Part 27: Becca: The Single and Content

Somewhere between the wedding, my surgery, and my ongoing simping over Pete, Holly and I stopped nannying together. I was juggling a few different families at the time, but the one that was especially dysfunctional—the same one with the stairs I fell down—ended abruptly and, unfortunately, not on great terms. It started with her baby daddy bringing home the wrong vacuum cleaner and forgetting to pay us. It ended with Holly and I walking out on a yelling match, leaving their poor toddler quite literally standing in the middle of them. We never went back after that. She did text me to let me know that she had taken the baby, the TV and a bunch of money and left their house. She asked me if I would testify in court if she decided to go for full custody. I was nineteen and I think anyone would agree that would be inappropriate. So I didn't respond and we never spoke again. 

My other nanny families were great. One family had two boys and a baby girl, and the other had two small girls. The pay was low and the hours weren't steady, but I loved playing with kids and I felt like I was in my element. I felt like I wouldn't be genuinely happy until I had a baby and family of my own. It seemed near impossible at this rate since I really wanted to be with Pete and he was a missionary. I had fallen so deeply "in love" with this guy that I had convinced myself that I really wanted to move to Lethbridge. When I brought this idea up, he seemed pretty into it. I thought that could mean big things for us. 

I felt that I needed some guidance about where I should move. I really wanted to date Pete but I had also heard that Calgary was really great. The LDS church is a lot bigger in Alberta and the young adults group was known to be a lot of fun. I recruited my friend Emma to go on a soul searching road trip to Alberta. I was going to visit Calgary and Lethbridge and see what felt right. I had never been on a road trip without my parents before, but Emma and I planned our route and took off.

The trip was all we wanted it to be. I didn't get the amazing revelation that I was hoping for about where to move. I thought I was definitely supposed to end up in Lethbridge so Pete would fall in love with me. I even went to the bakery where he used to work. Unfortunately when we were on the trip, Pete messaged me and told me that he was being moved far away to a different part of BC. I was absolutely gutted by this. The only way for me to see him again would be for me to move to Lethbridge. 

When I pulled in from our road trip, I hit the concrete wall with my dads car. Way to go out with a bang. 

It was also around this time where I saw a gynecologist for the first time. This might not seem noteworthy for everyone, but I had been struggling with some medical mysteries for awhile. I basically had cramping and nausea all the time. Specifically in the night, I would wake up with awful waves of nausea that were so uncomfortable. I'm sure any woman can attest to how hard it is to be taken seriously by doctors. This had been going on for quite some time. I had been through so many ultrasounds and all anyone could tell me was that I was fine. But I wasn't. 

So when I went to see the gynecologist, I had my first pelvic exam and she told me that they could operate to get rid of whatever was causing the issue. She said it so casually, like I had heard this information before. She said it like, "You know, we can just go in laparoscopically and remove any lesions. That should solve the problem." I would have surgery, and then I wouldn't be in pain any more. So I was put on a wait list for surgery. 

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Jump forward to November 2021. I had met someone new—my new love interest. We can call him Jake (I’m not sure if I’ve used that name yet). He was a missionary I’d become friends with, and he seemed genuinely interested in me in a way Pete never really had.

By then, Pete had already moved away like he said he would, and I had mostly moved on. Jake definitely helped with that. He lived in Calgary, and I thought he was really something. When he even asked to meet my family at a church service, I completely ate it up. He gave me his cell phone number and said he would message me when he got home in a few weeks. I was completely convinced that Jake would be my husband. We had so much fun together and we had some serious chemistry. 

So imagine my surprise when Jake went home and I didn’t hear anything from him. It was his first day back, so I told myself to give him time to settle in, set up his phone and be with his family.

But days passed. Then weeks. And still nothing. He had completely ghosted me.

It felt like a horrible pattern I knew all too well, Gaston, Hans, Pete, even Greg, who took me on that awful date to White Rock. The common denominator in all of these “relationships” was the same: for one reason or another, they decided I wasn’t good enough. What had my life come to? Chasing after any man who gave me attention. Sitting in the church parking lot on Sunday mornings, crying because I couldn’t bear to go inside. Drinking with my friends and hiding it from my parents, who I love more than anything. 

I felt like I had lost everything. It was the end of the world, not just because I really liked Jake, but because it felt like nobody wanted me, and I had nothing left. Three weeks after Jake went home, I drank for the last time. I buried my sorrows and laughed until tears rolled down my face. It felt like an interesting juxtaposition, because I really was trying to numb how sad I was. It felt as though I was trying to convince myself that the whole thing was a hilarious situation and that I "just can't win".  

It was that night, call it a drunken epiphany, where I vowed that I didn't need a man. I was going to take some serious time to be single, get myself together and really heal. I also decided to apply to a Cosmetology and Barbering program at Kosmetae Academy. I was going to be a hairdresser. I had applied and was accepted and would be starting shortly. This was going to be a new era of Becca: the single and content.