Negatively Positive

Not long ago, I was filling in a new-ish friend on some of my trauma lore -- 2015, the miscarriages, and the early years of my marriage.

 

That last bit is something I have not really spoken to anybody about. I had already learned that honesty was an offence punishable by public dismemberment and being buried alive, plus I couldn't reconcile being honest about the pain while simultaneously loving my husband. I shut down. I spent probably four years in an eternal present. I had no past and no future. No thoughts besides how to prevent the next blowup or smooth over the current one.

 

Early on, I had been messaging my friends about my confusion at his sudden change in attitude. How the calm, generous listener had overnight started screaming insults over basic use of the English language. Their response was unanimous: Leave him.

 

The thought was very tempting, I won't lie. But I had seen who he had been before, and I was unwilling to believe that kind act had been only an act. This isn't who he is. He wasn't always like that. It has to be just stress or something.

 

When I tried to explain this, with my rapidly-decreasing ability to think (let alone write) in comprehensible English, they escalated. I will not watch you self-destruct. If you don't leave him, I will not be a part of your life.

 

How do you respond to an ultimatum like that?

 

I had been friends with some of these people for over a decade. I had helped most of them through life-threatening crises of their own. I had offered so much time and energy to them freely, even in times when my own life was crumbling. Now I was in crisis, and they could not remember the times I had moved heaven and earth to help them through worse.

 

I don't have the mental capacity for your problems as well as my own, they told me, one by one. I can't handle your negativity. Don't bring me into your problems anymore.

 

But it won't always be like this. It'll get better... right? Marriage is hard and we're both learning and it'll get better, it just sucks right now.

 

I was speaking to an empty room by the end, with only my own voice for company.

 

It has to get better. This isn't who he really is. I made him a promise. I made a vow before God.

I promised. 

 

I hung onto that thought with all my strength. But my fingers were slipping. 

 

Five years earlier, when my world had crumbled around me, when the Angel of Death took a combine harvester to every part of my life, the friends who didn't die in the devastation turned on me: you're too negative. You always see the worst in everything.

 

Now, as my loving husband turned into a monster before my eyes, as I clung to the insane hope that this was only a season and not an eternal condemnation... my friends still left me. I chose to look for a sunrise while buried alive, and that still wasn't good enough.

 

When everybody died, I was too negative, too sad. When my husband turned out to be a real-life Jekyll and Hyde, I was too positive, too hopeful.

 

Make it make sense.

 

Like if you hate my guts and are just looking for an excuse to cut me out of your life -- this is a Pro-Tip, by the way, take notes -- just say you hate my guts. Just be honest. Don't do this 'you're too X' song and dance. It's like trying to kill a grizzly bear with a spoon -- it takes way longer than necessary, and everyone involved feels way more pain than they needed to.

What's more, I am sorely tempted to message every single one of those people who couldn't find a scrap of compassion in their hearts -- hearts that in some cases were still beating because of me -- and tell them you know what? I was f--king right.

 

We are coming up on another wedding anniversary. If anything, we are happier now than we were even in those early days of dating. And if I had followed their advice and left him, he would be dead and honestly I might be too.

 

 

P.S. -- Do you want to know what the problem was? Why my husband went from sweet, romantic, caring, and generous to angry, manipulative, vicious, and did I mention angry?

An allergy.

A food allergy to a very common seasoning.

By the time I convinced him to go to the doctor about it, it had mutated into five other major chronic health conditions which we are still trying get treatment for, to say nothing of the ongoing emotional fallout for both of us individually and in our marriage. Our marriage still exists only because I'm a stubborn German who is still too bitter about my uncle leaving my aunt (for literally zero reason) to give up on my own marriage for any reason at all.

2026 Goals

It's that time of year again.

 

Usually I'm really excited for these goal-setting posts, but this year I feel I've lost quite a bit of momentum. That's crazy to say... I added six shows to my résumé this year alone, including a 15-minute solo tap dance set for a fairly well-known theatre company and two theatre-musical choreography gigs. I made enough crocheted shawls to place them in a brick-and-mortar shop for sale. I learned how to draw half-decent human eyes (in colour).

 

But I feel like I'm stuck in quicksand.

