Everything Changes on New Years Day

(The first story in Steph in Van-City: A year in the life)

As far as I’m concerned, New Years Day is the most pivotal day of the year. It signals many things: You need to change your calendar, you need to update your cheque book or else the bank will laugh at you and return your cheques, and your now tight pants are reminding you that the holidays are officially over and it’s time to hit the gym again. After those thoughts have been processed, it’s time to take stock of past 12 months and plan for what you want this fresh New Year in your life to look like. For many people, that might be planning to quit a bad habit or lose those extra pounds. For me, it meant losing 170 pounds in the form of my current boyfriend.

That’s right, New Years Day this year signaled that it was time to end my one and a half year relationship and start the New Year off right. And by right I mean single and alone.

I should clarify that this wasn’t some rash decision I made when I woke up on January 1, contrary to how it may seem. In fact, things have been building up for several months now and it all seemed to get that much worse the closer it got to the end of the year. So really, the timing is just perfect to make a new start. All I knew on the morning of January 1, 2006 was that I wanted to start this New Year off right.

I suppose now would be a good time to give you some background information on why I decided to start my fresh new year with a clean break up. Here goes:

Panama

It all started in the spring of 2004 when I met my ex-boyfriend, let’s call him Panama. The morning we met, I had just come home from a horrible weekend in San Francisco with a guy I met on vacation a few months prior. He asked me to come back and visit, so I did, and it turned out to be the most disappointing 4 days of my life. The sex was terrible, the guy was a dumb ass upon closer inspection, and I probably would have had a better time alone and lost in the woods for 4 days. I flew back at midnight the night before and was picked up by my fabulous roommate, Cheli. In a valiant effort to console me, she provided two bottles of wine and we drank them together while I cried my eyes out about yet another failed relationship attempt. Needless to say, the next morning I looked and felt like absolute dog shit, and my irritable “piss on the world” mood reflected how I felt on the inside.

As the bus pulled up to take me to work, I fished around for my monthly bus pass. It was then that I realized that it was no longer May, it was in fact, June 1 and I had a bus pass for the month of May. When I presented my pass to the driver, he pointed out this simple fact and I had to scramble to find change to pay my fare. Of course, I had no change, I just spent the last 4 days in the states and I had absolutely no Canadian cash on me. At this point, I was holding up the line of commuters trying to get onto the bus. It was then that I heard a calm and quiet voice behind me say something along the lines of “That happened to me before”. I spun around to find the source of such an asinine comment and found myself looking into the face of a rather attractive, smiling Latin man. Given my horrible mood and subsequent red eyes, I just gave him a horribly dirty look and then turned back to the bus driver and began to plead with him to take me to work. The driver finally decided to let me on, only after making a spectacle by dramatically ripping up my bus pass and throwing it into the trash can.

I got on the bus and rode to work in misery. The attractive Latin guy kept stealing glances at me out of the corner of his eye and I just continued to glare out the window, hating everyone and everything all at once. Needless to say, it was a terrible morning and somehow I knew the day would only get worse.

A few weeks later, I saw the attractive Latin man again at the bus stop. This time, I was in a much better mood as I walked with Cheli to catch the bus. She saw him waiting for the bus and said “Hello, Panama. This is my roommate, Stephanie”. He looked at me and smiled and said: “Hi, we haven’t met officially but I know you.” Flashbacks of my extreme bitchiness that fated June 1 mad me smile sheepishly as I said hello and tried not to feel like too much of an asshole.

Panama and I started hanging out after that and then one day he just leaned over and kissed me while we were munching on Sushi for lunch. That was it, the next serious relationship had begun.

Panama had caught me a strange time in my life. For the first time, thanks to the icing on the “all men suck” cake courtesy of Mr. Loser San Fran, I was official jaded. I didn’t trust men and didn’t really want anything to do with them for the first time in my life. Panama worked hard to get to me though and he did eventually win my heart after countless romantic gestures to remind me that not all men are bad. This was one of the first times that I have forced a man to chase me, but not on purpose. I suppose it is true that people want what they have to work for in relationships because he had to work hard to win me over and he fell hard in the process.

