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 I shrugged
off that experience, but it foretold a fascination with what was to come. Sometime
after this experience, the three of us moved to Montreal. Within two months of this
move, my marriage was over and my daughter and I wound up in Toronto, more aware
of each other than we had ever been. In one evening, I celebrated my wedding anniversary
and ended my marriage, all while eating dinner at Ruby Foo's.
It was March
of '82 when we left Montreal at my husband's invitation. The train route to Toronto
ended at Union Station and from there we rode the subway to Kennedy station. With
our two suitcases in tow, we walked to my mother's apartment, which she shared with
my dear stepfather.
I had originally
intended to return to Guelph. But Mom and my stepfather talked me into staying at
their Toronto apartment with my daughter, where I slept on the pullout bed in their
spare room.
It was tough
trying to secure an apartment, and I played the waiting game for a home of our own.
I worked temporarily while I waited. I had $10,000 in the bank and was somewhat financially
secure. I held off getting a permanent job until I was settled in my own place and
had my furniture and possessions with me in Toronto.
I found
an apartment, and my stepfather, who never let me down, saw that my furniture was
delivered. I then applied for a job with a bank and after weeks of their deliberating,
I was offered a permanent position. My life seemed to be settling down.
My daughter
and I went to the Canadian National Exhibition on Labour Day weekend, and I was to
start work the following Monday. We walked through the CNE and I don't really remember
all the details, but I began to play the games of chance. It was fun. In fact, as
closing time came my daughter and I were all smiles, thrilled to have enjoyed ourselves
for the first time since we left Montreal.
After that
I lived for the CNE, and began buying $2 instant scratch-and-win tickets. I was consumed.
One of the early scratch-and-win tickets also had a number for a future draw with
a prize of $100,000. I eagerly kept all these tickets in anticipation of the future
draw. One day I counted them up, I had over $200 in useless tickets. I began to realize
that something was wrong. I searched for the number of Gamblers Anonymous and hesitatingly
called. That night, unlike the other nights I called, someone answered.
I told him
that I thought I might have a gambling problem, and that I had been buying lottery
tickets. The reformed gambler on the other end of the phone scoffed at me and said
buying a few lottery tickets was not gambling. He had gone to the track for years
and that was real gambling. I told him I had bought more than a few tickets,
but he was not impressed. Not being at all forceful, I hung up. I decided that I
would try the racetrack and that weekend - fearful, but drawn to it, I made my way
to Greenwood Racetrack.
It was overwhelming
to a novice: noise, crowds and strange odds, which I would later become a master
at, showing displayed on television screens beside the horses' numbers.
Thoroughbred
horses were running that day, and asking help from a ticket seller, I made my first
bet. The horse won and I lined up to cash my $5 winning ticket.
I asked
a man in line ahead of me, obviously also a winner, how much I had won. He said the
horse had been at 4 to 5 odds and I would get back $9. I was disappointed. The man
showed me his winning ticket: a $100 bet. I wasn't so much impressed as in wonder
at someone risking so much money when the payoff was so small. Obviously, he was
adept at playing "sure things": the bane of all gamblers.
I made some
other bets, but finally I made two or three at once; one of which was a show bet
on a horse going off at 20 to 1 odds. I was learning about odds quickly. I went to
put my tickets in my wallet and I couldn't find it. Frantically, I dug around in
my purse. Of course I couldn't have lost my wallet, I told myself, but my search
was fruitless. I was in a panic.
I retraced
my steps, but my wallet with $17 in it and my means of getting home were gone. The
track was a long way from where I lived. No one knew that I had actually come to
a place like this alone. How would I get home and explain my shame, not only at having
gone, but also at being the victim of a pickpocket.
A prickle
of fear was all over my body, but I calmed myself and hoped that maybe one of my
horses would win. Having nothing better to do, I nervously watched the race. My 20
to 1 long shot came home. I cashed the winning ticket and got back $6, enough to
get home and back to real life.
I left the
track sobered by my experience. But I would return to that haven of shame and compulsion
many times in the years that followed and walk a tightrope of living a dual identity.
In a way,
I would remain true to my nature and not be dishonest or cheat anyone involving a
money transaction for the sake of gambling. But to myself, I heaped lies onto lies
and my self honesty was diminished. Thus what I was changed forever. Changed
too, was how I would look at the people who passed through my life. I regarded the
addicted as fellow travellers for whom, at times, I would share an unspoken empathy
that did not always produce sympathy. The unaddicted became God's chosen; just normal
folks, but sometimes within me I wondered if they too harboured a secret self. I
regarded anyone with a forced smile or show of gaiety with suspicion.