 

This is probably understandable. We just made a fairly major out of town move less than two months ago. Work has been absolute madness for the past two months and I'm thisclose to burning out. My body feels weary. My brain feels like a car that won't start. I have $3 to my name, winter tires balder than Peter Furler, and less than a quarter tank of gas with which to get to work for an entire week before my next paycheque. I am so tired of worrying about finances, of asking for help, of having to put off legitimate needs (like safe tires for my vehicle) with more pressing legitimate needs (like gas for said vehicle). I think this year's goals may be more about getting my immediate 'boring' surroundings in order than creative projects that will probably never be seen by human eyes anyway. Maybe the fact that the small boring details of my day-to-day life are in chaos is the reason I'm struggling to work on my choreography and writing projects.

 

I've recently discovered Struthless on YouTube. This channel has been a Godsend, and a lot of what's in the rest of this post is probably going to be adapted (if not directly lifted) from his videos.

 

2026 Goals:

 

FINANCES.

I absolutely need to get some finances in order. I am so freaking done with not being able to go anywhere or do anything because I didn't set aside enough gas money for the van. I'm tired of knowing I'm driving on extremely unsafe tires, and the catastrophic electrical failure that took the van off the road for so long that the registration on it lapsed is still fresh in my mind. If something like that happens again, how are we going to pay for it?

I'm not trying to become a millionaire, I just want an emergency fund. Something we can fall back on if another $3,000 part on the van drops dead or if I get sick and have to miss a week of work. I want to be able to go to the grocery store and not have to prioritize some food needs over others because we don't have enough money for the whole list.

I'm guessing that the financial chaos we have lived in for so long is a big part of why I can't get my act together enough to work on anything creative. 

 

So how am I going to do that?

First, any and all Christmas gift money is going to open up an investment. It's something I have been talking about doing since I was 18 years old and never did. Not doing it is one of the biggest regrets of my life, and the longer I wait to open one, the bigger that regret will be. I don't even know what I'm saving for, I just want that money out of my easy-to-access chequing account where it WILL get spent on fancy snacks because that's exactly where it has been going for at least five years.

Second, I want to set up autotransfer so that every time a paycheque comes in, a certain dollar amount will immediately get siphoned off to a savings account of some kind. This may honestly just go toward buying Christmas gifts next year or something, as that has been a huge sticking point for me every year since we got married. Clearly I'm not doing this manually, so I need to automate it or it just is not going to happen.

 

Third (and we've already started to do this a bit since we moved), I want to meal plan at least a week in advance so we can buy groceries accordingly and cut back on eating out (last time we went on a dinner date it was over $80... just for the two of us! This wasn't even a high-end, fine dining restaurant, this was the culinary equivalent of a decent sports bar).

 

 

DANCE.

This is a tricky one. My confidence in my abilities took a huge hit on the second-most-recent show I choreographed, and now I feel like I need to prove something. Again. I was only just getting out from the 'I have to prove myself' mindset from college and then this. I've been asked to be a choreography consultant (not even the actual choreographer) for a local show and even that feels like I'll mess it up somehow.

I'm also fairly out of shape. Our new place has two levels, and even climbing the stairs twice in a row knocks the wind out of me.

 

I've been offered a really great teaching opportunity, and while I really want to take it, I'm also VERY aware of how easy it is for a teacher to absolutely destroy a student. My biggest fear is that in my inexperience, I will do the same to all my students and they will come away hating dance and hating themselves, the same way I often have. 

 

How am I going to do this?

First, I am NOT starting by posting on Instagram, where all the people who have tried to break me will see them. Instead, I have drafted an email to those who have supported me over the years asking if they would like daily video clips of me performing choreography for the month of January. I have learned that if I don't have any specific people waiting for a video, I will not make one... so I need to get people invested and waiting.

Over Nachmo, I would like to do an Alphabet superset -- 26 dance clips to songs starting with each letter of the alphabet. After 26 days, I'll run a poll and see which piece my accountability group thinks I should develop further and run out the run of the month working on that. I want to start putting those clips on my Ko-fi account and after January will start actually promoting that (because then it will have actual dance content on there -- wild, right?).

 

Second, I want to make a Project Board with a clear timeline of the dance thing I'm working on and focus only on that ONE dance project. The thing that has always hamstrung me with making dance films is trying to have eight of them on burners at once. This is impossible to do, and I absolutely know this. But I keep freaking doing it. I need to start with one (1) film, and not even think about any others until that one is legitimately done.

