The landscape of ex-girlfriends

[mbarrick]

So there is one thing about my job that is occasionally disturbing. The view out the window from my cubicle faces a small park that I associate with a very intense emotional moment. It's where I had to say goodbye to a girl eleven years ago. This girl remained the ideal by which I judged other women for years à la Reive's "Megan Andrews Rule". In fact, because she was staying at what is now the Renaissance Hotel, which is just around the corner from my office the whole area is steeped in memories of her. It doesn't help that on a subsequent visit (which had serious ramifications on my life - it's a long story) she stayed at another hotel just around the corner in the opposite direction. My office is in the centre of this space that is crawling with memories of her.

It is the result of a larger "problem". I have a tendency to remember altogether too much. It is why I am such a fountain of useless information. I am also a creature of habit and I don't like moving around. I have a few favourite places and things to do and have only ever moved my home out of necessity. These things in combination add up to the fact that everywhere I go there is some memory, some ghost of someone who used to be in my life. Vancouver has become the landscape of ex-girlfriends.

Comments

I hear ya Mike.

[lusus.livejournal.com]

My personal bane is music. I've already got such a personal attachment to most songs to begin with, being the music junkie that I am, but on top of which certain songs never fail to bring back memories of certain people in my life. It really makes enjoying your favorite stuff difficult sometimes. Kind of ironic how the Cure is my favorite band of all time and yet their songs make me miserable from nostaligia more often then not. Depeche Mode are very guilty of the same affliction as well. And just recently I find it difficult to listen to A Perfect Circle without getting a little misty.

Ah, but I guess it's best that we're feeling anything at all right? If we didn't care we could hardly call ourselves human.

"For how much longer can I howl into this wind..?"
~ Lusus.

Re: I hear ya Mike.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention The Cure. I met both the girl in question and my now officially ex-wife through the same Cure fanzine ("Other Voices").

There are a lot of old songs that bring people back, same as you. Certain Cure songs and Sting in general remind me of one girlfriend back in Nanaimo, Harry Connick Jr. is inexticably linked with my ex-wife (hell, some of my Harry Connick CD's still have her name written on them because she used to play them at the restaurant she worked at), there are a lot of songs I associate with the girl whose ghost surrounds me at work (her name is Suzanne) because we used to trade tapes when we were pen-pals, etc., etc...

So, yeah. Places, music, even smells - it all piles up.