“And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.” Jack Kerouac, On the Road

 


 Friends,

I have been absent in more ways than one. There has been a long silence, while I keep my life and thoughts mostly in the dark. I'm not sure how this came about. Perhaps I lost the courage to share, or stopped giving myself permission, or dismissed my reflections as unimportant. Sometimes it is easy to become hard on yourself.

I tried writing throughout the months, but could never bring myself to make it known. Hidings and secrets. It can be easier to remain quiet, to avoid judgment and scrutiny, and self-doubt.

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August 2011

During the month of August I had a birthday. Turning 25 was the first birthday I both dreaded and disliked immensely. I woke up that day feeling unversed, unsuccessful, untraveled, all of which I felt in equal measure. Simply awful. 

The morning of my birthday, relatives crowded around the patio table for a blueberry pancake breakfast that my aunt had prepared in my honour. The younglings gabbed away in their talk of tweens, happily oblivious that their biggest mistakes are yet to happen, and that they have their whole lives sprawled out ahead of them, laying in wait, and I sat there all antsy and teary-eyed, terrified of failure, and being divorced, raising my children to be convicts, developing arthritis, god only knows what else, becoming fat, and missing my mother, and just generally feeling sorry for myself.

After breakfast I drank some wine, and the world turned itself right-side-up again, and remained that way for the most part, despite a wasp stinging me just before I jumped off a bridge. I only jumped because everybody else was doing it, and by that I refer to the children in their youthful glory. They can do anything un-phased. I did not want to jump, but I did because I am afraid to grow old, and it seemed that someone young and carefree might do this sort of thing. I was stiff as a board when I hit the water, and I felt my spine all the way to my neck do a little switcheroo, click snap, though nothing was broken or anything really, just angry as hell. I think I had whiplash. I bought muscle relaxants, little white pills that made me high. Best birthday gift ever, not that I condone that sort of thing, because I don't. However, I took to being this way on the day I turned quarter of a century, and accepted my new speaking accent, which sounded to me like a blend of South African and Australian. I bought into it and felt alright.

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September 2011

"I like days like this," Michael says, standing near the window of his apartment. Gray outside, misting, cool -- the snap of Autumn, the one we've been smelling with our noses for weeks.

One evening just about about a month back, you could have found me sitting in the front yard of my grand-parents house, the summer still wrapped around me as though I were a child. There were fifteen of us there if I exaggerate: three large dogs, one fat cat, four rambunctious kids, seven adults, one of them being me. 

During the night in question, I was at the patio table with a glass of red wine in hand, phone in the other, while the kids darted back and forth with flashlights, playing hide-and-go-seek as the last of daylight waned. It was twilight, that window of time where the sky hangs a memorable blue, one we all know, though it is difficult to describe: a magical, evasive colour that hints something deeper is coming.

Many evenings I would sit in the grass, watching the little insects crawl, or the waves of the lake make their way towards the shore. There is a safety that cannot be savored enough when you are among people who love you, who really truly love you.

"We're going to do more of the things you love," Michael said to me over the phone. "When you get back, we'll go into the mountains. Every chance we get."

Our first date had been the last game of the Stanley Cup finals, when the city of Vancouver errupted in riots. When the glass bottles began to fly, Michael wrapped his large arms around my head and carted me out of there, chatting casually the entire way. At a safe distance he let go. I was in one of those moods, nonchalant and carefree. I wandered off at one point, which he responded to by taking a fistful of my hair, pulling me back to him where it was safe. I knew I loved him then, though I didn't say as much.

We wound up at the large bus depot downtown, the old building that reads Pacific Central, and has lots of drunkards sleeping on benches in the park. I wanted to run through the grass in my bare feet.

"Do you want to go to Alberta?" he asked me, feigning to take out his wallet. "You want to make a run for it, just you and me?"

When I took off my shoes to do exactly as I had said, he threw me over his shoulder, stooping to pick up my shoes saying, "Not in this park."
 

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It didn't get easier. It is not always easy.
More to come.

- Kendra