It's Been Decided Upon, I'm Not Going... Friday, July 22

When Facebook came on the scene I was quick to jump all over it like a fat kid on a twinkie, adding friends and posting pictures.  I was in Korea when it first started up and for me, a foreigner living overseas, it was an instant link to friends and family back here in Canada, my then "home".  Before work, during work and after work, I was on it like bees to honey.  It was a life line for me.  Long time no see friends were easy to find and I reconnected with them and so many others from years past.  

I had a whole cyber life.  I didn't need any physical friends in Korea, I had my friends online -- my friends in Canada. Likewise, the desire to connect with Snickers' family faded as I got closer with my family here in Canada and friends here because so close you would have sworn they were my actual family. 

Facebook provided the perfect medium for me to disconnect with all that came with being in Korea and enabled me to connect stronger with Canada.

But now I'm back in Canada, the country where most of my friends and family live and yet I feel that I'm still somewhat overly connected to Facebook to feed these relationships and sustain them.  

Christmas hit me hard this year, hardest Christmas in my life, but I managed to salvage it when I woke up in my bathtub and rushed off to Double J's house.  There I was surrounded with his family.  I wanted to celebrate Christmas with my family but with my dad not really wanting to treat it as anything special and all my cousins, aunts and uncles doing their own thing, there really was no family around to celebrate it with.  So I celebrated it with someone else's family.  

Tomorrow is my family's annual BBQ reunion party and I've decided not to go.  

I've been in Canada for 11 months now and the way I view it is if it takes this BBQ to get together and really be a family than that's rather sad.  Perhaps we're really not the family I remember us as being and maybe I've hyped them up in my head.  Last year I was fresh off the plane and was bombarded with a ton of questions regarding Snickers, Hulk's, my year in Canada, and whatnot.  But now it's been almost a full year and the questions, I'm sure, have only stacked up because many of them don't understand why I'm still here when I told them all I'd only be here for a year.  I don't have any answers I'm willing to part with just yet beyond it's my life, my choice, but I can't say that.  I know they have good intentions but I also know some perhaps just want a juicy Saturday afternoon chunk of gossip to chew on with their potato salad.  Those who have good intentions, I'm thankful for them, but there are 364 other days in the year for them to voice their concern and approach me in a more appropriate setting as oppose to a packed family BBQ party.  I would answer their questions too but I know most of them aren't ready for my honesty.  I lived a life in Korea that they know nothing about and part of me doesn't want to tell them my answers because I know it'd make them sad.  I don't want them to be sad, of course not.  So I'm not going to the party.  I don't care to be the elephant in the room on what's expected to be a beautiful Saturday.