gotta go on

This is my cur­rent anthem. T‑Dot rep­re­sent.

Sometimes I won­der if I only love Toronto because of the peo­ple. There are always things to do and friends to vis­it, and it feels like my home­town. I hate the dri­ving, I hate all the cops down­town, I hate the fact that it takes me at least half an hour to get any­where, but I always look for­ward to going back.

baby sun conure

Baby sun conure. This lit­tle guy was just start­ing to grow feath­ers, and kept in an incu­ba­tor.

The iso­la­tion was nice, but it got to the point where ____ would say he was proud of me just for hav­ing lunch with some­one. Now I find myself going out more and more and it’s a refresh­ing change of pace. Not that I felt like I was uncom­fort­able being home alone; more like the urge to be out over­took me, even if that meant I was still alone among oth­ers.

I won­der if my her­mitage was just an extend­ed stretch of time I need­ed to recharge after my trip to Europe. Or maybe it was know­ing that the next stretch of time until the sum­mer was going to be busy.

This time it does­n’t feel like a tran­si­tion peri­od, because I know it won’t last. I’ll even­tu­al­ly go back to extend­ed time alone, and I’ll for­ev­er be in the flux of socia­bil­i­ty and soli­tude, win­ter and sum­mer. The only thing that’s con­stant is hap­pi­ness. Sure, there are flash­es of mis­for­tune, but they’re fleet­ing, con­tained, and just a part of day-to-day life, noth­ing out of the ordi­nary. Maybe this is why I’ve been find­ing it hard to write. I’ve always been fueled by suf­fer­ing in some way or anoth­er, but all that’s left now is this con­tent­ment.

Goodbye, little buddy

The vet’s office called this morn­ing to tell me Leonard did­n’t make it through the night.

I’ve been bawl­ing ran­dom­ly since. Uncontrollably1. I haven’t cried like this since I was a kid. I sup­pose it’s the shock. I always expect­ed Dolly to be the one to go first, and not for many years at that. I know I’ll be alright, I just need time. It was such a big deci­sion to adopt anoth­er cat, and I jumped on it cause I want­ed one so bad­ly, and I made all the prepa­ra­tions, and nursed him back to health so many times, and now he’s gone so sud­den­ly.

____’s been talk­ing some sense into me. I blamed myself for not going to the vet soon­er; maybe there’s some­thing he could have done, maybe being on an IV ear­li­er would giv­en him the strength to recov­er. But I did what I thought was best at the time, and there are count­less maybes in life, and there’s no way of know­ing why he died because the tests weren’t fin­ished. It could have been some­thing con­gen­i­tal, which seems like­ly con­sid­er­ing he was sick most of the time.

Continue read­ing “Goodbye, lit­tle bud­dy”…

  1. I’m so glad I work from home. [↩]

until tomorrow

The days go on con­tin­u­ous­ly, mea­sured in beats-per-minute. Winter’s here in all it’s bright glo­ry, but the sun sets a lit­tle lat­er every day, mark­ing the change of sea­sons. It’s the only way for me to keep track of the pass­ing time.

So many days are spent alone, yet I don’t feel lone­ly. The only prob­lem with iso­la­tion is that it lets me spend too much time with my own thoughts. This, com­bined with my intro­vert­ed ten­den­cies (which means my stim­u­la­tion comes from mem­o­ries), makes me feel like I’m trapped in the past. I sup­pose it’s not all bad, but it cer­tain­ly does make it hard­er for me to heal.

Bronwen puts on makeup

 

I don’t know what to write. There isn’t the same strug­gle or need to vent. I find myself sit­ting and star­ing at a blank screen for hours at a time. It’s not like I feel the need to say some­thing for the sake of it. There are still thoughts and ideas that linger, things to get off my chest, but they’re either too too sim­ple to men­tion, or too com­plex to put down.

It’s strange to see this path laid out before me. I could wan­der off and explore new things, but I’m still too com­fort­able.

Things don’t change, but I don’t think I mind so much any­more.

returns

The only thing I bought in Britain was this tea can­dle shade of the London sky­line, found in a shop filled with baubles and knick knacks where Mike and Emma took me. They had a feel­ing it was my kind of thing. Funny to think that they knew me so well already in those three days. I love watch­ing the shad­ows dance across the shade in warm colours.

I went through an entire spec­trum of emo­tions there. Through all the won­der and excite­ment were still moments of weak­ness, gid­di­ness, sad­ness, and inse­cu­ri­ty, because there are things you can’t escape by fly­ing to the oth­er side of the world.

I’ve since set­tled back into my old life. The trip did­n’t change me, not in any epiphan­ic way at least. It was more of an affir­ma­tion of myself and the way I’ve been see­ing things.

There were so many times that I was far out of my com­fort zone, thrust into inde­pen­dence, push­ing my lim­its, and that forced me to be objec­tive to keep my wits about me. In those objec­tive moments were objec­tive views of myself, where I began to under­stand that I was respon­si­ble for every­thing that was hap­pen­ing. For all the mem­o­ries and expe­ri­ences and footage and friend­ships.

And sud­den­ly, I real­ized, I like me.

One measures a circle, beginning anywhere

Been liv­ing on too much sin and not enough sleep, though most­ly it’s in the form of calo­ries and sug­ar. Thank god I have an Asian metab­o­lism.

Things are hap­pen­ing so quick­ly around me. Chris is get­ting seri­ous with his girl. Pat and Jen had their first baby, a boy named Kyden. ____’s get­ting mar­ried in April. (What? Yeah. What? Yeah.) Funny how I’m start­ing to feel like the one who’s all set­tled.

It makes me fan­tas­ti­cal­ly proud to say that I’ll be assum­ing best-man respon­si­bil­i­ties, though I still asked ____ who he was going appoint cause I nev­er feel like I can take any­thing in our friend­ship for grant­ed. His anger at my hav­ing asked was prob­a­bly the warmest ges­ture I’ve had in a while. That means with the bach­e­lor par­ty, the wed­ding, and anoth­er wed­ding I’ve to film, I’ll be dri­ving to Toronto three times between now and spring.

I’ve already lost ____ to an extent, as he’s only had about two months to plan his wed­ding, and he’s been busy with such. But even though our phone calls were my main form of con­tact with the out­side world, I haven’t noticed their absence, or as much as I thought I would at least. I think I’m get­ting used to being so out-of-touch with peo­ple. There’s so much ful­fill­ment one can find in a book or a movie or an instru­ment, let alone the vast­ness of the inter­net.

One of my ven­tures was mak­ing a tri­al World of Warcraft account1, just so I could try being social at a dis­tance, but I still could­n’t both­er inter­act­ing with oth­er peo­ple. And since the whole point of pay­ing a month­ly fee for an MMORPG is to have that kind of inter­ac­tion, I stopped when I maxed out at lev­el 202 on the third day. Good thing too, because it was the only thing I did for those three days.

I used to feel so guilty about being alone, think­ing I should be tak­ing advan­tage of some oppor­tu­ni­ty to be social. Then I real­ized that if I ever got too uncom­fort­able and lone­ly, I’d get up and do some­thing about it. I’m too hap­py and too com­fort­able here right now. I think that’s why I can’t tell if this is where I’m going, or where I already am.

  1. Which I’d pre­vi­ous­ly vowed nev­er to play, know­ing my addic­tive nature to any char­ac­ter-build­ing games, and WoWs nev­er-end­ing game­play. [↩]
  2. The max lev­el for tri­al accounts. [↩]