Things went very well for most of the first year of our relationship and I actually thought that this might just be the one for me. He spoiled me, I admit it, but it felt so good to be treated like a queen for the first time in my life. He did everything for me, something I had never experienced before. Basically, he adored me and put me up on a very high pedestal and he looked at me as if I was his perfect woman. I just sat back in awe and watched it all unfold.

But of course, what goes up must come down and when you are placed on such a high pedestal, you have no where to go but down and that’s exactly where I ended up.

Things went very well for the first year. We even spent almost a month together in Panama City, his hometown, and he was the perfect escort for the trip. He made sure I was comfortable and content. He even helped me through a particularly embarrassing episode in which I had to use a local tampon when my period started and I became violently ill as a result. It started just after dinner one night with his family and suddenly I had to throw up, and a few seconds later I did, all over him in the restaurant! He didn’t even flinch, he just made sure I was okay and got to the bathroom. How could you not appreciate a man who cares more about your well being than the fact that you just barfed all over him in public? (Ladies, please take note: Always bring your own tampons when traveling outside of North America. Just trust me on this one!)


So things were great in Panama but after we got back, everything started to change. He suddenly started to view me in a different light. He began criticizing me constantly. Pretty soon he verbally expressed his dislike for everything from the faces I made to the way I walked. This was a complete 180 from the guy who thought I was womanly perfection just a few months prior.

During this paradigm shift, I tried my best to accept this sudden change in the dynamic of my relationship while attempting to alter my habits to better suit his needs. It was also at this point that I started to realize that we had horrible communication skills as a couple. I would say one thing and he would hear something very different. It was almost as if we were listening to two different radio stations, or speaking two different languages. It wasn’t necessarily a language barrier, he spoke English very well, it was just that we were two people with very different thought processes.

Suddenly, the dynamics of our relationship changed dramatically. He was distant and unreachable while I was the one scrambling to get his attention and keep things happy and comfortable between us. The fights came easily and often and there were times when I wasn’t sure if we had any respect for each other left anymore.

It was at this point that I started to realize just how differently we dealt with problems in our lives. I am the type of person that likes to tackle problems by coming up with a list of potential solutions. He on the other hand, likes to talk in depth about the problems, even complain about them, and then eventually work the problem out in his own head. Basically, I’m solution oriented without a lot of complaining while he likes to explain his issues in detail and let the solution come on it’s own. This fundamental difference between us was the root of a lot of our problems: He thought I wasn’t listening when I interrupted with ways of solving the problem while I thought he was a big whiner that likes to complain about his problems rather than do something about them. Even when we began to understand these personality differences, we knew we probably couldn’t change our ways just to suit the other person.

During this tumultuous time in our relationship, I tried everything I could to understand what was happening and somehow restore the harmony we once had. I read several books on communication and discussed them with him, I tried to surprise him with gifts and things to relieve his stress. I spent as much time with him as I could. I basically moved into his apartment during this time period, all while virtually ditching my dear friend Cheli, who had also began to change her once positive opinion of him. I tried hard to take a good look at myself and my bad habits and attempted to change and improve upon things that I was in control of. However, the harder I tried, the more stressed I felt and since I was getting minimal reciprocity for my efforts, it felt like a vicious circle.

Panama also started becoming a lot more mean to me. I knew he had a mean streak, I’d seen it before, but he never treated me even similar to how he treated others at times. He started making terrible jokes that were hurtful to me and when I called him on it, he would say that I couldn’t take a joke. Suddenly every thing he said seemed to be mean or condescending and it was starting to take a toll on my usually very cheerful and optimistic self. One day he mentioned that I didn’t laugh like I used to, in fact I hardly laughed at all anymore, and I was saddened to realize that he was right.

This all came to a head around Christmas time. We were arguing constantly and nothing seemed to be going right. He was obviously unhappy that he wasn’t spending the holidays with his family and he took it out on me in many ways. At this point, I had had enough of his whining and I wasn’t tolerating it anymore. This only made things worse.

