Jaimee Eat World

“Hey, I know it’s been a while but…”

We Build

A few years back when I was more than ready to start my life anew, I moved to a city just north of my hometown called Barrie. A friend of mine lived in the even smaller neighbouring town of Innisfil, but otherwise I didn’t have anybody up there.

Still, I’d chat semi-regularly with my friends from home and assumed once things settled a bit we’d visit each other.

Settling never really happened because things got weird and chaotic quickly dealing with my unhinged neighbours and even my friends started acting really strangely over text. I’d call them out on it, genuinely asking if they were okay because they were acting so out of character, like suddenly blasting our group chat with comments as though we had been in the middle of a specific conversation – I was the only one that didn’t seem to understand what was happening. They’d never really give me an explanation for that.

And my friend from Innisfil never seemed to have time to meet up in person, but she’d drive around Barrie with her folks and notice me walking and send me messages instead like, “what are you doing walking down that street?” Which is weird behaviour from someone you’ve known for as long as I had.

Eventually I’d reach out less and less as I grew more and more untrustworthy of all the people around me and started to focus on myself and what I needed to do to take care of myself and Dakota.

We Box

Before long, 4 months or so, I had to get out of there. I packed up everything I had, hastily rented a U-Haul and booked it out of Barrie. The stress of everything I’d been dealing with had made me lose 30 pounds rapidly and I hardly recognized myself when I caught my reflection in the mirror back at my parents house; I’d never seen my face so gaunt in my entire life.

But I’d made it out and was working towards bringing myself back to some semblance of normalcy after whatever that all was.

It felt better to be back at home and away from my former neighbours, but I still had this strong feeling that I should be out on my own and figured it was only a matter of time before I got out of Ontario – this was back when I was first looking into moving out of province. To get ahead of it and because I wanted to debrief a bunch of things that had happened over the last year or two, I reached out to my friends to see if they wanted to meet up and talk about it all.

Instead of getting a few of them together like I’d hoped, I was only able to arrange to meet up with one. She had been part of those weird group chats so I was a little weary of it all, but we’d known each other for over 10 years. Hell, she was one of my bridesmaids and I was best friends with her brother, too, who had been in my first band.

So we met up in the parking lot of the mall and as I should have sort of expected, had a weird conversation.

I don’t really know how to explain it other than to say once again it felt like we were both talking at the same time but I was unsure if we were talking about the same things or what she was referring to.

I remember she apologized to me because she “didn’t know everything that had been going on” and I was confused about what she thought all had been going on. What did she know? What had she heard? From who? Because certainly we hadn’t talked about it and I was the only one there.

We fumbled through a conversation about basically nothing for a bit and then she offered to drive me home. I hesitated, thinking briefly that if she did it would definitely be the last time I ever see her for some reason.

I said I could walk home, it was alright, but eventually gave in and let her drive. Besides, she wanted to see my sisters new golden retriever puppy and who was I to take that joy from someone.

We Carry On

Back at the house she stepped out to play with a very young and energetic River and then before leaving (and apologizing again for ??) we made plans to meet up again next week for coffee. I was glad for that because I hoped to clarify a few things that I was still super confused about.

Next week came, I sent some texts and… never heard from her.

Reached out on other apps – nothing. A few months later wished her a happy birthday. Nothing.

Tried to reach her brother. Nothing.

I obviously eventually gave up and tried not to think much about it, but it’s one of those things that always creeps back into my consciousness because … why? The fuck happened?

No idea.

So you can imagine my surprise when just a couple days ago I get a message through Facebook and it’s her.

“Hey Jaim, I know it’s been a while,” it starts. A while? It’s been almost 5 years.

The rest of the message goes on to just say she’s sorry to have heard about Dakota.

Which is all fine and nice for you to reach out about it, but… what the fuck? What am I supposed to do with this?

Anyway, I haven’t responded and I’m not sure I will.