Giving Up Shopping for Lent.

Those who know me probably know two things about me: 1) That I’m not Catholic; 2) That I LOVE to shop. So they might be wondering why it would be important to me to give up that which I love, in the name of a religion I’m adamantly, and never have been a part of. The reason being, I have a shopping problem. And Lent is a prescribed 40-day deadline in which people give up that which they love. So I’m not Catholic. So what? I’ve decided to become a part of a fine tradition of giving things up for this 40-day period anyways.

My shopping problem is mostly with clothes but sometimes I find, I wander through the day just coming up with things that I need to own for a variety of reasons. But, the thing  is — I never end up with things that I ‘need’; for instance, I need dishes. Actual dishes. I’ve been eating off of cheap plastic plates and Ziploc containers for the last three months. But, instead of dishes I have a barrage of new sundresses, jackets, jeans, fun shirts, boots, and a new clutch purse ‘for the bar’. It’s ridiculous. Why do I have all this stuff?

Shopping is a two-tiered problem. The first of those problems is, “How can I afford to pay for all this stuff?” The second of those problems is, “Where to I put all this stuff?”

I live in a 700-square foot apartment (in a hotel, but that’s not relevant to the story). And I’m looking around my living room right now and it’s actually surrounded by mountains of stuff — in bags, in boxes, sitting on its own, unopened or opened… just surrounded. I feel like a hoarder. I’m not though… yet. But sometimes I look at all this shit I don’t need and wonder if I could end up that badly someday. I don’t WANT to get there. I want to stop this before it gets real! But that doesn’t solve the problem of what do I do with all this stuff?

Once you acquire stuff, it’s much harder to get rid of than if you’d never bought it at all. Belongings (or at least, a select number of them) become a part of who you are; they define you — what you love, what you treasure, what you hold dear, what ‘stuff’ defines you emotionally. And when you look back at all your stuff you recall a time when you bought it, and why. And it becomes difficult to part with. And even if you did part with it, how do you part with it? Do you sell it? Give it away? Who do you give it to? How do you get it to them? When I finally clean up this mess of mountains of crap, how do I organize it? It just creates more problems than just leaving it on the shelf ever would…

Giving up something that you once perceived as important is a powerful step to exorcise your demons. It hasn’t even been a week yet since the start of Lent, but I want to feel like I exorcised. I want to feel like I’m lacking something in my life and find other more productive ways to fill that lack rather than with belongings. I want to become more appreciative of what I have rather than pining for what I don’t. Lent seems to be about the best way for me right now to really feel that feeling and see how the anxiety can continually disappear on its own.

On Negative Self-Talk: STOP IT.

My entire life has been filled with bullies.

In Elementary school, the girl I referred to as my Arch-Nemesis would follow me around the playground calling me a “fat dyke” and continually asking me if I was going to cry in this maniacal baby voice, until I did cry, and then she would laugh at my weakness in front of everyone.

When I was in junior high, I used to pull my hair out (apparently there’s a name for that ‘disorder’; it’s called Trichotillomania) and these two older girls followed me around and taunted me for my bald spot and called me an ‘old man’. I was made fun of by all the girls in my class because I changed in the bathroom stall and not in public like everyone else.

In grade nine, I was teased relentlessly for, of all things, being a huge fan of the Beatles. These girls in my class were taking suggestions for songs to give to the DJ prior to our upcoming school dance and one of them said to me, “Well you don’t get to pick because if it was up to you, we’d just hear shitty old music.”

In high school, this guy in my class, Brian, made me cry in front of everyone in our Biology class; he was calling my friend a “cradle robber” because her boyfriend was a couple of years younger than her and I stood up for her and then he went on this huge rant about how useless women were and how she, nor I, nor any other woman, was useful or contributing. Essentially, he was an idiot. But with teenage emotions running high, for the first time in my life I was actually offended (very little offends me) and I ran out into the hallway crying.

In my second year of university, I was shunned by all my floormates – especially the girls who were all crushing on and sleeping with all the guys on our floor and asking my friend and me why we were even there in the first place. Why were we there? Because we were paid to be; we were students; we were entitled to live under a drama and scrutiny-free roof. But instead, we were left totally ignored and disliked for a miserable eight months.

At my last job, half of my job title was “Event Assistant” and what this entailed was doing extraordinarily unpleasant donkey work for a 24-year old anti-Christ who was rude, condescending, bossy, and conniving. I’ve never, ever worked with someone so unpleasant and discouraging. Everything I did was totally wrong, but I received no training, encouragement or know-how from her whatsoever. She was the definition of this newly discussed phenomenon of the ‘workplace bully’.

