Crying at my favourite ramen spot

Could I have the tan tan udon and a tissue, please?

Credit: Mary Magdalene, Artemisia Gentileschi, 1616.

This week, I was in Toronto for a work conference. I had many expectations about how the trip would go but crying at my favourite ramen restaurant was not one of them.

If you’ve been subscribed to my substack for awhile, you know that I recently left Vancouver to spend some time in my hometown before heading off to Europe. But before the west coast, I actually spent six years in Toronto.

And if it weren’t for the pandemic, I know I would still be there today.

I’ve often strayed away from discussing how the pandemic changed my life because in comparison to many people, I had it easy. I am not immunocompromised, I didn’t lose my job, I was not a front-line worker, and most importantly, I did not lose a loved one to COVID.

But three years later, the reality of the pandemic’s far-reaching impact is finally settling in. Our feelings of uneasiness have evolved into reflection as many of us cope with decisions that we would of otherwise never made.

For me, that was leaving Toronto.

At the time, I was living alone in a 1-bedroom apartment on the west side of the city. It was a lower unit that made up for its lack of natural light with heigh ceilings and beautiful chestnut-coloured flooring. It was down the street from fresh produce markets and some of my favourite dive bars.

Although I was paying a lot of money for it, it was the place that housed some of my fondest memories. It also felt like a representation of how far I had come since my arrival almost a decade earlier.

When the lockdown started in March, this little Parkdale apartment became the closest thing I’ve ever known to a safe haven, bringing me peace when very real fear suddenly showed up outside of its door.

It was the place that saw me wipe down groceries, bake sourdough, and drink on zoom calls in the middle of the day. Despite it giving me everything I could have asked for, with no end in sight, I was starting to struggle with the isolation of lockdown.

One night I was on the phone with my mom and she suggested returning to my hometown to essentially stay with her while we waited out the pandemic.

“It would only be temporary, honey. You can save some money and go back whenever it feels right.”

The weeks that followed that phone call felt like a fever dream.

All of sudden, I was calling my landlord to give her my notice; the same landlord who would knock on my door to drop off roti or text me at 9pm to come over for tequila shots.

I cried, she cried. I hung up and cried some more.

On moving day, I looked around at the empty space and felt as much sadness as I felt disbelief. I liked my life. I liked my apartment. I didn’t want this.

Five hours later, I pulled into my mom’s driveway and found her waiting outside for me. “If one more person tells me that I’m doing the right thing, I’m going to scream” I snarled.

To no one’s surprise, I felt out of place in my hometown and in its defence, it never really stood a chance. I was living in a perpetual state of comparison while also being incredibly bitter and resentful that I was there in the first place.

And like any domino effect, my brief hiatus from the city somehow led to a cross country move with my first long-term return to Toronto happening this week in 2023.

To my delight, I had a bit of free time and spent it walking around the city with my headphones on. Memories flooded my brain faster than I could process them. I passed a familiar intersection and thought about the day I moved to Toronto.

I had just graduated university and rented a massive U-Haul by myself. With absolutely no experience driving in the city, I somehow managed to navigate rush hour on Queen St W without causing a major accident.

I didn’t have the money for movers so it was just me, an elevator, and my own two legs. After putting down the last box of unassembled IKEA furniture, I squealed while I danced around all 400 square feet of my new place.

Toronto welcomes everyone with open arms and for me, it was love at first sight. The culture, the busyness, the food! I was completely entranced.

Slowly but surely, the best was brought out in me. I started going to galleries regularly, I learned how to use chopsticks, and I made friends with people who exposed me to new perspectives and experiences.

During my mid-conference walk, I found myself by the Eaton Centre and saw the Red Lobster that I used to work at. I continued my schooling in Toronto full-time, which meant pulling double shifts in an attempt to pay tuition on top of living expenses.

Class would usually finish around 3pm giving me enough time to make it to my 5pm shift where I’d work until midnight. To stop myself from falling asleep on the streetcar, I’d pick lobster linguini out of my apron or count my tips to see if I stood a chance at making rent that month.

Toronto showed me how to keep my head up when I was exhausted and broke. It also surrounded me with likeminded people, working ourselves to the bone in the name of chasing something bigger.

When I finished school, I knew I wanted to work in advertising. Most of my peers had parents with connections but I was someone who came from nothing. I couldn’t call my mom for directions, let alone an informational interview at a top agency.

But if you know Toronto, you know that the spirit of this city is relationships. If I wanted to stay here, I had to learn how to talk to people that I had never met. I needed to learn how to make connections, how to ask for help, and how to return that help where I could.

To this day, I credit my ability to spark up conversation with just about anyone to my time spent living in Toronto.

Driving home from the conference that night, I passed the very first agency I ever worked for. Known for servicing some of Canada’s biggest brands, I now remember it as the place that severely underpaid me, often working well over 40 hours a week for a $1000 bi-weekly paycheque.

From Monday to Friday, I took notes in rooms with CMOs, VPs, and Directors and on weekends, I secretly continued to serve at Red Lobster, always peering around my shoulder nervous that I would run into someone I knew.

I took comfort in the fact that most marketing executives aren’t fans of all-you-can-eat shrimp promotions.

If I’m being honest, it was as awful as it sounds but there is a silver lining. Toronto forced me to learn how to make more money. I desperately wanted to stay and knew that in order to do that, I needed my full-time job to pay me enough to cover my bills.

So, I did scary things like put together a case for a raise. I learned how to strategically navigate my way through interviews to double my salary or to get a better title.

Toronto made it crystal clear that the only person who will ever advocate for me is well, me. It looked me dead in the eye and said sink or swim, baby. Serve the lobster linguini or don’t. The choice is yours and no one gives a shit about which one you choose.

It was tough love, which is exactly what I needed. When I left Toronto in 2021, I was confident, self-assured, and really believed it when I would tell people that I could do anything.

On the final night of the conference, I decided to have dinner by myself at my favourite ramen place. Somewhere between ordering and taking the first bite, I started crying.

It was a weird moment for me and probably an even weirder moment for the server refilling my water.

But the truth is, after years of repression, I was finally allowing myself to mourn my old life. The one I worked incredibly hard to build. The one that the pandemic took away from me in one fell swoop.

I cried about my time being cut short and about all of the memories I walked by that day. I cried over friends and my old apartment and this massive bowl of ramen that I haven’t had the chance to enjoy in over three years.

Too often, we think that it’s wrong to feel bad for ourselves when so many others are suffering. We focus on gratitude and positive thinking but sometimes, you need to throw all of that shit out of the window and give yourself a moment to acknowledge how you feel.

Although I was complicit in my decision to leave, it doesn’t change the fact that I thought it was temporary. I wholeheartedly believed that everything would go back to normal and knowing that it didn’t? Well, that’s worth a good cry.

Thinking about the next couple years, Toronto is definitely in the foreground. Part of me is thrilled by it and another part of me is terrified that it won’t be the same place that I left all those years ago.

I guess what I’ve learned from all of this is that pandemic or no pandemic, life is unpredictable. It will continue to pluck us from place to place, person to person, comfort zone to comfort zone. So, the only thing we can really do is cherish the moment that we’re in.

When I was picking lobster linguini out of my apron on public transit, the last thing I thought was that I would feel nostalgic about it years later. But isn’t that’s what makes life interesting?

That among all of the big milestones and major moments that we think define our lives, the ones that truly move us (to the point of tears over soup) are the ones we thought had no meaning at all.

Until the next one,

Taylor