Happy four year anniversary

Today is my official four year anniversary of life in the city. Four years ago today I walked off that plane in Pearson airport not knowing what I was walking into. I had no idea that this decision to come here would change my life so irrevocably. I thought two years of working for the Ontario government and I'd be back in Thunder Bay cruising down Lakeshore drive.

Well four years and four jobs later I'm still here and it doesn't look like I'm going back anytime soon. The question is do I feel like I belong here anymore than I did four years ago? Sadly my answer is no. I still feel like a person stuck in limbo between two worlds. I don't belong to one or the other. I'm a stranger in both.

A lot has changed since I've been here. I've actually changed since I've been here. There were things I left behind in Thunder Bay that I never thought I'd be able to stop missing. Surprisingly I adapted. There are things here I never thought I could get used to - again I adapted. Human beings really are more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.

I still remember exactly how I felt that day on the plane coming here. I cried looking out the window as we flew over Lake Superior in the brilliant morning sun. I was so sad about what I was leaving behind. Even though I felt like I was losing a lot I knew in my heart that what was there didn't need me anymore...that is if it ever did. The people I left behind would get on with life and would move on and in reality they already had. While I was there I wasn't moving on. I had no where to go and no one to go forward with.

I came here hoping it was my new beginning...my saving grace. In the beginning I expected miracles from this city and I didn't get them. The first four months here were possibly the most difficult of my life. So much happened yet I still clung to what I had left behind. It took 2 years before I finally could be here and not wish to be leaving every second of the day.

I still like going home. It's still a safe and comfortable place to be. I know every nook and cranny and you can get anywhere in fifteen minutes. I miss that simplicity. But there are things that this place has done for me that home never could have. There I was a stunted plant in a pot that had long ago gotten too small. Here I have room to breathe.

For the first time in my life I got the opportunity to really be who I am. I got to discover the potential that people had seen in me but that I had not yet found. In many ways I was forced to face things that I had been able to hide from. Here there was no where to hide. Here all I had was me and if I didn't step up to the plate than no one was going to.

It's a hard lesson to learn but once you've learned it many of the bad things that happen don't seem bad anymore. It takes the bite out of them.

I have also been given the gift of a huge group of amazing, generous and supportive friends. Of all the things this place has given me, I value them the most because they have given me more than I could ever thank them for or repay. I still marvel at them.

This place has also given me clarity and respect for where I come from. It is something I understand better now that I'm on the outside. I have a perspective that many of the people I know will never have never having lived outside of it. It changes your view on so many things and you begin to understand things in a way you never would have thought possible.

I remember my old drama teacher saying that when you leave home and live away you come back to discover that it has changed on you and that you can never again look upon it the way you did before. I thought I knew what he meant by that at the time, but I can tell you I understand that statement on a whole other level now. There is no going back now.

You are exactly where you are supposed to be

I can be pretty stubborn when something I feel passionate about is at stake. I
remember many moments in my life when I had something I really loved and wanted
more than anything but knew deep down inside that it wasn't meant to be and I
would lose it.

I can still remember how gut wrenching it was in the clarity of that moment in
which I knew inexplicably that I could fight with all the energy I had and I
would still lose it. Those moments were always a mix of bitter hate, denial,
anger and sadness. I felt hate because I thought I held something so special and
precious and yet I knew I was about to lose it. I felt denial because a part of
me believed that there had to be some way to work it out because my intuition
could be wrong. I felt anger because it seemed unfair and that it was always
happening to me and because I was always helpless to stop it. I felt sadness
because I thought I knew that I would never feel whole again.

Intuition is my enemy because it always pits itself against my innermost
desires. It seems that every time I find what I think is happiness it rears it's
ugly head to prove me wrong. It's like that bully in a highschool movie that
waits for you to feel safe in your success and then humiliates you in front of
the entire school. That is what intuition has been for me.

One lesson I have learned in life is that experiences come to you in the exact
moment you need them. They come to you at a time when you are open to the lesson
that they will teach. My lessons lately have come through the book Pillars of
the Earth by Ken Follett and the TV show Being Erika.

I know that if I had picked up Pillars of the Earth at any other time in my past
I would not have gotten out of it the same thing as I am now. In this book the
protaganists face so much unfairness and brutality at the hand of evil men who
abuse power.

