Date no. 9

I'm smitten and I think it shows. I think it is very obvious and I have made no attempts to hide it. I'm smitten and then I have to admit that for the first time in a while, I am happy.

Mom, don't worry about me. I think I'm finally figuring things out. I'm finding my way. 

Yesterday, he wrote an important exam. I could tell he was tired when I asked him to hang out with me at the park. He looked so sleepy. We laid in the park, basked in the last of summer's sunshine. He told me that he was glad he came out even though he was tired. It was a beautiful day - one worthy of being celebrated.

I appreciate that he is someone who will say yes to me, who will say yes to my whims. This need of mine to be outside and to do things, to never feel trapped. He is someone who will say yes when he starts to see the ways I falter, my inconsistencies, and the way I am stubborn. I appreciate that he is so different from me in this way. Kinder than me, more patient than me, likely more forgiving than me. He is far warmer than what I'm used to dating.

Yesterday, we sat at the park for about an hour, maybe a little more. We spent the time trading more stories, more experiences. I was reminded the way that dating is the way we fill each other in on the details of our lives. He told me the time he drank the Sourtoe Cocktail. He told me the time and the way his grandpa admitted to smoking marijuana. I told him about my dad's reaction to the legalization of marijuana. We talked about the way that Ontario will roll out its own legalization process. I showed him some of the thumbnails I was working on. We were laying in the grass. I was rolling around. I felt really happy; it felt light. After about an hour, I recommended Hanmoto for dinner. A Japanese bar with tapas-style food. We had to wait, but he really enjoyed the spot. We each got cocktails, split the food. If I'm honest, when I say I'm smitten, I like just spending time with him. I move outside of myself and I realize I like just sitting across him, waiting for our food. I like watching him. I like these moments. I'm very smitten. After dinner, we migrated to his place. We chatted with his roommate. I appreciate the way he introduces me to the different parts of his life - the parts of life that build a real person, a real existence. We spent the evening watching Twin Peaks, cuddling and making out. I went home at the end of the night, but I didn't really want to. I wanted to spend more time with him. I didn't think he wanted me to leave either. We spent an hour "leaving".

On the porch, we hugged and kissed goodbye. I think I am becoming less frightened that he will be someone who disappears from my life without so much as another thought. It is a wonderful evening. I like the way he pats my head. I like the way he holds me, tightly but with a pressure that says he is worried that he may snap me. I am happy thinking about it. He feels safe. He is easy to talk to, someone I'm comfortable around, and he feels safe. I'm smitten. I like him. I really like our time together.

I'm a fan of this one.

Tommy Thompson Park

This is a photo from the day he first kissed me. We went for a 5-kilometre trail through Tommy Thompson Park, making it a 10-kilometre hike (walk). My feet will be sore for a week and a half after. It will hurt so much that I am unable to walk for two days. He kissed me when we were sitting on some rocks, watching sailboats and the city skyline. When I'm with him, I never want to stop.

I met him at a pool party almost three months ago. It was an old university acquaintance - someone I had classes with and sat at a couple pubs with, but not someone I spent a lot of time with. It was through another mutual friend that I was invited at all. It is funny how these things happen. Funny how coincidental life is. When we tell people we met at a pool party, I wonder who I am. I wonder how these things happen to me. This doesn't seem or feel like something that will happen to me. I met this boy at a pool party and I assumed I would never see him again. Nearly three months later, I miss him when I don't see him. I like hearing him laugh. 

Last Saturday, he texted me he was hungover. We were supposed to hang out. I brought pizza and kombucha (my hangover cure) over to his place and we watched Black Books and Bojack on Netflix. We sat with his roommates. I met a guy from my old high school (many years my senior). I am in awe how we do these things, in awe of how comfortable I feel in these situations with him. 

He holds my hand when we walk together. We do things together. We watch movies, go to bars, go to Shakespeare in the Park. He asks me questions about my weeks, my life, my history. He introduces me to his friends. We spend time with his friends. He wants to see me and spend time with me. This is a real experience, a real exchange with a real nuanced person. With him, and with me. The more time we spend together, the more we become 3-dimensional figures in each other's lives. I heard once somewhere that someone is less likely to steal from your wallet if you have a picture of a baby in it. I think you're less likely to have your heart broken when someone first acknowledges that you have a real heart capable of being vulnerable. We hold hands. We kiss. When our bodies fold together and I'm cuddled against him, I wonder how I might never leave. I like him. 

