and then this happened…

When the world says, “Give up,”
Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”
~Author Unknown

Well, I had no idea when I signed off last time that it would be what – one, two, three  - 3 1/2 months until I wrote again. I am so very out of practice at this blogging thing, and I apologize.

Much like an old friend, I’m torn between the idea of catching you all up on what’s been going on here chez Bee, or writing a themed post and being all “I’m back!” enigmatically. I think the catch-up is going to win, this time.

The last time I wrote, I was on my way to my first-ever Eves family reunion (that’s my mother’s side of the family). I thought it might really spin me for a loop, as I’m not one who really has a consistent family to fall back on most of the time. While my father and my mother’s families both grew up in the Ottawa Valley, my maternal grandparents and most of their kids moved out west to Vancouver in the late 60′s, as did my dad’s side. Since my mother’s death in 1999, I’ve lost touch with my stepfather and his new wife, and my dad himself is a distant satellite, having left the country in 2001. We rarely email.

Mostly, it’s my sister and me, a fierce twosome knit together by blood and circumstance. We’ve since added to the pile with our spouses and her son, but when I’ say family, I meant the two of us. Using the term “orphan” just complicated the situation.

But when I said that my family comes from the Ottawa Valley, I mean, they CAME from the Ottawa Valley. To give you an idea, my grandfather was born in 1911. He was already in his late 60′s when I came along, in 1978. His father, my great-grandfather, was born Newman Eve in 1872. I feel like bolding that year. 1872! Only 3 generations back! Anyway. Newman wasn’t a very nice man, but his wife was long-suffering (fitting enough, her name was Grace), and together they raised 9 children. Some of them are now dead. Some, amazingly, are still alive – like my great-aunt Thelma, who was my grandpa’s youngest sister and who will turn 96 this year. But ALL of their kids stayed in the Ottawa Valley, all of them married people from the Valley, and all of them stayed.

They have a different concept of family then I do, for sure. I have often said that “family isn’t only blood, it’s also the people you choose”, and while that has validity, it’s amazing to get bone-crushed in a hug by a relative you’ve never met and told that they will do anything for you, whenever, because “we’re family, aren’t we?” and look at those earnest, nut brown faces and know that they would. To have a litany of aunts and uncles tell you things they remember about you as a baby. Have great-uncle Stan ask Aunt Sara for a square dance after telling stories about how our mother pooped on his front lawn at a party.

Okay, I’m kidding about that last part, and changing a few of the names. But you get the idea.

We had a dinner at the Legion, and a square dance, and there was cheap booze, and then Anna and I camped at a trailer-park camp that night. There was tons of stars and this was around the time of the 50C heatwave that settled over Ontario like a wool blanket, so we did yoga underneath bowlfuls of constellations and swam in the warm, clear laje and then we went out to breakfast with more of the family. We took a tour of the house Newman and Grace had raised their 9 children in, and which had been a part of our family from 1903-1948.

It was good. The yoga and the swimming and the time with the Bean, time with my youngest uncle and my 84 year old grandmother and aunt (who had flown from B.C. just for this)..it helped to make me feel like more of a part of something again, rather than this odd piece lost in a tool box.

So that happened. Then July ended and August started and my dad and his new wife (he’s had 4) flew in from China, where they live usually, to stay in P— for the month, and get to know my nephew, and my sister and I again. For the entire month of August I split my weeks between Toronto and working, and P— and family. Thank goodness there are bus deals.

That went really well, too, all things considered. I was so nervous about it initially I threw up four different times on the way to the airport to pick them up, but between the 3 of us we were able to figure out a system that worked. None of us dredged up the past; we left serious topics alone; we hung out “ensemble” only for a few hours, maybe a few times a day. And that was it. It was a shock to see how much my father’s aged in the 5 years since I’d last seen him. He’s an old man now, and maybe not so scary. and maybe I’m stronger and more mature than I was, because he didn’t bother me as much as he did. It felt good, to put some more distance between the more complicated parts of our history, to create some good memories. Who cares, really, if they were only surface memories? They still create ripples in the water.

Thanksgiving weekend, on the water.

