[Ellie's Story] Fears

Hi Ellie,

Technically, we haven’t met yet, but I’m glad that we are chatting now and I hope that we’ll have an opportunity meet in person soon!

To answer some of your burning questions: I work for a law firm downtown that specializes in environmental law, but perhaps I’ll wait until I get to know you better before I bore you with the mundane details. :)

I did grow up in Vancouver, after my family moved here when I was four. As for hobbies, I like to play racquetball in the winter and a bit of ultimate Frisbee in the summer. I listen to all sorts of music, ranging from contemporary pop to classical. Sometimes I might even indulge in a little country. Hope that doesn’t scare you ;)

And now I somehow feel like we’ve just played 20 questions, so as the game requires, what about you? What are your hobbies and what do you do for work?

Regards,
Simon

And that is how the email exchanges had begun with Simon.

      We've been corresponding for two weeks now, with a frequency of about one email every two or three days. And it was only that because I purposefully made a point to wait the two or three days before responding. Simon always replied to my emails immediately.

As much as I was eager to get to know him, and although each time I logged into my email I’d have a tiny flutter of excitement in my stomach, a part of me wanted to wait. I don’t know what I was afraid of, but something made me want to not rush into things.

After having corresponded with Simon for the two weeks, these are the things that I knew about him so far:

      1.) He had been wanting to be an environmental lawyer since he was sixteen

      2.) His favourite foods are pizza and Hungarian Goulash (specific, I know)

      3.) He used to be play right wing in an amateur hockey team

      4.) He broke his arm in fifth grade, falling off of a porch

      5.) And yes, he does like cats (his family used to have two when he was a kid)

I’ve been happy with getting to know Simon online. Sure, there were times when I’ve wondered what he would be like in person (and Madison has certainly been pushing me to meet the guy), but the thing is, I’ve been avoiding it. Perhaps I was happy to live in this happy-fantasy land where Simon would be perfect, and afraid that meeting him would spoil the illusion. Perhaps I was afraid that somehow he had a better image of me in his head than I was capable of projecting in person, and that I would disappoint him if we met. Perhaps I was afraid that we were only good at conversing through email since we could plan out our thoughts in advance, and that in person we would both be silent messes. Or maybe that the only silent mess would be me. I inwardly groaned at all of the reasons that kept me from wanting to meet Simon, from not having good enough hair to the fear of having spinach stuck in my teeth.
      There was no way I could reply to Simon now, feeling the way I did. 

 I looked out of my window and watched some of the last petals fall from the cherry blossom trees outside my apartment building. The weather had warmed up significantly in the past month, and the cherry blossoms bloomed and faded quicker than I had anticipated, almost in the blink of an eye. It was nice seeing the sun shine outside – the gloom and doom of winter seemed like such a long time ago.

I returned my attention to my computer screen, and logged into Facebook, hoping that the distraction would make me feel better. My home page listed a ton of status updates and a couple of unread messages. I scanned the many feeds that ran down my page.

“11 Jager bombs + a room full of mini skirts = a sick night” posted my brother, tagged at This is London from last night. I quickly commented: “Shouldn’t you be studying for exams, Edison?” I shook my head as I typed, doing my sisterly duty.

 I kept reading my feeds:

Annabelle

Why do emails come in faster than I can delete them? I need a Pause button at work. – near Vancouver, BC

Cecile posted a photo of her son holding a chess trophy. I scrolled through more feeds, scanning through some vacation photos and pet photos. And then I froze.

Up top at the news feed was this:

Elisa

Sweet, my brother’s back. This means I can finally have my iPod back – five months later.

I had initially logged into Facebook in hopes of distracting myself and improving my mood, but now I just felt worse, like throwing up. To any other person, Elisa's statement may not seem like a big matter, but it was to me. I understood what it meant.

It meant that David was coming home.