Then came the straw that broke the fatigued camels back: After Christmas dinner at my parents, everyone who attended came down with a very severe stomach flu. Within 48 hours of dinner, every single guest was bed ridden and very sick. It hit Panama first and I took care of him for the first 24 hours. After that point, it hit me and we were both down for the count. I couldn’t eat for almost 3 days and he was in just as bad of shape as I was. He recovered a little sooner than I did due to his illness coming earlier and by New Years eve, he was back to normal and I was finally ready to start eating again. We went out to a nice dinner and talked for a while and made plans to visit friends for the countdown. However, soon after dinner, my stomach had other ideas. I felt horribly ill again and I had to go home. I was in terrible pain and he just looked at me as if I was faking it and ruining his night. He then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the night.

As I sat with him on the couch watching the ball drop and hearing the neighborhood welcome 2006, I felt more alone and unhappy than I had in a very long time. I knew at that point that I didn’t want to be with him anymore and I was simply delaying the inevitable by pretending that I did. Perhaps we could have salvaged some of the relationship that night if only he had tried to comfort me somehow in my time of need. He didn’t however, because he chose to act like a spoiled child and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Even a friend would have done more to comfort me when I needed it that night, but my so called boyfriend did nothing but sulk.

That was the last night we shared a bed, ever.

On New Years day 2006

I woke up feeling marginally better physically, but weak and drained emotionally. Cheli was doing the polar bear swim at English Bay that morning and I decided to go and hold a towel for her and take funny pictures. The Polar Bear swim is a crazy event where locals throw themselves into the freezing cold ocean at noon on the first day of the new year in an attempt to cleanse themselves or prove their bravery, or stupidity, or something like that. I’ve never really understood it, even though I’ve lived here my whole life.There was no way in hell I was going to go and throw my perfectly warm self into sub zero temperatures for no apparent reason, but of course I wanted to go and take pictures of Cheli doing just that. Panama and I wandered down to the beach, hardly speaking, and I knew in my heart that it would be our last day together as a couple.

When we returned to his apartment, I told him I needed some time and space away from him and I packed up my bags and left. He didn’t try to stop me that day and I was glad for it. Somehow deep down, I just knew that I needed to start my new year off on the right foot and that meant being alone.

I’ve heard people say that the matter in which you spend your first day of the New Year will colour the entire 12 months that follow. I am not sure if that is true or not, but for some reason it stuck out in my head and it gave me the strength to end what was once a strong and happy relationship. I knew that I would rather be alone than unhappy, so that is exactly what I decided to be: alone.

I thought a lot about the relationship, the mistakes we both made and all the warning signs I neglected to see. Twenty-twenty hindsight is indeed an interesting thing. I learned a lot about myself and relationships while we were together and I could see that I had grown a lot in the past year and a half.

One mistake I definitely will not make again is letting a man believe that I am truly perfect when I know I am not. I think women like the idea that men may think we are perfect, I suppose it stems from the ideal fairy tale romance we all dream about as little girls. The reality is though, if you let someone think you are indeed perfection, you only have room to make mistakes and show your flaws. With Panama, I was put on the highest pedestal in the world. After a short while though, I fell off my throne and crashed to the ground and was horribly beaten by a painful reality. I learned many things from this relationship but that particular reason stands out in my mind more than the others.

The other major thing that stands out in my mind is the realization of just how important individual identity and clear communication are in a relationship. If a person needs you to change in order for them to like you more, than you are with the wrong person. I tried to change for him and in the process, I lost my laugh and I lost my sense of confidence in being the unique and wonderful person I am. I spent all my energy on changing myself and in the process, I lost those good things about myself that I love so much while I was trying to change the areas that needed work.


I also realized just how important it is to have your partner truly understand you without the need for fights, arguments, and disrespect through yelling and name calling. I’ve always known deep down that clear and honest communication was important, but now I understand it so much better having lived through a great example of how badly things can go when that element of good communication is missing. I know relationships are hard work, but if it takes all you’ve got just to hold on to the relationship, it is definitely taking too much work and nothing should be that hard. I guess it’s kind of like trying to shove a square peg in a round hole: It just won’t work no matter how hard you try.

As I went to bed alone, in my own bed, that night on January 1, 2006, I thought more about what I wanted the next 12 months of my life to look like. I stopped thinking about the last 12 and started focusing on all the wonderful things the next 12 would bring. I felt strong, in control and optimistic that this year held good things in store for me. Deep down, I knew I made the right choice to spend the first evening of this New Year alone and I slept peacefully for the first time in several months.