Tag Archives: Reality

These are the Times

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

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Sometimes I get lost in nostalgia. Today is one of those days.

I lived in Toronto for 11 years in two different time periods. There was pre-New Zealand and post-New Zealand and the experiences are vastly different from one another.

This morning I find myself in deep reflection, once again, on my time there pre-New Zealand. This was an intense time full of deep relationships, friendships, emotions, highs, lows, struggles and heart aches.

During this time I led a reflection activity for a group of young people using Billy Joel’s song “This is the Time,” encouraging them to make the most of their young days because they would not last forever. I didn’t realize how true these lyrics would become for me. I truly thought that this was a time that would last forever; at least for me.

Watch on YouTube: This is the Time

As I sit here writing this, listening to these lyrics again, I am almost surprised by how much things have changed. I was certain that my life was going to continue-on in the same manner, that I would be surrounded by the same people, doing the same things, for the rest of my days.

But, everything has changed.

There are beliefs, lifestyles, locations and people long-gone that I thought I would never leave, or leave behind.

Despite the fact that I was encouraging a group of young people to be mindful of their current situation, that it would not last forever, I did not seem to grasp this reality for myself.

There is one truth I know in life – things will change. I miss my friends, I miss the city and sometimes I even miss some of the experiences. I never thought I would be sitting here, miles away, having not spoken to most of these friends for many years, worlds apart from one another, living completely different lives.

In-between us now sits the large ocean called “Life,” and it seems impossible to cross.

“Sometimes it’s so easy
To let a day slip on by…”

 

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The Decision to Move

22 Thursday Jun 2017

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When my Mom phoned to let me know she had called an ambulance to bring my stepdad to the hospital, it was as if the world around me grew still, despite the fact that I was standing in the middle of a bustling Nathan Phillip’s Square in downtown Toronto at the very first Winter Festival being held there.

My husband, child and in-laws kept walking and I could see them pointing towards the ice skaters and, more excitedly, towards the Zamboni. But, my heart had sunk to my shoes and tears were streaming down my cheeks.

I didn’t want to spoil their moment, but I was feeling desperate. I just wanted to get away and be somewhere I could have a good cry. But, I didn’t want to scare my son.

I hung-up with my Mother and eventually rejoined my family. I explained what was going on to my husband while his parents entertained the kid. My gut instinct was to get in a plane and go be with my parents. However, this was very much complicated by the fact that our in-laws had flown all the way from New Zealand to be with us, we didn’t have any other vacation days (so I’d have to take a pay-loss), we were broke so I would have to borrow the money to go as it was, I and I have a 3-year old that I had to consider.

My husband calmed me and told me to just wait to hear some more news about what was going-on before I panicked too much.

It wasn’t until recently, when we moved-back to be with my parents, that I learned just how dire the situation was and just how terrified my parents had been. These are difficult things to convey over text or phone calls, I suppose.

When talking to my Mom in that week and a half, I was trying to discern from what she said and how she sounded whether, or not, they really needed me there.

After getting off the phone with her one evening I broke-down. When my husband came to see what was happening I sobbed “I hate feeling like I am waiting to get that nightmare call that we had better come now or it will be too late…”

My Stepdad had gone through 11 rounds of chemo for colon cancer, and this was the year after he had been flown to Ottawa for a triple bypass. Now, he was in hospital with sepsis and my Mother had said that they were struggling to keep his organs functioning.

I knew it was serious, but did not know how serious or how scared both of my parents were going-through this. I guess that’s a compliment to how well they handled it together. Still, I hate thinking that they had to go through it alone.

Once my Stepdad was out of the hospital, I said to my husband, through more sobbing one night: “I NEVER want to be in that position again. Having to ask my Mom to let me know when it got to the ‘you need to come now because he’s dying’ stage.”

I hated being in that position. I didn’t wan to wait until it was too late. I wanted to spend time with him while there was still time to spend. I wanted my son to be able to build memories of his grandparents of playing games, laughing over dinner, sharing ice cream treats and going for car rides and not just sitting in a hospital saying ‘goodbye’.

So, we made the decision to uproot our lives, and move home.

It was a decision that required a lot of sacrifice, and there are times I still can burst into tears when something I miss about our old home strikes or when my Son asks something like: “Can we go to the tick-tock park?” (A park we used to frequent behind city hall, where the large clock on old city hall, would chime on the hour).

But, the pain and the loss we experience over leaving the city that we all dearly loved pales in comparison to the pain and the loss we would feel if we had decided to stay and, instead, forfeited the time we now get to spend with family.

You just cannot put a price on that.

People say it all the time, but until you are staring it in the face it can be tough to comprehend;

life is short.

You have to look at what really matters to you and be prepared to move heaven and earth to make it happen.

It may be very difficult at times when we are missing our beloved city, but that is grief, not regret. I will never regret choosing time with my family over our life in the city.

We never know how much more time we have together. I’m determined to make the most of it.

I Dreamed a Dream

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

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I had a dream last night that I had decided to leave my husband and run-off with an old flame of mine. This isn’t a unique dream for me, I have some variation of this dream every 3-4 months. 

