Melt Down

True to form, I made it about one week in my new home before having a slightly exaggerated crisis. A few days ago I was boppin along, thinking about how wonderful Montreal is. How nice everyone is, how pretty it is, how lucky I am, yanno. So I'm just gonna bop along over to the neighborhood (as opposed to the big box) grocery store for some dinner ingredients. I get everything rung up at the register and they don't take my type of card. The cashier sends me to an ATM across the street to get some cash. I begrudgingly agree (my card is debit and credit!) but I get to the ATM and I'm denied. I know I have money, so I try again. Denied again. Frustrated and slightly embarrassed I call customer service. I forgot to call and tell them I'm abroad, but the man promises that now it should work just fine. I try again and am denied. Undeterred, I walk decently far to a Scotia Bank where they have an agreement/partnership with my bank. I put the card in but not only am I denied but the machine keeps my card?!#$!? Now I am really upset. I call again, I'm shuffled through customer service, and I finally get a very kind woman who is sympathetic to me. No food and no money in a foreign county after business hours.. I mean, I was sounding a bit pathetic. So she and are are on the phone for a little more than half an hour, with her fielding possible solutions that are impossible because of this or that bullshit reason. By this point I'm sitting on the floor in the corner of the ATM area crying and snotting all over myself while people come in and out to make their successful ATM transactions. (I would like to mention that although everyone I've met so far has been wonderfully nice to me, no one in the ATM stopped to see if I was ok or even wanted a tissue. What's up with that, Montreal?!). Anyway, we the bank lady and I figure the only thing that can be done for me instantly is to call someone and ask for a money wire. I find this extremely embarrassing but call my aunt who isn't home. I then give up and return home, a pathetic blubbering mess.

Now, if I had taken the time to be calm and rational I could have realized that all I needed was to order a new ATM card. It's not like I had nothing to eat at home, I would just have to eat cereal or something for dinner. And of course I have roommates who wouldn't let me starve in front of them. Also I do have money in a bank account here, I just need to wait until business hours to access it because my new card is coming in the mail. But none of this was going through my head at the time. All I could think was 'no food, no money, no way to get these things' in loop. How silly. I got home and Laurene, seeing I was upset, immediately began comforting me and offering to lend me cash over and over again. I kept saying no thank you, I can get it tomorrow, so then instead she went out and got some beer for us to share and offered anything that was hers in the fridge to eat. I knew she'd be nice, so why was I so consumed in this useless train of thought? I'll chalk it up to lots of stress coming from the move. It is my pattern, I've realized by now: have a superstar first week in a new place, followed by one big, overexaggerated meltdown from the built up stress, and then return to life as normal. Well, I'm glad that's over with.