One Year Mark (Edited)

I stopped going to therapy because last time I went it felt as though I did not need it. As if for the first time in years I did not need to be guided carefully through the psychological minefield that was my brain.  So I have not made an appointment.

8:00am. Alarm. Get up. Shower. Get dressed. Eat breakfast.

The day started like any other but instead of leaving the house after breakfast I piled right back into bed, jeans and all. I did not get out of bed until 5:30 in the afternoon.

Instead, I took a mini-vacation. I disappeared into a land Netflix in bed with my roommate and endless amounts Sandra Bullock and Huge Grant love affairs. Usually, a gluttonous day like this would overwhelm me with guilt and induce jealousy in others but after hours of countless romantic comedies I realized that despite my best efforts, I’m still rather deeply depressed. I laughed and strategically told my roommate minutes before she left for work.

I am getting dangerously close to the one-year mark since my father passed away. 

While other little girls dreamt about their wedding dresses I fantasied about what my apartment would look like. When little girls started to notice their increased interest in boys I feared that I would never develop an opinion of my own. Never feeling strong enough or in charge enough I could not wait to be older and assume the responsibility that would come with my apartment. Especially the most grown up act of all time- doing laundry at a Laundromat.

I began writing this sitting in the alcove of my local Hollywood Laundromat, a place that on the wall highlights celebrities from James Dean to Arnold Schwarzenegger in all their sun-bleached glory. The Laundromat has it’s own certain charm with buzzing fluorescence lights and a touch of home with plastic patio chairs chained together to make up the waiting room. I always wait in the waiting room while my laundry goes round. I wait in the waiting room even though I live down the street; I always pictured myself with a book in the waiting room of my Laundromat so I wait. Every time I put cash into the moneychanger there is a twinge of nostalgia as if I have done it a hundred times before. I smooth out the edges of a five-dollar bill and anticipate every high-pitched ‘ting’ the quarters will make as they knock against the metal mouth. I’ve won the lottery.

That is it then. I’m all grown up. The little girl in me should be thrilled that I have an apartment of my very own with a Laundromat just a stone’s throw away.

Is it as simple as something is missing?

I see my dad almost every day now. If it is not his ties then it is his moustache. If it is not his moustache then it is his potbelly. His potbelly that he would tap announcing he shouldn’t eat the last slice because he didn’t want to ruin his girlish figure.

Something is slipping. 

The Langley house was packed shoulder to shoulder with people the day of the funeral. Wine and beer in abundance and the kitchen was full of cooks with hundreds of casseroles, frozen lasagnas and blueberry pancakes. Fewer people came by the next day. The day after that a few less until it was only my sister and I and a fridge full of leftovers. After a month or so people stopped asking how I was doing. After three I started to meet people who had no idea. When the one-year mark hits it is proof that I have lived through this past year and continued to build a life. Here, in my apartment with my Laundromat and something missing.

In the middle of loading my colours into the washing machine I called my therapist. Again, I had fallen in the trap of thinking that not crying meant I am doing better than ever. Generally speaking the opposite is true. Something is about to snap.

 

whoops

I’m an unforgiving person. I don’t forgive myself so I don’t forgive others. It has taken some time to figure out just why I’m so mad at myself. What is it that I have to atone for?

I was 17 when my mother passed away from breast cancer. The next logical step for me as a teenager was to throw myself into school work, graduate with honours, ride out my current relationship till it ended at 19 and then, only then did I see it appropriate to dive head first into denial and begin debaucherously drinking and sleeping around. Obviously.

Then when that was over, I spent the rest of my adult life pushing myself far away from that person. I became obsessed with personal growth and pushing myself to always be just a little bit better. I aimed to become the responsible well adjusted adult that stands here before you today.

I don’t know if you can tell where this story is going but that constant push to become better and better and better is like stretching an elastic an inch, an inch, an inch. There comes a day when it just snaps.

Whatever the reason was that I hated myself, didn’t matter, I just left it back there with 17 year old me, and didn’t look back.

And the further from 17, the further i got from 19 the further I got form 20 the more angry and unforgiving I became. Whatever I had left back there got buried deeper and deeper each year getting the final push down when my father passed away a year ago.

I always thought that 17 was old enough to lose my mom. Of course I wished I hadn’t lost her at 17 but all things considered I thought that was old enough so I didn’t have any sympathy for her, 17 year old me. She was old enough to drink and sleep around so she was an adult enough and I didn’t want to pity her. I thought I was angry at her for being irresponsible. I thought that’s why I didn’t forgive myself when I was 17.

It took a hell of a fight with a good friend of mine to see what was really going on. You see my friend had been acting like myself when I was a teenager, drinking too much, partying to hard, and avoiding reality at all costs and I couldn’t forgive her because she looked so much like me, and I really really hated me. After a while my anger toward my friend wouldn’t subside, nothing was calming me down, I was livid. It had gone beyond being upset at my friend and now was tapping on the side of something buried much much deeper.