Also on this project board, I want to lay out a memorization schedule. The other MASSIVE difficulty I have with making dance films is simply not learning the choreography and then trying to cram it all in the week (or even the day) before. I want to schedule one section of memorization per week, so that by the time I want to film these upcoming projects, I will already know them well enough to feel comfortable performing them.

 

 

WRITING.

Kyrie has stalled out. The older I get, the less confident I feel writing about interpersonal relationships, and unfortunately that's exactly what Act I of this novel is. I've been stuck on/avoiding this one dinner date scene for probably almost a year at this point. I love this story, and even if I don't bring any of my other novels to fruition, I want to see this one published. I have had a handful of friends publish their own books, so I know it can be done by people like me. I just need to do it.

 

How am I going to do this?

Small, daily goals. One sentence a day. On good days, maybe shoot for 100 words per day. Just get something, anything, on the page. I'm going to set myself a goal to get this draft done and out to beta readers by the end of April. Most of that period is my layoff time from work, so I have PLENTY of time to write 100 words a day (especially since I'm pretty experienced at cranking out 3k+ words an hour from my NaNoWriMo days). Plus, Act II is already is pretty decent shape and really just needs some light editing before it's beta-reader ready.

Or, if 'one sentence' is too much, I might try for half an hour per day (setting a timer). 

I may also need to implement some kind of reward system until I can get Act I to be more fun. 

 

 

WIP CLEARING.

I have a pile of (mostly crochet) works-in-progress that I need to either finish or officially abandon and rip out. I think these are taking up a lot of brain space and slowing me down from doing other things because I keep thinking 'I really should work on this...' Two weeks ago I knocked out two crochet projects that literally took less than two hours each and already I'm starting to feel a little more like I can breathe again. I wrote a list of all the WIPs that exist so I can think about which one to tackle next (and which ones I need to seriously consider ripping out so I can use that yarn for other things).

 

How am I going to do this?

I used to crochet while watching YouTube videos, no I need to get back into the habit of doing things while watching YouTube again. Adrian's Digital Basement is a great channel for this, as Adrian is really good at explaining what he's doing as he's going along so you don't actually need to look at what's happening every single second. Plus, if you're watching one of his repair videos, you can tap into the body-doubling effect, as he's working on a project too. I also learn a lot about patience, troubleshooting, and computers in general from his videos.

 

 

 

SLEEP.

My mother often tells of when I was a two-month old baby and she would have to sit up with me at night because I was awake and wanted to play. (She's still bitter about this, by the way.) I wasn't crying or upset, I was just ready to explore and hang out and had zero interest in going to sleep.

That has set the tone of my entire life. I can sleep just fine. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm down for the count. The actual sleep is not the problem. The getting-to-bed part is. There's just too much to work on, and learn, and do, and explore. Life is short, and to spend a third of it sleeping, a third of it working, and half of it dealing with feeding myself seems absolutely ludicrous. When exactly am I supposed to, you know, live?

But my husband has given me an ultimatum: be consistently in bed by midnight before May 2026 or he'll leave me. And if it means that much to him, I do really want to try. But I've never done this before.

 

How am I going to do this?

I've come up with a physical tracker idea and I know I want to implement a reward system (which, of course, will require me to stay on track with the financial goals). A reward system helped me a LOT with getting my wake-up times solid (still going strong after six months!), so I'm hoping it will help with this too.

Being on ADHD meds has already helped a lot because now I can actually get the chores done before midnight (most of the time), which was definitely a big part of what kept me from going to bed. But now I'm using that time to putz around on other projects. I have a feeling clearing out the 'should do projects' (the WIPs, see above), might help a lot here.

 

 

COMMUNITY.

Part of why we moved was for a community. We had some friends in this town already, and for YEARS my husband and I have dreamed of hosting people for dinner... which is tricky when all your friends live(d) 90 minutes away or more.

I'd like to set a goal of hosting two dinners per month. That feels manageable, and that will be a great day to strengthen the connections we have (which is turn will hopefully help our mental health).

 

How are we going to do this?

Meal plan. Schedule. Text people until somebody's available for that date.

 

So what are my first steps?

 

- Buy a corkboard and some brad fasteners (to make the project board, as at least three of these goals will be tracked on these).

- Make a list of people to send the accountability email to.

 

- Keep referencing the WIP list and work off the momentum I've already built.

 

- Write one sentence in Kyrie.

 

- Wear the tap shoes. 

Rewrite Update

I'm currently rewriting the MC's death scene.

