I Moved to a New City
For the record, this was written during my 2nd week in Toronto. I feel better about it now. Turns out, meeting people is fun.
After work, I walk up Bathurst towards King to catch the streetcar. The Go Train rumbles underneath, leaving the city, and heads towards the sunset. Its passengers don’t live here (except from nine-to-five on weekdays) and I hope their kids are lovely. Two hours in transport is less Sisyphean when the task means going home.
They can’t build skyscrapers on top of train tracks, and I am grateful for it. It means when I cross the rail bridge and look to my right, I am not greeted with a mirrored wall of glass that extends infinitely upwards, but with cerulean skies and a breath of brisk January air. Beneath my footsteps is the locomotive gutter that cuts downtown Toronto into two — wedged between Bay Street towers and lakeshore condos.
And here I am, just a girl from Alberta who thought mountains were irreplaceable, but maybe just maybe, there is something about these towers of glass, beyond their corporate snobbery. There is something about seeing them like this, from a distance, as they run the economics of this country. Far away and up, there are people orchestrating entire symphonies of equations in their minds and perhaps it is the same as standing beneath the Rockies. Both are reminders that I am small, and allow my worries to vaporize from monsters into dust.
I am buzzing. I am a city-girl now. I have remembered to remove my backpack on the crowded streetcar and it is nestled between my legs with my work-authorized 16” MacBook.
And just when you start to get all romantic about a city, you are chasing after the bus driver who waits for you but gives you the stink eye as you board.
Work is lonely because the decade between me and my average coworker becomes tangible when the conversation shifts and there is talk about that other type of family — the type that you have to create. I nod, then sit back staring at my knees in quiet resolve at the realization that despite having this hyperactive-neurotic-mess of a brain, there are no familial instincts to be found up there. Error 404. Instead, here is an interrogation into the origins of the word downtown. As in, why is downtown never really, “down”-town (with Manhattan being the exception)?
There is a profound longing to refer to someone as my partner, not because I need one but because the words themselves shroud their speaker in a layer of mystery and sophistication, like that of a foreign language film. Who is this woman who makes powerpoint presentations at the desk next to mine when she returns home and cooks penne alla vodka with her partner?
On Friday night, I walk down Bloor and there are groups of people my age huddled together in the cold. I sink my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket and slip by in the shadows. There is something about this city that makes me want to scream <I HAVE FRIENDS, OKAY? They are just scattered across the contiguous United States and Canada at the moment>. It is not in my nature to be embarrassed when alone. Solitude was bequeathed upon me the moment I was birthed because my mother decided she would not do it again. But then, why is it imperative that the cute boy shelving books at BMV and the waitress when I pick up sundubu-jjigae know that I am, in fact, wanted by other people?
On the Ossington bus, I must stand squished up against bodies. On my right, a couple so good looking I cannot help but feel plain. On my left, a group of teenage boys who are laughing over the smell of their own farts. I am left to stare at my reflection in the window. It is when the bus brakes hard to avoid a jaywalking pedestrian and my head is flung sideways, that I am struck by how much I hate Toronto. Toronto is saturated with car fumes because the smell of petrol cannot disperse through the concrete. I cross a street in Toronto and I am over-stimulated by the eyes of strange people. I walk fast to pretend I am going somewhere important. My feet hurt. Toronto is tiring. I forget what solitude is in Toronto because I just feel alone.
Turns out, I am not-a-city-girl.
I don’t belong here. Torontonians are pretty and blonde in the metaphorical way and speak a different language. Theres is one of not paying for the streetcar, of not waiting for the light to turn green, of not saying hello to your neighbour, of not saying thank you to the bus driver. Theres is one of staying up past midnight, of being friends with the barista, of pub crawls, of long wool coats and leather tote bags.
I wear a metallic purple puffer jacket and Costco backpack. I am just-a-kid.
But, in time we hate that which we often fear. At my core, I know these streets are ugly because they are painful reminders of a decision I must make. On one hand, I can live as a creature of habit, of simple pleasures — navigating myself across town, shouldering four loads of groceries home all on my own, a solo walk down Palmerston Ave with headphones on daydreaming about million-dollar houses. Surely, there will be the intermittent depression that can no longer be fixed with a road trip to the mountains, but there will also be the satisfaction of self-reliance. I am good, no I am great, at being with myself and is that not enough?
Perhaps not. At least, not in this city, where my old excuse of there is nothing to do here no longer applies. In Toronto, I am engulfed in leaps of faith — join the run club, go to the event, meet new people. But it is asking myself to sit in discomfort for an indefinite amount of time and play the odds that something will happen.
I can’t help but feel that my insecurities are a hell of my own creation, this propensity of mine to self-sabotage-cancel-plans-stay-at-home-ghost-my-matches. A question for the universe: Putting up these walls — is it anxiety or just intuition?
There is 1-in-10 shot that my life will be exceptional but is euphoria worth the price of jumping into black holes over and over until I stumble into a timeline in which there exists a version of me that is open to others and where that openness is reciprocated. When I find it, there will be no going back to the girl I am today because she will be forgotten somewhere in time. She will be lost in the ether.
Wait a minute.
I can’t just leave her behind. Right?
No, I’m afraid of leaving her behind. Is that it?
No, I’m afraid of accepting there is more to living than just comfort and I would be an absolute fool to not at least try to experience something remarkable.
Besides I think, maybe, she will be okay back there all alone. She’s pretty strong, and she’s the kind of freak who might actually like it — in the silence, amongst the stars.
In the meantime, I will still say thank you to the TTC driver even if I have to shout it like an asshole over the wall of bodies on this bus. It is entirely uncool, but I can say with 100% certainty that this is one thing I am meant to do. My past, present, and future lives meet here, at the doors of every bus I will ever take. It is the one thing Toronto will not take from me.