5 Years.

Five years ago today I moved to Québec.

What my life is like now is nothing like what I thought it would be on that day I crossed the border and moved to Canada. I came here to be with the person I loved, and once I left my country, he became my home. It wasn't a conscious decision; it just happened in my heart when I displaced myself for him and we got married.

When that exploded and the ground beneath me finally stopped shaking, I realized that I would need to gently dust myself off and redefine "home" for myself. I had to figure out a path forward.

Résilience.

This morning I watched this video about a goat that made me cry. The concern and commitment of the caregivers was moving, but it was seeing the little goat's determination that left me with tears running off my face and dropping onto my sternum. The goat kept going, despite adversity, with an attitude that I interpret as thankfulness. And not happiness, but joy. I was taught from an early age that joy is different than happiness because it is independent of external circumstances.

The other day I saw that a library in my town had added the word "résilience," written in huge silver capital letters, all across one side of the building. It's much larger than a billboard, and I took it as a message of encouragement from the universe to keep going. It is a reminder that that we can bounce back from adversity, that the human spirit is strong.

Death and resurrection.

Where I grew up, Easter Sunday was important. There was usually a new Easter dress and sometimes there were hats, but there was always an abundance of pastel-clad people. And green plastic tinsel grass inside bright cheery-colored Easter baskets with chocolate, Paas-dyed eggs and jelly beans.

Until this year, I didn't really have much experience with death. And it turns out, resurrection feels pastel-colored only if you don't know what it's like to go through some sort of death.

Woken by rain.

I'm not sure I ever wrote about this before, but in the winter of 2011 our bathroom had two leaks coming from the ceiling. There was one leak coming through the vent thing over the tub (which convieniently dripped into the tub) and one through the light fixture beside the tub (which required a bucket). I quickly realized that the leak only came when I heard the upstairs neighbors using the toilet and then flushing. But the leak started dripping before the flush.
 
***

          Lights up.

The audience hears the sound of the upstairs neighbor peeing.

Drips begin coming through ceiling at a rate of more than one per second.

Toilet flushes.

Drips continue for a while, then slow to a stop.

          Blackout.

***

So....yeah. Gross.

Well. This morning the sound of running water woke me up.

No going back no going home.

I got home from my holiday travel three days after my return flight was originally scheduled. The domino-effect delays and cancellations caused by the recent snowstorms led to my Thursday flight being cancelled and rescheduled for Friday. Then that Friday flight was cancelled. After lots of time on hold yet again, I was told the next flight I could get was for Monday. I later called back and managed to get a flight for Sunday, but then that one too was cancelled. More time on hold and the feeling I would never make it home led to looking for flights out of a nearby city an hour and a half away. I managed to get a a flight out of that city for Sunday. I was told that if I didn't make that flight, my next option from either city would be the following Wednesday. Both legs of that Sunday flight ended up being delayed, but I eventually got home at 2 a.m. or so Monday morning.

Darkness and light and the belly of the whale.

I've been thinking a lot about darkness and light, death and rebirth, and the journey into the belly of the whale.

In writing about the monomyth, Joseph Campbell described three overarching stages of the journey: departure, initiation and return. The last step of the departure stage is the journey into the belly of the whale, where the hero seems to be swallowed up by death.

The boots are on.

Crisis: Dead-End or Transformation

This was in my neighbors' mail outside their door. I took it as extra motivation to fight my way through to the other side of this experience. I recently watched Under the Tuscan Sun, and it's just like when Patti says to Frances (whose husband left her for another woman):  

"You know when you come across one of those empty shell people, and you think 'What the hell happened to you?' Well there came a time in each one of those lives where they are standing at a crossroads... someplace where they had to decide whether to turn left or right. This is no time to be a chicken-shit, Frances."

Today my ex moved his stuff out.

Things Not to Say.

When someone tells you that their husband/wife/partner left them for someone else suddenly without any warning signs at all, here are some things it's probably best not to say out loud to that person.

"C'est la vie." 

Choosing thanks.

As I sit at home with Booboo in my lap, I look at the snow outside and think of life and it's unexpected turns. Sometimes life's surprises are exhilarating, sometimes they're excruciating, and sometimes they're just...different.

It's American Thanksgiving, but since that's not a holiday here, it feels like a normal day. Thursday. Except it's not just Thursday, so I am choosing to focus on what I am thankful for today. I have a purring Booboo in my lap, I have a home to live in that is within walking distance of most of what I need, I have a job I enjoy (and freelance opportunities I love), and family and friends that love me and support me. I am lucky...blessed...and thankful. I'm also thankful for hope that everything will be alright in the end and that life has good things in store for me in the future, despite the hell of these past months. It may not always feel that way, but I will choose to believe it anyways. Life does have a way of surprising us, after all.

Morning coffee.

 

As I was walking home from the grocery store the other day, I realized that I had lost track of how many times I have been to the grocery store since July. I suppose that is a good sign.

Digging before the ground freezes.

"It doesn’t go away, the importance you put on one single person, the value that he had for you, the assumption that you would lie beside him forever; the hope you had for your union is so great that the loss of it doesn’t go away. To move forward you have to dig an internal grave and intentionally put that hope to rest. People will try to help you, but you must do it yourself. You bury it like a body in the earth and pray that whatever it was for you will give life to something else—like a tree—and hope that with every year that new life will become bigger, stronger, and more beautiful. But that loss doesn’t ever go away, not entirely."
-Isabel Gillies, A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story (p. 32)

So we signed the divorce paperwork. It was the saddest thing I have ever done in my life.