It's a weird experience. I first wrote this novel, this scene, in November 2014. Even then, I was no stranger to writing death scenes, but that's not what's weird.

What's weird is all the losses, the deaths that happened to me in real life -- all happened after I wrote that rough draft. This character dies of asthma. I wrote this scene in November and lost my best friend to lung failure three months later. My cousin died of asthma five months after I first wrote this scene. I didn't even know she had asthma until the night she died.

It's also weird that this doesn't really trigger me or raise my anxiety levels (I don't have an anxiety disorder -- one of the few mental illnesses I've managed to dodge so far. My fear levels are normal, but my sadness and self-hatred levels are off the charts). Maybe I've accepted defeat and am just assuming bad things will always happen no matter what and there are absolutely zero ways to get out of it. Maybe I've been successful as separating fact from fiction. Maybe not really remembering writing the initial scenes in the first place is helping me be more objective -- there's not much emotional connection as far as 'I wrote this scene on this day while sitting in this place at this time of day' so I haven't had the 'I wrote this and then it happened' thought. Maybe the writing and the real life happened far enough apart that I was able to keep them separate.

Maybe I just knew that this is what had to happen for this book to work, and I have to do what I have to do. This book has no point if she survives. She's already had a near-death experience and the character's lives just continued on for the most part (as it does at college -- if you're not actively dead, you aren't sick enough. At least not at my college). For the MMC to learn what he needs to learn, he has to lose her. And it has to be severe and sudden, with absolutely no recourse. She's not the type of person to willy-nilly end a friendship, especially not one as precious as what they have.

Honestly, her leaving this particular friend character was the initial seed of the idea. At first the scene in my head was her driving away, never to return, but somewhere between initial idea and NaNoWriMo that year it morphed into what it is now, and I think that's a much stronger climax with more interesting repercussions. If she doesn't die, he never gets mad enough to stand up to the villain character -- at the cost of everything he's worked for. If she doesn't die, he never learns to live, really live, and to value people and experiences over money and 'proving people wrong.'

I guess this novel is kind of a synthesis of what was going in my own life at the time -- I was still very much dealing with implications of my own near-death experience several years before and I was in the beginning stages of learning those very same lessons. The main character was who I was striving to become, and the MMC was me in that moment, trying to figure out how to get from here to there.

In some ways I think I've regressed in my goals there. And that's what making this rewrite in general so hard -- because I shut down hard when my cousin died. Suddenly life was not beautiful and life was not worth living. I never fully had the chance to learn those lessons. They have never taken root in my own life. And because this character doesn't die until very near the end of book, that means I spend 97% of the book building her up into this Mary Poppins sort of magical figure (while somehow not being a Mary Sue) with which I am very unfamiliar, and only the final 3% of the book is MMC consciously learning the lessons (which I actually am familiar with). Since the novel is 'written' by him after her death, there are elements of him picking up threads that he missed while he was living them... but that's a tough line to toe, though, because I very much want a 'no spoilers' approach. He, our narrator, doesn't mention that she dies until she does, right in front of him, barely a year after he meets her.

I do intend to send this draft out to a couple of beta readers, though I can think of a couple of things I might need to rewrite after this. This time I did a straight-through, top to bottom rewrite with absolutely no jumping around (partly so I wouldn't forget to write 'smaller' scenes, partly so I wouldn't have to completely reassemble the book potentially multiple times only to find parts still missing -- in short, to stave off mind-melting, brain-burning overwhelm). I started in April 2022 and I am on pace to finish this month. I'm currently at 77,000 words. I've never written anything this long before (you'd better believe I'm backing this thing up on an external drive every other day).

I'm just so proud that I've gotten this far. Even if nobody pays money for this book, I'm proud that I have given it a fair shot at life.

Too Much

This week I had another close friend suddenly cut contact with me because I'm too much of an emotional drain on her.

I get it. I really do. It seems unimaginable that somebody could have such as long of a streak of abusers, deaths, and bad situations as I have. It's a lot for anyone to carry, including me. And that's why I turn to people for help and support.

Inevitably, though, my despair-ridden life overwhelms them and they 'step back' for their own mental health.

I do get it. And that almost what hurts the most. I trigger people's worst mental health symptoms. I am the reason my formerly happy friends are now suffering. Maybe depression really is contagious. Maybe I really am God's punching bag.

