In approximately 3 hours it will have been 3 years to the minute that I cried in Ikea.
I used to cry a lot. In high school, in Timmins, in varying restaurants and venues in Toronto, at the farm, and in St. John’s Mark would always remark if I got through a whole night without crying, so that’s that then.
I had panic attacks and the sting of hot tears streaming down my face, but no sound would come out, just that feeling of being locked inside this body, constricted, locked in that life really, but the tears would escape. And eventually I did too.
All of this is inconsequential and not who I am anymore. I love that girl I was, the one who survived.
I didn’t always love her, but I do now.
But let us wander back to that unseasonably warm day at Ikea. I don’t think any of us needed anything, does one ever really neeeeed anything at Ikea? Mandabear and Panda knew I was about to break down and were attempting to postpone the inevitable, little did they know, I have no shame. My emotions demand to be felt, they don’t care where. And as I put my phone on speaker and they listened to the rote message saying ‘the person you are attempting to contact is unavailable’, neither one of them wanted to be the one to tell me I was blocked, but I knew.
By the man I had been seeing, boy really. 28 at the time. But he had a youthful, playfulness about him. After a year of talking and me keeping him at arm’s length, I became the girl in the Fleetwood Mac song, “she broke down and let me in.”
I did. And I wasn’t sorry at the time. He was lovely, at the time. He eluded to marriage, introduced me to friends and family, I did the same.
Then, one insanely fateful day in October, he vanished.
Best thing really, even though it didn’t feel like it at the time.
But he was the noticeably clear and mildly violent catalyst to where I am now. And for that I am grateful.
I am currently tucked in my attic about 7 city blocks from my old house and a 20 minute drive to the very same Ikea. It amazes me to think about all the places I have been and all of the things I have done since that day. How much the world has changed, and how much I have changed with it.
My room is 97% clean and I did 7/10 things on my list of big things to do.
I think I have been so busy that I didn’t really realize where I was until now, and suddenly the last 3 years kinda hit me like a train. So, here I am, talking to you fine folks after a very long hiatus. I need my acrylic nails taken off, typing is hard and they need a rest. One more thing for the list.
I changed my bedding yesterday as I always do on Sundays, and it is strange to look over at my bed and see a coverlet that graced my second room in St. John’s. Feels out of place somehow. I am not who I was when I bought it, but its pretty and it suits this space. I spent my first two weeks in SJ setting up my old room and going from room to room like Gollum taking back my precious. I still don’t know what happened to the pretty yellow damask cover and I left the green blanket of sadness behind, or maybe I wrapped the mirror in it, who knows. It was the last bastion of bad memories from the catalyst.
I woke up a week ago here. To a room in disarray and covered in cat hair. I stormed and raged a bit then just put my head down and did what needed doing. The cats are healthy, and the plants thrived being outside for 2 months, so that is enough in itself.
There are still things in the car that need to find a home in storage. The rest of my stuff n things arrived a week before me and have already been fetched and unpacked and sorted through. I did that on Tuesday and it about killed me, 3 days solid driving, 10 to 12 hours every day respectively, just to come home and have to power clean in time to drive 4 hours to get more stuff and move furniture. My body hurt in new and interesting ways.
For the record, I have a lot of stuff for a homeless person.
I mean I am not homeless homeless, but I don’t pay to stay where I stay and I am constantly fighting the urge to pack up and run away again. But it is an interesting feeling, this sense of completion, everything I own within reach and all in the same time zone for the first time since shortly after the catalyst. I plan on enjoying it for a little while.
I went to Newfoundland for the same reason they took me to Ikea. Just to get me out of my head and my funk and my sad and it turned into an almost 3 year adventure which ultimately led me to meeting the love of my life.
The same day I was flying over that island full of sticks and rocks and dirt and trees, staring out the window of the plane, dreading what was to come, was the exact same day 2 years later, that he told me he loved me for the first time.
I would love to wax poetic right now and say that was the same day I realized everything I had been through was totally worth it, and it was. But I tend to always feel that way. I never minded the wait I always knew something better would come. A lot of people despise hindsight, thinking they shoulda coulda or woulda done something different.
Well, we didn’t. We did what we did, and here we are.
The sooner we all accept this, the better off we will be.
I accept where I am and how I got here.
I see my past as a map, full of pushpins and ticket stubs of places I have been and exits on the highway sometimes planned out and other times taken on a whim that landed me wherever I was at the time, which sent me in another direction and so on. I can see very clearly the how and the why.
And in this moment, I am happy.
I found the most random bag yesterday under the table downstairs. All my shampoo and whatnot from my trip to Florida last year. Seems like a lifetime ago, so much has changed, but as I scrubbed my face with the soap this morning I could feel the sun coming through the patio doors overlooking the ocean, I could see myself sitting down at laptop at 6am, half writing and half watching for dolphins. I could hear the waves and everything just felt good and right in the world for a minute.
I am in the same mindset I was back then after 2 years of treating my body badly out east, I am once again eating clean, doing yoga and drinking lots of water. That was my Florida resolution and I have the same one starting today.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life.
In 5 weeks I will be somewhere else, and 4 weeks after that on to a new adventure.
That’s all this life is really, just an adventure. Sometimes we have to wait, sometimes we get violently ripped from our reality and catapulted into something so much better.