Remember the snapping of the elastic I mentioned earlier, yeah this is it. I didn’t hate myself for drinking too much as a teenager, the anger I was feeling was disproportionate considering the relatively inoffensive affair that happened years ago. So I kept asking myself what on earth did 17 year old me DO that I can’t even begin to forgive her.

I pictured her in my head, 17 year old me, sitting on the stairs of her highschool feeling old and alone waiting for her dad to pick her up to take her to the hospital to see her dying mother and for the first time I saw how young 17 actually is. Then it hits me. The reason I can’t forgive myself, the reason I can’t forgive 17 year old me is because as I was sitting on those steps, waiting for my dad, I thought I had killed my mother. I couldn’t forgive myself because I thought I killed my mom.

I’d never seen it before because that logic is totally irrational so I never considered it, I know breast cancer is why my mother died, I was there at the hospital, I saw the x-rays, I cut her hair when she started to lose it, I saw the treatments. But at 17 I made the connection that somehow it was my fault and I never let myself forget that and I could never forgive myself for killing her.

Realizing this was the first step, as much as I hate hearing that it’s true. My relationship with 17 year old me is now on the mend and I’m hoping that from this I could learn to be just a little bit more forgiving.

"You’re going to discover that conversations are best at 4am. The heavier the eyelids, the sincerer the words. Those are the talks you’ll remember. It’s okay not to know the answer and silence is not awkward. It’s shared, so share it more often than not."

Jeff Stuckel  (via wethinkwedream)

(Source: c-onstance, via allvessels)

One-year mark

I stopped going to therapy. I did this because last time I went I didn’t feel like I needed it, almost like for the first time in years, I didn’t need to be guided carefully through the minefield of different emotional states, so I haven’t made an appointment.

—-

I happily spent the day in bed two weeks ago. I woke up to my alarm at 8:00am and continued to get up, shower, dress and eat breakfast like any other morning but instead of leaving the house to get on with my day I piled right back into bed, jeans and all. I didn’t get out of bed until 5:30 in the afternoon. Usual a lazy day like that overwhelms me with guilt and induces jealousy in others but in retrospect I had to take that mini vacation. That mini vacation of watching endless amounts of Netflix in my bed with my roommate gave me enough distance to recognize that, despite my best efforts, I’m still rather, deeply depressed. After hours of quirky sitcoms and bad romantic comedies, I came back to reality I laughed and told my roommate, strategically minutes before she left for work, that I am in fact still quite depressed.

I am getting dangerously close to the one-year mark since my father passed away and each day I have these little moments that affirm that this is in fact my life now. These moments always throw me for a loop because when I was a little girl I always dreamed of being older, I didn’t like that I never felt responsible enough, I always fantasied about my adult life and was dying to know what my apartment would look like. I dreamed of all the responsibility I’d have with this shiny, grown-up apartment and I knew I’d have to complete the most adult act of all time. That being of course doing my laundry at a Laundromat.

I began writing this sitting in the alcove of my local Hollywood Laundromat, a place that on the wall highlights all the big hitter celebrities in all their sun-bleached glory. The Laundromat has it’s own certain charm with buzzing fluorescence lights and a touch of home with plastic patio chairs chained together to make up the waiting room. I always wait while my laundry goes round, I always wait in the waiting room even though I live down the street; I always pictured myself with a book in the waiting room of my Laundromat so I wait. Every time I put cash into the money changer there is a twinge of nostalgia, as if it’s something I’ve done a hundred times over and over and over again in another life. Every time I put a five-dollar bill in that machine it’s a moment I cherish and it’s a moment just for me. I know it seems silly to place such importance on a money changer and the arduous task of hauling your laundry to a public place to wash it but to me, this act of leaving the house to do laundry at the comically time warped Laundromat is the physical manifestation of having grown up. I’ve waited a long to be able to develop a relationship with a Laundromat.

So if I’m doing laundry at a Laundromat that means I’ve grown up or am growing up but how grown up can I really be if I still think a Laundromat is a magical place. I’m either in my grown up stage or I’m on my way there and there are these moments I stand in the mirror and just stare at myself, just really taking a look and I’m met with nothing but confusion. I’m not complaining about my new grown up life, I mean look at it, I have an apartment of my own, an education, a job, a Laundromat which are all good things, I guess I just don’t quite see it, I don’t quite feel like it clicks. Maybe it’s as simple as something is missing.

I see my dad almost every day now. If it’s not his ties that I see than it’s his moustache. If it’s not his moustache that I see it’s his potbelly that he’d tap saying he shouldn’t eat the last slice because he didn’t want to ruin his girlish figure. The pictures of my mom and dad have started to animate and I don’t always recognize my own voice. Something is slipping. 

