Erin (an introduction)

Why I haven’t mentioned Erin more than once, I do not know. That once, even, doesn’t really count: she was “Marie” there—I decided, for some reason, to keep the “real” first names of my friends and enemies secret, but now such things seem irrelevant. I mean, until we get into surname territory, it doesn’t really make much difference. So Velcroed is Shawna, Jeffrey is Jeffery (I just learned this last night), Jean is Stephane, Monique is Monique. And Marie is Erin.

Erin and I were acquaintance-friends at a summer job 2 years ago at a call center. Though she was (and is) 5 years younger than me, we bonded for reasons I never tried to understand. Erin, months later, told me that it was because we were, personality-wise, “quite similar”, which, as far as we both go, is highly rare. In spite of this similarity, and the mutual acknowledgement that we found each other hilarious and enjoyable to be around, after the summer ended our relationship shifted into highly sporadic e-mails and slightly less sporadic msn conversations.

When I had my breakdown-ish thing last May, I found myself drawn to Erin, half because she was one of the few people resembling a friend I had in my city, and half because I’d always wanted to get to know her better. So one day, in mid-to-late May, I went on msn with the hopes that she would be there, and she was, and we started talking, and then we very randomly went on a fairly long day trip somewhere in the province (funny, I have no idea where). Road trips became the staple of our friendship last spring and summer. Most were highly unmemorable, some weren’t, for whatever reason (St George really sticks out in my mind), others unforgettable (the 2-day trip to Mt Carleton, the 3-day trip to Montreal and, almost accidentally, Quebec City).

When I think of Erin, I think mostly of these two road trips. The former was unquestionably my favourite in-province trip, and the latter was a very odd adventure. It was my idea to kidnap Erin for her birthday last year. I wanted to take her to New York but Jeffery (my accomplice) thought it would get too complicated so we settled on Montreal.

That trip, in many ways, symbolises our entire friendship. Because Jeffery takes hours to pack for even the shortest trip, we didn’t leave until noon, though I figured I would be fine for driving straight to Montreal and having a late dinner there. By 8 pm, though, I was so hungry and tired I was ready to shoot someone, so we decided to stop for dinner in Quebec and possibly find somewhere to spend the night. This was, in every single way, a disaster. We got unbelievably lost trying to find Old Quebec, thinking we were on the right side of the St Lawrence, we were unable to find a restaurant we all agreed on, and then came the terrible, terrible, terrible experience of trying to find a hotel with vacancy and an affordable rate and reasonable proximity to where we were at 10:15 on an early fall Friday night. It was a disaster in almost every sense of the word, but it was terribly, terribly fun. At least in retrospect.

On the ferry, I remember looking across the river thinking that the city was unbelievably beautiful and strange, and that it would take me years of living in it to understand it, though that could have been the cold breeze blowing, or the way I could only half-understand the people next to me, or feeling depressed for no apparent reason (fatigue maybe, and/or hunger, and/or the ever-present homesickness I get even when travelling only 400 miles away, and/or loneliness).

Montreal was both better and less memorable, but I realise I’ve completely strayed off-topic, so I’ll save Montreal for another day.

So Erin and I realised, probably in early summer of last year, that we had become best friends. We were inseparable and in a kind of non-sexual love.

Something has happened since January, though. Erin has been in Sweden since then, at university. At first I missed her so much I wanted to vomit all the time, but eventually that waned. We still talked on the phone a lot, still e-mailed and chatted fairly frequently, but something has changed. It’s the distance, for sure—

I just can’t finish this. I feel sick now. Why, I don’t know. Erin is coming back on Friday. I have been so looking forward to this date, that at times I didn’t know what to do with myself.

The whole point of this post was to tell you about our strange falling-out, that was both brief and awful. We reconciled (of course) but the event, I think, forever changed the trajectory of our friendship. Or maybe Sweden did that. Or Jeffery. Or the St Lawrence River.

Or I’m crazy, and just can’t wait to see her.

Friday, coincidentally, is also the day I leave my students at the school, for new horizons.

And the day Monique leaves for Nunavut, for GodKnowsHowLong.

Friday.