Ho-Hum

Lately I've been knee-deep in a blue sort of feeling and it's so strange. So encompassing. So heavy. So unwanted, truthfully. Thick as mud and just as hard to get out of. Damn wheels are stuck and we all know I'm rear-wheel drive.

Usually, October is my jam. Pumpkins and horror movies, sweaters and new seasonal colour palette - that riot of orange, yellow, red and brown, what's not to love? What's not to celebrate? Every other year, I've looked forward to saying goodbye to summer (good riddance, summer, with your tiresome heat that causes my meaty thighs to chafe) and hello to Autumn (Hello, warm blankets and big mugs of hot tea (well, actually, lukewarm tea. If you know me at all, you know I don't drink my tea while it is hot. It's a quirk, I suppose).

Except, this year is different. (You know how I am not equipped to handle different)

At first, I thought it was because of the baby boy's first birthday. Yes, he turned one. (Certainly I deserve some sort of praise and cake for this?) And yes, I was unusually emotional. Like the weepiest of all the weepers. I couldn't believe how often I welled up at the thought of him turning a year old. It was, to say the least, headache inducing and annoying. (You know how I am when it comes to feeling the feels.) I thought, for sure, I was being ridiculous, but word on the street is that being a mother is a very emotional business. In truth, I am not cut out for all these feelings. They are exhausting. So, I was sad. Very sad. But also hugely happy and excited about the baby boy turning one. After all, we made it a whole year together. It was both a blink of an eye and the longest period of time simultaneously. 

That was back in August. In September, I chalked it up to the change of seasons and the lack of warmth. Rainy days are great for reading a book but not so wonderful for adventuring with the wee one. We try to get out and explore for a couple hours a day. Hard to do that when the heavens are throwing a temper-tantrum of epic proportions.

Still, I thought for sure once October hit, I would be back to my joyous self. Actually, no one has ever used the word 'joyous' to describe me. So, let's not get too hyperbolic. Exaggeration is fine in moderation. Lo and behold, I did not feel excited about October. In fact, it turns out, I became even more morose. Confounding, I know. 

Now, it's ten days in, and I've yet to shake this melancholic mood. It's Thanksgiving today and I have many things to be thankful for. I try to focus on that, but you know how sadness creeps in until it has coated everything with its weepy residue and no matter where you sit or stand you get it all over you. The truth is, I don't foresee a turn around in mood any time soon because, and I know this is going to come as a shock, I am moving again (YES, AGAIN). And I started thinking, maybe this is why I wasn't enjoying October in my typical Halloween obsessed fashion. 

Even though we have a crazy landlady and an ant problem, I actually like living here. I have good memories. Like the most important recent  life-changing memory ... baby boy's arrival home. This was his first home and, for some weird reason that I'm sure other mothers can understand, I am sad to say goodbye to it. I know in my heart our next home will be just that, our home, but this one is special because we spent so much time together here. We grew so much here. I became a completely different person here. And that's the most truth I have written in a very long time. 

I learned to love another human unconditionally here. This is where my universe shifted. In this house, where I write this, I became a mom. I figured out how to be a mother. And I brought my son here. He learned to crawl here. He learned to say 'mom' here. He learned to eat food here. He learned to walk here. His first smile was here. My life was given new meaning here. 

If that won't trip you up and make you feel a bit sombre, I don't know what will. 

Also, the house we are moving into at  the end of the month is much smaller (cozier). 

Do you know what a smaller home means? Less space. 

So, I have been purging. And by purging, I mean throwing out my life. You wouldn't believe the things I've gotten rid of. There is still so much more to go through. It's daunting, really. I have donated, consigned, sold and thrown out so much of my life. So many things I was holding on to. At first, when I found myself knee deep in sentimentality, this was hard. Really hard. I felt as if I couldn't let anything go because I'd be hurting someone, or myself. That I would be letting go of who I was. The girl I used to be. 

And you know what ... sometimes you need to do just that. 