They say 'just be positive,' but as much as I want to, no amount of happiness and positivity is going to stop the abuse and the deaths and all that pain that just keeps piling up with nowhere to go. Forcing myself to pretend to be happy only distances me from myself because I know deep down that I'm just suppressing the pain and not dissolving it. And if I can't be honest with myself and with my friends, then who even am I? Why even bother? They're not my friends if I don't feel comfortable being honest with them, but they also say they're not my friends because I 'overshare' and I'm 'too negative' when I am honest. To me, friendship is when you can talk no holds barred and no punches pulled. If I can't do that, then you're an acquaintance, not a friend.

But if I try to honour them with my honesty, I get cut off. And the stupid thing is, I get why. I get that they need to protect themselves. But then who's left to help me pick up my shredded heart? Who's left to hold my hand? Who really means it when they say they're always there for me?

I feel like I'll always, only be too much for people. There is something fundamentally broken in me and who I am as a person and it will always ruin every person I touch. I am poison, and despite what some people say that isn't a choice. Do you think I chose to watch my family dissolve? Do you think I chose to be abused by a primary caregiver, the church, the director of my college program, and my voice teacher? Do you think I chose for my friends and my cousin to die horrible deaths? Do you really think I wanted all that to happen? If I could do my life over again, I wouldn't even be born. It wasn't worth it. There were good moments, but they don't outweigh all this insoluble pain. I would rather have never existed. Or at least I wish I had died in that car accident, when I still had the hope of a decent life ahead of me -- before anybody else died.

Quality Time

In order to understand this post, you'll have to be familiar with the five love languages. You don't need to take the quiz if you don't want to, just be familiar with the five different kinds.

Read the overview? Good.

I am a STRONG quality-time, with a healthy helping of words of affirmation. I scored a perfect zero in acts of service (which explains a lot for those who know me in real life).

On one hand, quality time is the easiest. It requires no money (gifts), very little prep (gifts), not a lot of effort (acts of service), no eloquence (words of affirmation), and no physical contact. Certainly all of these can go into loving a quality time person, but they're by no means requirements. Literally all you have to do is sit with us and talk/listen. Honestly one of my favourite things to do with my college friends was to go to the grocery store. Nothing crazy, nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Let's just get in the car and drive to your chiropractor appointment and the car wash together. We don't even need to get coffee. All I want in my life is to spend time sitting in the same room (or vehicle) as you, with more than 60% of your undivided attention (if you're scrolling through your phone or watching a movie, that absolutely DOES NOT count and in fact actively makes me feel even more unloved because you have a beautiful chance to share a few moments with me as another human and you're deciding that your Instagram is more important).

But on the other hand, quality time is the hardest. You can't just toss us a hug or a pat on the back and we're good for another three months. You can't take out the trash and expect us to suddenly be okay. You can't buy our satisfaction with gifts and you can't smooth over a wound with some nice words. The very thing that makes us easy is the thing that makes us impossibly difficult.

Every other love language can have their needs satisfied in thirty seconds or less. But not quality time. We are not satisfied with a quick 'hi love you bye.' We are time sucks. We are the black hole, the awful vortex in your busy lives that you avoid because you have two meetings and a birthday party and an office dinner and a dance lesson and rehearsal and three classes and you don't have any energy left to give to us, let alone the four or five hours we would prefer -- no, need -- to have from you. God help the parents of the quality time children. You barely have time for yourselves, let alone for us.

And we know that. We know we ask a lot. I cannot even begin to communicate the depth of my guilt that I need you so much and that I interfere with your busy life so much. You have no idea how much I wish I could be as easily satisfied as everyone else. I can't even explain how much I pretend I'm fine or I pretend I'm satisfied with the two-second greeting you give us when everything within me screams for you, for somebody, for anybody, to just spend an afternoon with me, with no limit and no other agenda. I know I'm expected to be okay on my own and so often I pretend that I am, but I'm really not. The need in my soul is vast, and deep, and so incongruent with how our society operates. Nobody knows HOW to just sit and co-exist with another person anymore. We underscore our days with Netflix and Skype meetings and the six o'clock news and sports and Snapchat and Bejeweled knockoffs and the ever-buzzing phone and your quality time friends and family quietly shrivel into dust in the corner, edged out of your lives by f*cking pixels on a screen. In this world of opportunity and money and privilege, the one thing nobody has to give, the one thing nobody can earn, the one thing that nobody can deposit in a savings account for a rainy day is time.