Then, September came, and TIFF descended on Toronto and anyone who was in the hospitality or entertainment industry. It’s hectic, there’s always something to do, or some new movie star to ogle, or a premiere to attend, or a party to get ready for, or a 4 am license to survive…and after it ended, my very very part-time bartending gig kicked in, as did a new job entirely. Since the last week of September I’ve been working between 50-60 hour weeks between 3 jobs, which hasn’t left me very much “me time” at all, as I’m learning how to surf this new lifestyle.

You add into the mix my partnership with the Magician, as well as my need to be somewhat social sometimes, and there was barely enough time to sleep.

Also. Because it’s not over yet…we also exchanged room-mates, and MY DOG CAME BACK TO LIVE WITH US AND SHE IS AMAZING.

First off, according to the Chinese Zodiac, I am a horse. (While that link doesn’t mention the characteristic I’ve often heard about horses, that they need to have an orderly home, I’m including this link here as I think it’s pretty apt). The more I live in this world, the more I appreciate something about myself: I need to know where things are in my house. It can be messy (and often is; I won’t have people over if it’s too messy, it stresses me out too much) but as long as I go to the place where I last saw my umbrella, and it’s still there, I’m fine. When our former room-mate moved out and our new room-mate moved in, and everything was everywhere for a very long time, I thought I would lose my mind. Especially because I was suddenly working every day. I also felt guilty that Nick, our new roomie, would look around at the chaos and hate his new living space, or resent the fact I hadn’t cleared out a bathroom drawer for him, or…you know.

But my dog came back. She’s 6 now, and and sweet as ever (literally, just for fun I’ve started keeping track of how many strangers come up to me in the course of a day to tell me they love my dog. It’s never less than 2 and the most has been 8). She can be a bit alpha with other dogs sometimes, but with humans she is patient and loving and so smart. She doesn’t need a leash. We’ve been going on rambles for hours every day again and it feels so good to get back into that rhythm with her, a best friend in a different class of best friends. When we were apart (and sometimes, being kept apart, but that is a different story altogether) I never felt completely calm. I rarely talked about it, or her, because just mentioning her name, Daisy, could cause me to break out into tear; there was a hole. A feeling that I’d done this sweet being wrong and I hadn’t meant to, which was the saddest part. The second I saw her again everything was healed.

I’ve also decided to apply for my Masters’ this winter. If everything goes well, I’ll be starting my Masters’ in Library and Information Sciences this coming September. Coming with it, a move east, to a brine-soaked oceanside province that we’ve already begun dreaming about living in.

So. I’ve got my winter, my work, cut out for me. Because I still want to be writing. I’m volunteering as well, or will be, as a “Learning to Read” volunteer with the public library.

And that, as they say, is that.

HOLY SHIT, that’s a lot.

I want to be here more. I’ll teach myself how. Please be patient.

 

(I’ve included this video because this dog makes me laugh…and it’s really sweet. Maybe you’ll smile too).

embracing what i resist.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Fear. 

Over the past few months I have entered into a meditation with myself over how fear has become a theme in my life. I find that a bit ironic, actually, because so much of my life (I thought) has been about trying to have every experience I could get my hands on. I now think, or realize, that I was just getting very good at running away from what I couldn’t handle.

