A Confessional

I read, “Unless it’s mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it’s a waste of your time. There are too many mediocre things in life; love shouldn’t be one of them.” I watch the finale of How I Met Your Mother again. In the third to last episode, Ted, the show’s protagonist says, “Because love is the best thing we do.” I cry for an hour and a half and I am still sitting in bed with a stuffed red nose.

Because love is the best thing we do. Because love should not be another mediocre part of our lives.

I am half sitting, half laying in bed. I am naked and I have a cup of my favourite peach chamomile tea with honey. I am trying not to cry again. I am not sure why I feel so emotional tonight, but I might cry again.

I went on a date today and it didn’t go so well. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t well. It wasn’t good or passionate or even intriguing. It was so boring and dull. Across from me sat someone who was nice, who was smart and sensible, not unattractive. I will never see him again. I didn’t think he was funny. I didn’t think he was interesting, or fun, or wild. I always thought to myself I needed my men to be reckless. He inspired nothing. There was nothing wrong or different about him, or the situation. He was well and good, but he inspired nothing. It was mediocrity.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been revisiting older pieces of writing. Vivid writing about old memories, so vivid that the memories soothed by time now come back forcefully. I am thinking about the boy I so innocently liked in my first year. I am thinking about the way we hung out and talked about music and movies and politics. I am thinking about the hours and hours and hours we spent together but never kissed. I am thinking about the way our friends and acquittances always wondered about whether or not we were dating. I am thinking of sweet Dalton and sweet me. I am thinking about Richard, the last guy I really dated - almost two years ago. I am thinking about laying in his bed, over the bar crowds and the screaming party. I am thinking about the way he used to talk to me, the way he used to look at me. I am thinking about the way he once traced my body. I am thinking about the way I thought about how nothing was quite right, but I didn’t want to give up on the comfort of having someone, of being with someone. The hope of someone. And then I think about Phil. I think about Phil and the fucking nightmare of a mess he left me.

My heart is heavy. I am 23 and it feels like I’ve been dragged through the mud too many times. I am 23 and my body deteriorates far more quickly than my age suggests. I am 23 and my heart is shattered, too jagged and confused to know anymore. I am 23 and I’ve never been in a serious relationship. I am 23 and I am still so hopeful but I don’t know how to get the pitter-patter feeling anymore. I don’t know how to feel excited about someone anymore. I am 23 and wondering how to resuscitate myself.

Tonight in between crying and here, I try to find an older couple who used to photograph themselves. They’re gone. Recently, I have a conversation with someone whose photography I have long admired. So much has changed. So many people have left. So many relationships have changed. So many circumstances have changed. Life has changed. The world around us has changed.

I am struggling. I am doing better. I have a bit of a sense of direction again. I am going back to school in the fall, for a path that is a bit clearer than it has been in years. I have a few good friends who are supportive and encouraging and present. I have stopped fucking in an effort to forget or replace. But what has began to feel more solid and smooth, has stripped away the passion I once felt. I have left behind a lot of friends because I didn’t want to explain myself one more time. I have almost stopped dating completely. I don’t feel the same passion or drive towards the arts. I have become complacent and grow more and more tired. I grow less and less inspired by life, and the people and movement around me. I want to resuscitate myself but I do not know how.

I want love. I want good. I want passion and drive and spirit and adventure. I want something that makes me feel alive. I am 23 and I feel like I am wasting away.

The Light in Me

The light within us, that roots into the Earth, like a beam, a thread that travels downward into the molten core of the Earth. This light that is connected to everything and everyone. This light that is like the Sun. It will radiate and touch everyone- you, me, the planets, the stars, the Moon, but this will not diminish its own light. It is a flow that permeates all. This light is everything and it will be here after us as it was here before us. It will last, it will change, but it is. 

Krista in class today talks to us about yoga's origin story of the world. It is believed that the world, the universe originated when God decided to become the world, the universe. So God is everything in this world, and everything in this world has a piece of God; an essence of God. The Earth we walk on, the people we meet, the animals and plants we touch. All of this is God. There is divinity in all of us. A small seed of bright light. Because God became the Universe, because there is a piece of God and a piece of divinity in all of us, we all share something as part of the core of our being. We all share this quality, and there is not any more or less of it in each of us. 

If we replace this idea of divinity and put in its place humanity or some other quality like kindness or compassion, I think it becomes easier to understand our world and all the beautiful things in it and that can be in it. All the good that we can share. 

The world right now is in a state of chaos. There is so much injustice, so much death, so much horror, so much unkindness in the way that some of the world is treated. Almost an unkindness to all of us in the way the world is, the way God is in all of us. 

Today she tells us this, and we practice in hopes of experiencing all of what it feels to be human, so we might be better able to see God in each other. 

July 9, 2016. 

Weekend Reflection

Last weekend I visited Kingston and Queen's University. It's strange to think that I graduated and moved out of Kingston almost a year ago.

The following is the journal entry following my visit, dated March 14th:

The last two months have been hectic and exhausting. I decide I need a break, a refresh. I am in my old university town for the weekend- from Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. I graduated last June, so it hasn't been that long. Everyone thinks the same. Everything is familiar but everything is different. I don't run into any of my friends. I don't see my classmates or friends of friends. Everyone is gone. The fields, the library, the main intersection, the campus coffee shop- everything is the same. I am home, but I am not. This isn't my home anymore. It almost feels like a strange dream. 

I get in on Thursday afternoon. The ride share isn't pleasant, but I'm back in this place where everything looks the same. I sit with my friend at the library for a couple hours while she works on a paper. I grab sushi with one of my old roommates and I tell her everything- all the good, all the bad. She tells me it's like old times again. We go over everything. Friday consists of shopping downtown, Thai food and hanging out with Sarah, her boyfriend and his friends. I miss my friends, I miss my friends, I miss my friends. Saturday is sweet. I go for a short walk because it is beautiful and warm. There are so many girls already in shorts and short dresses. Ellen and I get coffee. We check out the small art gallery attached to the library. After this, Sarah drives us to the movies. We see How to be Single. We have dinner at the campus pub. We order so much food between the four of us that the waitress cannot believe. Saturday night ends when my best friend and I wait for her to get ready and then a beer tasting at a brewery downtown. I don't get back to my weekend home till almost 2 or 3AM. I leave Sunday, so Sunday is slow. We start slow and we sit at the campus coffee shop until my ride is there. 

I encounter all the same things but everything feels different. Everything feels fine and normal until in an instant, I realize, I am reminded that this is not my normal anymore. While everything looks the same, what made this place for me is not here anymore. I am walking by the field and I will not go past it to go to my first year residence, or the building where my last year seminars were. I am sitting on a couch at my friend's boyfriend's place and the jokes being made are not personal (to me, for me). These boys are funny, but they're not my Boys. They're not my friends, not who made these past four years great and safe and home for me. I take a shortcut through the gym to get to the house I lived in for two years. I only do this once. It is not my house anymore. I go into the house and everything is where it is supposed to be- the kitchen, the living room, the dining table, the stairs upstair, et cetera et cetera, but it no longer has that sense of home. It no longer has a sink filled with dirty dishes or drums sitting in the living room. It is not filled with our shouting or our laughing. It is not mine. Not our's. 

This weekend I feel strange and distant from everything because while everything looks the same, I know things are not the same. While they may not have changed drastically, they have changed. I have changed. The people who used to make this place home for me, have also changed. All the the students walk by and everything makes sense. But then something says, "You're not a student anymore." 

I'm not a student anymore. Kingston and Queen's was almost a year ago, but it feels almost like a dream.