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Dark Places
Aug. 20th, 2011 11:10 amI got off work quasi-early Friday so that I could hang out at a pub with some friends. I got to the pub only to discover that I didn't know anyone there. The person organizing it (whom I've met once), was already encircled by conversation. At that point I decided, "fuck it, I'm out of here".
Simply put, I'm tired of apologizing for being an introvert. Trying to make interesting conversation with a bunch of strangers is not my idea of a good time, and expecting the host (the organizer who doesn't know me at all) to help me in that regard is a waste of both of our times.
So I took off from the pub. It being late afternoon and sort of near the neighbourhood I grew up in, I decided to take a walk down memory lane. Went to the ice cream shop near the former Casa Cyr and bought a cone that was too big (they cracked the cone, so doubled the amount of ice cream on it to compensate - which is nice an all, but it all got in my mouth).
Casa Cyr is long gone. It was knocked down about six years ago and replaced with a giant duplex. In fact, of the seven houses on my old block, only four remain in the state I remember them. The rest of the neighbourhood was much the same. Not quite half of the houses were new construction less than ten years old. The older houses were dwarfed by the new ones. Clearly Altadore is a highly desirable area of the city (close to downtown, plenty of amenities, not in any way scummy), so much so that the property is worth more than the buildings.
I walked down to my old school, St. Raymond.
It is still standing, though I think the Catholic School Board stopped using the building for actual teaching in 1980 and used it as storage for much of the intervening time. Apparently the Rundle College Society decided to use it as an elementary school at some point. As an aside, there's something Stepford-esque about them, but I can't put my finger on exactly what. Their website doesn't make them out to be bible-thumpers. Maybe it's just their bragging about how much the Fraser Institute likes them.
Anyway, I really shouldn't blame a building for the actions of its occupants those many years ago. Still, no prisoner is fond of his prison, even long after being released.
I may have raised a few eyebrows walking around the perimeter of the building. 40-something men wandering around elementary schools is not something that today's paranoid society looks fondly upon. Thankfully it's summer holidays right now, so I just looked like a thief, not a pervert.
I continued on to Glenmore Dam, which I wrote about recently. I walked across it and back, which took about an hour due to my slow pace. All-in-all this was more exercise then I get walking to work. The bad news being I still haven't recovered from my cold, so it kind of wiped me out.
While I was physically visiting the sites of old traumas, I was mentally revisiting them too, which is not terribly healthy. I had many dark and violent fantasies about confronting my tormentors in the past or the present. You'd think this would be cathartic, but it isn't really. Closure never really comes - even if I was to act out some (strictly verbal) violence against one of my tormentors, the end result would never be the positive thing I imagine it would be. They'd not realize what damage they did, or they wouldn't care, or worst of all, they simply wouldn't remember the thing that consumes my thoughts.
I returned to my car and went to archery. I was too tired to effectively shoot things, but I did get to hang out with some friends and socialize. It put me back onto an even kilter and depression did not come. Frankly things are going pretty nicely in my life right now, so it's hard to feel sorry for myself. I've got people to see, things to do and adventures to plan.
Simply put, I'm tired of apologizing for being an introvert. Trying to make interesting conversation with a bunch of strangers is not my idea of a good time, and expecting the host (the organizer who doesn't know me at all) to help me in that regard is a waste of both of our times.
So I took off from the pub. It being late afternoon and sort of near the neighbourhood I grew up in, I decided to take a walk down memory lane. Went to the ice cream shop near the former Casa Cyr and bought a cone that was too big (they cracked the cone, so doubled the amount of ice cream on it to compensate - which is nice an all, but it all got in my mouth).
Casa Cyr is long gone. It was knocked down about six years ago and replaced with a giant duplex. In fact, of the seven houses on my old block, only four remain in the state I remember them. The rest of the neighbourhood was much the same. Not quite half of the houses were new construction less than ten years old. The older houses were dwarfed by the new ones. Clearly Altadore is a highly desirable area of the city (close to downtown, plenty of amenities, not in any way scummy), so much so that the property is worth more than the buildings.
I walked down to my old school, St. Raymond.
It is still standing, though I think the Catholic School Board stopped using the building for actual teaching in 1980 and used it as storage for much of the intervening time. Apparently the Rundle College Society decided to use it as an elementary school at some point. As an aside, there's something Stepford-esque about them, but I can't put my finger on exactly what. Their website doesn't make them out to be bible-thumpers. Maybe it's just their bragging about how much the Fraser Institute likes them.
Anyway, I really shouldn't blame a building for the actions of its occupants those many years ago. Still, no prisoner is fond of his prison, even long after being released.
I may have raised a few eyebrows walking around the perimeter of the building. 40-something men wandering around elementary schools is not something that today's paranoid society looks fondly upon. Thankfully it's summer holidays right now, so I just looked like a thief, not a pervert.
I continued on to Glenmore Dam, which I wrote about recently. I walked across it and back, which took about an hour due to my slow pace. All-in-all this was more exercise then I get walking to work. The bad news being I still haven't recovered from my cold, so it kind of wiped me out.
While I was physically visiting the sites of old traumas, I was mentally revisiting them too, which is not terribly healthy. I had many dark and violent fantasies about confronting my tormentors in the past or the present. You'd think this would be cathartic, but it isn't really. Closure never really comes - even if I was to act out some (strictly verbal) violence against one of my tormentors, the end result would never be the positive thing I imagine it would be. They'd not realize what damage they did, or they wouldn't care, or worst of all, they simply wouldn't remember the thing that consumes my thoughts.
I returned to my car and went to archery. I was too tired to effectively shoot things, but I did get to hang out with some friends and socialize. It put me back onto an even kilter and depression did not come. Frankly things are going pretty nicely in my life right now, so it's hard to feel sorry for myself. I've got people to see, things to do and adventures to plan.
