It all began when I got shortchanged on my cream cheese-to-bagel ratio on New Year’s Day, 2010.

I was hungover. It was also my birthday. And as I crawled into my boyfriend-at-the-time’s car wearing last night’s dress and clutching a bottle of Advil as close to my heart, the only birthday present I cared about was a Tim Horton’s bagel. Toasted. With Herb & Garlic cream cheese.

You know that feeling when you get dumped and you feel truly hopeless for a moment in time, but then you see a puppy or have a glass of wine or have a really great hair day and all of a sudden you see that light at the end of the tunnel and you know — you know — that everything is going to be okay?

That feeling, to me – in that moment of darkness – was a bagel. My tunnel had a light, and it was a single piece of multi-grain/cream cheese glory.

I walked up to the counter. I ordered. I sat down, smiled, opened it up, and promptly saw the most disappointing sight I could have imagined. A toasted bagel, smeared (and I use that term loosely) with the saddest little lump of cream cheese I’ve ever seen.

We all know the Tim Horton’s bagel strategy. They layer up one side pretty good and then smush the other half on top, so when you, the consumer, take it apart, you’re presented with one overwhelmingly cheesy side and one side dry as a bone. But you’re never surprised. You’ve come to expect it. You’ve mastered evening it out using the corners and edges, and sure, sometimes you have to sacrifice a quarter. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough to go around. But at least you had ¾ of a perfectly ratio’d bagel. And it is always awesome.

This time, however, I did not open my wrapper to see a surplus of cream cheese vs. a bone-dry half. I saw two bone-dry halves with a little spoonful of cheese. A drip. A smidgen.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Absolutely not.”

I returned to the counter, politely requesting a bit more cream cheese. They refused.

“K, but look at this,” I said, showing them the sad little bagel. “This is ridiculous.”

“Sorry honey,” the employee cut me off. “You get one scoop. Can I help who’s next?”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Get the fuck over it. It’s a bagel. The world is a scary place with murders and typhoons and people who don’t say please or thank you and people who litter and it’s awful. The world is awful. And I know that. But that isn’t to say that in that moment I felt I had a right to enjoy my bagel to its absolute and fullest potential.

I went back to the counter.

“Hello!” I said, smiling at the employee. “Can I please pay you an extra dollar for extra cream cheese?”

“No.” She said, staring me down. “You get one scoop.”

“But this isn’t one scoop!” I exclaimed, unfortunately feeling my voice get a tad whinier than I had anticipated.

“Please go away,” she said.

So I did. I sat down and I stared at the table and ate my stupid dry bagel in silence. Then we left.

Years have passed. My boyfriend-at-the-time and I have long since cried and fought and broken up. We’ve moved on. We’ve grown up.

But I still think about that bagel.

I mean, not often. I don’t harbour any ill feelings towards the Tim Horton’s franchise or my ex-boyfriend or that bottle of Advil which didn’t really do much for me that day. I’m not bitter or hardened or holding onto a negative outlook on life in general. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. But I still think about it. I think about it when a salesperson is unwarrantedly rude to me, or that time that stranger went out of his way to tell me he didn’t think I was cute. I thought about it when the car rental company totally screwed me over and had nothing to say for themselves. I think about it when I know I’m right but I’m being told I’m wrong and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I think about it because in that moment, I wish I had done something. I wish I had said ‘hey LISTEN lady, take my dollar and give me my cream cheese because this is bullshit’.

I wish I had told her she was ruining my birthday.

But I didn’t. So I’m telling her now. And now – ohh baby – I can finally let the bagel go.

And maybe it isn’t always a bagel. Maybe it’s a person. Maybe it’s that boy who called you babe and suddenly stopped and is pretending everything’s okay but you know it isn’t. Maybe you know he isn’t treating you right but you don’t want to say anything because you know he’ll walk away and you just aren’t ready to see him go. Maybe you aren’t ready to miss him. So instead, you settle for a shitty dry bagel.

But maybe we should never settle. Maybe we should always fight. And sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we don’t – but at least we tried. At least we can say hey, I’m insanely sad today, but I won’t stare at my phone waiting for his call. At least I know it isn’t going to ring, and I can start fixing my heart and laughing at nothing again. At least we know, and at least we tried.

Because in the end, whether it’s your birthday or not, we all deserve to enjoy – to its absolute and fullest potential – the perfect bagel:cream cheese ratio.

Leah Ruehlicke lives in a tiny apartment downtown Toronto with bad water pressure and an amazing book collection. She’ll never get sick of Celine Dion’s Greatest Hits and hates when people classify themselves as ‘foodies’. Read more from her on Twitter.