I’m sure that many, many other people’s lives are not too dissimilar to mine; the passive-aggressive neighbour, the snide boyfriend you should dump, that friend who creates rapports with people entirely based on sarcasm and ‘gentle’ ribbing, the rude coworker, your overly-strict and nosy parents, etc. The world is filled with bullies. The world is filled with people whose sole pleasures are to bring you down a peg, make you feel small, disable you and disempower you. Maybe you too, have been in a position where you are continuously disempowering someone. Maybe that someone is yourself.

It has been said many, many times that “we’re our own worst critics” or “we’re our own worst enemies”; this very often is true. But the thing I’d like to know is why is it true? Why do we compare ourselves to others? Why do we put ourselves down? Why are we recirculating and reiterating this culture of bullying and bullies within ourselves as well?

If you were a bullied kid, you probably came home from school discouraged and hurt, and asked yourself, and your parents, “Why is So-and-So picking on me?!” and there was no answer. Maybe your parents said something like, “Because they’re just mean” or “Because they’re jealous of you”, but really… these answers aren’t really that logical, there’s no way to prove their veracity, nor do they take away the pain of being bullied at a constant. How come it’s okay to ask these questions of others but not ourselves?

Why do you put yourself down?

Is it because it makes you feel good? That’s impossible to believe. If it doesn’t ‘feel good’ when someone else does it, why does it make you feel good when you do it? If people are scrutinizing your weight and then you go and scrutinize your own weight, you’re being just as bad as they are, and I guarantee you they’re not making you feel good.

Is it because you’re consoling your own dissatisfaction? Well that’s a piss-poor attitude, isn’t it? Think about it: Something didn’t work out for you. Or you’re not as pretty or lucky in the gene pool as some A-Lister on the cover of People magazine who you don’t know, and never will. So you’re going to say, “Well – that’s it. I’m a terrible, ugly, awful, awkward hideous human being”? COME ON. Society has set some sort of unattainable standards that we can’t match up to and this has become an inherent truth about the world. But do you really want to let yourself contribute to the ‘norm’ being to hate yourself for not being able to reach those goals? Wouldn’t you rather be part of an empowering solution?

Is it because you want to put yourself down before others can put you down? Have others put you down ever? Are you that mistrusting of mankind that you feel the need to bring yourself down to make mankind’s plague on you easier on yourself? Also, do you really feel that putting yourself down first is going to stop the bullies of the world from casting cruel, judgmental eyes on your weary, un-confident soul? They will. And then you’re getting this BS from them, and from yourself.

Is it because you really believe that what you’re saying about yourself is true?

I understand. I’ve been there  (maybe I’m even still there) and I know what it feels like to legitimately feel inadequate; to feel you’re a lesser person than everyone else, to believe that what others are saying to you is true. Even so though, don’t the people who care about you tell you otherwise? Why do you disregard the positive things they’re saying about you but count your enemies’ opinions as valid reflections of who you are and what you look like? Why do you allow yourself to become part of this myth that’s created about you? Do you really, truly believe that when you walk down the street, everyone is looking at you and pointing and laughing and scrutinizing and judging and saying to themselves s and each other, “Wow, look at her! What a loser! She’s hideous! She’s way less pretty than Kim Kardashian or Kate Winslet or Rachael McAdams…” Um, no. And even if they were, what do you care? You don’t know these people. Their opinions mean less than nothing to you, and why should they? Why should complete strangers ‘opinions about you matter more than your own opinions of yourself, to the point where they affect your opinion of yourself!?

Nobody has the power to take your power away from you. Say this to yourself. Believe it. Read it. Write it like lines on a chalkboard, over and over and over and over until it sinks in, makes sense, is as plain as black and white. NOBODY HAS THE POWER TO TAKE YOUR POWER AWAY FROM YOU. Nobody that is, except for you. You can disempower yourself; you can put yourself down; you can hate yourself until you’re blue in the face and you actually will end up hating yourself, perhaps until you actually are blue in the face if it comes to that. But if you maintain, inside yourself, that you are a worthwhile person who is deserving of love and deserves to feel pretty, smart, wanted, creative, talented and able to achieve your goals… you take back your power.

I know a few people, and I’m sure there are billions that I don’t know – who are charming, funny, witty, smart, caring, beautiful, strong, intelligent and simply put, amazing – but don’t believe at all that they are. And it makes me so sad to see someone who squanders their own power like that for absolutely no reason at all.