This is different. This feels different. I am not ready to admit or really openly vocalize my excitement. My best friend and I are of the variety that believes when good things happen, the other shoe will drop. The faint optimist in me wants to believe otherwise. He is so good. This is different. This feels different. If we look and compare and contrast, there are differences. I think both minor and more substantial. If we look, we start to begin to picture things that may not be there. I think we are creatures desperate to see what we seek. But this feels different, I say again. 

This is another photo from the day he first kissed me. I want to see him again soon. 

PS. Thank you to my friend Amanda who asks me about this blog, and reads my content, and encourages me to write more. I miss you.

Dear September

Please be kind to me.

Tomorrow, I am heading back to school after two years away. I am terrified. I was excited and nervous for so long. I am now terrified. I'm worried I won't be able to keep up. There's so much going on, and I know I always work better, learn better under pressure but I am a nervous thing. A scared, frightened thing. I've never been good with being wound up too much. Always a little reckless, always a springboard.

I really want this to work out. I really need this to work out - more than I am willing to admit, even with writing this now. I need this to work out. I need the blanks in my life to fall into place. I think above everything else, this is the thing that leaves me most insecure, most anxious. I don't like having no sense of direction in my life. I've never been good with aimlessness. I've been aimless. If this year of schooling goes well, if I work hard, if I am lucky- by the end of it, I can have a job. A real job. A creative job full of new opportunities, new people, new environments. I don't want to feel so lost. This is not an exploratory lost; this is a black, shadowy lost. It is "I-cannot-see-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel" lost.

This month will be juggling. It will be finding balance. It will be finding where my new calm is, where my safety in the midst of all this trouble will be. It will be the sweet spot between adventure and self-care.

I start a full-time program. It will be a little over twenty hours of lectures and labs, and however many hours spent working at home. I will likely start working at a new coffee shop where I will have to learn so many new things. I will still try to balance yoga into my days, weeks. It is something that both my body and mind need. I don't think it is something I can go long without anymore. There is something sacred about going to the classes, seeing the faces of my teachers, hearing their words. Their questions. I will try to schedule in a social life. I will try to date. I will try to make this go as well as I can.

I hope I make friends. I hope they're fun and we spend real time together. I hope we work well together. I hope that the program will not be so difficult that I cannot handle it. I hope I will enjoy my time. I hope that I will be happy, that I'll learn a lot. I hope I'll laugh a lot. Open my eyes a little more, have my world shifted into a new adventure that I'll be able to embrace. I hope I won't lose everything I've worked hard for up until this point. I hope I'll continue to work harder to let these new things fall into place too.

September, please be kind to me. Please let me be happy. Let me learn. Let me meet lots of people, make friends. Let things work out with this guy. I think I can really like him, or I do really like him. I think I need someone like this in my life. Stable, sweet, kind, patient. Please, please, please let things fall into place the way they need to be. Please let me learn balance, learn calm, learn a new sort of bravery to do all of this.

It all starts tomorrow. I hope I do well.

Talk to you later.

Tattoo II

At the end of June, I got another tattoo. This one, I'll dub my second and a half tattoo. It's a coverup for a stick-and-poke that didn't work out. It cost roughly $240, not including tip. It was done by Jennifer Lawes at Pearl Harbour Gift Shop.

What is it?
It's a sparrow, diving down. In flight. Note that it's a different bird from a swallow, which is prominent for tattoos.

What does it mean? 
The sparrow is a coverup for a stick-and-poke that featured a love-heart pierced by a sword with 'ME' written inside. So, in part, the sparrow means nothing. It just is.

A sparrow for flight, for freedom, for escape, for never being bound to the ground, or a single place, a single situation or scenario. A sparrow to remind me to leave. To keep moving, to keep chasing. For the last while, I have felt very stuck. Glued and pinned to the Earth. I haven't been satisfied or happy or alive. A sparrow as a reminder that some things aren't meant to be bound to the ground. A reminder that if the wings are pinned, it is much like dying. It is important and necessary to move, to chase, to seek adventure.

It is a sparrow more than any other bird because a sparrow is common. It is plain. It is small and soft. It is flighty and shy. To me, they endure. They push onward.

Did it hurt?
It hurt a lot. The area here is much more sensitive than my first tattoo. The parts that hurt a lot more were right next to my boob and closer towards my armpit. I think it hurt most as it got closer to my armpit. It was a lot. I hope that for my next tattoo, I will be kinder to myself and pick a less sensitive spot.

I should note that this time I got some shading done. I learned that shading is not as painful as linework. I thought the sensation of shading was much more bearable.