And sometimes I hate that something so impossible is often the literal only thing that I really want from you.

The Birth of the Curse

I'l just get this out of the way: I hate my birthday.

Not because I'm another year older and closer to death. I hate my actual birth date -- 2 August.

In Canada, the first Monday is August is a statutory holiday. I don't know why they felt this was necessary -- the month of August literally is holiday unless you're one of the lucky few who have actually managed to land any kind of full-time job in this economy. Yours truly was literally born on that God-forsaken Monday. To be born on a holiday Monday -- especially in the summer, and especially the last one of the summer -- is a curse straight from the lips of Satan himself.

Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to plan any kind of birthday party when literally everyone goes camping in the mountains or goes to the lake on that weekend? There are 51 other weekends every year, but all the vacations magically converge on THAT weekend -- the weekend of my birthday.

These circumstances literally incited my lifelong battle with depression. My own birthday doomed me. I was sunk from my first breath.

I was nine, going on ten. My birthday was coming up and I had carefully made up invitations and sent them out WAY in advance -- having learned in the previous three or four years that people apparently make plans for my birthday weekend in April sometime. But it was now late July and the RSVP calls were rolling in -- 'Sorry, Lindsay can't make it, we're going to the lake that weekend,' 'Sorry, Katie's camping with her dad that weekend,' 'Sorry, Brittany can't come -- we're all going to Disneyland that weekend...'

I was with my dad in his workshop when my mother came out and relayed yet another message like this -- my best friend couldn't come. And it was kind of the last straw. I had invited probably about a dozen people, and now probably about ten of them had already backed out. I had long been reduced to inviting even my much-younger and significantly more annoying cousins just so I would be with someone on my birthday.

I excused myself and headed back to the house to process. How could my best friend be busy? She knew my birthday. It happened every year on the same day. How do you not start to remember 'oh yeah, my best friend's birthday is that day, don't book anything'? This was my best friend. I had never missed her birthday party. Why then did she and her family seem to think it was okay to miss mine?

I was walking up the steps to the back door of our house when a solution presented itself to my nine-year-old brain: nobody likes you. Nobody wants you around. And that's why they're making all these excuses. They didn't forget -- they just don't want to come.

And suddenly everything made sense.

The problem was not the date, the problem was me. I was annoying and stupid and nobody liked me.

The knowledge was enlightening. Suddenly my entire life made sense -- my mother's seemingly unprovoked rages at me, my dance teacher's constant needling comments at me about how I wasn't good enough, the fact that every social gathering I ever tried to plan flopped spectacularly, the fact that literally nobody ever talked to me unless forced to.

It was because nobody liked me. It was because there was something wrong with me.

That thought opened up a whole new world of explanation -- a Pandora's box that not only could I not shut, I didn't want to because I would rather know that I was worthless than live under a delusion. I would rather have known the truth -- the truth that nobody wanted me around and would do whatever it took to avoid me. That thought still pervades literally everything I do and everything I think. I know nothing else.

I still had one faint hope -- that when I was an adult and my friends were all more in control of their work schedules, they would know to keep that day (or at least that weekend) free. They would remember that that was my birthday and maybe my adult friends would somehow be able to love me enough to not want to back out of whatever I might plan.

But now I am an adult. I'm alone in a city with very few (and somewhat tenuous) connections. I can't go visit my family because I work two days in a row and can't make the trip. My best friend is on vacation -- her family plans the same stupid trip to the mountains ON MY BIRTHDAY every single stupid year, despite knowing that that's my birthday. I had made plans with another friend to spend the day together on my birthday -- nothing fancy, just literally being in each other's presence -- and that friend just found out today that there's a family event that he can't back out of... on that day.

My one birthday wish -- to spend my birthday with people who care about me. It's not about the event. It's not about the gifts. It's not about the party or the food or the beverages. It's about being with people I love. That's all I want. It's so simple, but it's the one thing I can apparently never have.

Nobody should have to be alone on their birthday. And yet that's my constant reality.

Living Deaths

The problem with being single and living a fairly transient lifestyle (like, say, freelance performing) is that people don't stay your friends after you've left their city. There's no loyalty anymore. I have lost DOZENS of very close friends because they couldn't even be bothered to try the long-distance friendship thing. It's not that it's 'too difficult' -- some of them literally do not even try. I'm constantly texting and emailing and writing to them (with some I even consider calling), trying to keep the lines of communication open, trying to keep updated with their lives, but no replies... no acknowledgement of receipt... nothing.

