It’s an unusually gloomy August day in Toronto, and the second one in a row, so I have a hard time getting out of bed. It’s been almost six weeks since my ex and I broke up and over a week since he moved out of the city. I try not to overthink about that, but end up thinking too much about a surprise meeting that my boss put in our team’s calendar. A surprise meeting almost always means that someone is leaving. I consider sending a message about it to one of my coworkers but change my mind at the last second in case she’s the one who’s jumping ship.
As soon as all of us log onto the call, there’s a tense energy — I can’t pay attention to anything anyone is saying. My boss hands off the meeting to one of my coworkers, who immediately says, “I’ve accepted a job.” No beating around the bush.
He talks for about ten minutes as all of us absorb the news, and partway through his explanation, I realize that I’m tearing up. I work in a close-knit team and have seen a lot of departures in the three years that I’ve been part of it. Even though this news never surprises me, it never stops being sad. My coworker implores us to speak so he can stop talking, and I hear my voice quaver as I try to put into words what I’m feeling. I know immediately that it’ll have to be something I write down for him later — right now, my hands are shaking.
I’m overcome with sadness and anxiety as I think about my coworker’s departure. It won’t be for a few weeks, and our team has dealt with this before, but as much as I’m happy for him, I’m also thinking about how everyone’s workload will increase until a new teammate is hired. Things have already felt incredibly heavy lately, but I can’t think about that now. I have a lunch date with my old boss.
I meet up with her near her office and we share slices of pizza while sitting in Muskoka chairs at a nearby park. She already knows my coworker is leaving, so we mostly talk about that. An hour speeds by as we gossip and the uneasy feeling grows inside my body, getting bigger and bigger on my way home. As soon as I’m back inside my apartment, I burst into tears. Big, hot tears, the kind that wet your entire face and the front of your shirt. I sob and sob, feeling a constricting weight on my chest as I struggle to wrap my head around everything I’m feeling. Lonely. Scared. Exhausted. Anxious. My breaths are shallow. I remember the “self-compassion exercise” that my therapist insisted I try when I get overwhelmed with anxiety, so I load it up on my computer and curl up into a ball on my couch, following along as a woman’s soothing voice tells me to bring mindful awareness to the fact that suffering is present. Halfway through, the video stops working and I burst out laughing.
Still struggling with my breathing, I pull up a 10-minute meditation on YouTube and lie down. This video has worked for me in the past, especially on mornings when I wake up feeling jittery or weighed down. At the end of the ten minutes, my breathing has finally slowed down, and I try to get up to go back to work, but I can’t. I let my arms and legs sink into the couch and fall asleep.
I wake up about twenty minutes later in a panic, thinking I’ve missed a meeting and feeling like a whole day has passed, but it’s only 2:15. The rest of the afternoon goes by in a frantic daze.
After work, I decide I need to be outside. I get on the streetcar and go further west than usual. I stroll down Garden Avenue and into High Park, but it starts raining, so I duck back out of the park and onto High Park Blvd. I can’t believe the size of the houses and call my mom to describe them to her. I peek unabashedly into the windows as I walk by, taking in the elegant light fixtures and expensive furniture. People sitting on their porches stare back at me over their flowers and manicured lawns. I try to picture living in some of these houses, but can’t imagine being in such a big space. All I really want is a dining room.
Back on Roncy, I walk into Cafe Polonez and ask for a table for one. It’s not busy but not empty, the perfect atmosphere for a solo dinner. I order half a dozen potato cheddar pierogi, a beet salad, and a glass of wine. The glass of wine is comically full, and I wonder if that’s really what six ounces looks like, or if the waitress just feels bad for me for eating alone. Either way, $7.50 is a steal for how drunk I’m about to get. I sip the wine and scribble emotional nonsense into my pocket journal, eavesdropping on the couple behind me who are clearly on a first date. He went to Western, and she went to Queen’s. He lives in Newmarket and she lives in the East End — so why are they here? On a Thursday night? I guess I’m pretty far out of my neighbourhood, too.
The enormous pierogi are warm, buttery, and perfectly savoury with a little side of caramelized onions and sour cream, and the beet salad is cool and sweet. I relish every bite, but halfway through my meal, I notice a fruit fly has drowned in my glass of wine. I consider fishing it out but end up sheepishly asking the waitress for a new glass — “but not a full one,” I say. She comes back holding a glass with even more wine than the first one, and I laugh.
My eyelids start to get heavy as I finish the last of my pierogi and I feel sleepy from all the potatoes and wine. I pay my bill and head back outside clutching the leftover beet salad in a deli container. The streetcar is nowhere to be found. I consider walking home but it’s over an hour and raining pretty heavily, so I hail a cab. Lightning lights up the sky all purple as the driver zips down an uncharacteristically empty stretch of King Street. He cracks the windows and I close my eyes, feeling the cool wind on my face. I take a deep breath.
Everything sucks until it doesn’t.