The character of Prior Philip in the book is a man with high moral ideals and a
complete trust in God. He does everything with God in mind. He believes that if
he is to do something that God approves of then God will help him achieve it. If
the endeavor falls to pieces than God did not will it and he should redirect his
efforts.

He has such complete faith that God will provide for him and his people even
when the most horrible of circumstances befall his parish. No matter what
happens his faith is not shaken.

The lesson I take from this story is that God's plan for my life is not the plan
that I want and therefore I will continue to fail until I align my goals with
his plan. My problem lies in my inability to accept what I believe his plan for me to be. I guess that means I don't have any faith.

By definition faith is believing in something even though you have no proof that you are correct in your belief. Uncertainty has always been my problem. I do not cope with it well. I worry until something is certain.

For instances I hate thrillers. I can't stand not knowing what will happen. I have no problem watching a thriller a second time because I already know what will happen to the characters.
If I knew that 5 years down the line that everything I'm worrying about in my life right now would have worked itself out and that I was happy, nothing would be bothering me now.
Being Erika is about a 32 year old single woman who believes the secret to her
messed up life lies in the mistakes of her past. She gets the opportunity to
relive all her biggest regrets and put them the way she thinks they should have
been.

What I have thoroughly enjoyed about Being Erika is how even when she sets things 'right' she discovers her life does not turn out perfect as she thought it would.
It serves to remind me that without the experiences I have had in my life I would not be the person I am today. So as Dr. Tom said in Being Erika "you are exactly where you are meant to be at this moment in your life."

So this makes me wonder why is it that God wants me to be single and miserable at 32?

Another Day in Paradise?

The things that make me smile these days are small things. Yesterday I had dinner with Auntie Carol in her garden. That is something I don't think we have done since I moved here. Her garden all bright green with imminent summer made me smile.

The weather yesterday was comfortably warm with a light breeze and it reminded me of many a summer night back home. It's nice to see summer is actually coming since up until now it has been unseasonably cold. There were some days in which I wondered if I was actually back home it was so cool.

Today on Facebook I decided to use their check your email address book to find contacts feature. I had never used it before and I figured there wasn't anyone in there it would find that I didn't already have on my contact list. I was shocked to see Kris come up. He was the last person I ever expected to find on Facebook. He didn't really check email often and only had dial up at home.

I have to admit when I saw his profile pic come up with him and his son my heart clenched a bit. He really did break my heart and it still smarts sometimes to remember him. He must be happy though and that is some consolation.

I wish I didn't feel regret about things I have no control over. That was a situation I could not save and there is no use in thinking about it anymore. I suppose that is what happens to people that are lonely they sit around combing through their past trying to figure out where they went wrong. The problem is that my past is littered with so many 'couldve been' relationships that I have plenty of 'what ifs' to consider. Enough to keep me feeling sorry for myself for decades.

My friend Frances often tries to remind me about the joys of being single and childless. She tries to get me to think positive about it but it doesn't cheer me in the least. I don't deny that being in my situation doesn't have its perks. I'm well acquainted with them as I have been this way for almost seven years.

In other strange news I no longer have a geocities web page. I was kind of sad about it but I suppose it was time to take it down. I had not been able to update in quite a long time and geocities was discontinuing their free service as of sometime this summer. I'm not going to pay for something that has always been free.

I suppose all those free web space providers out there have realized with the advent of things like Facebook and mySpace no one needs their services anymore. People can keep in touch, post photos and videos without any need to know code or design. It's the end of an era for sure. I built my webpage on Geocities back in 1996. That was how I taught myself html.

I figured since I was doing a big purge taking that page down I also took down all the other pages I had scattered across the net. Now all that's left is this blog.

Last Woman Standing otherwise known as LWS

I picked up a book the last time I was in Pearson airport called "Better Single Than Sorry". It was written by some woman who was on the Bachelor and Bachelorette and didn't marry any of them. I admit I felt pathetic and desperate buying it but I seriously needed to hear advice from someone who knew what it felt like to be like me - the last woman standing.

So far it's not helping. Of course I'm only 85 pages into a 272 page book but the only thing I've learned thus far is that it's ok to be 30 and not be married or dating and for GOD'S SAKE DON'T SETTLE!

Right, well I could have written that and probably more succinctly. I suppose I should know better than to look for help in a self-help book.

In actuality I really did learn a number of years ago that other people's advice doesn't help because their solution is not necessarily your solution. Answers are always inside you rather than external to you. Of course that doesn't help me from having another panic attack about the state of my life in comparison to all my close friends.