When I seriously started to get down to business, when I stopped moping and getting all boo-hoo over this junk, when I finally pulled my purge pants on and actually started giving things away, selling them, throwing them out - it got easier. With each thing I donated, it was easier to toss something else. Until, I looked around and thought, Well, shit, this is all just stuff. 

Now when I look through a box labelled 'my past', I don't see the people I used to love or memories we shared. I see things. Things that have been sitting and collecting dust. And some of these things I have moved around with me since I was seventeen years old! Do you know how many moves that is? Let me think ... Surrey, New West, Main, 14th, back to Surrey, another place in Surrey, to the Island, and to here ... that's eight damn moves! And do you think I even opened those boxes? Or went through that stuff? 

Big. Fat. Nope. 

So goodbye pirate shirt, I might fit you again but I will never wear you. Goodbye ex-boyfriend boxes full of twenty page love letters and mixed tapes. Goodbye scrap books of ticket stubs and weird advertisements. Goodbye jewellery I've had since I was sixteen, no one needs three dog chain choker necklaces. Goodbye wedding dress with the wine stain from Leppy. Goodbye random tooth I had pulled when I was eighteen. Goodbye first tattoo design which I seriously regret having now. Goodbye all this crap. 

Because these things may serve as memories, but you know what else does. My memories. In my brain. I still have them. They are all stored up there in meticulous order. And if one day I no longer have my memories, then these items will be useless anyhow! 

Okay, so maybe I know why I'm in a funk. Birthday. Moving. All this change. And I know I am terrible with change. There's been so much of it in the last couple years - the business, the baby, the job. It's basically been a complete overhaul. And now all this purging - it's hard work, you know. I suppose even the brightest beam of sunshine might be disenchanted by this act. All these items, they fill up our lives, don't they? It's almost as though this stuff defines us in some weird way. It is nice to have a few trinkets to hold onto to remind us of who we once were and how we got to this point. But we are not the same people we used to be and, you know what, it is okay to let that person go. I think letting go of who you once were is freeing because you no longer have to compare yourself to her. 

You can simply be who you are now. And maybe that's something I can look forward to. 

Then I can start working towards the girl I want to be.*

*a girl who isn't in a funk

And now a picture to sum up the chaotic beauty of my life: 

Get Lost

Remember when 'get lost' was a popular saying? It was right around the time 'get a life' was making headlines. Now, they weren't really very insulting. We took them in stride. But after actually getting lost in the forest today on my way, I can safely say, being lost is not something I would wish on anyone, not even my most devious enemy.

There's a panic to getting lost. At first, you remain calm and collecting, you're rational, but as the foliage thickens and the trees grow denser, that levelheadedness gets left behind. Then you're traipsing through the forest, with no path in sight, silently cursing yourself for being so ridiculous and seriously doubting whether you're going to make it out alive. After all, there are bears and cougars in these woods and - wait, what's that? Did you hear that noise? Something's following me.

It goes from 'nice walk in the woods' to 'I'm going to die out here' pretty quick. I was foraging my way through ferns and shrubs and trees and stumps for about twenty minutes until I found a massive rock. Upon this rock, I searched for a break in the trees, a path or road, something to tell me what way to go. Since I'd climbed up, I figured climbing down was my best bet, but there was a cliff involved and I wasn't dressed for rock climbing. From here, it went downhill, but not literally, even though that was my plan. Images popped into my head. Ones of search and rescue, cadaver dogs, and a bear dragging me off by my ankle. As my body temperature went up and dehydration started hurting my kidneys, my thoughts only worsened.

Now, I don't ever plan to go off path. It's happened once before, the scenario similar to this one, but that time I had Dixon and my phone. Both worked as a blanket of comfort in a somewhat trying moment. This time, though, I had nothing. No phone. No dog. No water. No composure. Don't worry, you don't have to lecture me. I know how stupid the whole situation was, but I didn't get lost on purpose.

So, how did I get there?

