You can [always] go home again

A little over three years ago I wrote that home is where the heart is, and now my own heart is once again on the move. I cried when I left Toronto then, heading into a world of what felt like the complete unknown. Fast forward two years and I cried at Heathrow when I was flying back. Talk about a fickle heart. Perhaps it’s because of how much time I’ve been spending at airports over the past year, but I think I may be immune to crying in airports now.

This time leaving feels a lot more bittersweet. I am reuniting with my fiancé after not living in the same country, continent, or hemisphere for over 2 years. Plus, I made him fly all the way to Toronto and back again because he has a better status level than I do and it means I can carry more bags with me. And it really helps me feel like I am not doing this on my own. I am not on my own when I opt to leave my very well paying job and hightail it to a place that is not incredibly familiar and just a smidge stabbier than where I live now. I do love a good adventure, but I love paying down my student debt even more.

I didn’t plan to come back home so soon after graduation. The original plan was to stay in London, but life knows better sometimes than to let you plan. I hadn’t intended to meet my future husband, in spite of what people say about women getting an MBA more so for getting an MRS. I wasn’t able to move to South Africa where he had relocated after finishing his degree a year earlier than I. I made the decision (discussing with my partner) that I’d move back to Toronto for a year, aggressively make headway on my loan and we would reassess our situation.

I would go on to tell wannabe consultants that I went to school abroad because I wanted to launch an international career, and they would look at me confused as to why I was working back in North America. And they were right. I am not ready to make one place my home just yet. I still yearn for the adventure and the excitement of exploring new places and learning how the rest of the world goes round. I know how lucky I am to have a partner who I can do that with. If I don’t have one place to call home yet, I am so glad to have one person who I do call home. One step at a time, I suppose.

Toronto and Canada are wonderful places to be from and to be; I hope my constant wanderlust does not leave anyone thinking otherwise. Many of my favourite humans are from here (there?) and who I am is because of where I have come from. For my own selfish growth and next phase of life, I want to build new perspectives and keep pushing my boundaries outside of my comforts.

This could be a long rant about the arduous application process and how immigration really is the plight of the rich (versus being a refugee, let’s be clear). Really, I wanted to take some time and say thank you to those who let me back into (or new to) your lives this past year only to have me scamper away again, who knows how long this time.

To me, modern friendship knows no physical bounds. We are connecting through the magic of the internet right now! I am so grateful to those who know that out of sight sometimes does not mean out of mind. But more importantly, physical distance does not degrade the value a person has in the other’s heart. We all grow, and we all change, some more than others. Thank you to those who continue to be on the ride with me and allowing me to cheer you on from afar. True friendship is picking up right where you left off – whenever and wherever – because these connections exceed even that of the internet.   

I look at my own departure as well as the departure of others as an opportunity. You’ll always know someone wherever you go in the world, and that to me is exciting. The whole world is just that much smaller when you’ve got a friend. So if you find yourself down in South Africa in the next little while, be sure to catch me while you can.

See you on the internet. I'll be right here.

Running through The Six in a towel - You'll have to speak up

Last Friday, I was walking in the subterranean tunnel system beneath the belly of Toronto’s financial district (known to the local mole people as the PATH) to obtain my overpriced lunchbox of spiralized zucchini, massaged kale, garlic-free basil pesto and added tempeh for the extra douchebag touch, on one of my last tender young days of being a gentle 28. [Complete sidebar: Microsoft Word knows the word douchebag but does not accept the word spiralized – I salute you, Bill]

I am not a very good PATH mole, my career didn’t grow up with the wont of vitamin D supplementation, and only being at the office one day a week these days doesn’t help. I really only know how to get from my desk to my massaged kale (only through massage was it elevated to a superfood from buffet garnish) back to my desk again.

In spite of seemingly never going outside and walking bowlegged as a result of rickets, the PATH is full of bright young things with pressed suits, brightly coloured socks, and even brighter shined shoes with that glint of arrogance that only youth and not graduating in a financial crisis can give you.

Procured lunchbox in hand, I turn on my heel and begin the perilous walk dodging these shiny moles as they meander towards their chosen grazing holes. And I think to myself: “these guys do absolutely nothing for me.” Eureka! This is it! That is the exact moment that I realize – I’m grown.

Mind you, I didn’t jump out of the bath a la Archimedes, but if I have to explain how I arrive at all the titles of my blog posts, I’ll realize how unfunny I’ve been the entire time. If you’ve been a part of this blog for the past 6.5 years, you may notice some recurring themes: one being a penchant for men in suits. Perhaps it is the full immersion into mole culture which has given me immunity. I had to be around it completely to be repulsed by it. Kind of like how working at Wendy’s in high school taught me humility and killed any desire to ever eat there.