I am scared of my writing. To give you an idea, I have been sitting at this computer for about an hour now. I have written a couple words in a story I started last week, and then I thought about the blog that I have recently re-started, and then promptly neglected – so I thought I would write this essay instead. I started to write here, then changed my twitter page; looked up Eleanor Roosevelt quotes online (because I thought an Eleanor Roosevelt quote would be completely appropriate for reflections on fear – I love Eleanor Roosevelt); wrote an apology letter to a friend of mine because she got stung by a hornet on MY patio last night; checked a blog; fed my cats and made more coffee; updated my Facebook status; and looked over several times at E, to see if he’s waking up/I can offer to make him breakfast. I can’t find my glasses so my near-sightedness is a factor – and all of this to say that I AM NOT REALLY WRITING, AM I. 
    By not writing, which is something I’ve spent my whole life setting up to do, I can only draw the conclusion that I am, somehow, scared of my life, or being successful at it. It is extremely difficult for me to stay with a project until I finish it. I have lots of great ideas, that start in my notebooks or in drafts on my computer, but rarely, if ever, get more than a few pages long. I know that there is only one solution to this, a Churchill-esque approach to just barrelling on through anything until I get through it, (and the result will probably not be as painful or as qualitatively bad as I think), but as of yet I just…can’t.
Knowing that I am scared of my writing, leads me to think, or know, that I most likely don’t have much faith in myself. My own fault, really, for not understanding how valuable and necessary it is to safeguard one’s worth. I didn’t, growing up. I had a lot of crazy, highly-emotional things happen to me in my early years (enough of it that I hope I’ve lived through my life’s quota of chaos and can just “coast” from now on – don’t worry, I know that’s not how it really works – ha ha), and to cope with it, I did a lot of self-destructive things. I smoked cigarettes and drank a lot and have done my share of unhealthy things; I offered up my heart to people I shouldn’t have, and didn’t know how to repair the damage they/I inflicted on myself. It is only recently that I have realized that sometimes, not all of the time, but in special cases, one must cut people out of their life. Before, I always thought that was too cruel of a thing to do – that everyone was hurting and living their own story and everyone deserved chance after chance. Now, however, I have a very solid boundary. Only two people have crossed it, and they are not allowed in my life anymore…after I gave them repeated warnings that they were coming up to this line. They didn’t respect me enough, so I had to respect myself.
I am thinking that the more I move towards the life I want to have, (being connected with lots of people, writing for a living, building a life with E) the more I will be asked to deal with my fears and get over them, because for me, I’m beginning to understand that fear stagnates.

I am fearful of my body. In my “offline” life, I live half in, and half out of the closet that I am differently-abled. Some friends know, some don’t. I don’t make much mention of it throughout my day, and my workplace is in the dark about it (mostly). Why I do this, or live my life this way, is at once simple, and complicated to explain, and has something to do with why I’m scared of my body.
I find that I can usually ‘pass’ as an able-bodied person, and so I do. In my personal experience, if I’ve been ‘out’ at my workplace, it affects my options, but in such discreet ways that it’s hard to pin down as ‘discriminatory’. It’s things like, “Bee, it’s not that you can’t do this particular task, but that person xxxxxx would be that much better at it.’ I’ve found that historically hard to argue with: my lack of fine motor control does make certain tasks more challenging, and I tend to need to explain how things work to my hands and feet a lot longer than most people, (my massage therapist calls this ‘proprioception’) so other people would be better at certain tasks. I guess up until now I haven’t asked for the right to learn how to do things my way.
I feel lucky that I can pass, and this makes me feel guilty. Guilty because feeling lucky insinuates that there is a good vs. bad binary between being able-bodied and not, when there isn’t, or shouldn’t be.
By hiding a large part of who I am in my day-to-day life, I am hiding a large part of who I am in my day-to-day life. I have to wonder how that affects my inner self. (Or, rather, I know how that is affecting my inner self, and I need to change that).
Pain. I do experience pain from time to time. I chalk this pain up to my unique body, (as in, one side is smaller than the other, so it affects my joints and muscles in certain ways; I have spasms from time to time; essentially I need to be proactive in keeping myself relaxed), but it could also be because I was hit by a truck when I was 18, or that I fell and broke my hip when I was 26. But I’m nervous about the ways pain will continue to affect my life, and perhaps worsen.
I am at a stage in my life where I am fearful of hurting myself, and that governs a lot of the physical risks I am willing to take. Not only because I don’t want to be seen trying, over and over, to do something simple and not making it (I didn’t climb a tree last week at a party when so many others were, simply because I knew it would take me a lot of support and figuring-out-how in the moment, and this party was literally being hosted by acrobats), but because I am incredibly accident-prone. I need to teach myself, again and again, that it is all right to make mistakes.

I am fearful of change. I have been studying Buddhism off and on for too long not to have some idea of the wisdom of non-attachment, of letting go into the fear, but I am not good to adapting to transitions I don’t orchestrate myself. Example: E’s job. He works in an industry that is known as the “relationship killer”… (yay, us) because of the hours and the intermittent time commitments, which can be strenuous when called for. Even though we are solid, good partners for each other, I still realized I was resisting looking for a day-job in my field because that might further affect our chances of spending time with each other. In other words, stunting my own growth to further the future of my relationship. That’s not an ideal I want to subscribe to, or that I think can last very long.