The compulsion
to gamble took a firmer grip on me. I left reason and reality behind on the nights
when I discovered that I had inadvertently brought my banking card. One night when
I discovered the card, I made a frantic trip to the automatic teller to withdraw
money and then raced to the betting window just in time to make a huge bet. It never
mattered if I won or lost; though I usually lost. Winning just kept me in the grip
and atmosphere of the racetrack, but I always left with nothing in my pocket. I would
trudge out and wait by the bus stop at the Harvey's.
Sometimes,
but only sometimes, I had the $1.60 to purchase one of Harvey's wonderful chocolate
milkshakes and I enjoyed the reality and treat of it as I entered the real world
and shook off the horror and hopelessness of the madness. The many trips I made to
the banking machine drained my account, even with my overdraft, and I would steel
myself to survive until my next paycheque.
As the bus
moved through the darkness, I would look out the window and dwell on how secure the
homeowners were, but I knew that such a luxury as a house of my own could never be
mine.
Once, when
the bus stopped for a light at Greenwood and Danforth, I looked up to the top window
of the bank. Perched on the window ledge was a lone pigeon, which huddled on the
ledge with its feathers ruffled outward, the small head turned around and buried
into its back feathers as it sought shelter from the bitter night cold, and I wondered
in whose grip we both were held.
Then a series
of events came out of reading horoscopes, an amusing pastime for some. My sister,
who was also born under the sign of Libra as I was, played a game with me during
our evening telephone calls.
We speculated
for what we read made us believe that soon the heavens would be with us. We found
a new horoscope that forecast hope and promises for us both. I took special meaning
from a forecast that urged me to look into a relationship from far back in my past
and deal with it, for there I would find the key. I remembered a love I had encountered
when I was 17 and the great dysfunctioning that had begun for me with that love.
I began to explore my early past and how I was still living with it.
I continued
to go to the racetrack, but I carried a memory of someone I had loved, now dead.
My betting frenzy increased and my feet dragged with the sheer hopelessness of it
all. Then one night my gambling frenzy peaked as I sat in the smoking room, hanging
my hopes on the outcome of the televised races. I bargained with God that he should
let me win one time and secure enough money to walk away forever from that place
and go no more. I kept making trips to the banking machine, buying more and more
vouchers, only to lose.
I was in
more of a fever that night than ever before. As I frantically purchased my last voucher,
I believed I heard the ticket sellers talking about me, but I made a bet and sat
at a table to watch the outcome of the race. The force of my need to win was so great
that I called upon Heaven to let me win as a sign that I could walk away. Heaven
answered with silence and I lost the race. But I got up and walked away feeling that
something had left me.
In the weeks
that followed I went no more to Greenwood. I told those who loved me and who grieved
over my compulsion that it was gone. What took hold of me was a thirst for the beauty
and caring of life - the small joys. I began to have money in my pocket and was now
able to purchase the little things I had learned from gambling to do without. I looked
to a future when I would have enough money to buy more expensive items.
This metamorphosis
had not begun just with the horoscope. With my sister's help, encouragement and sympathy,
we talked and I exposed the true horror of the gambling and my helplessness. Many
factors all came together. In the end, I was someone who cared about smiling at people
and listening to them. However, because of my nature I still cared too much about
everything else, but not myself.
I took myself
back to age 17, when my odyssey had began and then arrived at 50, still the same
person. I lived the filling of those years trying to deal with the disapproval the
world had heaped on me when I was 17. I sought safety in marriage and created a child.
My reality for many years was to put my heart and soul into being a dutiful wife,
but all that I offered my husband was rejected and I began gambling. I heaped scorn
and abuse on myself by gambling, but within I knew I had been true to myself. I never
stole or cheated to gamble, and if I borrowed money, I always paid it back.
I was 50
and my future was to learn to find small joys and the perks of life. I bolstered
myself with daydreams of a man I once loved and a sometime belief that we could be
together. Perhaps true heaven, even on earth, is the ability to dream dreams.
Our mood
of the moment is how we look to our end. The gamble of life and the chances we deal
with are our reality. In despair we want oblivion, but if we have ever achieved the
brass ring, we cling to the pleasures of life and want more.
At 50 years
of age, I cared again. I never made a mark on the world, save for those who loved
me and those with whom I dealt fairly. I wondered sometimes if I even wanted to go
'round on the go 'round of life yet another time, if I had the chance. I was not
certain if I wanted to go.
I took better
care of myself and I laughed more; I gained my daughter's respect and I functioned
and went to work everyday. I had money in my pocket and most days I lived in the
reality of the world. I had come to terms with life.
But someday,
if you feel a hollowness or if you're in a place and it sparks an echo within - you
know - they call it deja whatchamacallit, then remember this tale and think of me.
If you listen closely, you may hear me laughing as I go around again with a certain
someone, reaching for the brass ring.
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