So can I empower you for a moment, if I may? I was watching this documentary on TLC the other week about a 13-year old girl who has Progeria, an extremely rare genetic disease that rapidly ages very young children who typically, due to all kinds of complications, don’t live past their mid-twenties.  This girl has alopecia, she dislocated her hip and had to wear a brace so heavy, she was unable to go to school anymore. Life has truly been catastrophically unlucky and unfair to this girl (it is estimated that Progeria occurs 1 in 8 million births and there are only approximately 140 reported cases of the disease in recorded medical history) and as she mentions, all of her friends that she’s met at various get-togethers for kids with Progeria are dying; at one point, she addresses, quite plainly, that she could be next. This young girl wrote a book about her experiences with the disease; she did speeches at major universities to thank medical researchers who are investigating the disease. She is well-spoken, intelligent, and to me, seemed to exist with a quiet confidence well beyond her thirteen years. This girl is on her death bed after challenge after challenge after challenge. Think about this for a moment.

Nobody wears self-deprecation well. It’s annoying; it’s like going to a birthday party as a kid and being the one who gets driven home early, crying because the cake was chocolate instead of vanilla. It’s not attractive, and it doesn’t make sense, and while I firmly, and always have believed that you can’t compare people to other people under any circumstances and we live inside our own experiences to the point that those are all we know, I feel that people take for granted things like their health, family and friends, the fact that they can walk around, scratch their own leg, and sit out in the sun, listen to music, and even just breathe normally without complications. These are things we don’t think about. And hopefully we never have to.

The bottom line is, there is no logic behind negative self-talk. None. None at all. At ALL. You’re only injuring yourself and inviting and welcoming negativity everywhere you go for any reason that you see fit. There’s no reason for being so unkind to yourself whatsoever. It’s unkind to yourself to stab yourself in the heart with a huge machete but are you going to go and do that? Probably not.

So stop. Stop allowing yourself to be one of society’s bullies. Stop perpetuating myths about yourself. Stop taking for granted that which makes you not just special, but human as well. And most certainly, stop allowing it to be okay, socially acceptable, normal, ‘right’, and somehow bettering, to see yourself negatively. Just stop.

Life Is.

Life is a carnival; it is a non-stop smorgasbord of the unexpected. It involves thousands of people, both memorable and not; rides; the feeling of cheating death; the chance of actually cheating death, and the fact that you’re having such a good time, you forget that you’re doing just that. There is food and choices and sunshine with a chance of showers, or showers with a mix of sun and cloud, and horses and games of chance and countless opportunities to ask yourself, “What do I do next?” There are risks that result in both revelation or disappointment. Life is a carnival.

Life is a tapestry. It is an intricately-woven, finely crafted depiction of who you are made up of various squares of fabric and different colours of sturdy thread. Upon close inspection of this life as a tapestry, each thread, stitch and piece of soft, plushy fabric are visible; you run your hands along the seams that you created, remembering at the time how hard it was to cut, to surge, at that particular moment; or how lovely and cozy it was to stay inside while it pattered rain down the side of the house, how the windows were foggy and gray and speckled with rain, while you worked quiet and diligent on your beautiful tapestry.

Life is a house with many bedrooms. It was built by someone like you who envisioned it a certain way but ran into some problems along the way; the plumbing, the plot of land, the foundation, ran into unexpected roadblocks and the house was redesigned again and again. Over the years, its occupants moved bedrooms, converted rooms into other rooms, replaced old furniture and fixtures with new ones. But it still sits on the same foundation that was created, however it was created. The occupants don’t always know, until someone tells them or reminds them – this is the house that was originally going to be built, and look at how it stands and what it looks like today. Some houses are identical to their vision, almost painstakingly so; and others are a heap of added-on rooms, multi-coloured shingles, and scattered renovations. And there is always a room that is filled with childhood relics but remains unoccupied today.

An Open Letter to All the Men in My Past:

First Crush, when you handed me that evaluation on my Remembrance Day art project, you wrote “Miya, never quit art; I can tell you have talent.” And I didn’t quit art for ages actually, because of you. Not only that, but I kept that evaluation stored safely in my journal at the time in a little zip locked baggie. For all I know, it still sits there among the other detritus of my teenage years. I kept that because it was all I had of yours; you were in your twenties and totally gorgeous; meanwhile, I was fourteen and ugly, large and hopelessly awkward; so much so that I could barely look at you. I remember when I learned that other girls also liked you I felt less pathetic but by the same token, jealous; those other girls were prettier and more mature than I was and they would have had a better chance with you. So, I hid in the corner and said nothing because I knew my place.