I have lost count of the number of years that on the outside I have put on this mask of happiness for my friends all the while my insides are rotting with jealousy. This of course only adds to my own self-hatred because what kind of friend would hate their friends for being happy.

I just want to be a normal 30 year old. I want to be happily married with a house a dog and a couple of kids. I've been a stupid outcast anomaly all my school life and I really thought that as an adult I had outgrown it but it would appear not.

I'm already five years behind my friends and there is no possible way I could ever catch up now. Another friends announced a pregnancy so that makes two people here who will now have kids and that is two less that I will see anymore.

I'm told I need to make new friends. It really sucks that I find this great group of friends only to lose them all because I can't keep up in life. I'm so tired of being a failure.

My own mother told me that she prays for me to meet someone! I'm so tired of being single. I'm so tired of feeling inadequate because I can't meet anyone or keep a guy interested for more than a week. I'm tired of feeling so hopeless and helpless.

If I could go back in time I'd do so many things differently. There are so many guys I would have done things differently with. Maybe if I had been smarter then I wouldn't be such a failure now. I was so stupid. I wish I could go back and fix it.

What you're left with

I miss Dziadziu. It's been three years since he died and I still miss him. I miss what he represented for our family - stability. He was the pillar on which everyone depended. When he died our entire family just went to pieces.

Everyone needed him - Babcia, Uncle Joe, Mom, my sisters, my cousins. Everyone. As soon as he disappeared from the family dynamic things started coming out of the wood work that he kept in check. Without him to be gate keeper everyone got out of hand.

My reality is now that the family that I used to spend holidays with is gone. It's not coming back. In some ways I'm not that upset because I think the truth of who they are just came to light. Dziadziu's presence in our life kept everyone on their best behaviour. Everyone played nice because we didn't want to upset him and tension amongst his family always upset him.

So it wasn't that something came into existence when he died, it was just no one would dare act on those things while he was living. I'm sure he's sad at what his family has become in his absence. I'm sure he's disappointed in us all. I never thought my family life would become a bloody soap opera!

While I was doing Waiting in the Wings with ESP there was a scene in the play that took place at Christmas and it made me so sad to watch it. Christmas is the one day of the year I used to love more than any other. It was five days of pure joy and now it's lost it's lustre because there really isn't much happiness in it anymore. I feel like that died with Dziadziu. We haven't had a good Christmas since he died.

If my immediate family was normal and followed the traditional cycle of life like everyone else we could have rebounded from this because we would have grown a new family by now. But me and my sisters remain unmarried. All we have is each other and God knows that doesn't last forever. What will I do when my parents are gone and my sisters are married? Where will I go? Who is going to care?

Dziadziu created his family. Perhaps it wasn't perfect but we did have our happy moments. I have 27 years of happy Christmases in my memory. I'm afraid those are the last happy ones I'll know.

After all this time I still can't make myself be ok with uncertainty. I know that the key to life would be to be completely unruffled by the unknown events of the future. I wish I could trust blindly that everything would be ok and that no matter what happens someone is going to care where I am on Christmas. I wish I had that much faith.

How do I know that down the line that my sisters and I won't end up like my mother and her brother? I already feel enough adrift in the world and it's been hard enough seeing what each member of my family has been reduced to because of Dziadziu's absence.

I don't know what the answer is. I just know that my attempts to move on have been for naught. I am alone here and I can't fix that despite how hard I have tried.

Desperately seeking purpose

I thought by getting involved in some extra curricular activities I would find what I needed - what I felt was missing from my life. As it turns out I was wrong. I was being so optimistic but none of it is working.

I was so excited to be back into theatre and now I see that it was something that was just better left in the past. This group I joined will never be for me what theatre once was in my life. There is no room for me in this group and I haven't felt this much an outsider since I was in elementary school. It's a very insulated group. Everyone has their role and everyone protects their role from anyone else being able to do it.

I understand the perspective, I just wish it was different. I wish I could get back what the theatre once represented for me but lightening doesn't strike twice. It does underscore exactly how special that point in my life was though.

There is also something else that rattled me today. Last night I had a dream about a man I know. Someone I cared for but not someone whom I ever attempted to pursue a relationship. with. There was only ever one opportunity for that to have happened and I knew that neither of us were in a position to be in relationships at the time.

