Finally my opportunity to write.

So about appreciating you even more later yesterday. I reconnected with my friends after you left and yes, they made me appreciate you more. No, we didn't talk about you. I just realized it afterwards.

I went for a walk around the lake here on the westside and while I was doing it, I concentrated on you. I tried to feel your presence, and since I work with visual, I pictured you, on a bus, looking out the window. And I hugged you. I sat down on a bench, and pictured you walking around the streets in Calgary, and I hugged you, and kissed you all over your face. I wasn't sure if it worked, but I practiced it anyway, with great effort.

Then I called up my friend September. She's the only person I know who's a survivor of child abuse and has gone through a lot of therapy to deal with it. We sat in esquires. We sat at the same table you and I were at. We talked about the city, she mentioned a lot of people are leaving Golds and I was telling her that I want to leave this city. She said she wants to move to Calgary. She told me I looked good in the hoodie and I smiled. I closed my eyes, pulled it up to my neck and nuzzled it for a moment and said "It came to me 5 days ago" - which is incorrect because it was actually 4 but w/e.

Anyways I told her about you and how confused I was about things. And then that song Hide and Seek came on the stereo in the shop. It caught me by surprise. The song has a lot of meaning to me, and I began to cry. I covered my face and stopped talking. She asked me "what's wrong" but my throat was tight, and I couldn't speak.

The walls are thin, my dam is broken, and a poke in the right place causes water to flush through. I retained myself, but she grabbed my hand and looked into my face.

I tried very hard to regain my composure, for we were in a public place. We've known each other for nearly 2 years and I've never cried in front of her before and I felt embarrassed. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be so weak that I cry in front of just anyone. But I was.

We talked some more and I told her that I've been very emotionally unstable lately. "I haven't always been like this have I? I wasn't like this when we met, right?"

"I don't know." and she tilted her head like a curious dog, intent on finding out more.

I told her more and she suggested, "Maybe everything in your past is catching up to you?"

I don't know.

She suggested that I go to the hospital and take their program for people who suffer from depression. She's been through it, and she said her eyes sparkled with life when she walked out of there. I looked, and the sparkle is still there. My face was red, and my eyes felt swollen.

She said, "I've been where you are. I've been sitting right in that very place you are sitting. I wish I had someone like me - and I know that sounds a little... but I wish I had someone like myself to help me then."

My eyes frantically looked around at things, and I bit down on myself to keep quiet. She continued in my silence, "It's not you that's horrible. You've been to hell and back. It's the things that have happened to you that are terrible, not you."

"When I went into therapy, my therapist said that we're like drains." she moved her hands in the air, conjuring up the imagine of a sink with a drain out the bottom. "When we go through bad experiences, we shove them down the drain, because we don't know how to deal with them. We stuff them in there. And you stunt your growth when you do that. It's when you unclog that, it's when you reach in and pull all that gunk out and kind of go 'Blah!' that's when you allow yourself to flow freely again, and you can grow as a human."

I told her I don't think this is going to be an overnight thing and she said she was in the program at the hospital for a year. I asked her if she's thought about going back and she thanked me because I reminded her that she's been wanting to go.

Esquires was closing and we were required to leave. She gave me an "invitation" or what I would call a piece of paper, that had some dates on it for Jehova's Witness stuff. I thanked her and stuffed it in my pocket, intent on throwing it out when I got home. We got in her car to continue talking and headed down to the gas station.

There, we saw a guy named Taff. I recognized him, we worked together 4 or 5 years ago at Convergys. I went to the bathroom and when I came out, September said "So apparently you and I have been dating." and she put her arm around me. I froze.

She let go and the woman behind the counter was laughing, "He's like..NEW'S TO ME!" - that's what my face said. September cleared it up by saying that Taff asked if we were dating. Then we got into a little group conversation. Taff was going into this program to teach him how to pick up women. And he was like, obsessed with it. I think he feels like he needs to get laid to validate his existence. But I knew that such a thought was too much of a curve ball for the conversation. So I listened to the three of them talk, regurgitating the old phrase "Looks aren't everything" etc, etc.

There we were, and I felt like I didn't belong. They all sounded so uneducated. They were trying to help Taff out because he's placing way to much emphasis on getting laid in life. I just felt that in order to participate in the conversation, I'd have to take my IQ level down a few notches.

And when September drove me back to my car, I told her that I felt awkward back there. She tried to convince me that it was a joke, but I still felt weirded out.

And when I got in my car and drove home. I really appreciated you. I had spent 4.1 days with someone who was intelligent, attractive, and warm, among so many other things. I believe if you were there with me during that gas station conversation, it would have been a comfortable experience.

I read your email to me today, the one entitled "Bye babe" I had no idea you had teared up at all, and especially right here where I am sitting this very moment. I could picture you sitting here typing away. "Did she expect me to read this before I drove her away?" I don't think you expected me to read THIS facebook email from you BEFORE reading that one.

You know that thought in your mind "Is he realizing he didn't have feelings for me?" and then the rational mind telling you that the complete opposite was true. I have moments like that too. Anyways this is a novel in itself.

Oh and adding that the Indian guy was from India, that's pretty funny :)