The “object of my affection” is a guy who was my biggest crush in life, though in the dream he’s actually an almagamation of different people I’ve met into one super-human.

This dream always starts off so beautifully. My ‘dream guy’ has just professed his love for me and expressed the ultimate desire for us to be together. I’m swept-away. Swept-up in a daydream of violins, rose petals, strong arms and perfect love.
This is what I’ve been missing.

What I’ve always wanted.
My new/old beau and I spend some intimate and romantic time together. We embrace, we cry, we kiss we talk about the time we’ve missed and the dreams to come.

(At this point, I wake up because I have to pee. I go to the bathroom, pee, return to bed and fall back asleep, and am instantly brought back into the romantic reverie. My new/old beau and I have a few friends around us who are so happy that we’ve finally connected and that we have accepted the fact that we were meant to be together and I am feeling peaceful, happy and so in love).

Eventually, however, reality hits. This is the part of the dream where I start to think about how I would break the news to my husband. I begin to process how this will hurt him, and the realization starts to set-in that hurting him will hurt me as well, because his well-being was part of me. I don’t want to hurt him or see him sad.

More importantly, I don’t want to break what we’ve built together.

It hasn’t been perfect and it most definitely did not start-off in any romantic, loving, head-over-heels kind of way, but it is what it is because we’ve worked at it together. 

I never “fell in love” with my husband. We were good friends and I loved him as a friend. But, I never had romantic feelings towards him or felt attracted to him. Our romantic relationship hopped-skipped-and-jumped from friendship to ‘couple on the verge of divorce’. That is where our relationship started.

I never had the butterflies, the nervous stomach, the excitement and anticipation of being picked up for a date, or that feeling of being swept-up or falling in love. 

I have always wondered what I missed-out on. I try to tell myself that I don’t want, or need, the romance – that they are not required to be in a happy relationship, that it is unrealistic, that this idea of being “in love” with the person you marry is a fairytale, or something that only a few special (privileged) people get to experience.

I used to wake up after one of these dreams feeling resentful towards the man that was snoring beside me. Why couldn’t he be more like the man of my dreams? Why do I feel trapped and that it is impossible to leave to pursue a relationship like that of my dreams? I loved getting swept-away in this dream, a fairy tale, a plot for a Sandra Bullock or Meg Ryan movie. I used to try to live in the dream as long as possible once awake. To pretend that it was real.

But, this morning when I woke-up, I was surprised at how I was feeling. I didn’t feel resentful or sad at my lot in life, I wasn’t desperately clinging to the romance I had experienced in my dream, I wasn’t depressed by feelings of being trapped or stuck, I was relieved. I was grateful that the man snoring beside me was my husband and nobody else.

I usually wake-up during the part of the dream where I’m just starting to feel sad about the looming idea that I might not be able to go through with it. But, this morning, I dreamt for much longer than that. In my dream I went through a lot of processing and woke up after I had realized that I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to be with this other person. I wanted to be with my husband.

It was the first time that this dream didn’t leave lingering feelings of regret or sadness.

And there was no sadness there.

Only joy.

Joy and gratitude.

There are is still improvement needed and I clearly desire more excitement, romance, intimacy and adventure in our relationship, but I know that I want it in OUR relationship and not with anyone else.

I want to continue to build on what we have created. To explore and discover romance and beauty together. To continue to challenge ourselves and each other to make our lives the things of which dreams are truly made.

I love you, sweet cheeks.

To Thine Own Self…

31 Thursday Mar 2016

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I was terrified when I moved to New Zealand.

I wasn’t 100% convinced that it was the right thing to do, but the people I trusted around me seemed to be, so I was doing it with the faith that they knew what they were talking about.

3 years earlier I had joined a gap-year program in Toronto, where I had been living and working for the past year, feeling lost, in way over my head and struggling to make ends meet.

There were 6 other people on this program from USA, Canada and New Zealand.

Over the years, I developed a deep friendship with the guy from NZ. We spent a lot of time together and were given more responsibility in the organisation, culminating in the request for us to return the following year as team leaders for the program.

By the end of the first year, this boy professed his love for me. But, I just wasn’t feeling it. He was like a brother to me and when he started to be at all romantic towards me, I felt like I would puke. It just felt wrong. I loved his friendship, but was not attracted to him or interested in him in that way.

After 3 years in the country, he decided it was time to return to Aotearoa-the land of the long, white, cloud. However, the leadership of the church did not want him to leave, as they still had plans for what we could do together. I was sent-in to talk to him because they all thought I would be able to convince him to stay.

But, even I could not persuade him to stay.

My minister pulled me aside and told me that she thought I was making a huge mistake by letting him go. She told me that she thought I had been blinded to my real feelings for him by feelings I had for someone else, the focus I had on the ministry I had been doing in the community and even a fear of commitment.

I trusted that she knew what she was talking about, especially since she wasn’t the only one saying that we were meant to be together. Everyone in that community had been pushing me to be with him and expressing the belief that it was what God wanted.

So, clearly, I was missing something. I began to feel as though I couldn’t trust my own mind or my own emotions, so I had to trust that everyone else knew what was right. And, so, I did what she told me to do and I went to this friend and suggested to him that we should give “us” a real chance.

