happy happy happy!

Happy birthday to you! May your year be filled with more late nights and even more early mornings and red nails always and laughs and love love love!

today

But then there are moments like this one where you wake to the bluest sky and the greenest leaves and you think to yourself "how can I be sad on a day like this?" and so you roll out of bed earlier than expected and you pull back your curtains and you play music louder than it should be played at an hour like this and you read your horoscope and it tells you "You are nearing the end of a long struggle. Victory will call for a celebration" and because you are still sad and don't know why, you believe it to be more true than you should at an hour like this.

springspring

Spring darkness is forgiving. It doesn't descend
abruptly before you have finished work,
it approaches palely waiting for you
to get outside to witness another illuminated hour

you feel someone brush against you,
on the street, you smell leather, the lake,
the coming leaves, the rain's immortality
pierces you, but you will be asleep when it arrives

you will lie in the groove of a lover's neck
unconscious, translucent, tendons singing,
and that should be enough, the circumference
of the world narrowed to your simple dreams

Days are perfect, that's the thing about them,
standing here in half darkness, I think this.
It's difficult to rise to that, but I expect it
I expect each molecule of my substance to imitate that

I can't of course, I can't touch syllables
tenderness, throats.
Look it's like this, I'm just like the rest,
limping across the city, flying when I can*


*Dionne Brand gets it right again.

time will overcome

Most of the time I am just fine and most of the time I can smile and take pictures outside my window and ooh and ahh over the budding trees and tell you and tell myself I am just fine and everything is fine fine fine. But sometimes 'fine' just doesn't cut it because fine is just fine and don't I want to be better than fine? And sometimes 'fine' just doesn't cut it because I realize I'm not even fine. I'm much worse, really.

This realization is not boy related ("for once" they sigh). Or maybe it is? But that isn't all it is. There is an emptiness inside that I can't simply blame on an empty inbox. That would be too simplistic and easy. This hollowness is bigger and scarier and more unexplainable than that. It is roots that don't cut far enough, and a plastered smile that is starting to waver, and it is caring too much always and about everything and about everyone and wondering what I get back in return. It's about wonodering how much longer I can pretend.

But don't worry. I'll be fine again tomorrow and this blog will resume its original form.

dance sequence

Sometimes your favourite song can make even the weirdest of nights better.

even an ocean apart

I feel these good times coming back again.

winds

The sun is a shining and the drinks are a flowing more and more these days, but my steps are still dragging a bit more than they should. And I know you gotta feel your worst before things can ever get better, and I also know this essay isn't helping matters and moods any, but still. Give a girl a little something to be excited about. Please?

Broken records

Home alone and procrastinating an essay leads to an eventful and insightful walk down livejournal memory lane. This time I opted to re-live my single, boy-crazy phase of two years past. I feel older in the sense that I'd like to give my twenty-one year old self a big hug and tell her "IT'S GOING TO BE OKAY AND YOU'RE GOING TO FIGURE THINGS OUT AND YOU'RE GOING TO LEARN WHO YOU ARE AND YOU HAVE SO MUCH GROWING UP TO DO!", but at the same time I feel like not much else has changed. I am still playing the same broken records, just in slightly different form.

Need proof? I thought this poem was written about my situation two years ago, and today, I still feel that way except this situation now involves a different boy but an always too familiar ending.

I have changed the numbers on my watch,
And now perhaps something else will change.
Now perhaps
At precisely 2a.m.
You will not get up
And gathering your things together
Go forever.
Perhaps now you will find it is
Far too early to go,
Or far too late,
And stay forever

-Brian Patten

there is a photo of us

This was an assignment I wrote last fall for a writing class I was taking at the time. We were told to take a photo and write about it in a way that would allow readers to visualize it without having to see it.

Can you see what I saw and can you feel what I felt?


We are frozen mid-walk on a now empty downtown street. Our faces are a bit blurred and slightly out of focus, faces reminiscent of those cartoons that came in the cereal boxes I had as a kid, the kind you needed the red and blue glasses to see clearly. But even with this slight shake of the camera lens, there are some things I know for sure: the neon glow of a nearby convenience store adds pure light to the otherwise yellow tinge of city streetlights; he is wearing his favourite black sweater, and I can’t remember what I’m wearing due to my unfortunate mis-framing of the shot; he is almost a head taller than me, his cheek touches my bangs as he leans in for the photo; I am bad at taking self portraits, my aim always slightly off; the black mascara smeared around my right eye is the only proof I have just finished crying.