In the past few years, I have noticed and tried to curate a shift in my own life. Right around the time I graduated university (something that took me 10 years to finish), a friend of mine died from a drug overdose. Sacha’s death immediately helped me take stock of what was going on in my life and figure out the direction I wanted it to go. I was able to finally say NO to an emotionally abusive situation that had lasted years too long. I was single through the summer and I noticed that rather than being depressed and scared about being on my own (as I thought I would be if I gave up that relationship), I felt liberated and free. I developed my own interests. I took care of myself. It was relieving and reassuring to know that I could be a grown-up, in a pinch.

In the middle of that summer, E and I started happening. We’d been friends for a long time and always able to talk to each other about deeper things, which is why I think we fell into the partnership that we did as fast as we did. E has always nurtured and encouraged the woman I am as well as the person I want to become, and he has often tried to stimulate growth when I have been too nervous to. We strike a good balance between being whole individuals by ourselves, as well as a unit that works extremely well together.

My life is completely different now  than it was just a few years ago, and I can feel myself growing again. I’m into my 30’s now, and I find myself wanting to accomplish the things I’ve always said I wanted to – I realize now that I actually want to. I don’t want to be scared of life, the energy of it, how it ebbs and flows, how it’s uncertain in places and always moving. I want to honour my own experience and be able to climb trees (most likely with assistance) if I want to; or take a yoga class and have myself truly stay on the mat; or be inside the pain and breathing with it. I want to write and finish and start again and finish again. I want to be a giving part of a loving community. I want to identify the obstacles that I believe are holding me back from living a life that is 125% authentic, put charges next to them, and blow them up.

inspiration…

I have another post percolating in my brain, admittedly, but that’s how life happens sometimes…you plan and plan for something, and then realize days have gone by and you’ve lived them, but not sat here, in this space.

It’s been a while since blogging was a regular habit of mine, you’ll have to forgive me as I remember how to do it.

There have been lots of inspiring things in my life lately. I had a visit from one of my best friends from my hometown, just today. We snuggled on the couch and drank margaritas from a can and caught up on everything. She has just spent two years of her life in rural Saskatchewan teaching high school on a Native reserve, and is moving forward in her journey as a teacher to create an education program at a federal penitentiary. I’m grateful to have and know and be able to celebrate so many phenomenal women in my life.

This full moon is kicking my ass. All week. You?

I randomly ended up at a “trance sitar and world music” concert tonight – the friend who invited me told me I was the only person she could think of who would enjoy it. I was/am flattered, as it gave me the opportunity to watch a SPACESHIP come to land:

Check THAT out…and it was only invented in 2000. Incredible, the sounds space-ships can make.

This poem. I forgot about this poem. How could I forget about Mary Oliver??

Wild Geese 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

That poem fills my belly sweetly like good bread. There’s something about the phrase “soft animal” and then, later, “family of things” that really pin this poem to my heart.

Going to the island twice in one week has been amazing, and good for my soul.

Putting a request out into the universe, and getting it back – specifically, I asked for yoga and was pointed towards an energy exchange program where I clean a studio for 3 hours a week and get a week’s worth of unlimited classes.

This blog phenom.

• the smell of frying onions
• good stretches
• writing

  and there you have some of my recent inspiration. I’d love to hear about what’s tickling you…

hello, my friend, hello.

It is 9:30 on a Friday morning in a July of an uneven summer. 2011 has been a bit seasonally flirtatious: the warm weather took longer than normal to hit, and stick; the days have been alternately scorching, humid, or crackling with jagged thunderstorms; there are weeks that go by where you can FEEL the sun behind the banks of high, grey clouds, but it just can’t break through.

But, it is summer. And I am, while not technically, in my heart a summer baby, so I am happy.

This is my (once-again) first entry in this blog, the URL of which I’ve been saving for over a year now. I have blogged before, but rather than include the (long-quiet) addresses here, I might just introduce myself, and this space, by saying I’d like for this to be a whole new chapter. You may know bits of who I am, and those bits are true, but from now on I will try and give you a more honest, complete picture of who I am. A more optimistic one.

