Thursday, December 31, 2009

Reset 2010

Yesterday afternoon, I found a notebook in which I had written my new years resolutions for 2009. Suffice it to say, save for one, I pretty much bombed in the keeping resolutions department. I don't know what the hell I did with my time, but it didn't include a writing schedule, music-playing schedule, running a half marathon in under 2:05:00, and a litany of other things. So the motto this year is Reset 2010.

This new year brings with it some adjustments to the resolutions, but they're in the same realm. They include:

- run the Mississauga Half Marathon in under 2:00:00
- ...okay, this is a hard one...keep that commitment I made on May 14 and have that damn show. It may not be the show I originally had in mind, but it's me, on stage, peeing my pants and singing my heart out.
- stretch
- eat less sugar
- author the feature article in an issue of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Or at least, author something that people will read aside from this blog.
- worry less
- slam

"Don't let mistakes me so monumental and don't let your love be so confidential and don't let your mind me be darn judgemental and please let your heart be more influential." - Michael Franti



Friday, November 27, 2009

For Taylor

A few nights ago, I went to see someone fulfill a dream that had been in the works for 23 years. The show was called "Mirabel Sings the Blue - At Last", and it was just as it described. Mirabel had a dream to sing. 23 years later, she fulfilled that dream, finally letting go of the fear which had held her back for so long. The venue was intimate, and the crowd was small, all friends and family who love her. She sang her ass off, and she was really, really good.

I met Mirabel in the bathroom before the show. We had never met, but I introduced myself to her, and told her how much I admire her for conquering her fear and doing what she had always wanted. She told me the story about how she got there, and encouraged me to put my own fears aside and follow my heart.

And it made me think about Taylor.

On May 14, 2009, we went for a walk, and ended up at a downtown bar that was featuring several local musicians. The first one up was Taylor Mitchell. An 18-year-old guitar player/song writer/folk singer who knocked our socks off. She wasn't doing anything complicated. Simple songs with simple melodies. She seemed to understand what Neil Diamond said: All you need to write a song is three chords and the truth.

I sat there watching her and thought, in a rare moment of fearlessness and clarity, I can do that. If she can do it, I can do it. I will. I asked the bartender for a piece of paper and wrote on it, right there while she was singing:

At The Silver Dollar

May 14, 2009: Taylor Mitchell

May 14, 2010: Anne Shirley

I spoke to Taylor and her mom after the show. I bought Taylor's CD (which had been released less than 2 months before), and left the bar feeling excited about what I was committing to do. I went home and hung that piece of paper on the refrigerator, and then on the lamp on my desk, where I would see it, and always remember this young girl, how she inspired me, and a moment where I was totally fearless. A moment where I really believed that I could do it.

On October 27, 2009, Taylor was killed by two coyotes while hiking on the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia. She was on an East Cost tour to support her album, and had taken that morning to hike through what is without a doubt one of the most beautiful places in the world. The attack was one of those crazy random events that just makes you shake your head, because it is so far out in left field it is almost unimaginable.

This amazingly talented young artist is gone.

Mirabel waited 23 years fulfill her hearts desire.

You never know. Don't wait.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

I think this little exchange pretty much says it all.

Me: Today would have been my fourth wedding anniversary.

Him: I'm really glad it's not.

Me: Me too.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

My Side of the Story: The First

I don't remember meeting her, but there she is, in my old class pictures starting in Kindergarten. It's like she was just always there. I don't remember much about our friendship until the third grade. There was a Grade 3 class and a Grade 4 class, and mid-way through September, the school decided that some of the Grade 3 students would be moved to the Grade 4 class to make a 3/4 split. I was home sick the Friday that they announced which students would be moving, but I remember R coming home and telling me that I would be in his class starting on Monday. She was in that split class too, and that's really where I remember it beginning.

We would go on through grade school, with a larger group of friends, but there was something special between us, even when we had other friends who we spent drifted more towards at any given time. We often walked home together, splitting up at the end of the path that ran through the park - she went north to the home with the porch that her father and uncle had built, and I went south to the home that I grew up in - the one my family lived in for almost 30 years.