I know that he would never have dated me anyway. I wasn't his type. But the dream bothered me because I have not thought of this man in a very, very long time. The dream haunted me today. I don't remember what happened in it I only remember him and how I felt. In this dream we were together and I was so happy and fulfilled. But in the middle of the dream my conscious mind burst the bubble by reminding me that it was just a dream and in real life, right now this man is spoken for.

It was just a dream but at the moment that reality disturbed it my heart broke. Not because he wasn't real but because the feelings weren't. That it was all imagined and that when I opened my eyes my life would be devoid of it all.

I try so hard every day to turn my focus to other things - work, the play, sports. Anything that will keep me from thinking about what I'm really aching for. It's the one thing I can't do for myself. I try to be positive all the time. I try to make people believe that I'm not lonely and that I'm not bothered by this area of lacking in my life. I know I'm fooling no one.

I hate that my dreams do this to me. I hate that when I'm sleeping I have these carrots dangled in front of me in a way that is so realistic.

Lately, I find myself wishing a lot that I didn't feel anything. I find myself wishing that I could shut myself off from all feeling and emotion. I wish I could make myself believe that I didn't need any of it. I wish I could make myself forget all my missed opportunities like this man because I know that he probably never even saw me in the first place.

Bits and Pieces

Every so often I come across things I've scribbled in old notebooks or typed hastily into a text file that I saved and forgot about. It's strange that I usually come across these tidbits when I most need inspiration. Here are a few old tidbits....



Sometimes it is hard to continue to stand because you are so filled with doubt in your own course that you begin to question your choices.

Right now I want to believe that the good guys win. I want to believe that eventually those that are honest will always come out above those that are not. I want to believe that you don't have to crush others in order to get ahead. I want to believe that bullies get their due even if it doesn't happen immediately.

I don't want to allow anyone to narrow and degrade my soul by causing me to hate them. (Thank you Booker T. Washingon)

I want to learn to be an example of strength and not one that crumbles at the first sign of adversity. I want to be better than I am. I want to be stronger than I am. I want to be all that I need and I want to be able to give strength to those that need it.

I want to believe in what's right even when it isn't easy.

“Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.”

I Love history because it shows the progress of humans
It shows that change happens even if you can't see it at the time
It is hope because it shows that we can better ourselves.

Being more self-aware helps us to be better people.

I like being able to look back on my life and see the moments that were so awful at the time become small and insignificant matters in the grand scheme of life.



Artist: Edward Ross (In Dreams)
Song: The Breaking Of The Fellowship


When the cold of winter comes
Starless night will cover day
In the veiling of the sun
We will walk in bitter rain

But in dreams
I can hear your name
And in dreams
We will meet again

When the seas and mountains fall
And we come, to end of days
In the dark I hear a call
Calling me there,
I will go there
And back again

My Return to the Theatre

So the play I'm running lights for opened Thursday night. It's been a long week but a successful one. I'm quite enjoying being back involved with theatre. I've realized how much I missed it from my life.

Theatre and drama have always held a spot in my heart. I love the sense of community that develops when you take a group of people, that may not otherwise would have crossed paths, and you throw them together for several months to work towards a common goal.

It inevitably has it's ups and downs, successes and challenges. When you emerge on the other end of it you have learned a lot about yourself and about the others you worked with. You learn things about people that you would never otherwise have had the opportunity to learn because you've been in cramped quarters with them for several months. You are forced to deal with them and co-operate with them even when you don't feel like it. This experience produces and closeness and intensity I have not found matched in anything else I've done.

When it's all over there is definitely a mourning period. When you put so much of your energy and heart into something inevitably you're sad when it's done. I remember when I was younger and I would be missing the daily routine of rehearsal or performance after it was done. I'd miss the people I worked with. A year later when it would all come around again it was never the same. Each experience was unique but there was always this teensy bit of sadness that I would never have that exact experience again.

I love the challenge of solving problems on the fly in front of a live audience. It's totally exhilarating. We've only had one major problem and that was an actor not being on stage when the lights came up on his lone little bench downstage left. I looked up to see the lights come up and no one be on the bench. The stage manager talking to the asm found out the actor was not backstage and no one knew where he was.