Morgan, I think the reason I liked you is for a few reasons: firstly because my friend did too, and therefore I jumped on this bandwagon; secondly, because you were the ‘hot’ popular athlete that everyone loved to be around. Additionally, you were the best of a bad lot. It was no wonder so many girls liked you; we were all aroused teenagers coming into our own and there you were – this walking wet dream compared to everyone else in school. I had never talked to you, really, save for three times: the first being on the elementary school playground when my friend and I had given you that fruit roll-up that had been dropped on the ground and stepped on unbeknownst to you, and then we laughed at you when you ate it. The second being in grade 10 English when I dropped my pencil and you picked it up for me and I thanked you. The third was during what was the ballsiest moment of my high school career; when I asked you to dance to Shake Ya Ass by Mystikal at one of our high school dances, and you agreed to do so. Then the song ended abruptly and you bailed. Despite that I spoke to you all of these three times, I was obsessed. I even had a photo of you in a frame that I kept on my desk that someone had acquired from a pile of yearbook castoffs. But, I didn’t stand a chance with you. In fact, I believe if you knew about all this, you’d have been really, really mean about it if only because that’s the kind of person you were; the kind of person who didn’t have time to bother with girls who were fat and un-popular like me.

Colin, I’m pretty sure you were gay but in my first year of university I was really attracted to effeminate guys and not the typical jock-ish meatheads that did keg stands at Lister Hall floor parties. I was also pursuing acting at the time and what I found in you was someone extremely talented and I found that really appealing as well. You helped me get my first university A+ on a midterm project and that still stands out in my mind as a great accomplishment. Also, it was from your mouth that I first heard of Wilco. Once again, my shyness got the best of me and I was unable to ‘do’ anything, not that there was anything at all to be ‘done’; but we did one exercise where I had to give you a back massage and while my palms were pressed against your back, I felt my first taste of real romantic bliss, if only for a moment. I did in fact see you a couple of times after our stint in Drama 149 was over but our conversations were surfaced and minimal and didn’t leave a lot of room to explore any feeling. Nevertheless, I don’t harbour any hard feelings. At the time I knew you, I simply wasn’t “ready”.

By the time you were in my life Ryan, my life was spiraling downwards and almost out of control; rather than be overly upset about my grandfather’s death, my depression and dissatisfaction with living in residence, my dad’s cancer and my friends abandoning me, I focused on what I could focus on; I ended up losing weight actually because I was forgetting to eat. I ensured that I was always out of my room at the crack of dawn and I didn’t return back until long after dark. I read novels and studied hard and wrote a lot of stories and I did well in school; better than I ever thought I could do. I learned I was a student, I even felt pretty once in a while dropping from a size 16 to a size 12 in just a few short months, and I was finally looking ahead to something bigger than residence life. And I fell in love with you. Head over heels in love. All-encompassing, consuming love. Every song I listened to, every sentence I read, every journal entry I wrote, was all about you. I remember that time you dropped your slush in our Film Class and I felt a bit embarrassed for you but at the same time, I was totally endeared. I remember the day you bought me that bottle of cranberry juice because I lent you notes that one time. In my head, all of these little acts were a long and beautiful romantic equation. In reality, you walked out of our final exam without even saying goodbye.

Chris, I think my favourite memory of you was that time we were all stumbling home drunk from the bar at the end of term and just before entering your building, you crouched down on the sidewalk and threw up at a constant into a snow bank while we all watched from the sidelines. I asked you if you were okay and you said yes, in between hurling your guts out with great, audible, guttural sounds that could be heard throughout our quiet neighbourhood. Never have I seen you so shamed and certainly never had I seen you so vulnerable. Vulnerability is and was not your strong suit, and this is how I’ll always choose to remember you. In fact, I smile when I think about that night.

I’m not going to lie, John; when I met you, I was desperate to get over something and live out some sort of exciting fantasy. You were tall and you liked Wilco and Ryan Adams and you worked for a company that Chris would have killed to work for but wasn’t talented enough to – and so at the time, that was good enough for me. I didn’t know though, that you were a crazy cat man so that was a bit of a shock. And then you insulted Matt Damon – my Matt Damon – in front of me. I don’t know what ever happened to you after that, but you gave me the worst date of my whole life. So, thank you! Because now I can regale people with the story and it makes me seem funnier and wittier than I actually am.

