervous little bird. But it so happens that the few times I've relapsed back into fungirl mode, you've been around. Not for any related reason, just by chance.

So I've just got to pull myself together and not be such a sensitive twit. But I'd just like to say, you still impress and delight me. Having once thought I could be one to make you feel less alone - and now being one who is herself less alone thanks to another - I hope that you find someone who would pick you up and dust you off if you crumple. Because it really can be better than being alone when you're with the right person. Love isn't so bad after all. Nowhere near as ugly as that goddam hat, and as fun to give as it is to receive.