Category Archives: Seeking Life Now

There are Good People in the City

04 Friday Mar 2016

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One thing I hear all the time, especially from people in my hometown, is that people in the city are rude and unfriendly.

This is a belief that I have never understood because I have lived here for 10 years and I just don’t see it.

I meet extremely friendly Torontonians every day. I meet strangers and share little funny moments of life with them every single day (well, as long as I’ve left my house…come on, everyone has those ‘stay in my pj’s’ kind of days!). I am constantly receiving offers of help with T’s stroller, or holding doors, offering me seats on TTC, etc.

A co-worker had an experience this week that has really struck a chord with me and I have been wanting to share this with as many people as possible in hopes of dispelling this idea that Torontonians are rude, stuck-up and narcissistic.

There was a morning this week where there were several subway and streetcar lines not operating. In a city of 2.86 million people, you can imagine the chaos that this caused as people were attempting to get to work for the day.

My friend was standing at a streetcar stop with a large crowd of people waiting for the substitute buses that were being dispatched to deal with the problem. A man in a vehicle pulled up, unrolled his window and said: “Ok, guys. I have room for 4 people.”
My co-worker and 3 others accepted the offer and were dropped-off near their work places.

There are good people in the city.

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Memory Problems

03 Thursday Mar 2016

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Memories constantly fool us, much more than I think most people would realize or admit. Memories that we carry with us from childhood are particularly tricky because our brains were less developed and time can drastically change memories.

I have many memories from childhood and each of them I hold onto knowing that what I remember and what the reality was may be two wildly different things.

I recently had a revelation of one such memory that brought-about this approach and encouraged me to never fully trust my recollection of events, or anyone else’s for that matter.

When my parents were splitting-up I remember going to family counselling. I don’t recall how many times we attended, but to me it seemed like once. It may have been more.

As we sat in the room with its professional grey, muted tones, and uncomfortable furniture, there were a lot of words being said and as a child I struggled to fully grasp what was going on.

My world was spiraling out of control and all that I had known was crumbling around me but my little brain was not able to process it all and separate what was happening between my parents from what was happening to me.

During this meeting my Dad said something that, for over 20 years I believed he had said directly to me:

‘I will never love you like I love her.’

What I heard: “I don’t love you anymore.”

In my mind, my Dad just told me that he doesn’t love me. Or, at least, that he loved someone more, which meant I wasn’t good enough-I could never measure up.

This moment in time changed my life forever.

It’s no wonder that my relationship with my Dad has been difficult. I would struggle during our weekends with him because I had these words playing over and over in the back of my mind.

It wasn’t until the past year when I was on the phone with my Mom and she mentioned that time that my Dad had told her that he would never love her like he loved his new partner that it all became clear.

He had never said it to me. It had nothing to do with me. That wasn’t how he felt about me.

I instantly felt such a great sadness for all those years that had been lost because of a misunderstood experience as a child that evolved into a destructive and heartbreaking memory.

As I grew up, I had held onto the memory of being told I was not good enough, not lovable, not important and it has been a memory that has shaped who I am today.

That is time I can never get back.

I often wonder how different my life may have been if someone had been able to set it straight so many years ago.

I always wish I could have that time with my Dad again, to be able to go back and have a relationship with him without that destructive memory getting in the way. To be able to grow up without feeling like I needed to constantly prove myself as being worthy of love or good enough to love and being able to enjoy just being loved.

Because, I know he loves me.

Love exists despite the pain, despite the sadness, despite the sad memories and lost time.

And, from this point forward I will go through life with the words of Marcel Proust forefront in my mind:

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”

And I will be a little more careful with my memories.

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Failure

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

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We’ve all heard the jokes about high school locker rooms and seen tv shows and movies that use them as comical fodder. But, for some of us, there was nothing funny about these moments of our lives.

A few weeks ago my husband and I were talking about Volleyball and he made a comment about how someone wouldn’t make a good volleyball player. When I asked why, he replied “she’s too short”. I had never considered the actual physical attributes of women in sports as being part of the reason they had made a sports team. Because, I grew up with none of these barriers, as in my small school, everyone played every sport. 

I went to a small, public school in the country where everyone was involved in all the sports, and I was good in them all. I could keep up with most of the boys playing soccer and football and often surpassed their talents in ball hockey, volleyball and softball. 

High School, however, was a whole new playing field. It brought sports to a new level that I haven’t been able to understand or appreciate until recently.