Of all the men I’ve ever kissed up until recently, I believe you Jon, were the best kisser. Which is surprising really, given the type of person you are; a comedic actor/clown school instructor/substitute teacher who wore a shirt with a manatee on it on our first date. You’re a perfectly nice guy but really, the only reason I wanted to see you again is so we could make out. When we didn’t make out the last time we ever spent time together, I was kind of over the whole summer fling thing. At that point in my life I already assumed love was dead and therefore, this was too and I moved on without hard feelings might I add – I was willing to forgive you because you were a prize maker-outer and I’m only a tad envious of whoever is kissing you these days for that reason only.

Sigh. Oh, Dale. You clever little boy, you. Telling me, “you’re the most beautiful girl in the bar” and trying to both flatter and seduce me with hilariously awful text-spoken text messages like “im wurth waiting 4” and “Id rather b with u”, and taking me out on a decently gentlemanly date while telling me about how you rear-ended a Mercedes and are now trying to sell off your truck parts to make money to pay the insurance company… it was all too cute. Unfortunately, I’m just too mature for you and your feeble attempts at booty-calling me. I will say though, that you showed me a much better time than a lot of the boys that I was legitimately interested in. Good job, kiddo. Here’s a gold star.

And to the rest, I hope you enjoyed our time together on all the dance floors of Edmonton; I’m sure you all thought for sure that you were going to take me home but in reality, you were mistaking me for someone that was dumb enough to fall for the old lifting-the-skirt-up trick. Firefighter, you smelled like sour milk and I firmly believe that although the whole costume fetish thing piqued my interest a bit, I’m probably a better catch than you; I mean, you’re a little old for The Rack, aren’t you? And Taylor – I’m amazed I even remember your name but I was always amazed that someone could legitimately ask, on a dance floor, “Do you want to go have sex?” It was brave – the kind of bravery that lands you in a section of The Darwin Awards books. And of course, then there was David – you were the best random bar make out of them all.  I would have loved to see you again but judging by the fact that I followed you up in the same night with Connor, who was actually pretty uppity and rude to me in the end, I must not have cared all that much. I guess it just wasn’t mean to be.

What all of you have taught me though, was that I have undergone a very linear progression in my romantic and sexual maturation. I had started my life as a girl who could barely even tie her shoelaces let alone so much as look a man in the eye, to a girl who believed that in her own life, love is dead for me and physical chemistry is really all that’s left for the jaded spinster who embodied my soul. And now, I’m looking back at all of you and realizing, what seemed like a huge deal at the time really wasn’t a big deal – it was just growing up, and having to learn lessons about people the hard way. So thanks, guys. I hope you’re all enjoying your lives doing whatever it is you’re doing; I likely won’t see any of you ever again, nor do I care to but I wish you well.

Regards,

M

What Ben Folds and The Foo Fighters taught me about music back in junior high school.

            I was absolutely “that girl” when I was in junior high; the teenage girl that’s not too far-removed from being a “Belieber” nowadays, who had posters of Josh Hartnett on her locker and listened to boy bands and girl groups and had Spice Girls pens and notebooks and watched Much Music constantly. It was in these formative years that I developed a taste for what it meant to be “female” when you were 13 or 14 years old and also what sparked in me, a love of discovering new music. I regard myself as someone with a pretty good musical knowledge and repertoire in the present day and I remember back to when I was 12 and trying to listen to and discover British boy bands or Canadian boy bands – not the Backstreet Boys and N’SYNC as much, because I wanted to break the mold and dig a little deeper. Not much has changed with me, I guess.

            Between grade 8 and grade 9 though, there were two records I picked up that I believe made me into the person I am today. Those were: “Rockin’ the Suburbs” by Ben Folds, and “Nothing Left to Lose” by The Foo Fighters. I was years too young for both but the fact of the matter is, they were my introduction to a world away from pop; a world that is more meaningful and rawer than the world I knew when I was listening to B*Witched every day.