The path ended. It simply stopped. There I was, in the blistering heat, already having ran/walked over six kilometres, hungry, thirsty and tired, determined to get home. Up the path I walked, and walked, and walked, until it just stopped. Well, stopped isn't accurate. A bunch of trees had fallen in my way, causing me to think a landslide must have happened and the path surely must have picked up on the other side. It didn't. And when I turned around to go back, I must have been discombobulated because I seriously couldn't find the path again. Thus began my great adventure into new territory and what happens when you have an overactive imagination.

In the end, I didn't die. But I will never say 'get lost' to anyone ever again.

No Thank You.  

The Weirdness On The Wind

A couple years ago, I thumbed through my diaries and picked out some of my favourite scribbles, which I typed out on the intersnacks. These rather short writings have been stored away in a super secret blog that no one has ever read. Except me, of course, which is a mighty relief, to be honest, considering how painful it is to even glance at these posts. No, seriously. Even my most favourite entries are so tedious they make me want to weep tears over how I massacred the English language. 

Anyhow, tonight I found myself going through these handful of writings. Why? That's not too clear. Maybe I wanted to revisit the tortured years of my youth, or maybe I wanted to do some serious mental cringing. If the grotesque grammar and preposterous punctuation weren't enough to cause me to recoil, then the subject matter would have done the trick. 

Every last entry was an ode to forlorn love, being wronged, not liking the girl I used to be, and how heartbreaking the world is. Needless to say, I haven't always been a bright ray of sunshine. Most of my youth was spent feeling lost, uncertain and angry - how I imagine a lot of people feel in their younger years. Still, not everyone wrote down their inner turmoil to read through and relive later on in life. Lucky them. 

If you think I'm going to be sharing any of these embarrassing excerpt with you, think again. No one of them is good enough to show to a blind and deaf mule, let alone a unprepared reader. Having clarified this, there was one line that caught my attention.  

I can hear the weirdness on the wind and my heart echoes the sound. 

Something about this line made me smile. Truth be told, it's very hard for me to look at anything I've written and think it holds any sort of merit. To find this line, especially in writings well over a decade old, is a miracle in and of itself. It simply struck me as a beautiful observation. 

Yes, I am weird, but so is the world. It's in the wind. And I hear it. If weirdness is all around us, inside all of us, then we are never alone in our strange ways. Of course, I can't even remember writing the damn thing, but I must have, because it's here in my super secret online diary, riddled with typos even grade schoolers wouldn't make.  

And yet, in all the messy words, choppy paragraphs and complete lack of white space, I found a golden sentence. 

There is something very comforting in thinking the common thread binding us together is our weirdness. How perfectly abnormal we are. It's a beautiful idea, isn't it? To think we are all colouring outside the lines together.   

Master of Macabre

Today is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday. As some of you may know, I believe in celebrating births, especially of creatures so near and dear to my heart.

This writer of the weird. Maker of mystery. Master of the Macabre. Well, he's a special sort of somebody.

In a world where there are two sorts of people, those trying to fit in and those trying to stand out, we often forget the forefathers of going against the grain. Born in 1809, one must admit, this gentleman is truly one of a kind. Though his work is saturated with loss, forlorn hearts, and a darkness not even a floodlight could dissipate, he himself is deeply loved by many. And, despite the attempts of his rival Rufus Wilmot Griswold who worked diligently to ruin Poe's reputation after he died, Edgar remains one of the most shared and celebrated poets of all time.  

Even his signature is a delight:

I could certainly detail out his life here. His stint in the military. His marriage to thirteen year old Virginia, who happened to be his cousin. His interest in cryptography. But you can read all about it in several books. Here, today, I will simply say, he is by far one of my most favourite people to have ever roamed this earth.

Aren't we lucky to be able to indulge in his legacy of poems and stories?

There is beauty in the darkness. Beauty in the oddities. A simple beauty in the macabre. The morbid. The grim. The ghastly.

And those who can show you that beauty, like Poe, are truly artists. Wielders of the Weird. Servants of the Strange.

They inspire me.