She's Not a Fan

Chapter 16

Regrets about Mike were easier to set aside when she was involved with patients or immersed in work.  It was tougher at night on her own. 

She couldn’t stop thinking about what could have been.  She missed Mike, his easy smile and the interest in his eyes, directed at her.  She wanted to be held in his arms and kissed until she was breathless.  Regret circled in an endless loop in her head.  It was driving her crazy.

Time to focus on something else. 

Cleaning.  She vacuumed and polished and cleaned out her closets.  She sorted through clothes, put away the summer wardrobe and pulled out the winter.  Her closet was more organized than ever before, but she didn’t feel any better.    

Exercise?  She joined a yoga class at the local gym.  All that stretching and bending.  Poses she had never seen or heard of.  Downward dog, Dolphin plank, cow face, wild thing.  Turned out, she wasn’t a wild thing.  No surprise there.  It took concentration and flexibility.  And apparently, she had none.  It distracted her temporarily.  That helped.  Until the meditation started.  The Dhyana, ‘I want it so bad’ meditation.  To summarize, the goal was to stop thinking of what would be bad for her….Mike.  And instead focus on what would be good for her….still Mike.  She needed to focus a little less.

So she cleaned some more.  She scrubbed her tub and washed the walls.  She unclogged the drains and soaked her showerhead until the water pressure forced her back out of the stream.

She pulled out her favourite books and went to the library to find a few more.  She tried lighthearted ones, but wasn’t in the mood to laugh.  She tried heavier reading with hidden meaning and subtle metaphors, but couldn’t concentrate enough to figure out what they were.  She pictured Mike as every handsome hero.  In the end, she returned them all to the library.

And cleaned out the cabinets in her kitchen.  Setting tables was a hobby, so most of her cabinets were filled with dishes, rather than food.  Which was handy when she wanted something to do.  Lots of dishes to organize.  She stacked her chargers and sorted them by colour.  With all the matching plates and bowls.  And wine glasses.  She burned a lot of ‘let’s try to forget Mike’ energy cleaning and sorting through glassware.  It sparkled and shone.  But in the end, it only made the reflection of her unhappy face, that much clearer. 

She was getting desperate.  It was time to pull out the big guns. 

Chocolate.  Didn’t they just discover dark chocolate was as good as sex for making you feel good?  She was sure she read that somewhere.  Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, she tried them all.  Didn’t work.  She’d rather have sex.  With Mike.

Maybe she was approaching this from the wrong angle.  Maybe if she understood the game of hockey, the strategy, the players, maybe she could learn to love it. 

She found a copy of Hockey for Dummies.  She put some serious effort into studying it.  Until she read they had to play 82 games to determine who would qualify for the playoffs.  What?  Eighty-two games worth of effort and all that did, was get them to the playoffs.  Not even a pass to the finals if they were at the top of the heap.  Jeez.  Tough crowd.  It was a wonder they didn’t give up.  And players had virtually no say in where they played.  They were at the whim of a manager or owner or coach.  Didn’t seem very nice. 

Really, she could point out a few flaws. 

And what if she did learn to like hockey?  She couldn’t even sit in a rink.

It sunk in that it wasn’t going to be easy.  She couldn’t change to be someone she wasn’t, even if she really wanted it.  People loved hockey.  Why couldn’t she be one of them? Was she missing a hockey gene?  What was wrong with her?

She sighed.  There was nothing wrong with her, but Mike Wallace was definitely wrong for her. 

She needed to suck it up and move on. 

Yeah she’d get right on that.  Right after she went shopping for some more cleaning supplies.