When New Years isn’t happy

I’m one of those people who get anxious around New Years, because I have it in my head that if I don’t celebrate, I will be a big lonely loner loser who nobody loves. So usually a month before, I try to find a few friends to cement plans with so I don’t have to stress myself out to the point of developing a cold sore. As a result of my weirdly neurotic efforts, most of my New Years have been pretty decent. Yet, there’s one that stands out in my mind as the all time worst New Years, because not only did I feel like a big lonely loner loser, I really was one.

I was working as an anchor at a Vancouver radio station that billed itself as having the second largest English-speaking audience in Canada. It was an entry-level position so I was immediately assigned the shit-shifts. This meant weekends and overnights, 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. My job was to compile and write local, national and international news and read it on air, in between various programming, to approximately 174 listeners across Vancouver’s Lower Mainland.

Also working nights was Bob, the board ops guy. For those of you who might not be familiar with how radio works, board operators are paid $8 an hour to sit in front of a sound board and push those sliding buttons up and down. I made the mistake of being friendly to Bob, only because I once wanted to try one of his nine chicken McNuggets, which he would regularly eat as an appetizer to his food court Chinese takeout slop. I hadn’t had a McNugget in a while, and we briefly chatted about that. I guess this gave the impression to Bob that I was open to a friendship with him because he soon started Google stalking me.

“Are you the same Elianna Lev who once wrote something for Forget magazine and dated a guy from Hot Hot Heat,” he emailed me, at my work address, having clearly scoured my online existence. (This was about seven years ago, so it’s grown substantially since then.) I never responded and made a point of avoiding him when he approached. That didn’t stop him from wandering up to my desk and offering me a McNugget every chance he could get.

I was grateful for the anchoring experience, of course, but it couldn’t come at a worse time. I was already living a pitiful existence, having recently broken up with my first true love, who was a touring musician. In the months since we’d ended things, he’d met a go-go dancer in Ibiza, flew her back to Vancouver to live in the apartment we’d once shared, which was a few blocks away from the new place I lived in, alone.

I felt I had nothing much going for me at the time, except my career as an overnight news anchor. I was working another job doing listing for a magazine, so I spent the days sleeping and writing listings and the nights reading the news. I rarely got to go out or see my friends. I certainly wasn’t getting much loving. So when I was scheduled to work New Years, I was strangely numb to the idea of ringing in a fresh start alone in a radio studio, with Bob the opts guy.

News was slow that night, as it had been the whole holiday season. I pulled stories from around the world, mostly relating to festivities that were happening. In the long, boring minutes I had after I’d made up my cast and before I’d go on-air, I’d check my email. Even though I knew everyone was whoo-hoooing it up and not sitting in front of a computer like I was, I had absolutely nothing else to do.

My mailbox was empty, except for one note. One of the girlfriends from my ex’s band sent me a message on my MySpace wall.

“In Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel! Miss you so much and it’s not the same without you!”

She was on the road, with her boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, and the other girlfriends and band members, whooping it up in Vegas at one of my favourite hotels. I’d stayed there once with said ex-boyfriend, and had a lot of fun, lounging by the pool in a cabana, eating onion rings.

Now, I was alone in a radio studio, reading news to who ever it was that stayed at home on New Years and listened to this radio station, across from a creep who only seemed to live for chicken McNuggets and my online presence.

Bring on the good cheer.

In the minute leading up to the count down, I made my way into the anchor booth. There was a sports call-in show on air, with a host I’d never met because he never bothered to introduce himself to me. He counted backwards as I put on my headphones.

“10…9…8…”

I sighed and stared ahead of me at Bob. A year ago I was partying on stage at a giant New Years gig my boyfriend was playing. Look how far I’d come.

“5…4…3…”

At least the studio was on the 35^th floor, high above the city, so I couldn’t hear the echoes of the good times that were being had.

“…1! And now here’s the news!”

I leaned into the mic.

“Happy New Years,” I said in a voice that would have flatlined on a heart monitor. “I’m Elianna Lev with your news to 12 o’clock.”

I managed to get through the next four minutes of my cast, knowing that in five hours, the sun would come up and I could go home. Then, I could ring in the New Year by sleeping the day away, and hopefully dream about happier New Years to come.

Hi readers! First off, extra points if you can guess which radio station I worked at. Second off, I wanna hear about your lonely loner loser New Years stories. Email me at write@eliannalev.com or leave me a message below or press one of those pretty buttons below to share this with all your social networks…I’d really like that! Like really really like that. Have a safe and happy new year! And don’t drink and drive…it’s the stupidest thing you could possible do. 

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