            I can remember the first time I heard Folds’ Losing Lisa; I was sitting in my room on my bed listening to the album for the first time on my Discman just before lights out and I was blown away – not just by the quality of the song and piano in it, but by my underestimation of Ben Folds as an artist. A single like the title track is indicative that the record itself is sure to be something funny, lighthearted and sardonic. Instead, songs like Losing Lisa and a couple of my other favourites, Annie Waits and Still Fighting It are a quirky, unconventional approach to sadness, heartbreak and displacement. Up to that point, I hadn’t ever explored these emotions through music in the way that Folds presented them and I remember sitting there thinking, “This is a really sad record” but shortly thereafter thinking, “I live a very sad life”. This is half-true; I was bullied profusely and I was dealing with various other heavy-handed demons that I was reluctant to admit to anyone including myself. Songs like this made sense to me. They instantly became a part of a new reality for me because they weren’t ‘pop’ and they weren’t ‘boy bands’. They weren’t on the radio or on Much Music (although, the first time I saw the video for Rockin’ the Suburbs was on Much Music’s alternative video hour, “The Wedge”). Something that I thought would be catchy, funny and boisterous turned me onto the type of music that allows listeners to feel something extremely deeply. Ever since the first listen to Suburbs, I’ve been crazy about Ben Folds.

            The Foo Fighters have been around forever; ever since I started watching music videos and familiarizing myself with music from my own generation, there they’ve been: with Monkey Wrench, Big Me, and then, when I was in junior high, Learn to Fly, Next Year, and Generator. That was around the same time that the HMV superstore opened at West Edmonton Mall. I was in there over Christmas holidays and my world was changed once again. There were different CHAMBERS for different genres. CDs were everywhere. A live DJ was spinning tunes and speakers hung from the ceilings releasing pulsating beats like heavy rainfall. HMV is now a sad version of its former self, selling t-shirts, gadgets, washed-up DVD and Blu-Ray combo packs, and reducing their music selection from chambers to one big long shelf of M.O.R. But it was in the original incarnation that I picked up Nothing Left to Lose.

            I remember feeling like I was doing something ‘bad’ when I listened to it. It was sort of the same sensation I got when I listened to Alanis Morisette singing, “…are you thinking of me when you fuck her?” on Jagged Little Pill when I was only 8 years old. I heard Dave Grohl singing, “I’m impressed, what a beautiful chest/I never meant to make a big scene” and literally thinking, ‘I’m too young for this record.’ And yet, I loved it. I loved everything about it. I loved the trippy rock as much as the hard rock and even though it frightened my sensibilities a bit as a 14-year old girl singing along to radio-friendly hits by  the Boomtang Boys, it was a record I cherished because I felt like it reformed me into a grittier person.

            These two records stand out to me as the biggest introductions into the records I love and care about today and additionally, I consider them cornerstones in my life; they were the records that turned this awkward, fat 13 year old into the girl who is going to the Sasquatch Festival this summer with bells on, ready to be drunk for four days straight and singing along to all of her hippest favourite bands’ best jams.

8 Simple Steps to Getting Over Heartbreak.

Step 1: Eat breakfast. Eat lunch. Eat dinner. Just eat. It’s not productive, but it’s soothing and it allows us to remember fondly, the good times; with something comforting that will never let you down.

Step 2: Realize that eating has become a self-destructive, obsessive, dangerous behaviour. Suddenly you turn around only to realize none of your clothes fit anymore. You’ve lost control.

Step 3: Blame yourself – for the heartbreak, for the overeating, for the fact that you’ve landed in this terrible rut which is surrounded by darkness. Look  up and see only black clouds above you. Realize you’ve spent months – almost a year – living to please someone because you think you aren’t good enough for them and all you want is to change their mind. Continue to blame yourself by pressing on not just these bruises, but all your past bruises.

Step 4: Wake up one day and see – really see – what your life has become. You don’t enjoy spending time with your friends anymore. You don’t go for walks anymore. You don’t even have a job. There is nothing to busy you except dark, demeaning thoughts. One drab summer day, spend an evening with the person who broke your heart and become shattered to see they have moved on and left you behind. See that he’s ignoring you; hear for the first time how inconsiderate, unfunny and rude he is; walk away that day thinking, “There is more to life than this.”

Step 5: Lose weight – in fact, lose 60 lb. Finally get your drivers’ license. Work your ass off to get a career job and prove him wrong, because he was always telling you that a BA is a useless degree. Look behind you one day and see you’ve left behind that cartoonish dark forest with the arm-like branches and sinister knot hole faces. You are walking towards green grass and sunshine.

Step 6:  Attempt to glean something physical from people who don’t matter because you finally got over your heartbreak. Attempt online dating, only to realize all the men you’re meeting are either only there to hook up, or they’re DYING for a relationship – the kind you don’t want at all, with someone you don’t want at all. Then revert to dance floor make out sessions at dance clubs you’re too old for. Meander between a few incredibly meaningless dates and   once again realize there is more to your new life than these types of encounters.