I tried-out for the volleyball team in high school, and had failed to make the team. I was devastated. I had been one of the best players in my school. During tryouts I did more push-ups and sit-ups than most of the other girls who tried-out; I was very ‘verbal’ and encouraging to my fellow teammates in the try-out games; I kept up with the endurance and proved my exellence in my ability to serve. 

How could I have not made the cut?

And, more than 10 years later, it dawned on me…At 5″2, I was too short. 

But, for years I beat myself up for not being good enough to make the team. I thought that it was just another way that I failed to live up to my peers. I wish someone had talked to me about this failure at the time. I internalized it and let it write a narrative over my life that would so often hold me back from doing things that seemed difficult and carried a high risk of failure. 

Because of this fear I have missed out on so many life experiences that I should have had. I could have been on community sports teams, done more adventure-seeking stuff, gone to more school dances, made more friends, involved myself in more social events…

The older I get, I am starting to understand how important it is to embrace failure, learn from it and let it strengthen and not weaken me.

I’m working on a new mantra:

Try always.

Fail often.

Quit never.

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We’re All in this Together

01 Tuesday Mar 2016

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“They’re more emotionally reactive. People who are highly sensitive will react more in a situation. For instance, they will have more empathy and feel more concern for a friend’s problems, according to Aron. They may also have more concern about how another person may be reacting in the face of a negative event.” (See Original Article Here.)

I’m not really sure what is meant by “react more”, but I can definitely relate to having “more empathy” and feeling “more concern”.

In fact, I often feel more for someone’s concern than they do.

For the most part, I just became invisible in high school.

I was an independent.

But, a highly sensitive independent.

As someone who walked the halls practically invisible, I observed.

I observed the groups, the cliques, the fights, the horrible words spoken about and sometimes to other students…and felt it all.

When someone is being hurt around me, it always feels  as if it is happening to me-to my own flesh. No, worse than that, it’s as if it is happening to the most important person in the world to me-and I can’t reconcile it.

As if all the mean words and heartless acts done to poor souls in high school weren’t enough, I remember a cold morning in my first period History class that tipped me over the breaking-point.

It was the day after the Columbine shooting.

We had a substitute teacher. The students in class were shaken and wanted to talk about these current events. But, the shallow things that were being said had my teeth on edge. As if watching the news wasn’t enough to deeply impact me and set me at unrest, I had also been experiencing nightmares about being in school and watching as friends, classmates, teachers and family members were gunned-down.

And then one of my classmates said the coldest, least sensitive thing I’d ever heard anyone say.

She said: “I could see ‘Brandon’ bringing a gun to school and shooting us all.
He seems like the type of person who would do that.” 

(The name has been changed for obvious reasons)

Even now it makes my blood boil and my hands shake.

I don’t know how I managed to keep it together, but I manageto raised  my hand and somewhat calmly, asked my teacher if I could be excused to go and work in the Library.
As substitute teachers go, this one did something amazing that day – he let me go.

Unfortunately, the damage had been done. I tried to talk to a few people about what had happened, but no one seemed to think it was important or understand how much it had affected me. I don’t get how someone could say something so judgmental, so damning.

There wasn’t enough space in my mind for everything that was going on.

There still isn’t.

I still have zero capacity to understand hatred, racism, bigotry or even someone just being impatient or mean at a checkout in the grocery store. I can’t understand why it’s so difficult for people to be nice to one another.When these kinds of negative things come across my path I feel like I’m suddenly a robot that was only ever programmed to encounter positivity and all I can hear is “cannot compute-cannot compute”.

I can’t understand why everyone, as it says in the iconic words of that high school movie, can’t understand that “we’re all in this together”.

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Two Hearts

29 Monday Feb 2016

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According to the article “16 Habits of Highly Sensitive People”:

1. They feel more deeply. One of the hallmark characteristics of highly sensitive people is the ability to feel more deeply than their less-sensitive peers. “They like to process things on a deep level,”… “They’re very intuitive, and go very deep inside to try to figure things out.”

I suppose this was always apparent in me.

When I was a kid I used to know, intuitively, that I was supposed to love and care for every person that crossed my path.

When I was 13, I went for a 2-hour walk giving a heated speech (to no one in particular-I lived in the country and there was no one around for miles) about how homosexuals should be welcomed into society freely and without judgement. It was 1993 and I had just seen “And The Band Played On”. It infuriated me-made my blood boil. I couldn’t rest.

