In Which We Sort Of Anticipated This All Along

painting by Shannon Craig

Bonjour Tristesse

by SAMANTHA NELSON

Three months before I left to go back to my hometown, my default option of retreat should worse come to worst, April was sprouting into May. Exams were tapering and we began rustling our papers and shuffling our feet. And then suddenly, despite having anticipated it all along, everyone began parting ways. No summer-camp goodbyes: group hugs or hysterical crying sessions, promises to stay in touch. Elegant partings, excited at our next adventures. Last parties, last wine nights. Wilted but grown up farewells and I’ll see you soons. Almost everyone was leaving but me.

At first I tried sticking it out. But Victoria went to France, Lisa went to Toronto, Serena went to Napa Valley, and I went sideways. Depressed. Although of course I didn’t call it that at the time. I didn’t call it anything because I was too busy crying, sitting on a scarf in the grass, trying to finish Anna Karenina half-naked in the heat. And once or twice my eyes gave way at work in the back room; and once, I remember, at Memories, a European-inspired café hiding in the market: a few tables out front, fresh flowers on every table and an alluring display of cakes behind glass. Amber and I had lunch on the patio and for maybe the first time ever, I couldn’t quite stomach a meal. Amber kept her gaze on her plate and steadily ate, to let me act out my drama without attention or sympathy. She knew a thing or two because my self-pity could stand to go hungry.

painting by Shannon Craig

In March Nick had left. He didn’t give me a “maybe we should stop fucking”, and he didn’t give me an “I have a girlfriend now”. He gave me a vacuum of space and silence and increased nervous twitching, mornings with swollen eyelids. And on a night out, still high on MDMA after partying at an unexpectedly empty club, Serena and I laid on a hill, cold grass and night sky, by the National Gallery holding hands. The giant sculpted spider looming. I called him to confront him and yes he had found a girl. And Serena was lying with me, holding my hand.

When everyone was leaving, summer was coming. I worked reception at a spa, 10-6, Tuesday to Saturday. I strolled slowly up Bank Street sipping coffee, an hour to work. Slowly home eight hours later. Anna Karenina, Bonjour Tristesse, a biography of Brigitte Bardot.

On more ambitious days, I ran along the canal after work. A five minute walk down Carling to the park, a minute across to the water, and then a long stretch, jogging away and back again, sheltered by the trees that had the fatherly inclination to protect me and the sensitivity to try and cheer me up. By the time I was back, I was panting and sweating and it was the exercise that stirred up the luminous high but I suspect there was more. The overwhelming volume of leaves, flaunting themselves in their green glory, shielding me and loving me. The taste of the air. It was the blueness of the water. It was the ducks waddling and talking, the pavement, the sunrays, the music, the joggers, the cyclists, the shadows, the rhythm of shoes hitting pavement, the crunching of gravel. It was more than just exertion that made my heart beat faster, that shortened my breath and left me panting and drenched and hurting.

On other days I wore summer dresses. Pleated ones and draping ones, a navy silk strapless muu muu that I cinched at my waist with a peach and lavender strip of cotton. Once, I wore a silk, cream-coloured dress with small, black, imperfect polka-dots while walking down Bronson, holding a half-eaten gala. And as I was taking another bite, a car zoomed past and shouting from the window I heard the most romantic, albeit forward, catcall I had ever received: “wiiiiillll yooooouuuu maarrrrryyyyy meeeeeee?” And it lit me up.

painting by Shannon Craig

There’s a part in the book where I now slow down and breathe deeper, although I can’t remember if it had the same effect on me at the time. In an effort to clear his mind of conflict and his heart of despair after Kitty rejects his proposal, Levin works. He decides to mow the fields with his peasants the entire day long. And we are absorbed in the exhilarating process, the exhausting process. Levin working the scythe over and over, trying to perfect his movements, trying to keep up with his best workers. Tolstoy details the day over pages and as Levin is, we are caught up in the movements and activity of the day. The rhythmic and methodical movements of the body undoing confusion. Our minds are cleared.

But my understanding of the benefits of, say, steamed greens and meditation, hasn’t motivated me to eat less Häagen-Dazs. And I’m not Tolstoy’s fiction. I went for runs on hopeful days, but my predisposition for self-wallowing and laziness almost always blocked my way out the door. Crying in the grass. Calling my mom with nothing to say.

painting by Shannon Craig

It was not so much that worse came to worst as much as loneliness came to self-reproach, for I’m just fine at a distance, healthy like anyone. It wasn't his absence that hurt so much as the internal musings it triggered, or that ending school triggered, or that the dispersing of my community away from me ignited. The combination brought me back to myself so forcefully that pure shock and then horror at my own pathetic melodrama left me in paralyzed tears, compulsively rereading On Self-Respect as if the act alone would conjure it inside me.

I saved enough money, gathered myself and booked a flight home. I met a man two weeks before I left and we connected. I moved back to old places and old friends and went on slutty binges. I finally allowed myself to loosen my grip and then slowly unclench my hold. I allowed myself to consider abandoning my girlish despair. And like anything that’s a part of me, on some days it lays low but on others, of course, it’s back just as strong. It’s still there.

Samantha Nelson is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Calgary, Alberta. This is her first appearance in these pages.

Paintings by Shannon Craig.

 "Beat Beat" - Little Boots (mp3)

painting by Shannon Craig