In the 7th grade there was a shift. All of a sudden, we weren't in the same class anymore. She had a different homeroom - and a different math, english and science class. We went on an week-long camping trip that fall, and I ended up bunking with someone in my own homeroom. She said she was fine with it, but on that trip, she broke down and accused me of leaving her - leaving her on the trip with another roommate and leaving her at school by going to another homeroom (which was not of my own doing, but she was clearly having a moment). We got through that, and from then on, it was her and me. Me and her. If I was without her, people would ask, "where is she?" and vice-versa. It wasn't friendship, it was sisterhood. There were other friends who would come and go from our group, but it was always the two of us first. We didn't fight. We had each others backs. We shared lunches and homework and hair clips. We walked to school and home together every day. I decorated her family Christmas tree with her. She baked me shortbread cookies drowned in icing sugar at Easter. It was us and them.

In the 11th grade, we had a blowout and didn't talk for several weeks, maybe even a month. I don't remember exactly what happened - I just remember that she started purposely excluding me from things, and when I finally called her on it in the hallway of our high school, in front of my locker, she blew up at me. I couldn't tell you what she said or what I said, but that rift was the talk of the school for a while. In the end, she apologized, we made up, and went right back to where we were before. Her and me. Me and her. We sang in the choir together. I visited her family restaurant. She came to all my basketball/volleyball/soccer games. Us for each other first, and then, everyone else.


In our last year of high school, I started dating someone who was in University at a school about an hour away. He came back to Toronto on alternate weekends, and I'd spend that time with him. Otherwise, it was business as usual. Or so I thought. Till one day in January when she phoned me up, screamed at me for -- I'm not sure again -- something about picking him over her, and hung up on me. She wouldn't take my phone calls later that night. Apparently, she had talked to a couple of other friends about how she had been feeling about this, but not to me. So we didn't talk again. Our friends tried to get us together, but we weren't having it. I don't remember how we made up from this one, but I'm sure it was her who came to me. We cam back to where we were, but it wasn't the same. I felt betrayed. We never fully healed from that one. We were going in separate directions that fall - me to Hamilton, her to Windsor, and we ended up just drifting apart when that last year of high school was over.

During my first winter away at University, I had a dream about her. I don't remember it now, but I remember that it was that dream which was the impetus for me to e-mail her, ask her how she was doing, and try to reconnect. She responded, and from then we kept up an inconsistent communication until the end of University.

Graduating from University was a tough time for me. We met once for dinner right after graduation. I remember she had a beer, which I thought was weird never having seen her drink before (we were a pretty conservative bunch in high school). Shortly thereafter, I made a quick decision to leave the country for the summer, and I did. I spent two months in London, and when I came back, I sent out an e-mail inviting friends, her included, to a birthday party I was having in a few days. I received a scathing response from her. Something to the effect that I hadn't bothered to let her know I was leaving the country, so why did I think she would want to come celebrate my birthday...

After that, we only had very sporadic communication on and off over the years. Fast forward several years - and lifetimes - later, and the world of social networking ended up putting us back in touch. She eventually suggests we should get together for a cup of coffee, which we do. I'm more nervous than I've ever been on a first date. We meet, she gives me a big hug, we sit down, and she starts to talk. And she talks. And talks. And talks. And I realize that she's a different person than the friend I once had. But then, so am I. 15 years ago, I talked. She listened. This time, she talks, and I listen. It's not deep, or emotional. We're not sharing our personal feelings about our lives and about our relationship and what happened to it. For so long I missed that friend, and I thought maybe this evening over a cup of coffee may take us back to the place where we once were, but I realized quickly that it wouldn't. Because we're not those people anymore. We said goodbye with hugs and promises to do it again soon. We both knew we never would.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

A House Is Not A Home

I was sitting in the living room of a friend's apartment last Sunday, and it got me thinking. She lives in this place by herself. She moved to this place when her marriage ended. I don't know her most personal feelings about all of it, but I do know that she loves living where she lives. And all I felt was this overwhelming sadness and sense of loss.

Three years ago, one of my lifetime dreams came true when my name was officially signed onto the deed of a house. But it didn't take long to realize that a house is not a home, and that house never felt like home. Not for one minute.

Then I moved to a much more modest apartment, and for the first time in a long time, I was home. My home. All mine, and no one else's. I loved loved loved every minute I spent there by myself, and sometimes in the company of loved ones. I never regretted or lamented that I was there. I never took it for granted, and I repeated over and over to anyone who would listen how everyday when I went home, I just wanted to put my arms around that little apartment and hug it because I loved and appreciated it so much. A place where I could think, and sleep, and come back to who I really am. Home.

