the moon is gazing at me as I write this. I take this as a sign to go forward.
By the time I was twenty-three, I was choking. I was choking on my past and its demons - I was suffocating on the wrongs I'd committed out of self-preservation. I call it suffocating because, as is human reflex, you take as many breaths as you can when you feel yourself sealed into a tiny space. Like being buried alive - and yet there is only enough oxygen for a limited number of breaths. and it is so important to ration these breaths, to try to preserve the amount of air available to you. (a muddled analogy, I agree). And so, in Winnipeg, I had used up all that extra-air. I was into my reserves. And if I didn't get out quick, there was not going to be any more air to breathe. I was treading in the undertow of a city that I couldn't dry out of my veins, my bones; I couldn't clear the air because everything surrounding me, were the same things keeping my head under the water.
I escaped.
Montreal was a strategic decision. I'd chased love all over this continent before; the problem is that I never expected to fall in love with the place. I only allowed myself to focus on the people, or person, who I knew. So I came here to Montreal with little foresight...just the promise of someone.
unsurprisingly, this promise too waned. That's okay. I haven't spoken to the supposed catalyst of all my Eastern-provincial pain in months. I go days without so much as i-wonder-how-he's-doing passingthought. I realized an important lesson that is so much easier said and written than it ever is acted out. We can only depend on ourselves. My problem is that I faced that dilemma, so very unsure of exactly who I was. Yes I could find as many adjectives as there are synonyms to describe myself, but these words did not make up who I was. It is the words,the images, the smiles, the tears, the fits, the rage, the passion that make up me. If emotion were an element, it would be somewhere between earthairfirewater and most certainly would include "storm".
Like a tornado, all these emotions get spun together - all these fragments of what make up me- and they spin, almost mockingly, around and around. It's clear in the center, in the eye of the storm - but what is calm when there are millions of particles of confusion swirling around and around. Calm is isolation. Calm is relative. Calm can even be pain. Calm is clear, and yet so much is involved with finding that clarity.
No, when I arrived in Montreal, I didn't see my boyfriend breaking up with me. I didn't see me exploring photography. I didn't see myself working in a bar. I didn't foresee the stress and frustration that could come with a move.
Of course and absolutely I only saw warm nights with someone I love, companionship, exploration, and, at the time most importantly, a hiding place. I was only as accessible as I wanted to be; and the person by my side, understood that.
What he didn't understand, and what I failed to notice, was myself. Maybe not even myself...maybe just the important things that contribute to making up me.
These stories have such a way...
This has spoken to me:
M followed his heart. Youngest in a large family, he watched siblings leave for other countries; watched his parents age at a steady rate. Watched his country transform. He met a beautiful woman, with whom he shared so much. Until she too moved. He made the bold step when she came back to visit, that he would follow in her footsteps, and they would have all the love for one another, just in a warmer environment. An environment where you could flourish.
So, on his own, of his own accord, he traversed.
M arrived to have six months of wonder, linguistic revolution, cultural blindsidedness... with all the trust he could muster packed into the heart and arms of this one woman.
it's of poetic magnitude.
M came home early one day and things were no longer as they had seemed.
M saw her for the first time 9 months later...her labour imminent.
Somehow, with little language, with no leads, with few contacts and even fewer friends, he picked himself up.
He enrolled in a college. He learned English. He found a job. He took out a loan. He bought all the pre-requisites for his college's program. He found a place to live.
In May 2010, M graduated. Perhaps this was his greatest impediment. Because when the world's doors opened, the bank's doors closed. Crushed under the weight of a multiple-thousand dollar loan debt, he struggled to make ends meet. Promoted to assistant manager at work, he saw possibility. Hope.
Instead, things gradually became worse. Unable to pay back the school, and the bank, and the rent, he suddenly had to prioritize. So his final tuition never was paid, which meant he never received his diploma, which, obviously, meant no proof of graduating. Except for his own self-assuredness, he to this day knows not whether he graduated from the international-student-rate of $20,000- per-year college program. Why not university that would provide more international-student-friendly services? He didn't qualify based on his lack of language.
Without his diploma, he could not start a career in his field of study. A field he could excel at.
With his paycheques, M was able to cover the interest of his debt - for awhile. But, still not his tuition. Not his credit card. He was only working to pay the rent and the food and the bills - shooting his credit down the hole. As a trained videographer, he had to choose between camera or editing equipment. He went with the latter. But that severely narrowed his prospects for even freelance work. Indeed, to make money off his chosen field of study, he'd have to find a camera.
M continued to work, with his boss promising a promotion at a to-be-announced date.
M fell in love with a girl. A girl who was a breath of fresh air. One night, amid miscommunication, M became really angry. In a celebratory-gone-angry bend, M overdrank his capacity. When a group of people started to fight, he tried to break it up. The group turned on him, and by the morning, he was lying in the hospital. Depressed, hurt, injured, and lonely, his self-respect quickly fell apart. He disappeared.
When he reappeared, he was still a broken soul. A dishonest man. A lost child. At work one day, he picked up 10kgs of weight at once, and suffered a back injury that saw him back into the hospital. Immobile. Unable to feed himself. Unable to stand. Unable to sit. Unable to move. No communication, and only one person with whom he could express himself.
His claim for compensation for a workplace injury was turned down.
M said to me one day "Enjoy your day. You have your health. You have your education. You have someone who loves you, and opportunity."
I realized that M does not. Not yet a citizen of Canada, he can not leave the country. With no money being earned for over a month, and with his claim being denied, he no longer has any income, any health benefits. His desire to have attended a university-level language class beginning in January did not come to fruition. He has no credit. no matter how he prioritizes, it is going to be the struggle of a lifetime.
He....chased love. He came here on the promise of an ever-after.
Let me not be so rash.
I am waking up at the same time every morning
I am drinking less
I am already noticing a change in myself and attitude.
I am attracting people; the right type of people. The people I seem to surround myself with are mostly in their mid-30s and older, but that's okay. Perhaps not best-friend-material, but truly sustaining in a city that I am only recently opening myself up to.
School truly feels to be a burden right now, but I'm on a path. Some people believe in me. The ones who don't, or who didn't...aren't in my life anymore. My struggle is my own and, despite the storm, the clarity that comes with the calmness of this notion makes the maelstrom of emotion not only tolerable but necessary.
I know the things I want to spend my time doing. I know I just need more time to do them. Of all the 30-something year-olds I spend time with, not one of them lives regretably. Not one of them says "I wish I had as much time as you did." or "I wish I were as young as you are now". Maybe it's because they don't know how young I am; or maybe it's because they're truly happy with who they are. How they came to be there.
Given everything, I wouldn't change a thing.
This goofy girl still exists. I had the pleasure of re-meeting her when I went away for a few days.
xox
really.
