Forty-eight, possibly even forty-nine actually, years ago my father married the love of his life, my mother on this very day. With her brown, curly, thick hair and long legs, he thought she was the most beautiful woman in the entire world. I envy them. I think back then, back when they fell in love, love was so simple and so pure. Somewhere along the timeline of the human race we went and complicated it all, made it messy and lost sight of what real love is.
Forget romantic love -- been there, done that, not really interested in doing it again.
The love of my life these days is a four-legged boy who licks his own junk and occasionally pees on my roommate's rug... great.
The love of my life these days is also Cabbagetown. In all it's ghetto fabulousness and dirt, this neighbourhood has a lot of life to it. It's real and I love it. I don't care what anyone says about Cabbagetown. When I lost Balboa there were a lot of people who really went out of their way and concerned themselves with my situation. The people here are real, their situations are real, and it's not this superficial, pretentious place where fake smiles are the norm and nobody knows anyone or doesn't extend a friendly hand. There is very much a real community here and I love it. There's a man down by Food Basics that compliments me every single time I see him. Sure he may be rather intoxicated but none the less he's always so sweet to me. Today he said "thank you for your beautiful smile".
I learned today while chatting with the girls at the pool that I came so close to losing a one of them. She lives in a neighbouring building but I've come to know her via doing my laps at the pool because she hangs out there. I won't go into the details of her situation but a simple situation at her house party this past weekend turned terribly disastrous and almost fetal. What would have been a simple trip for someone else was a massive crash for her because of her medical situation. She told me about it as we sat in the sun, poolside today, and I was speechless. Absolutely speechless. This isn't the first time I've heard of a situation like this though this one was the most extreme of them. Situations here are real and they're on a whole other level that I've never really been exposed to. I've handed out my business card to a lot of these stories I've heard, hoping that they'll reach out to me if they need help. I don't really know what I could do to help them but there has to be something beyond just letting them go through it alone.
Last year when I first moved into Cabbagetown I met a gal around my age who was in an abusive relationship. I've confronted her several times about it and even went so far as to stick up for her a couple of times when the guy came around. She has since bought a dog for security but a little over a month ago she was evicted from my building so I haven't seen her. I ran into her a couple of weeks ago at the subway station and we were both so shocked but so happy to see each other. She said she lost my business card so I gave it to her again and she promised me she'd call me if she needed help, call me like she had promised she would.
My niche is here in Cabbagetown, I feel it, but how to go about it all is another thing.
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