And even without this poorly framed photo, there are other things I know for sure: the street is empty because it’s Labour Day weekend and the thirty-something year olds who would normally crowd its patios and coffee shops are away at lakeside cottages, clinging to the last few days of a season ready to wave its goodbyes; we clutch Spiderman popsicles (complete with gumball eyes), just purchased from the same nearby convenience store; we already have an album full of photos together, the real reason I stop to take this one is to slow our walk, to stall for time in an effort to make the inevitable seem less inevitable; I have just finished crying because I am not ready to say goodbye to everything I’ve known this week and these past months.

(Actually, he is all I know since before we even meet. He is all I know since that day on the street in the rain, when we were just strangers who stood beside each other, umbrella to umbrella. After an afternoon spent casting sideways glances back and forth, I remembered how the rain dripped off his hood, plastering his hair to his forehead. I also remember studying the grey and green lines of his shoes, hopeful for a day when I would know the person wearing them.)

Seven months later and in a city two hours away, I am standing in a tiny bar when I see those very same shoes again. We meet for real this time, and it is easier and more natural than I anticipate. The air has not reached its summertime heat; it still sends a chill up my spine as we stand outside trying to fit as many words into our few minutes together, both wanting so desperately to know each other.

We fall into this knowing as the nights grow longer and the air grows warmer and stickier. Afternoons spent sipping beer on ivy-enclosed patios soon turns into dinners of sweet Asian noodles and nighttime walks in search of new favourite ice cream flavours. This falling together happens so quickly and so effortlessly that it feels like it has always been this way, that there never was a time when I didn’t know him. It sweeps me up so fast I barely have time to think, but when I do, I realize things feel different this time around, and I whisper these words to myself whenever I feel my most vulnerable.

As the days cool and grow darker quicker than before, we make weeklong plans in an effort to slow the arrival of such change. We take long drives down 400-series highways, outracing and outwitting it with the simple press of a pedal. There is talk of a meteor shower but I fall asleep beforehand, missing the sky’s farewell to summer. We roast marshmallows around a campfire instead, and still smell like the season weeks later. We refuse to welcome fall, so we continue to walk and walk and walk (and even run) after summer, not ready to bid our own farewells.

We keep on walking right into this photo. We know real life awaits but are both too hesitant to greet it, so instead we pause for a moment and lean a little closer, trying to create permanence with the click of a button.

taking the farm

Note: running home after one pint, two bottles and one cigarette (I know, I know) makes for an interesting experience. Your legs don't feel attached to your body and so you are flying through the air and singing "You seem a little on the high side, disconnected from me, been a little to anxious and a little too sweet" at the top of your lungs and you are flying flying flying for real this time and he didn't text you and you suddenly know he never will so you just keep on running faster and remember how he was always a little too anxious and a little too sweet.

tick tock

I'm someone that holds tight to the past and often suffers the consequences that follow. I'm also someone that compares the present to the past all too much. I like to compare present to past through contained units of time. For example, it's Easter this weekend, and I still remember exactly where I was a year ago. We were still a we and we were up north with his family and we were eating two kinds of pie and we were sipping wine and we were gobbling turkey and we were laughing laughing laughing and we were falling asleep in the bluest room and we were driving down 400-series highways and we were happy.

Sometimes a year seems like forever, and other times, like tonight, it feels like the blink of an eye. How did it get to this? How did I get here (alone)? Howhowhowhowhow?

And sometimes I think that I'll stop comparing present to past when I can no longer trace things back a year. A year and one month doesn't have the same ring to it. Or is this simply how long the mourning process takes? It may seem a tad dramatic and drawn out, but it can never be too dramatic or too drawn out when you and he were a we and the we of you were happy.

hounds f love

He said "I think in time this will make sense."

A week later, it still makes no sense. But a week later a cd from a faraway friend comes in the mail and the first song is this one and it makes me pull back my curtains and smile at the sun outside and not even notice the snow lining the sidewalks and a week later I'm excited about starting the day and I can't even think of one thing I'd tell him if he was still around. So a week later I don't understand but I accept and maybe that's all I can ask for.

born to run!

Despite the city's temporary return to winter, I couldn't help but walk with a bounce in my step today. Yes, the sky was grey and the streets were grey and I had spent all afternoon inside a grey library reading yellowed articles, but my always favourite song was playing and I felt at home running into a friend on a subway platform. For a moment, during that walk down a familiar street, everything fell into place and sense. There was a future awaiting me and I was eager to meet it. It felt okay that feelings fell short while too much else was felt. Felt feel feeling. I am always feeling but I was okay with that, too.

i understood every word that it said

There are nights where the loneliness and the adjusting all seems to be too much but then that song that will always always always be your favourite comes on and suddenly you are dancing and your arms are flailing and your eyes are closed and you do understand every word that it says and you may have lost him lost him lost him but you are dancing and your arms are flailing and summer doesn't seem so far away and for a fleeting second this loneliness feels liberating as opposed to heartbreaking and even though that feeling passes just as soon as it arrives it was there nonetheless and so you sing "I've lost you I've lost you I've lost you" and you are both happy and sad doing so.

the morning after

Second Note to Self: Do not, under any circumstances and no matter how drunk you are, think it is a good idea to proposition your ex of over four months for a late night reunion. Do not let him become your rebound of another rebound. Do not let him think you've been pining this whole time. And do NOT move backwards when forwards is the only way to go.

i'll find myself as i go home

Note to self: updating your blog well past last call and even the slightest bit intoxicated is always a bad idea if only for the total sense it makes in its complete lack of sense.