As if middle school wasn’t difficult enough, when I entered high school it was as if I had entered a war zone. I was completely lost.

I took every comment, every glance, every shrug, every snide remark, personally-whether, or not, it was even directed towards me.

And, as my teachers were starting to expose us to more world issues and intense literature, I found myself spiraling into a deep, dark place.

My English teacher used to tell me that I needed to learn to have “two hearts”.
He would say: “Heather, you need to learn to have two hearts. One to care for yourself and one to place all the care for the world that is constantly weighing you down.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do with that advice.

I still don’t know.

me at mike and dans

I have one mind. It is me. For all its greatness and all its weakness. It is what it is.

I feel things deeply. Intensely.

I can’t really explain it. Try this: think of the deepest, most intense, moments of your life: childbirth, marriage, your most intimate sexual experience, a time you felt seething anger, moments of ecstasy, etc. and multiply it by 10.
That’s how I feel about 10-20 things every day.

A memory that rises from the recesses of my brain.
A car that cuts me off as I’m crossing the street.
A careless comment uttered by my husband.
A smile from my baby.
A scene in a tv show.
The feeling of the air as it hits my skin when I step outside.
The smell of toothpaste…

It doesn’t take much to bring me into a deep, introspective, place.

High School is known for being a tough place for everyone. But, it really did almost kill me. And this is one of the reasons why.
I was being exposed to more of life and the world, but given little help in how to process and handle it all.
And so, I have spent every day since I left that hell-hole, trying to come to grips with it all.

I still have a long way to go.

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High School Almost Killed Me

28 Sunday Feb 2016

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When I was 18, I over-dosed on Gravol and a few other things that I found in the cabinet.
I remember the morning as clearly as though it was yesterday.

I was tired. So, very tired.

I had just managed to scrape-through some of the roughest 3 weeks of my life. These 3 weeks were full of disappointments, let-downs, heartaches, hurtful practical jokes and endings. It was my last year of school and I was already feeling the grief of all that was being lost.

I didn’t set-out to kill myself in particular. I just wanted a break. I just wanted to be able to get-away from all the pain for a day.
To just sleep-through it all.

As the meds started to set-in I began to worry ‘what if I don’t wake-up?’ I took-out my journal and jotted-down some notes to my loved ones (just in case), and I called my Music Teacher to let him know I wouldn’t be at school or band practice that night.

And then…it all went black…

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As a, so-called, “Highly Sensitive Person”, I am amazed at how I’ve managed to make it through the turbulent waters of life.

Though, it’s certainly true that I haven’t come-through it unscathed. I have the scars to prove that I have embraced life in all its guts and glory.

This article is a good place to start on my journey because it sets the scene for who I am and how I experience the world.

Once again, for fellow HSP’s out there, or anyone who lives with an HSP, check-out the Huffington Post article:

16 Habits of Highly Sensitive People

‘The Adventures of Tom and Huck’

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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I was between the ages of 7 and 9 when my parents were divorcing. I remember this time as a mixture of freedom and neglect. We seemed to have very little parental guidance, control or presence in our lives.

While this meant that we could pretty much do whatever we wanted, it also meant we often didn’t have anyone taking care of us. While all of this was happening I rarely saw my eldest brother, who was 8(ish) years older than me at the time, while my other brother (4ish years older) seemed to become my entire universe.

He and I used to ‘skip’ school together, steal toys and food from stores, break into places, go swimming, eat candy (we had bought with money we stole from our Mom) and bike around town getting into trouble wherever we could.

I’m not sure I felt this at the time, but when I think back on those days I always think of them as sort of ‘the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn’ chapter of my life.

I remember the first summer after ‘the split’ being a hot one. My brother and I spent a lot of time at the lake and along the river. There were always houseboats docked along the river that were of great interest and intrigue to us. We would lay around on a nearby dock observing them until we sure it was safe, and then we would sneak on.

These weren’t expensive, fancy houseboats. They were the kind you could picture floating down the Mississippi on a humid summer day. We would imagine we were setting sail to wonderful, exotic places. And pretend that we were far away from our troubles.

We were caught twice. The first man who caught us was angry and unforgiving. He treated us like we were annoying, little, creatures (which, I guess we were) and kicked us off his boat.