And then for reasons beyond my control, I had to leave. Leaving that apartment was harder and sadder than leaving my marriage, by leaps and bounds. I didn't leave because I wanted to, I left because I had to. I left because he made it so I couldn't stay. It would have been different if I had left of my own volition, but he didn't really leave me with any choice.

So I bucked up and moved on, and have now landed in a place that feels like home again. But something about being in her living room last Sunday brought it all back, and it was almost more than I could bear. It made me angry at him all over again for doing what he did to me. It made me sad that I had to leave a place I loved, kicking and screaming and crying on the inside the whole time. It made me long for the chance to do it again and have the choice to leave, when I want, to where I want, on my own terms.

Then I had a good cry in the shower and closed that chapter for good.

Monday, November 16, 2009

What's in a Name?

Last week, a friend queried a few of us ladies to get our thoughts on changing our names after marriage. Here's what I wrote to her:

I never really swung hard one way or the other before I was married about whether or not I would change my name. When I did get married, it was important to him that I change my name, so I did. And I'm not ashamed to admit I did like being Mr. and Mrs Same Name. One family. One name. I liked that.

As our marriage went on and I became more and more unhappy, I knew it was going to end. About a month before it did, I changed my name back to Shirley. Funny because at work, I sent an e-mail out indicating that my name was Shirley now and got a shitload of e-mails back either saying "Congratulations on your wedding!" or "Sorry about your divorce." And all I had to say was, "It's neither. Just going back to what I know."

I remember I took a day off to run around and get my name changed back, and he called me while I was doing all this running around and asked me what it meant. I told him it just meant that I wanted to be who I really am: Anne Shirley. But in my heart I knew that wasn't the reason. I didn't want his name because I didn't want him.

Going back to my maiden name was one of the best times of that time of my life. It gave me a lot of strength. My name is Anne SHIRLEY. I, Anne SHIRLEY, don't want to be here anymore. I, Anne SHIRLEY, am getting the fuck outta here. I, Anne SHIRLEY, am going to go save my own life now. (Yes, you can have whatever you want. You can have everything. You can ruin my life as much as you can over the next two years. Please please please just let me go.)

So now I'm Anne Shirley once more. I like it. It suits me. I love being a Shirley. There is an identity there that ties me to people who will always be there for me, no matter what. People who understand me. People who are crazy like me. There are traits that "Shirley's" have, and I have them. I know I do. That name makes me feel like I belong somewhere. I would love it if my married name had made me feel like I belonged, but all it did was make me feel more alienated from myself. (And there was already enough of that going on in those years, believe me.) I also didn't feel like I belonged in that family, so taking that name only made me feel like I was kind of losing my place in one family, but I didn't feel like I was taking up a spot in a new one.

I can't say for sure that I wouldn't change my name again (Anne Blythe? Really?), but I know it would be hard to do. Much harder than getting married again (which is still not something I can fully wrap my head around yet). I still like the Mr. and Mrs. Same Name. I still like the idea of one family, one name. If there were children involved especially, it would be nice for all of us to have one family name. But it would be hard. Really hard. Maybe too hard. Maybe not worth doing if it's going to be that hard, given that it doesn't matter to Gilbert. But I've changed my mind on such things before.

Oh yeah. I'm back, Bitches.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

It's All Up Here

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Just thinking. Not writing, not talking, just thinking. I've been meaning to get it all down on paper, but until now, overcoming the inertia to pick up a pen has seemed an physically insurmountable task. It's just easier to think. But I do recognize that there is value to getting it down on paper - working through my feelings, organizing my thoughts coherently, and like she said, "if you're a writer, put that shit on paper".

So after this almost two month hiatus, I'm back at it. Trying, yet again.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Nice Shot. Wrong Direction.

Last fall, I started playing disc golf and immediately fell in love with the sport. Disc golf is like regular golf, except instead of hitting a ball with a club into a hole, you throw a frisbee (disc) into a basket.

Yesterday, I went to play disc golf with a couple of people who are much better than me. One of them said to me, many times yesterday, "Nice shot. Wrong direction."

After I heard it for maybe the third or fourth time, it dawned on me that this would be a good title for my autobiography, were I to write it today.

Nice Shot. Wrong Direction. The Autobiography of Anne Shirley.