Turning 29 means I am now immune to seemingly confident men in their protective designer suit amour deflecting sincerity with perceived charm and oozing self-importance. Kind of like how when I turned 19 I learned to vaccinate myself against guitar playing pseudo-sensitive types. I am sure that at 30 I will have the same feeling I had at 20 when I congratulate myself on – once again – escaping teenage pregnancy.

Never mind that my life partner wears a suit almost daily and also plays the guitar, nah, we can wrap this adult thing up – I got this.  

Truth be told, 29 came in as kind of a whisper, much less of a bang – even if it’s supposed to be the birthday I celebrate for a few decades to come. People say I really have to celebrate 30 next year, but really what is another journey around the sun? And what exactly is the purpose of celebrating survival?

It’s obvious I had nothing to do with my birth. I was just going with the flow, minding my own business, until I emerged into the world on March 13, 1987. And thankfully through scientific progress of sanitation, vaccinations and other modern medicines I stay alive a lot longer than previous generations. If you think about it, survival isn’t that grounded in my personal success or abilities at all.  

I grew up in the self-esteem generation, though when I look up the term the last time it was used was about 2013 so I’m even behind on the hip terms to explain the narcissist predilection of my generation. Growing up you were taught you were special and everyone gets a participation award, and not to mention, body image issues.

My preference is celebrating actual achievements. For example, I dragged my boyfriend to my MBA graduation (he opted to skip his) and made him sit through a long and drawn out ceremony on his birthday just to see me walk across a stage and shake a man’s hand. Because I spent 60,000 quid on that walk so I am damn well going to do it. It’s great that he also cares little for pomp and circumstance for middling achievements. He’s French, after all.

Barring any actual achievements, because hey – life is hard, I believe in celebrating the everyday. At least that’s what I tell the people at the liquor store who ask me if I’m celebrating when I buy champagne on a Tuesday. People see birthdays a socially acceptable time to reach out to someone you’ve lost touch with; I don’t see why you can’t do that anytime. We are so affronted by people reconnecting with us, it’s a shame.

In short, I am over my birthday. Sure, there are milestones in life, but there’s so much more to life than putting pressure on one arbitrary day versus another. By extension, this is how I feel about St. Patrick’s Day, bachelorette parties, New Year’s Eve and other “obligatory” high pressure celebration days. Celebrate, all day, every day because you want to and focus on building a life worth toasting.

[Author’s Note: The Six (The 6) is what cool people call Toronto. I’m trying to be cool. Is it working?] 

Epiphany - Three Wise Men

Epiphany is the 12th day of Christmas; no one remembers what your true love gives to you on the 12th day of Christmas because no one really knows beyond 5 gold rings. (Spoiler: it's 12 pipers piping, hence the photo above.) It is also the day when three wise men visited the Christ child and brought him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. An epiphany is also a moment of sudden revelation or insight. And because I love a good double entendre (who doesn’t?) and I like things that come in threes (again, who doesn’t?) I thought I’d take some time to write about three wise men who have appeared in my life. I will caveat by saying that “wise” is a subjective term, as is the use of the term “men”.

And if you’re scrolling down to read a heartfelt homage to my grandfather or reasons why we should all be the change we want to see in the world like Gandhi, you must be new here. This rarely cared for blog is reserved for talking about boys, absolutely no makeup tips, and occasionally pretending I’m growing up. In keeping with stayed traditions, I present three stories of men/boys/manboys that I have met along my way who have imparted some kind of wisdom – never directly – but led me to my own epiphany.

In one interpretation of the gifts brought by the three wise men, gold is seen as a valuable, frankincense is a perfume, and myrrh is an anointing oil. Loosy Goosy as that may be, I am going to try to stick with that as a guiding theme and as a clever device to structure these vignettes chronologically. Aren’t I clever?

(Oh, and no names here have been changed, nor has permission been requested, but these are just my completely one-sided musings on my interactions with each wise man.)

Scott(?) – Gold

I think his name was Scott, it was 2007 and I met him once, and I’m not sure we were ever Facebook friends and that was a time you’d add everyone you’d ever met on Facebook. And 2007 was also the time I was reeling from my first heartbreak. You know the one: where you get really drunk in a hazing ritual in the creepy basement of your university house and weep uncontrollably in front of your ex-boyfriend (hmm just me then?). The first cut being the deepest, you think that you’ll never move on and it won’t stop hurting.

Scott and I met on a car ride from Kingston to Ottawa when I was instructed to drive the classical guitar major (more useful than a gym major?) who was playing at a reception I was attending. We didn’t really speak on the way up as he sat somewhere in the back of the van I drove, but on the way back to Kingston that night, all the other carpoolers were asleep in the back and he rode shotgun and we chatted the entire way back. I can’t recall any of the content of what we talked about, but I do remember feeling that, yes, it was possible to meet someone new, even if I had no romantic intentions towards this person at all and that not everyone in the world is going to reject me just because my ex-boyfriend did.