I’ll be 33 in October, which seems to me to be a magical age, and yet, I look at it on paper and think, “wow. I’ve got to this age already?!” There was so much I thought I’d have accomplished by now, but when I made those plans, I hadn’t counted on life intervening. My 20′s were a little chaotic, filled with a lot of family upheaval and evolution. I feel grateful every day that I survived them, and that I’m in the place I’m in now (more on that in a minute). It took me about 10 years, off and on, to complete my undergrad degree in English and Creative Writing, which ended up not being as useful in the job world as I’d hoped – I’m currently working in an industry as far from that world as possible – but which I chased after for years, thinking that I needed that degree on my bucket list.

I have, since I was small, always wanted to be a writer, and always thought that I would make my living as one.  At various times, when the uncertainty of my field and the enormity of what I wanted to do would sink in, I OFTEN got scared and backed down – which led to years of empty notebooks, twisted ravines inside my heart, and lots of times following passions that didn’t lead very far, because they weren’t what I was meant to be doing.

I now have realized that yes, this is what I want, and no, there is no more time to waste. I am the quintessential type A perfectionist that keeps thinking she isn’t prepared enough – I haven’t read enough, or practiced enough; I don’t have a solid, current portfolio; my resumé doesn’t have enough writing credits in it to actually get me any jobs. This might all very well be true – I will probably never be able to read or write enough to get what is in my soul out on paper accurately, and I don’t have a solid resumé at the moment – but I’m done listening to excuses.

I found this quote today online and it is speaking to me:

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”
Mark Victor Hansen

This blog I hope will be a place for me to connect, and re-connect with a lot of blogosphere friends and potential ones; a place where I can track my process to living the life that I was meant to. I feel myself getting closer and closer to it all the time.

These are things I’d like you to know about me.

• I’ve lived in Toronto for almost two years (come October). My lover, who is in every way a gentle Magician, and I got together that previous summer. We’d been friends for several years before that, with him mostly being based here, while I was in Montreal. I’d actually made the decision I needed a new city THE DAY before we spilled our (up until that point, secret/unknown) feelings to each other, but the Universe had made this decision that we needed to be together – and that was that.
• We are ridiculously well-matched and sappy and happy together. He is my best friend and someone I’m inspired by every day. It’s really nice when that happens.
• We live downtown in our dream-house (for now – we eventually would like a farm, or something), with our two cats and our bicycles. Our shared life includes a LOT of music, friends, card games, art projects, and long walks.
• I am a voracious reader. Just for fun I should make a booklist. Most recently I DEVOURED “The Ape House” by Sara Gruen, and “Bossypants” by Tina Fey. The Gruen book might be the best thing I’ve read all year, no offense to Ms. Fey.
• I incur library fines pretty much every time I take out books, but I pay them every time, too. I’m absurdly proud of that.
• My favourite colour is purple. Or orange.
• I have an insatiable travel bug as a pet, who is only quiet right now because we recently got back from Cuba (in May), and a camping trip.
• I am well-versed with stretching money six ways from Sunday. I enjoy a good bargain hunt.
• If it’s late enough at night, I WILL fall asleep before the credits stop rolling on our movie. I’m sorry, please don’t take it personally.
• I like pretty things.
• And rocks.
• I currently am stockpiling crazy amounts of toilet paper rolls to make some kind of gigantic piñata.
• I am very accident prone and can act like a three week old puppy if I get too excited. (On my to-list: take a dance class so I can get to know my body-in-movement better!!)
• My imaginary grandpa is Albert Einstein.
• I like yoga, and beer, and coffee, and food that looks like a rainbow on my plate.
• My “summer 2011″ album is this one.

I really hope to use this space as a tracking device as I take stock of the things in my life that I am happy and at home with, while I take measures to move into the absolute life of my dreams. I know it can happen, I just don’t know how yet, and the uncertainty makes me excited and ready for that first leap. I see myself writing for a living, travelling the world with my partner, and making a positive, creatively-charged contribution to the world, somehow*.
Here’s to understanding that this life is the life of our dreams, only if it’s just because we’re living it. It’s up to each of us. This is something I’m just coming to understand about my own path.

I am looking forward to sharing in a dialogue with you. I’ve missed you all, and your inspirational journeys are a large part of what motivates me. Let me know how I can find you & I will pay you a visit, if you’d like!

*more specific “LifeWish” list to follow.