WHY CANADA?: PART 3

PHEW. Here is the third and final part of my series on why I wanna go to Canada aka Land of My Dreams. Catch up with part 1 and part 2!

Finishing university was difficult and rewarding and exhausting, so to find myself bundled up in blankets a week before graduation was not a surprise. I was so tired, I was just so, so tired. I took a quick trip home and tried to recharge my batteries as best I could. On the day of graduation I wasn't happy - I was tired and worried and I felt ugly and disgusting. I sucked it up and put on my high heels and mascara and went to MacEwan Hall, getting swept up in celebrations for the rest of the day. Graduation ball was another blur, but for different reasons (I won't go into it - let's just say I was that evening's Crying Girl). By the time I started my summer job at a box office in Edinburgh, I was even more run down. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me - everyone else had been through the same shit and were sailing along just fine.

"I don't want to go to work, I can't do it," I sobbed down the phone to Mum one morning. What the hell was wrong with me? I was weak and tired but it felt like my bloodstream was made of tonic water: I felt that I had to keep going keep going keep going to generate more energy, or else I would fall flat and never get up ever again. My inner hypochondriac was having a field day. Still, I went to work. I sat in front of my computer and answered telephone calls, and I settled a little. And then another wave came. And I just couldn't do it - I had to leave.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks and several blood tests later, and I'm in Aberdeen, lying on my bed with Starlight, my stuffed dog (who I was gifted when I was seven, hence the very not-dog name), in my arms, listening to the soundtrack to Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which was totally not The End of the World, but it felt like it. I had medication to take and about 3 months of solid recovery. I wasn't going to make my September flight. Canada was a shrinking point in the distance (for want of a better metaphor, Canada was like the twinkling star at the end of every "Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaainnn!").

Recovery was slow. Painfully slow. Worse still was when I had to watch all my graduate friends jet off to start new lives in Hong Kong, Australia, America, Japan; and here I was sitting in Aberdeen, not going anywhere. I felt like I had let everyone down because I had talked for months and months so fervently about Canada and When I Go To Canada and When I Go To Toronto and this and that and the next thing… you couldn't shut me up about it. Now, I was a fraud and a failure, because I wasn't getting on my flight at all. I pushed back my leaving date to January.

It took time, but eventually I graduated from leaving the house for an hour to trips walking in and out of town (shopping was always a good incentive, a very good incentive). Soon enough I was on the train to Edinburgh, and then trains through to Glasgow. I made mental notes of small achievements, such as playing a gig, or meeting friends at the pub. The bad-feeling bits began to outweigh the good ones. The more I got myself back, the more I could envision myself in Canada again, something I had lost total sight of.

Four - nearly five - months since that initial wobbliness before graduation, I was ready for the biggest test: work. A couple of weeks into November, I started a Christmas job in The Restaurant. The night before my first shift, I couldn't sleep for fear and anticipation. The excitement I was feeling for my grand return to Real Life was contradicted with the total terror that this job signalled my, uh, grand return to Real Life. No longer could I wrap myself up in blankets and coo as my mother brought me fresh, steamy cups of tea; I was no longer the sick, sad girl that summer had entertained. This job would prove that I had won my strength back, and the idea of myself finally becoming normal again was terrifying, because I had completely forgotten who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. Over the months of my recovery, family and friends had often passed comments on how unlike myself I was: 

• "Oh, you weren't yourself the other day"
• "Where's the real Olivia?"
• "You're looking much more like yourself than you were yesterday!"

This had all been iterated to me so many times it felt literal. I felt a bit like Alice In Wonderland, stretched and shrunk and sent spinning down dark passages, while the whole of Responsible Adulthood turned to me as a newly formed member of their gang and blew curling smoke in my eyes, spelling out the ominous question, "WHO ARE YOU?", and in the background, I could also hear, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

The next day I started work, and I dashed between kitchen and restaurant floor, plates in hand, serving with a smile. When I stepped out of the building at the end of my shift, I was greeted by torrential rain. By normal-people standards, the ten-minute walk home should have been absolutely miserable, but for some reason I found the experience strangely affirming. Here I was, raindrops rolling off the end of my nose and my black-heeled boots collecting puddlewater, and I was practically laughing at myself. This is what real people deal with, I thought. In the rain, I felt strong, I felt capable - more importantly, I felt like I had a sense of direction again. I knew who I was, and where I was going. I was going to Canada, goddamnit! Was this the return of The Real Olivia? 

*cue intro to The Real Slim Shady*

I bought a flight for the 16th of January on my first day off, a week after working in The Restaurant. I had also been given a boost at work by something I had, oddly, forgot to anticipate: making new friends. I had new people to hang out with! We had inside jokes! They invited me to the pub! I had finally arrived at Normal Person-dom. In life I often have spikes of excitement when I think of all the friends I am yet to make, and this was one of these moments. See all these friends you've made here in Aberdeen? Just think of all the cool people waiting to know you in Toronto, I told myself, and I wondered if my mystery future-friends ever thought about me.

I'm aware that with these diaries I could be on the verge of a Zach Braff monologue à la every episode of Scrubs ever, linking together a series of coincidental events while Counting Crows plays in the background, but that's just the way I've gotta work with this story. This is an incredibly long tale that I've been living for about 8 years now, and this is just the prologue! It's going to be a blessèd miracle when I actually step off of that plane at YYZ and feel the ground underneath my little feet. I may cry. To be honest, I'm going to cry at Glasgow airport, I'm going to cry when we take off, I'm going to cry mid-flight, I'm going to cry at "cabin crew ten minutes to landing" when I see the morning light over Ontario and then I'm going to cry some more. Tears of joy, intermingled with terror and trepidation. But mostly joy, I should say.

What's going to happen when I get there? That's the real question, one I can honestly say I have no answer to whatsoever. I just know that I have to go there, and when I'm there, Canada's going to show me something. Something important (a totem pole framed by mountains - the Canada Card comes back to my mind). And of course, there are stupid things that I'm looking forward to doing when I'm over there. I want to look at the night sky and pick out my favourite constellations (this is a genuine desire not a Tumblr post I promise), I want to go to the supermarket and look at all the brands of food they have, I want to walk down the streets I spent hours travelling through as the little yellow man of Google Maps (they have an Aberdeen Avenue! I must go there and show them my Aberdonian ways! fit like, eh?), I want to catch my first glimpse of the CN Tower and commit it to my memory for ever.

But I'm not there yet. For now, I'm in The Restaurant, making small talk with a customer as he pays his bill. Canada is brought up, and I tell him my plans to move in January. Here comes the question: "Why Canada?" I smile, and shrug my shoulders. I don't know, there's no real reason. But as he smiles back, I know that I'm telling lies: there are a hundred small reasons, all which have sparked and connected, magnetically drawn towards each other, culminating in one Big Reason, which can never really be explained. I wonder where I would be now if it all hadn't happened in the way that it did - what if, perhaps, I had chosen the Russian figure skater instead?

Nope. It couldn't have happened any other way.