When I lost dad, one of the harder things was when people slowly stopped coming by the house. The day of dad’s funeral the house was packed with people, the next day a couple less, the day after a few less than before and this progressed until it was just my sister and I. After a month or so people stopped asking how I was doing, after three I started to meet people who had no idea. It feels like I’ll lose credibility when the one year mark hits like I’m expect to have less of a reason to be upset because I’m far from the day it happened. The one-year means that I have in fact lived through this year and continued to build a life, here, in my apartment with my Laundromat only a stones throw away with something missing.

—-

In the middle of loading my colours into the washing machine I called my therapist. Again I fell in the trap of thinking that not talking and not crying means I’m doing better than ever when generally speaking the opposite is true, that something is about to snap.

typefaceportraits:

Prose Portrait by Dave Bidini, Word on the Street, 2012

My type portrait at Word on the Street, Toronto by Dave Bidini.

On August 14th 2012 I walked out onto stage at the at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho. I walked out and told a story at The Moth, a not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to the art and craft of oral storytelling. How it works is there is a theme to the evening and anyone who has prepared a story puts their name in a hat and throughout the evening ten storytellers get picked to come up. Since hearing about The Moth two years ago I’ve held the quiet desire to participate but never believed that The Moth was in the cards for me. Over the summer, realizing that I’m a writer and performer I finally saw a way into the quiet dream of telling a story at The Moth. This night’s theme was About Time.

All day before The Moth I was nervous as all hell, could barely eat kind of nervous. My fear that I’d blank and forget my story in front of such a huge audience was debilitating. As you will see in the video attached, my worst fear came true. Half way through the story I hit a wall and all the words that I’d poured my energy into, the whole rest of my story just evaporated and I ended up on stage standing in silence. On stage, this moment felt like an eternity and watching the video last night I saw how it was only a momentary hiccup.

This event was the culmination of my summer, evidence of the intensive work I’d done with grief and loss. To be very honest, I am damn proud of myself.

Run down of 21days of Joyful Exercises

On August 13^th 2012, after developing the irritating inclination to thinking things to death which would result in becoming removed from things like being playful and cheery, my good friend and I agreed to complete one act of joy, every day for twenty one days as an attempt to try and shift our habits. We defined “act of joy” as an activity that you do for yourself with the sole purpose of bringing you joy.

This is how those twenty-one days panned out.

 —-

Day one: Jumped on my bed.

Day two: Four somersaults in a public park followed by running home as fast as I could.

Day three: Wrote only in pink pen all day.

Day four: Listened to top forty songs while trying on different combinations of outfits.

Day five: Got a foot massage.

Day six: Did four handstands in my apartment with Devin’s help.

Day seven: Made out with Devin on the couch, high school style.

Day eight: Day eight landed on the day I flew back to Toronto, so as an act of joy and as an act of indulgence I had a large glass of white wine on the plane.

Day nine: Did not complete.

Day ten: Yelled ‘push it’ loudly in silly voice as I speedily biked through changing streetlights. I was with my best friend and we laughed and yelled all the way home.

Day eleven: Cartwheels with a friend in park.

Day twelve: No purposeful acts of joys but the first half of my day I was preoccupied with a moderately sized freak out about my old, ‘bad’ habits from Toronto superseding the good habits developed in New York. It wasn’t so much an act of joy but eventually I had to force myself up, off the couch and out the door where I then hopped on my bike to meet a friend. Spent the afternoon in the sun, followed by ice cream in more of the same sun. Biking home, I felt relieved and I cruised my way around the neighbourhood and ended up in front on my Nanny’s house. I rang her up, popped by and caught up. The day continued being social and pleasant where I then went to dinner with my sister and followed that with a celebration pint for her fiancé new job.

Day thirteen: My intended act of joy was to make ‘whoo-hoo’ sounds while I biked downtown. It turned out to be incredibly challenging to build up the courage to make such noises. Finally when I had just enough courage to make any sound, the sound that ended up coming out was not what I expected, in fact it was more of a yelp than a yell.

Day fourteen: Walked as slow as I possibly could down a tree-lined street.

Day fifteen: Surfed in the connecting part of the TTC subway car. To explain this a little further, recently some of the subways have been replaced with one long stretch of a subway car with a couple points that bend like an accordion. There are streetcars that like this along Queen Street and as I kid I’d always stand in the middle, on the part that bends, in hopes we’d turn a corner. On the streetcars it was never that impressive but on this subway, on this day, the satisfied the kid in me and then some; this subway ride I lost my balance. It was awesome.

