I Really Need to Stop Using Similes.

So, I have this horrible habit of having really ill-conceived conversations late at night. You know the kind. The ones you lay awake thinking about, the ones you can't get past. Tonight we talked about love, and here's what I think I've decided:

Falling in love is like falling down a flight of stairs.
99 times out of 100 you're going to get your ass kicked. The whole way down you're so caught up in it you think maybe, just maybe, I'll come out of this alright. That is, if you really think anything at all. All you know is you're falling.
And then there you are, flat on your ass at the bottom, nursing a bruise or two, wondering what the hell happened, where you went wrong, which step exactly was the one you missed.
But then there's that one time, if you ever get there, where you somehow nail that perfect landing.
And everything feels like it's gunna be okay.

On Leaving It All Behind

I'm not alone in saying that the last year has been a hard one. We've all had our things.

People have left, people have been lost. Relationships have been strained, and at the end of the day, I've felt alone in a lot of it. So it goes, eh?

But here's where I need to make a change. I need to leave it behind. I need to do something, anything, to deal with what I haven't been dealing with.

I remember quite distinctly finding out when both of my grandparents had passed away. Each time I was somewhere different, on my way to some event, and both times I followed with an utter breakdown. I can logic my way through loss as much as I want, but at the end of the day, no matter how much sense it makes on paper, I still can't wrap my head around it, not really.

I'm still not sure I believe that there are people I will never see again, never hear laugh again, never make smile again.

I'm still not sure.

So, as both a favour to my family, and perhaps even moreso - a favour to myself- I'm going to be going through and cataloguing all of my grandparent's old photographs. There are about a dozen photo albums crammed full of memories, of things I'd forgotten, things that happened before me, things that I never knew happened at all.

I know it's not going to be the most fun experience, but I'm just hoping that with it will come some sense of closure, understanding, or... I don't know. Something. Anything?

I'm still not sure.

"I know people say life goes on... and it does. But no one tells you that's not a good thing."

Lovefool

Is love at first sight total bs? 

No. 

Okay, a bit. But here’s how I think it works:

I think that love at first sight is that connection- that instant when you look across a room or stumble through a doorway or sit down at a table at a bar, look up, and instantly feel like the person in your direct line of vision is going to have a defining role in your life. 

And I think it’s largely our own responses to those impulses that define the follow-through; if I think that the person across from me will have something beautiful to offer my life, if I feel a level of attraction or connection, I’m probably infinitely more likely to be open to the development of our relationship from a chance encounter to something more substantial. 

Sometimes people just kind of... walk haphazardly into your life, and sometimes those people redefine you, or at least let you redefine yourself. 

The first time I met Pumpkin we were both getting drunk off our asses at an event; within a month, and after only two hangouts, I’d decided he was my favourite, my #1. It wasn’t until 6 months later that our casual acquaintanceship developed into a solid friendship. 

When I met Goldilocks we had one night in which we said probably no more than 3 words to each other, and the next week bonded over our love of the Body Shop’s Hemp line, and within a week or two following that had become fast friends. 

And when I met 1002things, way back in the day, I saw this amazingly cool lady every week for months on end before we finally sat down, talked, and developed into incredibly close friends. 

Was there an instant connection with each of them? I’m guessing so- but I met all three in three very different circumstances. So, while Goldilocks and I hit it off instantly, Pumpkin and I took a little longer to finally take off on our fab friendship, and 1002things and I had a much slower courtship which has landed me with a relationship with one of the best people I know. 

Love at first sight? Maybe a hint at love. A connection. An instant in which we decide- is this a person I’m going to invest my love in right now? Or do I maybe need to wait? 

Never Give Up on the Good Times

What experience would you be willing to risk everything for?

I’ve been trying to think on this one, very seriously, to figure out what, if anything, I would risk everything for. I want it to be something grand- something worth losing everything I’ve got. 

Worth losing my friends.

Worth losing my family. 

Worth losing the friends that have become my family, the family that are my friends. 

What would I be willing to risk losing Myself over? 

Honestly, I’m not sure there’s anything. 

