2003-04-27 - 6:13 pm
I really hate living in the suburbs. If I lived even in Confederation Park I have a feeling my life would be more lively. I get jealous of friends who seem to always have places to go and people to be with. I'm envious of all the stories they tell me and all the free drinks they receive.
Yea, I know I'm not a huge drinker and I very rarely go out to a bar, but Christ on a cross, I'd love to be able to tell my own story instead of recycling the same lines over and over again:
"Sure, I don't drink often but when I do I really know how to. Have I told you about the company Christmas party?" Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Last night I had a dream about Vicious Circle, a bar I used to go to quite a bit when I first moved here. I'd go there with boys I hardly knew until I met Andy. Man, did he and I ever drink. Funny how we don't do that anymore. Funny how we don't do a lot of things anymore.
When I talked to Austin a few nights ago, we tried thinking of different things we could do when he visits. Something aside from going to the Zoo and walking endlessly along the river. "We could go hang out at bars a lot," I said because that would be something different from all his other visits. He laughed and agreed. Dinner at home, twenty dollars spent at the bar instead of the movies, and a bus ride home. It'd be a pretty cheap date.
I know it seems stupid to be so caught up in drinking and bars, stubbornly viewing them as "the only way to have fun" but it's just another thing I feel like I'm missing out on because I live at home and didn't make a quantum leap to another city to start my life over on my own. Although I should be grateful for being able to live at home and have my education paid for, I feel too pampered and even sheltered. When I hear one of my best friends talk about her adventurous party weekends in Toronto I do get jealous because I wish I could be doing that too.
This insecurity has caused me to feel extremely boring, dull and terribly mundane. Sometimes I'll blame it on Calgary or even blame it on my friends here but I really should be blaming myself for thinking that drinking makes me a more interesting person because it doesn't. I guess so many nights spent home reading and watching movies, heading to bed before midnight and waking up before 9am has made me feel like I'm growing up way too fast. I'm twenty-one, I shouldn't be acting like some middle-aged scaredy cat.
I refuse to be stuck in some kind of pattern like that, when I become even more predictable than I already am. I'm too creative for that, I'm too good for that.
Maybe I'll make a change soon, order a pint instead of ordering a diet Coke and sit at a table instead of hiding in a booth. I'm a social person, I have to quit cooping myself up like some anti-social spinster that I had somehow convinced myself is "cool" because it doesn't suit me at all.
Anyway, Sunday has gone by quickly this week and I still haven't done half the things I had planned to do. I think PMS is finally rearing its ugly hormonal head right now so I'm going to bake four dozen cookies and hope that it goes away. Cookies cure everything.