The second man was much more patient. He expressed to us, in a kind but firm manner, that we were in the wrong and then showed us around his boat before kicking us off and making sure we understood that we were never to do it again.

On one of our more particular naughty days, we ‘skipped’ school and rode around town on our bikes taking air pressure caps off vehicle tires. I have no idea why we thought of doing this. We collected, what seemed like, hundreds of those little, black caps.

When our Mother found the stash she was, understandably, livid. She made us bike around and return them all. Which, of course, we didn’t do. We disposed of the ‘evidence’ and went swimming.

I remember these days as also being the days of ‘the empty fridge’. I have vivid memories of coming home from school at the end of the day, so hungry, opening the fridge and literally seeing nothing but a bottle of vodka.

But, we usually had a loaf of bread and, for some reason, a bag of icing sugar. This is when we created the first ever ‘microwave bread donut’!

Microwave Bread Donut

Recipe: slice of white bread, bag of icing sugar

Cooking Method: microwave slice of bread for 10 seconds, or until hot.

Roll hot slice of bread into a ball.

Place the ball of bread in icing sugar bag. Seal bag and shake well.

Open bag, consume ‘donut’.

This year is also the first time I remember my eldest brother, who is now an Executive Chef, cooking.

He would make us Kraft Dinner and pancakes and try to show us how to do things and get us to help. We were not very easy to manage. We would try to get the pancakes to stick to the ceiling, like we’d seen in cartoons and fling forkfuls of KD around like we were having an “Ernest Goes to Camp” kind of food fight.

I’m amazed after his experiences with his first, unruly, sous chefs that he still went ahead and pursued his cooking career. I’m pretty sure we helped him first discover his passion for the kitchen. Though, he’d probably say otherwise.

This time of life is full of fun stories, mischief, loss of innocence, pain, sadness, love and complexity.

This is only the beginning of the unraveling of my story.

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I’m Sorry. So Sorry.

26 Friday Feb 2016

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Back during one of my previous attempts at blogging, I talked about being a “highly sensitive person”.

I had found this blog on Huffington Post and it resonated with me:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/highly-sensitive-people-signs-habits_n_4810794.html

I’ve been thinking about #6 quite a bit lately: An HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) is “more upset if they make a ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ decision.”

My husband will be able to attest to the fact that I do not say “I’m sorry” very easily. This can often be misunderstood as me not being sorry. But, the truth is exactly the opposite.

The problem, and I try to explain this to him (though, I don’t think he ever believes me), is that I feel so sorry and horrible for what I have done that it’s difficult for me to talk about it.

The Huff Po article says “You know that uncomfortable feeling you get after you realize you’ve made a bad decision? For highly sensitive people, ‘that emotion is amplified because the emotional reactivity is higher’”.

Here’s an example of how this works for us HSP’s from an experience I had just this morning.

When I was changing my son’s diaper I found that he had pooped at some point, most likely, during the night and it had started to squish out of his diaper. When I removed the diaper, I noticed that, because he had been sitting in it for so long, his skin was beat red. Here is what happened in my brain:

He probably did it right after we put him down last night when he was fussing.
Why did I ignore him?
If I had gone in and checked on him this wouldn’t have happened.
It’s my fault his bum is all red and sore.
I tortured my child all night long because I’m lazy.
I’m a horrible person.
I don’t deserve forgiveness.
I don’t deserve to be loved.
With all of that going on in our brains, can you really blame us for struggling to say “I’m sorry”?

The ability to move through these thoughts and say “I’m sorry” is further stymied if the person we have hurt has a strong reaction to what we have done.

For example: I drop a can of peaches on my husband’s foot and he instantly screams in pain and shoots me a dirty look. Here is what happens in my brain:

What’s wrong with me?
I’m a stupid klutz.
Now he hates you (judging by the look he just gave you).
Why are you so dumb?
You can’t do anything right.
I’m a horrible person.
I don’t deserve forgiveness.
I don’t deserve to be loved.

What’s the solution? Should we just be ‘off the hook’ and not have to say “I’m sorry” ever again?

I don’t think so.

I’ve been working on being able to apologize by first of all, trying to explain what is happening in my head at the time so there is an understanding of what I’m facing. I also practice self-talk in my head and try to formulate something to say that, may not be the words “I’m sorry” but mean the same thing, with the hopes that, one day, I will be able to actually just say the words.

Until then, if I’ve hurt you in any way, please accept my apology and know that I’m working on being able to say I’m sorry for the next time I (inevitably) hurt you.