There are a whole lot of amazing things I’d love to experience- going into space, seeing the lowest point of altitude on earth, hell, seeing the highest. I’d love to fall head-over-heels in love with someone who loved me (head-over-heels) back. I’d love to get my PhD, become a published author, or sell and produce a line of tshirts. 

I’d love to do a lot of things; in fact, I have a whole list of them. I think right now I’m somewhere around 450. But would I give up the people I love to experience all those things? 

I don’t think I could. Because I wouldn’t trade in texts like:

“Although I like the adjective yeti-ish, I don’t think it applies to you”

“Hahaha, sorry, a hobo just called you from my phone”

“You’re welc-gooooooooo!”
or 

“Don’t go to bed with a frown in your pocket. Take it outside and strap it to a rocket”

for anything. 

And without those amazing people, what the hell are all the experiences worth?

Love Uncontrollably

What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done for love?

I tend to do a lot of ridiculous things, especially when love gets involved. 

Countless mix tapes/cds, dozens of handwritten letters, and at least a few extravagant packages later, I still think that the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done for Love, for someone I Loved and continue to Love was to fly across the country to see him. 

Okay, so, let’s set this up with a bit of backstory: My cousin plays for the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (KWS) and a couple years ago a buddy of mine was going to school out in Kitchener-Waterloo (he will henceforth be referred to as Kay-dub). 

And, while the trip was, in large part, to see my cousin and spend some time in what is easily one of my favourite Canadian cities, the added benefit was that, with some perfected timing, I was going to get to drive out from T.O with my cousin and see Kaydub for an evening, see a show, and have an awesome hangout. 

Since he moved away, we’d started emailing more, talking on ye olde interwebs, and occasionally even indulging each other in a phone call. Because, regardless of how far apart we were, we were buds, and it made sense to keep in touch. Hell, we kept in touch better that year than we have any year since. 

Anyway, and I mean this with no disrespect or slight intended towards my cousin, because she is easily one of the most amazing people in my life and I love her to bits and wish I could see her infinitely more often than I do- a big part of the trip was about seeing Kaydub. After all, he was doing his MA, which was a huge deal, and was living away from home. I’d been there. No matter how awesome it is, it’s still kind of rough. And I missed him, and wanted to see him. Plus, I got to bring him to one of my cousins performances, and show off how proud of her I am. That was hella cool. 

But, at the end of the day, I largely arranged a trip around the prospect of getting in a car or hopping on a greyhound bus and going out to see him. 

Lo and behold I happened to get there on what probably still ranks as one of the worst weekends of the kid’s life, but, hey, shit happens. 

Enough is Enough, Love is Enough, Love is Love

March 8th, 2009: Life's Big Questions: Is love nothing more than a chemical reaction?

I'll start this with a bit of a forewarning: I'm the cynic of most groups. I'm really skeptical about emotion, tend to fall on the side of the hyper-rational, and have been known to use logical arguments to reason myself through some decently heart-wrenching situations. Life tends to be easier when you can compartmentalize your way through the hard times.

What this means is that I tend to think that the idea of romantic love is a little hokey. And in saying that, I can feel the burning eyes of the romantics in my life turning towards me in scorn. Yes, I've been in love. Yes, it was fool of googly eyes and butterflies and staring at each other all day because we loved each other sooooOOOoooOOooo much that we even overcame the barf reflex from all that lovey-dovey-ness.

Unfortunately, that kind of love isn't really what I think love ever evencould be. I think it's easy to attribute love to the hyper-romantic version that, for some reason, seems to be idealized. And the endorphins that are set off when people become attracted to each other, during the phase of falling in love, are basically like one massive high, that tends to last about a year. So if you're talking the head-over-heels googly love, I think it's purely chemical. It's getting really jacked up on someone else and being entirely overwhelmed by the rush of chemicals swimming in your brain. That's real, but it's not real love.

I do think love exists, though. It has to. It's the kind of thing that's in every choice you make- choosing to care about someone above all others. Choosing to love someone not in spite of their flaws, but because of them. Choosing to stay with someone, day after day, even after that overwhelming euphoria has ended.

If love exists, it's the mundane-ness of daily life. Falling in love is just the chemical process you need to get to the place where you decide- is this someone you can spend your life (or at least some part of it) with, or isn't it?