Other things of note that helped with this tattoo session opposed to my first tattoo session: I listened to music as recommended by my friend Henrieta. Music helped drown out the noise from the gun. It provided a much needed disaster, and it wasn't until I put music on that I realized how much I really, really hated the sounds of needle guns/drills/etc.

I brought a giant thing of Booster Juice with me. I learned after my first tattoo that my body is very sensitive to the changes in my blood sugar levels. I needed something constant to pan me through the entire session. I sipped my Booster Juice throughout the session and I found it very helpful. It kept my blood sugar levels more consistent before, during and after my session. It was also a nice sweet treat to distract me from the tattooing process. Because of this, I didn't need much else after the session. The tattoo still stung but it didn't leave me feeling sick. I just walked home after and rested.

How long did it take? 
If I recount correctly, the whole appointment took around two hours. I think it took about an hour and a half to almost two hours for the needle-to-skin tattooing part. I did stop her for a couple times for a few minutes as a small rest. It took about two, almost three months from when I went in for a consultation to my tattoo date.

Why'd you do it? 
I really liked the design of my stick-and-poke tattoo. I thought it was really lighthearted and fun. However, the tattoo artist might have gone too deep into my skin and the ink bled. My tattoo was left with a blue-black halo around the lines. Although it did fade a little and would've likely continued to fade, I didn't like it. I wanted to get it covered up, so I settled on an artist and a design and did just that.

I recently read a thing. I can't remember from where. It described getting tattoos like getting a nose job or a boob job or dying your hair or whatever. It was a way of having your physical body more in line with your mental picture of yourself. It was a way of having your outside be reflective of your inside. I really liked that. I want my physical body to reflect some of what I feel inside.

I also mentioned in my post about my first tattoo that for me, tattoos are very much about control. My physical body is so often out of my control. It acts and reacts in unpredictable ways. Over the years, it feels like I lose more and more of it. I want an aspect of it to reflect my will, to impose my control. I want my body to feel beautiful when it gives me anguish and sometimes, a sense of despair.

Are you getting more?
Yeah. Already trying to plan more.

Henrieta and I

August Favourites

Glossier Generation G in Crush - Glossier launched in Canada (excluding Quebec) in mid-July. Having heard so much hype over the brand over the past years, I had to grab some stuff. For the most part, I have not been disappointed. I picked up both the Phase 1 and 2 sets. My favourite product is the Generation G lipstick though. It is what I want all my lipsticks to really look like. It gives you the faded look of worn lipstick right off the bat. Like you've been drinking coffee and wine and kissing boys all day. I think that's the thing with Glossier - subtlety is really key. You can shop my discount code here for 10% off.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay - My favourite stories from this short story collection were Strange Gods, North Country and Requiem for a Glass Heart, but they're all good. The exploration Gay does in this collection is really remarkable. There are so many tales - some sweet, some sad, some heart wrenching, some really simple and some very complicated. There are a lot of different perspectives. Stories of women from all sorts of backgrounds, facing all sorts of different circumstances, all fighting their own demons. All beautiful. I encourage you to read it, and then I encourage you to share your favourite stories with your loved ones.

Fresh Tangerine Braided Stacking Ring - I appreciate the look of delicate jewelry. I love the look of ring covered fingers dancing along a keyboard, making the tapping sounds as it goes along. I am trying to build my jewelry collection, but not with cheap costume jewelry. I want to build the kind of jewelry collection that I may be able to pass down to my future maybe-nonexistent children. Fresh Tangerine is a brand out of Seattle that makes handmade jewelry, using quality metals. (They're also filled instead of plated, which reduces chances of tarnishing.) The ring was a bit of an impulse splurge purchase, but I don't regret it. It looks beautiful next to my Wolf Circus Matisse ring, both in 14k gold.

Old School Dating - So I think I've mentioned on this blog before some of my interactions on Tinder and just dating in general. To say that it doesn't go well, may be an understatement. It's not that it always goes terribly, but online dating or dating through apps leaves a lot to be desired. Fairly recently, I met a boy at a pool party - friend of a friend. I didn't think much of it. I thought it was just meeting someone as you do, and then having them fade back into a stranger. We started hanging out. We went to see a movie in the park, we grabbed drinks, we went hiking. It's been very gradual, but I have to tell you: I miss dating. I miss getting to know someone and getting butterflies. I miss not knowing what he's interested in or if he's interested at all. I miss the mystery and the chase. I'm still hesitant to say whether or not this guy will be the guy, but I have to say dating like this is not bad at all.