Eventually I just stop trying. You can only scream into the silence for so long before you finally get it through your thick skull that you're invisible and nobody will ever answer and so you stop trying because there's no point anyway. After all, you don't want to annoy them either -- assuming they're even seeing your texts.

It's so ridiculous. In this age of smartphones, texting, Facebook, Messenger, email... nobody can be bothered to stay in touch because (verbatim) 'I just don't talk to even my very close friends if they're far away.'

Yes, it takes a little intentionality. Yes, you have to sit down and type an entire 'hey, miss you, how are you doing?' into your phone (back in the olden days we had to actually HANDWRITE letters on actual paper and put it in an envelope which we then licked closed and put an address and stamp on it AND THEN had to take it all the way out to the mailbox or -- horrors! -- the post office three blocks away... but yeah, tell me again how typing two sentences on your phone is just too much effort for a person you claim to care about).

I know you all have jobs and 'are busy' -- but if you're too busy to at least fire off a ten-second two-sentence text three or four times a month, maybe it's time to re-evaluate your schedule. I have a married friend with a full-time job who volunteers a LOT at her church as well as teaching art and taking dance classes on the side and she still has the time to text me at least once a week asking how I'm doing. If she can do it -- I daresay a lot of you can.

This means that every single time I move to a new city, I have to start from square one. None of my friends from my last place of residence carry across. I have to start completely over. It's sad, it's annoying, it's upsetting. And what's more, when I do go back to visit, the reception from my 'friends' is inevitably cool, because 'life moves on and people grow apart.' I'm sorry? We grew apart because YOU DIDN'T EVEN TRY.

I've already grieved enough deaths in my short life. Please don't make me grieve the relational deaths of my still-living friends too.

(Metaphorical) Split Jump

I feel like I have one foot in two provinces and it's honestly exhausting.

Earlier this spring I had made plans to stay in Saskatchewan fairly long-term (despite graduating college in April). I notified my housemates, job-hunted, started looking at places, told my entire extended family/friend group -- and then it fell through. Completely. Entirely.

I came up with a backup plan fairly quickly. Since it involved me moving back to Alberta, I officially ended the perennial Saskatchewan job-hunt -- no point in prolonging the frustration of not getting hired if I was only going to be there another month and a half anyway.

However, because I have zero income, this means I am literally scraping together couch change to pay for gas to get to rehearsals. I have $18 to my name right now. I literally can't even break a twenty for change for the parking meter at the doctor's office.

This leaves me in a very tight spot. I'm still in shows in Sasktachewan till mid-June. However, I don't have money to even fuel my van this week. The one saving grace was that there's a week and a half between performance dates here. It's a long enough period of time to go back home and work for my dad's company for a week. And that should earn me enough money to pay my final rent bill in Saskatchewan and cover gas till I move back to Alberta. It's really kind of stupid that I'm having to commute nine and a half hours (to a different province!) to work, but I swear literally NOBODY ELSE on the planet will hire me. Name it and I've applied for it. Even jobs below minimum wage. I have applied for literally everything.

I've just confirmed my place in a renting option in Alberta. I guess it's official now -- my time in Saskatchewan is ending, much sooner than I anticipated. I really only have about two weeks total here -- the rest will be in Alberta, working to afford to actually move.

It hurts. 98% of my friends -- my support system -- are in Saskatchewan. I really only have two Alberta friends left, and they'd be in a different city than me. I would be well and truly alone in a strange city, when I'm already not in a great headspace.

Don't get me wrong -- I love Alberta, and I love the city (both cities in general and the particular one I'm moving to). But I feel very much like I'll lose all the friends I made here in Saskatchewan, and I'll have to start rebuilding a support system from step one all over again -- do you know how long it took to cobble together the one that I currently have? And that was in a school environment, where you're together with people all the time, in a setting that's fairly conducive to building relationships.

It still doesn't seem real that one day, in less than a month, I will be leaving this house, driving away from this town, taking the exit off the highway... and never coming back.