Prom

25 Thursday Feb 2016

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To this day I can’t remember what kind of reasoning or excuse I must have given to my  prom date (who also happened to be my brother) when I drove us to my teacher’s house before heading to the prom.

This action is something that plagued me with intense self-disdain and embarrassment for years.

‘How completely ridiculous am I that I did something like that?’

As an adult I can understand why I did it and I have been telling myself to cut the teenage me a break.

My home life was not stable and could be fairly volatile at times. This teacher was one of the few people in my life that made me feel safe.

I was attending prom despite the fact that I desperately did not want to go. I had never been interested in attending a prom. But, it seemed important to my mother that I attend, and then my brother offered to go with me and I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or let anyone down (see my “People Pleaser” post).

Because I felt like I had zero control over anything and was about to walk into a world that I believed would chew me up and spit me out like I was yesterday’s gum, I needed to see a friendly face.

I went to his house to get some confidence.

If he said that everything was going to be great and that I looked lovely, then just maybe, I could survive the horror that lay-before me.

When I look-back on photos of my prom I’m always struck by how much I look like the ghost of an old grandma who died on the way to a wedding. Truthfully.

Our prom theme was, perhaps, the most disgusting theme ever used for a prom: “Truly, Madly, Deeply” based on that, ‘oh so amazing’ (makes me want to puke to this day), song by ‘Savage Garden’. We didn’t walk in the grand march, but I think we watched everyone else doing it as that horrible song played over and over and over again.

While at prom I did have some fun, despite myself. My brother and I danced a fair amount. He was incredible and kept saying things like: “Let’s show these assholes how to dance’.

I think I ditched him pretty unceremoniously at the end. I can’t really remember the chain of events, but I don’t think I stuck-around prom for that long. I remember going to a friend’s house afterwards and eating a crap load of junk food while watching a movie or something.

Most of me just wanted to forget that the whole, horrible, night had ever happened.

But, years later, after being able to forgive myself for the stupid things I did when I was a lost teenager, searching desperately for security, acceptance and self, I think back on my prom and the words that come to mind are not that it was lame, torturous, unimportant or stupid.

Now, when I think about that night, these are the words that float to the top: My brother is amazing. He loves me so much that he was willing to do that for me.

And, we really did show those assholes how to dance.

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Creativity

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

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While creativity can be something that you either have, or you don’t, it also doesn’t mean that you can just turn it on and off like a faucet.

For me, the most important thing to allow my creativity to flow is the ability to quiet the outside world. This means more than turning off the tv or avoiding checking-in on my smart phone.

For me, it requires a quieting of the world that, even after these external resources have been powered down, exists in the mind.

I can quickly overwhelm myself with thoughts, expectations and pressure to live up to a certain standard, be a certain way and to create a masterpiece.

With this pressure screaming at me loudly, banging its fists, stomping its feet and demanding that I perform, I will, inevitably, clam up and produce nothing.

I become like a flower under extreme heat. I wilt and lose my luster.

Many years ago I had the privilege of sitting in a small group of people and free writing. The guy leading the group was an editor for a non-profit magazine at the time. He instructed us to just write for 1 minute, 5 minutes and then 10 minutes without stopping or going back to correct or edit while we were writing.

This was an incredibly valuable experience for me. It is difficult to allow yourself just to write without allowing the drive to self-edit take over. When we start to edit ourselves our thoughts change direction and we can lose something really beautiful, honest, vulnerable and powerful that was about to come out because we have choked freedom in exchange for perfection.

This little lesson was only a couple of hours long, one evening, 7 or so years ago, but I am amazed at how many times, when I’m sitting down to write, I close my eyes and bring myself right back to that room. I picture the tables set-up in rows, the others in the group sitting around me, the darkness in the sky outside the window, the pen and paper in front of me, and this person standing before us telling us to write.

I keep my eyes closed and I can hear a clock ticking, ‘tick, tick, tick’, counting down the 60 seconds for the first minute to be finished and as I allow the gentle ‘tick, tick, tick’ to clear my mind of all other thoughts, I suddenly find myself writing. Freely, unedited, messy, jumbled, inspiring, terrifying and beautiful.

To the person who changed my life so many years ago, thank you. I know it was just a blip in time and may have felt fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but for me it has been a lesson that has held priceless value as it continues to help me be able to freely express myself time and time again.

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