Step 7: Learn that what you want and what you need are two different things. Learn that healing doesn’t happen through violently kissing people whose names you can’t remember. Remember that you’re 25 years old for fuck’s sakes, and you are old enough to be honest with people and with yourself. Communicate. You’re not a 12-year old girl slipping secret heart-shaped notes anonymously into a boy in your class’ locker. Once you’ve realized this, look back and remember: it was heartbreak that got you here.

Step 8: Be grateful for steps 1 through 7.

Happy! Valentine’s! Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Did I really just say that?

I did just say that, didn’t I?

Am I wearing red?! Oh my God. I am.

I’ve never hated the “commercialism” on Valentine’s Day. I think it’s sweet. I used to love class parties in Elementary school and cutting out paper hearts. I love watching long marathons of Say Yes to the Dress. I’m nowhere even remotely close to entering the doors of engagement or marriage. Nowhere near whatsoever. And yet, going to a Bridal expo would render me a kid in a candy store. I’m a writer. I like poetic writing. I like to listen to songs about undying love, sung by people who are in undying love. The truth is, I love love in any form – even in the form of pink stuffed gorillas wearing heart-patterned boxers that sing a tinny countdown singers version of some Elvis song. For me, it’s never been about the commercialism. It’s been about being single on a day that’s meant for ‘couples’. You feel left out. You always wonder, “What would it be like if I were in a relationship?” Maybe I’d be getting roses delivered to my desk. Maybe I’d be going to some fancy Valentine’s Day dinner and wearing a red dress. However, that’s for the rest of the world. And not for singles.

But here I am, wearing my red sweater with blush on my cheeks and an impenetrable smile on my face. Why? God knows. I never thought this day would come. I figured that no matter what happened, I would always be one of those “Singles Awareness Day” people who wears black, looks at the ‘Forever Alone’ meme collection online, and eats from a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, watching all my favourite moments from The Bachelor seasons past on YouTube.  I tend to do all the stereotypically ‘sad singles’ activities on February 14. Why? Because I’ve been placed into that hole and I felt like I had to live in it.

Or…

I could dig myself out.

I could break the shackles of convention placed upon me and think of a love story not as a typical “love story”, but as something else; something that’s transformative and renewing. Something that makes me feel as brave as I seem to be these days.

I’m looking out the window right now to a cloudless sky and grass on the ground. GRASS. In February, in Edmonton. The trees, leafless as they are, stand up proudly as though to hail to the gorgeous midday that fills the sky like cream pouring into a cup of really good coffee. This morning, I was listening to music – the good kind – that speaks of love as if it is some untouchable celebrity that can be seen smiling and waving from the front seat of a convertible on the cover of a magazine, but denotes a speechless insidious tragic life beneath. I ate oatmeal for breakfast – the star Starbucks oatmeal – which for all intents and purposes is bloody delicious with its nut medley and tangy dried cranberries. All these things, as small as they are, only contribute to the slow inflation of my heart; the palpitations, the brimming smiles, the newness of waking up one morning only to realize you’re a new woman and your past issues with “fake holidays” are nothing but stigmatic difficulties, easily solved by taking an extraordinary leap of faith and doing and saying some incredibly valiant, uncharacteristic things.

I’m reformed. I’m a reformed person in that today, I refuse to allow my past experiences to interfere with the purely magnificent happiness that surrounds me; I feel like a bee skipping among bright, waxy flower petals, inhaling soft talcum powder pollen and frolicking through sunbeams and light breezes. It truly is a wonderful, beautiful day. Love and happiness are making me dizzy, unfocused and purely giddy.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yes. I just said that.

“Dear Fay,” Tom had written. “I love you. I love you, I love you. I don’t know what else to say to you or why I’m saying it, but I have to tell you. Something is making me. I love you. I’m not a dangerous or crazy person, although I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so. I loved you the minute I saw you coming up the sidewalk carrying that bunch of balloons. I love the parting in your hair and the shape of your mouth. I loved the way you stood still and put your arms around me — that was later. I think of it every day, a hundred times, or rather I think of it continually, exactly how your hands felt pressing against my back and how it was to hold you, your wonderful thinness. I can’t seem to think of anything outside that minute when we were standing together by your front door. I just love you. I love you plain and simple. I love you. Tom Avery.”

–Carol Shields, from The Republic of Love

Briefly, On Sam Gagner.