It pretty much sums up how I feel about how I've lived my life to date. I have tried. My intentions have been good. But somehow, it all seems to go askew. School, work, relationships with family, friends and partners. I can find many examples of this very sentiment throughout my whole life.

Nice shot. Wrong Direction. Truer words were never spoken.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The Wife

WARNING: BOOK SPOILERS IN THIS POST

A few days ago, I finished a really awful book titled 'The Wife'. The book was about a woman whose husband is a huge literary success. He has published a large body of work, received accolades and awards, and ends up winning one huge literary award in particular, immediately after which he dies. Of course, it is apparent to the reader very early on (though it is not explicitly revealed to the reader until later in the book) that his wife was the one writing all his books. The book is written in first person, from the wife's point of view, and though the plot is thin, the characters are flat and the story is ultimately not well developed (at least in the opinion of this lay critic), there were a few keys lines in the book which caught my attention.

Everyone knows how women soldier on, how women dream up blue prints, recipes, ideas for a better world, and then sometimes lose them on the way to the crib in the middle of the night, on the way to the Stop & Shop, or the bath. They lose them on the way to greasing the path on which their husband and children will ride serenely through life.

Everyone needs a wife; even wives need wives. Wives tend, they hover. Their ears are twin sensitive instruments, satellites picking up the slightest scrape of disatisfaction. Wives bring broth, we bring paper clips, we bring ourselves and our pliant, warm bodies. We know just what to say to the men who for some reason have a great deal of trouble taking consistent care of themselves, or anyone else.

"Listen," we say. "Everything will be okay."

And then, as if our lives depend on it, we make sure it is.

I read the above and wondered how many women would read it and, like me, think "I could have written that myself".

I was a wife. I may be one again one day. Some days I feel like one now, though I am acutely aware of the distinction in my own brain which is brought by signing my name on a dotted line. But the author very clearly captured what I have heard from women every day, what I have seen women around me do - what I did myself to a certain extent.

When we are girls, we have goals and dreams and sometimes a certain whimsy about our lives - what they mean and where they may go. We imagine who we will become. But even those of us who imagine becoming wives (and mothers - an angle which I speak of with a certainty born not of experience as a mother but of experience as someone who has been mothered, and who is highly aware of the sacrifice which often comes with the title) - do we ever imagine what we will give up to do so? How our lives - big decisions and small - will be shaped so sharply by the dreams, desires and even comforts of another person? Do we all step off our own paths to pave the way for someone else?

Maybe a successful relationship is when each does that for the other. Or perhaps it is one foot on your path, one foot paving theirs. I never imagined that I would so easily make the sacrifices I did when I held the title of Wife. And they weren't all bad. But I made them quickly and easily and without much thought to what I may be giving up to ensure the comfort, success and desires fulfilled of another.

Ultimately, the problem for me was paving someone else's way without neither him or I paying attention to my own. Let's try to avoid that again.




Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Bleed, throw it out, move on.

Years ago, I took a road trip with a couple of friends. Two of us were going through bad breakups at the time, and the lone voice of reason in the car gave us some sound words which I still carry with me today:

Losing a relationship is like a plate breaking on the floor. It sucks, and there's glass all around, and you get cut and you bleed but you pick up the pieces and move on. But a few weeks or even several months later, you'll find a piece you missed. You may find it by moving a table or chair and there it is. You pick it up, deal with it, throw it out and move on. Or maybe you find it because you accidentally step on it. You bleed a bit (though not as much and not as long as you did with the big pieces in the beginning), but the bleeding subsides, you deal with it, throw it out and move on.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Orphaned

I read a book recently which included an idea that triggered something inside me. Though the exact line escapes me right now, it was something like we are orphaned over and over again.

I thought about this for a long time.

Merriam-Webster defines orphan as a child deprived by death of one or both parents, a young animal that has lost its mother, and closer to home for me, one deprived of some protection or advantage.

I am lucky to still have both my parents alive and kicking, but I imagine the loss of a parent to be significantly greater than the loss of another in one's life, because this loss represents not just a person, but a resource, comfort and security. The loss of this person, or people, changes everything, forever. I am a 31-year-old woman who has only very recently accepted that her parents are mortal beings with their own lives, feelings, problems and dreams. To lose one or both of them now would be unimaginable.