And now every time I strike up a really great conversation with a stranger at a party or on a plane (when I’m not being an irate business traveller), it reminds that conversation is not solely transactional and that connecting with people is something I enjoy and am good at. Back in '07 I think I had bored everyone I know around me overanalyzing my defunct relationship and being mopey all the time. So talking with someone who doesn’t know you at all means you talk less about your relationship issues. It's so freeing because you allow yourself to talk about something else, anything else. That was a valuable lesson. Thanks Scott or whatever your name is, wherever you may be.

Paul – Frankincense

Fast forward five years, a good chunk of that you can catch up on in my previous entries, and Paul is someone I’ve written about before. I could never say anything ill about him, I only ever spent time with him for a weekend (I swear I do have more than just fleeting encounters with individuals) so perhaps you could say I didn’t know him well enough. But in some way, he influenced me to move to London. That’s why he’s perfume – my encounter with him enhanced a part of me. I warned you these were stretches.

To be honest, I am not exactly sure when I decided to apply to London for business school. I was really more concerned about where I wanted to live and ended up only applying to schools in London and New York. And even though things with Paul had faded away well before my applications were due there was this distinct part of me that did wonder what it might be like if we reconnected while I lived there, as he lived in Essex. I did live in the UK for two years, and I am pretty sure I never went to Essex once.

I still have his contact number from when we were texting in Turkey (Google keeps it all!), and WhatsApp loads all your contacts to show you who also has WhatsApp and being the creep I am, I can see that his status of “Available” hasn’t changed in 2011 so I am assuming he has had the same number. All that to say that his WhatsApp display photo is of a baby girl. Maybe it did work out with woman he started seeing and decided to break it off with me who lived all the way in Canada. I’ll never know – he honestly doesn’t have Facebook.
                              
Secretly (or not so as I announce it to the internet here), I have an email drafted to Paul in my Gmail that has sat there for over two years now with only a subject of “Hello from much closer by” that I never wrote any body text. I think about deleting it sometimes, but it’s like this relic that sits there and reminds me of how I was feeling at that exact moment (lonely and curious) and reminds me how perhaps stopping our impulses that stem from loneliness may lead to better things. Two days after I drafted that email I met the man that I’m quite likely to grow old with. We hope to, at least.

Dave – Myrrh

I met Dave over weekend in 2013, and yes I know I said that I do know people for more than fleeting encounters, but Dave has more similar parallels to Paul as well – I too learned to stop. Myrrh is associated with ancient burial rituals and Dave was a turning point for me, I was going to bury some old bad habits and start fresh. I wanted to stop chasing awful men and leave the destructive half of my twenties behind.

I did that cliché thing: I loved like I had never been hurt and I was genuinely happy. I wanted my friends to meet him; I wanted to hold his hand. These were two things that gave me anxiety before. I felt this one going somewhere good and somewhere far; as fate would have it, we were both separately moving to London to pursue individual dreams and when does that ever happen?

Fate had the last laugh, because it turns out he wanted something (or someone) completely different. I had never been figuratively punched in the gut so hard. Why hadn’t I outgrown this? Wasting my time with a man(boy) who didn’t want what I wanted. Why was I so blindsided? Hindsight being what it is, I don’t remember my raw emotional reaction accurately anymore. But the best possible thing happened to me after the breakup: I moved across the ocean and got to start all over again. No one knew me and I could be whoever I wanted to be.

Being in business school is definitely three steps back, it would been have incredibly easy to get caught up in old habits. I showed up in London with a complete “don’t touch me” look, which is great for making friends. Does it sound awful to say that Dave was like a good practice boyfriend? Maybe a Good Luck Chuck kind of situation? That’s the first and last time I will ever reference Dane Cook. More so, I learned what I needed from a partner. Besides a man isn’t what I was looking for out of my graduate education - I went for an MBA, not an MRS - but he is a very nice cherry on top.

Not that you were wondering, but just in case, I did run into Dave once while I was in London. It’s a great story (to me), ask me about it and I’ll tell it to you.


Overall, these are just three stories that I thought fit together in a nice thematic way. Not because they’re men that I liked, lusted after, and loved respectively – but I think you really can learn something that you’ll carry with you for a long time from people, regardless of gender, that you know for only a few hours, a weekend or a few months. They don’t need to be someone you’ve known your whole life, someone who is especially close to you, or even someone you respect all that much. But to all the people who I have learned something from, I am thankful that I’ve come across you in my wanderings in the world so far. And I look forward to as many wise persons as they come.