The first night spent out after a breakup is all sorts of lonely. Nevermind the couples following you from bar to bar to bar, or your phone that lies still instead of vibrating inside your purse, its the knowledge that you have no one to call on that walk home and no one to crawl into bed with and no one to see tomorrow or the day after that or the one after that after that after that. A night out with some of your best girls is most perfect when it ends with your best boy. Its those moments that happen in the midst of a conversation shouted over the noises of a crowded bar, those moments when you pause and touch your hand to your heart and remember how he'd hugged you just before you'd left and said "everytime I see you, you catch me in a new way" as the noises and conversations pull you back.

And as good as the beer tastes going down and as much as you laugh and share and connect, you can't help but check your watch and think about how you should probably get going soon so as not to wake him too late. And your heart thump thumps as you walk outside and reach for your phone and dial that familiar number and it rings once twice before his voice comes through and all you can think to say is "hi." And it might be winter and it might be summer, but either way it doesn't matter because that walk is the only thing standing between you and his warm bed and his warm arms and his warm kiss sending you to sleep.

So last night, sitting in a crowded bar with loud conversations and louder music coming from the jukebox, I laughed and I shared and I connected but I did not pause to touch my hand to my heart because there was no boy to miss and no boy to call and no boy to run home to. But now that I think about it, that never happened once over the past three months. His phone was off, or he was sleeping and I didn't feel free enough to wake him. So then I ask myself, what is it that I'm even missing? Sure there was sharing and connecting and laughing, and guards came crumbling down and futures were imagined and histories told, but at that moment when the beer is swimming through me and the lights are dimmed, I don't think about any of that stuff I call progress. It was always only ever anticipation for a late night reunion.

And so is this me 'accepting'? Or is this me realizing that sometimes people are rebounds even when they don't seem like it because they give you the hope of something more and something comforting and something familiar when that something is all you need to hold on to.

Yes, I'm still upset about what I've lost, but I'm begining to wonder what exactly that was.

replay

"Hold my hand before you leave. This is the last time we'll hold hands."

"Don't leave. Please?"

I've said these exact same phrases twice over the past four months. But they were said to two different boys four months apart. But they were said in the same doorway and on the same bed. They were said out of the same broken feeling and the same fear. But when I said these words the second time around, I didn't cry. All I could think about was calling the first boy who'd heard them and who I since hadn't spoken to.

And call him I did.

Is this all very telling? I think so.

Also, since we're talking about exes, happy birthday to you! I know you don't read this and hardly remember me at all anymore, but you're 25 today! How could I forget.

let go

Waking up is the worst. Waking up is the worst especially when the sun is streaming through your windows and the day outside looks beautiful and ready to be conquered and all you can do is replay the lines "I can't do this anymore. I don't feel enough of a connection to move forward" over and over and over again in your head.

Over and over and over you try to untagle these words and make sense of them. "I don't think we're compatible." That one doesn't make much sense when long talks were had and long emails were sent and long talks in bed were had and you laughed you laughed you laughed more than any other boy has made you laugh before.

And what was that about a connection? You felt it in the beginning and you know he did, too. You felt it on your birthday and you felt it when you were sleeping and you felt it when he kissed your forehead when he thought you were sleeping and you felt it when he brushed the hair from your eyes so gently when he thought you were sleeping and you felt it when he couldn't stop hugging and kissing you and saying how he couldn't tear himself away. And you felt that connection those three weeks he was gone and you waited impatiently from a word, anything, from across the sea. And those words came, they always came, and you felt a connection then. You felt a connection when he gave you a thimble from Paris and your heart sped up just a bit. You felt a connection when he returned and you never thought you could be so happy travelling familiar streets in the sun with him by your side.

You always felt a connection and you know he did, too, and so you can't understand when this connection fell away and how it could leave so suddenly.

But it left, or he likes to believe it so, and so you are left untangling yourself from those words and that apple pie and a late walk home and one thimble from Paris.

after hours

Oh, someday I know someone will look into my eyes and say hello you're my very special one

answer me. why won't you answer me?

The worrying and over-analyzing and constant blogging was warranted in the end.

What comes is better than what came before?

You tell me. I can't believe it anymore.