While the ASM went looking for him the SM and I discussed the best course of action. He wanted me to dial the lights back a cue to the blackout but I argued that the audience would know that something was wrong. I said we should wait it out a tiny bit longer and we added a sound cue to make up for it. The actor eventually came wandering in through the gate on stage left and luckily it fit his character to enter like that.

To Remain Calm in the Face of Uncertainty

A few weeks back my friends and I at our weekly get together got into a disagreement about the state of my love life. I don't even recall how it started. More than likely I said something stupid to draw attention to myself. I still haven't learned to just keep my mouth shut.

The gist of the conversation became how I'm not actively looking for love and that is my problem. I find this to be such a contradiction of everything people say about love "It comes when you aren't searching for it." or "Comes in through a window you didn't realize you'd left open." "Go about your life and it will find you when you're ready." I'm thinking it's all fairy tale.

None of my friends found love by looking for it. All of them found it when they weren't looking. Not only that they didn't find their husbands by searching sketchy web sites or clubs. They all met their significant others through friends. Yet, apparently I have to search harder for it.

I just don't think like them. I figure that if I was lucky enough to find someone it would have happened by now. To me this area of lacking in my life is my biggest failure as a human being. What kind of person is completely undeserving of love?

My friends are always telling me about what a great person they think I am. They keep reiterating what it is they admire about me. The words they use I can never completely believe. They don't seem real. They seem superhuman sometimes. I'm not superhuman. I'm not even more than ordinary.

My problem with all these things they say about me is that if they were true then there would have been a man out there who would have seen those things in me too. One of these men in my past would have looked at me and saw that I could be a good wife, mother, friend and lover. None of them have. None of them even really wanted to know me. Once they had been around me for a bit I guess they realized that behind what you see there is nothing here worth keeping. There is nothing that they couldn't bear to let go of.

So this discussion with them just led to them telling me that I should try Plenty of Fish. UGH. All I really got were comments about how I don't try or don't put myself out there. Maybe I don't but I think I've had enough humiliation to last me a lifetime.

I'm not afraid of putting my heart on the line. I've done it when I really believed in someone. What I learned from doing this is that my instincts are ALWAYS wrong. It ALWAYS ends up that I'm throwing myself at men who wouldn't even look twice at me. Men who were just only ever being polite. If you put me next to any other girl in the world I guarantee you that any man will pick the other girl.

I've lost all my boyfriends and even potential ones to other women. That is how appealing I am. I'm so desirable that I'm always being left.

I look around myself at all my friends and family members and I see how I am the only one who is completely inept at love. They have all found someone who loves them. Who chose them over all the other people in the world. There is nothing wrong with any of them. I wish I could figure out what was wrong with me.

So after spending a week at home and getting to meet my new niece I've started having a major panic attack. Time is running out so quickly and I don't know what to do about it. I'm not going to run out and just find someone for the sake of finding someone. That much I know to be wrong. I know it's better to be alone than in an unhappy relationship.

The problem is that I don't want to be alone forever. I can be. I'm capable of it. I would survive if that were my fate. I just don't want to.

I read a quotation once that said "courage is the ability to remain calm in the face of uncertainty." I admire that. I try to live that quotation but I have to say that the person who is truly able to do that has an immense core of steel that I do not. I do things because I have to. I continue on because curling up in a corner and waiting to die is NOT an option. I don't consider that strength, I just consider that getting by.

I can't help but be disappointed because I know that my parents and my grandparents expected more of me than just getting by. So not only have I disappointed myself I have also disappointed them by being such a failure at love.

Christmas has come and gone

As I've gotten older I've taken note about how the things I love about Christmas have changed. As a kid I always loved getting presents - what kid doesn't love getting presents?

I loved the Christmas eve tradition of having dinner at my Grandparents house. After dinner the adults would bundle up the kids and we would pile into my Dad's Buick station wagon and my Dad and Uncle would take us to search for Santa. When we got back we would find that Santa had already brought our presents. I miss those days though they are many years past.

Christmas now is more about the food and company. When it comes to gifts there is nothing that I need so gifts are not the important part. I like getting things for others though. That is what excites me now. It's great to make people smile.

This year was very different from any other Christmas because I didn't get to go home. It was very strange not being there with Mom, Dad, Kathryn and Krysta. Poor Kathryn didn't get to go home either. I was so worried about how difficult it would be without them. My friends however, took good care of me. I need not have worried. They kept me so busy that there wasn't a free moment to contemplate what should have been.

They are the family I chose and they are amazing.