Last night, against the Chicago Blackhawks, Edmonton Oilers’ #89, Sam Gagner, did the unthinkable and scored 8 points in a game, earning the first, second and third stars at the game’s conclusion, which rendered the little Oilers and their unexpected breakout star the winners by a whopping four goals. Even before the end of the game, Gagner, among Oiler fans and fans of any other NHL team in the league, were blowing up social networking sites the world over to talk about Sam Gagner, who had done something unheard of in the NHL ever since 1988.

It’s reasons like this why I love sports; because sometimes, something completely unexpected, mythic and historic happens. Last night’s Oilers game is something that nobody would have seen coming a mile away. We were all blindsided; I think even Gagner himself was blindsided by his amazing performance. The underdog triumph in this case was two-tiered: an underdog team seeing a HUGE success at the hands of an underdog player. If you wrote this story as a fictional event, no one would believe it. They’d think it utterly impossible or too perfect and precious to be real. But there we all were, watching history in the making and watching a team find its sea legs in a crucial moment against a division rival with the big guns hoisted on its back.

Drama is something that people don’t associate with sports often enough. There is a physical side of sports; there is the analytical and statistical side of sports. But behind those two elements there is a passion play conducted, rehearsed, recited and performed at times that are completely random and astonishing. It happens every Olympic games; it happens every sports season: that moment that sends people into collective awes.

The Oilers basically have no hope in hell of making the playoffs again this year; I mean, mathematically, if they won EVERY game for the rest of the season and if someone else on the cusp went on a tyrannical losing streak, there is a slim chance that fate would thrust them into the eighth place spot. But the chances of that happening would rely on the presence of the most powerful Hockey Gods on the planet. However, I was watching them yesterday from my living room and thinking, “Now there’s the team to beat. Because there’s the team that wants to win, and will stop at nothing to do it.”

Opening a Message…

Have you ever had one of those moments where a very infinitely-carved and even deeply troubling characteristic of your personality can be traced to that one defining moment?

There I was, giddy beyond repair, on St. Patrick’s Day almost four years ago this March. I was singing love songs in my head, ones that I compiled into a rushed playlist on my iPod because I didn’t want to listen to any negativity or think anything but happy thoughts about the life-affirming night I had only two days prior. The whole weekend had been cold and snowy but suddenly on St. Patrick’s Day warmth returned to Edmonton and when I woke up that morning I could hear icicles dripping water from just outside my window. I peered through the blinds and sunlight and said to myself, ‘this is the most perfect, happiest morning that’s ever been created!’

I walked around in the warm weather and got coffee before going to class; once I sat down with my notebook and pen, I realized how difficult it was to concentrate on anything at all, so enraptured was I in my own life which seemed perfect; for the last 40 hours or so, what ‘should be’ and ‘what was’ were exactly aligned in my world. Everything made sense. Everything was illuminated.

I walked home from class with my best friend, both of us cheerful and greeting the coming spring with refreshed eyes and a new perspective on the world, our eyes covered by rosy red love-hued goggles. I bid her goodbye and went home, retreated to my bedroom again, and opened my Facebook page. There was a message in my inbox.

Have you ever experienced a moment where you were the happiest you’ve ever been in your life, by feeling something you had no idea you were even capable of feeling in the first place, and with the click of a button your entire world fell down with one huge, plundering, explosive  crash? Where your mood changed so completely from the very highest, highest high to the extremely lowest, lowest low, just by reading a few sentences on your computer screen? Imagine it for a second; your dry, tasteless mouth curdling; your heart emptying and palpitating; your eyes welling with prickling tears; the colour gone from your cheeks which moments before, were glowing and flushed with the promise of new love and prosperity… I put my heavy head down on my desk and whimpered silently into my lap. As is true with most serious, damaging events in my life that occurred since the age of 9, I was incapable of crying. I bled inwardly instead.

Why would anyone want to read a ‘make or break’ message ever, ever again after devastation like that? Why would anyone want to put themselves through that build-up resulting in terrible, catastrophic life-altering disappointment? St. Patrick’s Day almost four years ago this March, was the day my entire outlook on life changed completely. The irrational fears I had when I was in junior high – of being persecuted and having to walk among people who baited me and drowned me in cruelty; of being homely and fat with an awkward child’s body for the rest of my life – suddenly returned. The growth I endured by allowing my Drama courses to help me become more outgoing, fearless, careless and free was shut up again in a tiny, plainly wrapped, non-descript box. I was yarn, raveled back up into a messy ball, as opposed to the neat, tightly wrapped sphere I once was.

It was this moment that forever made me afraid of reading that which could say something I never, ever want to find out.