Day sixteen through nineteen: Did not complete

Day twenty: Made plans to get dressed up and go to a fancy dinner and dress up Sex-in-the-City style which actually turned into a night-in with two good friends while I unpacked my suitcases and moved back into my apartment.

Day twenty-one: I slept in.

—-

It wasn’t always easy complete an act of joy everyday, as you can see by a number of my days that I did not do one but after three weeks of trying, when I’m stressed, I can remember to take a minute to do a handstand. 

Big Picture Griever

Yesterday was the first day of school. Being the eager beaver that I am with an intelligence complex, I still get overly excited about the first day of school.
After flying about campus, catching up with friends and visiting the library, I went home to decompress in my old/new apartment to do the readings for next week. Something didn’t feel right, something wasn’t in line and I felt antsy. I felt the urge to head out and sit with someone over a pint, somewhere that isn’t here.

—-

I’ve never started a school semester without parental support before. My mother was the one who took me back-to-school shopping and after she died my dad, hesitantly but valiantly, took up the handle of going ‘girl shopping’, which meant I didn’t know exactly want I wanted when entering a store. It was awkward at first but after a while he hid his discomfort well, and I tried to shop fast. As I got older, to my surprise, he started suggesting clothes for me at the stores. All of which I would buy. All of which were something my mother would have bought.

—-

I wanted to make my parents proud. I normally would go to my parents and show them how smart I was getting and show them how engaged I was in class and how important my contribution to the group discussion has been. And today, busily reading the weekly reading, I didn’t have that outlet. I didn’t have my dad on the first day of school and it hit me in a  very young place.

While discussing this later in the evening, as in venting to my roommate over a pint… or two, she calls attention to the fact that, in all of this, I’ve been a ‘big picture griver’. I treat grief as a theoretical opposition that can be thought about and manoeuvred through so as to eventually develop a mutual understanding between grief and I. I spend my time thinking about the effects of grief not the effects of losing my mother and father.

Obviously, there are benefits and disadvantages to being someone who approaches grief in a ‘big picture’ way. One benefit is acknowledging thoughts that arise about my parents but still be able to continue with my day.This system only became effective after allowing analytic thinking about grief to keep thoughts of crying all day at bay. Generally speaking, when I catch myself thinking about the smaller facts about the loss of my parents, I don’t cry because I have the big picture card to play: Everyone has to grow up someday, Eventually, everyone has to take care of themselves and my time is now. This keeps debilitating crying fits at bay.

The trouble is that the ‘big picture’ approach is like a poorly built dam, it only catches so much before it breaks. Every so often, when my dam springs a leak, I fall into a state of panic when I catch myself thinking about my parents because that means, that seconds earlier, I wasn’t thinking about my parents which leads to guilt. The barrier I’ve developed is great for productivity especially going back into school, work and the accumulating side projects, but when those thoughts, those little sad facts spring a leak in my dam, they knock me down hard. Yesterday’s little thought was I wish I could tell my dad about my first day of school.

Because it was really really great.

My readers,

I must write to you and explain my absence. Through the move back to Toronto I’ve been readjusting to my life here and my writing has taken the biggest hit. 

The dust is settling now and I’m in the works of two blog posts, one being a run down of all the activities I did for the 21 Days of Joyful Exercises and the other about being a “big picture” griever and the benefits and issues with that. 

My absence from writing has only pointed toward just how integral and necessary my writing is to me. So it’s coming, I’m just wading through some dust!

Day 14 of Joyful Exercises

Today’s joyful exercise was different. Different in the sense that it wasn’t planned like the other acts of joy, for example going to Morningside Park for somersaults. It also wasn’t youthful and active like the cartwheels, handstands and biking I’ve been doing. It was different because it came naturally and was followed by gratitude. For my joyful exercise I walked as slowly and as calmly as I possibly could back to my sister’s place in the beaches when Bob Dylan’s Forever Young came on my iPod.

When I’d catch myself naturally picking up the pace I’d tell my body to walk even slower than when I had first started. Yes, I had to get back to my sister’s but on a lazy Sunday like this, there was no need to get there quickly, so I swung one leg in front of the other, dangling it in between strides and took deep breaths. I could start to listen to what Dylan was trying to tell me.

May you have a strong foundation when the wind of changes shift.

I looked up at the lush, tree lined street and saw Toronto in a new light, I saw myself in a new light.

Toronto, my foundation, remind me to sway when the wind of changes shift.

I was worried I’d come back without having learned anything in New York but today’s joyful exercise showed me that I have, and that I have come back. I cried joyfully as I walked home.

After six slow days of being off balance, angry and scared, today felt like a breath of fresh air. It was familiar because I recognized an emotion I felt only during my last month in New York but was unfamiliar because I’d never experienced this emotion amongst the complications of Toronto. Today, my two lives began to mix and I tasted the beauty of who this mix can be.