But the loss of resource, comfort and security - a loss that would change a life, is not necessarily that of a parent. In my life, I have lost two best friends and a husband. Each of those losses affected me greatly, and after each of them, I knew things had been changed forever. To use the term "orphaned" to describe how I felt when these people were no longer in my life is not a stretch. They each touched me greatly, and though their hand prints remain on my heart, the cool breeze over the spot which their hands kept warm has been felt for a long time.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

They're Just Dreams

Just over a year ago, I had a dream that T&R had put Nadira into an institution because she had been diagnosed with depression, at the ripe old age of 4. The dream took place in the institution - I was standing in a room with T, looking through a one-way mirror into a room where Nadira sat on a chair in a circle with several other children, who were presumably there for the treatment of similar ailments. There was a woman there too, on her own chair in the circle. She was talking to the kids, and Nadira was sitting there calmly listening, but I lost it. I began to cry, and begged T to bring her home. I told her that I knew it was hard, but that we'd all help her, and please please don't keep Nadira in there, please bring her home.

I woke up from that dream crying, and called T immediately to make sure Nadira was okay, which of course, she was.

Almost exactly a year later, I have another dream. This time, I'm on the second floor of a school, looking through a window into the gymnasium on the first floor. Nadira is there, as she is now at 5 years old, in her gym class with several other girls. Nadira is content playing on her own, but I can her the other girls talking behind her back, saying "she's so mean" and "she's so selfish, she never shares" and "I hate her". Then one of the girls walks up behind Nadira, grabs her by the hair, throws her on the floor and proceeds to beat on her. And nobody does anything. I begin crying and screaming for somebody to help, but for the few more moments that I lived this dream, nobody helped her, and I didn't know how to stop it.

Again, I woke up crying hysterically. I couldn't even talk for several minutes to explain why I was crying - probably not a nice situation for the company I kept that night to wake up to himself.

I relayed this dream to T, and we talked about the similarities to the dream I had the year before. Nadira being in a bad situation, being unable to help, always watching from the outside. Nadira of course is fine, and T asked the inevitable question: "Are you sure these dreams are about Nadira? Maybe in your dream she represents someone else...maybe you?"

Nadira is a crazy, kooky, amazing kid. She's loud and outgoing, and in many of her loud and boisterous ways, she's like neither of her parents. They are both so easy going and relaxed, and she's always on 11. She does remind me a lot of me when I was little. Maybe it is me in the dreams after all.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Black Cloud

There is a monster on the television show LOST. To call it a monster sounds a bit simple and childish, but that's what they call it. They don't know what it is or where it came from. It comes out of nowhere - though often it is probably triggered by something. Maybe if they knew the trigger they could stop it.

It is a huge, black, dense cloud of smoke. It comes from above or under the ground or out of the woods. It appears out of nowhere, and then wraps itself around you, enveloping you, suffocating you. Or it can grab your legs right out from underneath you and pull you down into a hole that's impossible to get out of. While you're in that hole, or enveloped, suffocating in the black cloud, you can hear the monster mimicking your own voice, telling everyone you're okay. You don't know how to stop it, or at least how to use your own voice to say you're not okay, and you need help.

For me, depression is that black cloud. Usually triggered by something - any myriad of things. I know I spend my life standing on the brink, waiting for it again. It grabs me out of nowhere, enveloping me and suffocating me. Or it grabs my legs and pulls me down, further and further underground. I hear my own voice saying I'm okay. So often that's not true, but I don't know how to stop it. I don't know how to get out of its grip, and get away.

So I run. I put my running shoes on, and sometimes a hat, and sometimes gloves, and sometimes when it's so cold that my eyelashes freeze together and sometimes when it's so hot that I've been on the verge of heatstroke. I run. I run because I often feel that it's the only thing that keeps that black cloud at bay, but sometimes it's like I just can't run fast enough or far enough. It's always nipping at my heels, waiting for me to stumble so it can grab me and feed on me once more.

I've gotten better at recognizing the signs when it's coming. I can sense it before it grabs me full force. Sometimes I can stop it, but when I can't, I know what I need to do. I run.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Simple Things

I spent tonight lying on a friends couch watching t.v.

She fed me chocolate, didn't ask me why I was there, and we barely spoke to each other for four hours.

It was like giving in to the blanket, but with another heartbeat in the room. And it was exactly what I needed.

Thank you, DT.