It didn’t change his mind about going home, but he did agree to come to my hometown for a few days and meet my family.

It was a horrible week for me. I felt uncomfortable, nervous, odd, sick to my stomach, miserable and confused for most of our time together.

I just kept telling myself that I couldn’t trust my thoughts and that my “real”, romantic, loving feelings would eventually come to the surface. They never did.

Despite all of this uncertainty, I found myself in Toronto, saying my farewells and crying to everyone I trusted that I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. I shared that I didn’t think I had feelings for him, that I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to be with him and I was afraid I was making a horrible mistake. I was hoping someone would hear me and tell me that I shouldn’t go.

But, time and time again these friends and mentors made me feel like I was silly, confused, and didn’t really know what I wanted.

I sobbed the day I left the city, my chest heaving with every breathe as though it had the weight of a thousand bricks on it. My other best friend was with me at the airport and I sobbed and clung to her for dear life, hoping she wouldn’t let go of me. I didn’t want to go. I really didn’t.

The next 5 years would be the hardest, most miserable, most terrifying, troublesome, difficult and challenging of my life. There would be many, many, many times I would be seconds away from packing my bags and disappearing. I had never been so sad, so depressed and felt so lost and helpless.

Those people, all of them who thought they were speaking for God, were wrong. Totally, absolutely, 100% wrong.

I felt like a victim for years about this. I felt that they were all to blame for this horrible life I found myself stuck in. They were responsible for making me be with this person to whom I wasn’t attracted, leaving everything I loved to follow God’s plan for my life.

This all changed when, 7 years after she had left me at the airport, my friend visited me and said words that made me so angry because they were filled with undeniable truth. I wasn’t a victim. I had made the choices all along. I made the choice to go. I could make the choice to leave. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for staying and feeling trapped.

She spoke frankly with me and for the first time in my life, I actually felt like someone was talking to me adult-to-adult.

This year will mark the 10 year anniversary of that flight and as I sit here, writing this tale, the guy from New Zealand is in my kitchen cooking himself some eggs and watching “Dancing with the Stars” and we are happy.

We are happy because I made a choice. We are happy because he made a choice. We decided, together, that we were going to make this work, no matter what.

It’s true that we never had the “head over heels” romantic phase that most people do before they get engaged. We never went on dates. We didn’t get giddy over texts. We didn’t giggle with friends and chat about stolen kisses or the silly things being done during the wooing stage. We skipped all of that and went straight to the ‘married for 20 years, romance is dead, have to work on it’ phase.

And so, that’s what we did. We worked on it.

And, the most incredible thing happened-the further we got from the church, the healthier our relationship became. When we removed all of that unhealthy, outside influence, the added guilt and pressure to be something we’re not, and the expectation to fit into roles that didn’t suit us, we found that we really could enjoy being together. We went to counselling and with the guidance of someone who actually knew what she was doing, we worked on things together.

As I said before, I have spent years doing what others wanted me to do and believing that other people knew what was best for me-even more than I could know for myself until that autumn day, while walking the streets of Toronto my friend put me straight.

Today, I take great pride in my marriage because it has been forged with fire. Tested with tears and fights and moments where the desire to run hung as heavy in the air as an elephant would hang from a weeping willow.

This is our marriage. Our relationship. Our friendship. Our victory. It doesn’t belong to anyone else. It doesn’t belong to the church. It doesn’t belong to God. It doesn’t even belong to our counsellor. It is ours.

And, just as I couldn’t blame anyone else for where I found myself back then, I get to take the credit for where I am now.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.” –(Hamlet Act-1, Scene-III, 78–81)

I am in charge of my own life.

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Starting over…over and over again.

18 Thursday Feb 2016

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I have always loved to write.

When I was young I would write long, elaborate, humorous stories and my friends would gather around during recess and ask me to read them out loud. I lived for English class, enjoyed writing essays and loathed the dreaded “100 words or less” type of assignments.

I dreamed about being many things when I was young: teacher, musician, missionary, voice of a Disney character, fashion designer, photographer, lawyer, therapist, personal driver, forest ranger, big rig driver…but, the one dream that never changed or went away was the idea that I would write.

I have started and stopped blogs, oh, about a million times it seems.

The thing that often stops me is this idea that everything and anything can already be found on the internet.

The internet doesn’t need another voice clogging-up its waves (or whatever it is that keeps things ticking-along behind the scenes).

I felt powerless. Voiceless.

There was nothing I had to say that would add any value or relevance to the magnitude of words already out there.

And then, just suddenly, while sitting at work one day (years after my last attempt at a blog post) it all made sense…

The world may not need any more thoughts expressed in words. But, I needed to write.

I feel lost, less myself, when I am not writing. And, as often happens with these massive life lessons, my Mother told me this long before I realized it for myself.

So, thanks, Mom. I got there eventually.

This time I hope to stick with it because, actually, I feel like I have a lot to say now.

And, who knows, if you come along for the journey, we might discover together that I did have something to contribute after all.

So, welcome back Me.

It’s been far too long (again).

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