What I Will Never See

I don't know if I'll ever fully realise just how sick I am. I'll probably never be able to see what the people around me see -- my friends who have looked me in the eye and said, "You need to go to sleep," the ones who still 'like' my (now-rare) dance clips on Instagram, the ones who have literally taken me out for food because I haven't been eating. I'll never be able to see the potential that they see in me; why they keep prolonging my life. I wish I could -- for just five minutes. I wish I could see what they see, why they insist they don't want me to die. Because all I see is guilt -- I think they say they want me to live because they'd feel guilty if they didn't say that.

Music Day - Treasure Of The Broken Land

Four years ago today, dear Brittney left this world, flew beyond the stars without the rest of us and our leaden souls still tethered to time.

I discovered this song probably about a year and a half after her death. It was Mark Heard's (recorded) swan song before his sudden death in August 1992 (Brittney would only have been a month old at the time). It so perfectly captures the tension of being alive on earth and missing those no longer on earth just a phone call or a text away. The song is rich with longing and even a touch of regret, but it's up-tempo enough to keep it from being unlistenable.

My words are weak in the face of such lyrical dexterity, so I'll let the lyrics speak for themselves...

I see you now and then in dreams
Your voice sounds just like it used to...

I thought our days were commonplace
Thought they'd number in the millions
Now there's only the aftertaste
Of circumstance that can't pass this way again...

You were relieved of a life-long thirst
I was dry at the fountain...

I often still wonder why she got to die and I didn't. I attempted suicide just over two years after she died, and yet I lived. Why then didn't she? She had so much more to offer than I ever have. Why did I have to stay while she went on without me?

I awoke when you called my name
I felt the curtain tearing...

Remind you of anything? Like Terry Scott Taylor's gut-wrenching One More Time? 'I thought that I heard / Your voice call my name / But that couldn't be 'cause you walk beyond the stars... Here inside a dream / I see you standing on a hill / You smile, then turn away / Now I must go...'

I could melt the clock hands down
But only in my memory
Nobody gets a second chance
To be the friend that they meant to be...

If this line doesn't force you to re-evaluate your entire life, I'm willing to bet a lot of money that you don't have a pulse. In just a few words, Heard throws the unforgiving march of time and the fragility of human life into razor-sharp focus.

Title: Treasure Of The Broken Land
Artist: Mark Heard
Album: Satellite Sky
Year: 1992
iTunes here; YouTube here.

We live in a broken land -- I think we'll all agree on that, at least to some extent. But she was a treasure in this wasteland of false fronts and manufactured love. She was the real deal. And I miss her every day.

Emotional Tourist - A Retrospective (2018)

This year, I lived.

Not as in 'survived,' I lived. From February-August I was either rehearsing or performing at least one show (An Ideal Husband, Pygmalion, Anne of Green Gables, Oklahoma!, and Mary Poppins), and then in mid-October I started rehearsing the next show -- hopefully the first of another good long stretch again. I have never known joy and excitement and the thrill of being alive like I did during the Mary Poppins run -- to actually be a part of a story I'd loved since I was three years old was truly special.

And I traveled. Quite a lot. I've never really thought of myself as much of a traveler, but I actually quite enjoyed it. I went back and forth between my parents' place and mine many times, I went to the city and explored a few times, I went up north for a wedding, I went to southern Alberta for an audition... and I took pictures of most of it on film, which somehow makes the experience richer even though 90% of the pictures suck.

I made friends with other performers. I stayed up till one in the morning talking and eating and dancing with these friends -- these people I might never have met. I watched them all grow and succeed and laugh and cry and look out for each other and stick together.

I made more impulsive decisions. Like driving seven hours to an audition in a city I have literally only seen twice in my entire life and then crashing on my dad's cousin's couch for the night. Or like going for coffee with one of the musicians I'd literally never spoken to before at 10.30pm after a two-show day. Or going to the city and shooting a whole bunch of film because I was bored. Or going to see local theatre productions because I wanted a night out. Or skipping two days of school to drive out to my dear friend's funeral. Or attending NaNoWriMo write-ins, for the first time EVER in my ten years of NaNoWriMo. Or doing a ten-hour round-trip to a three-hour wedding and only getting back in at 1.30am, surviving the dark, late, relatively boring drive only by the grace of God and loud driving music.

I began seriously rewriting Kyrie, and I actually got a bit of a system going. I've written some additional scenes, and rewritten a handful of pre-existing ones. I'm starting to figure out a more detailed timeline of events.

 I began writing original fiction again, for the first time since my cousin died in April 2015.

I began fighting for myself more. I began to realise (mostly through my experience with Mary Poppins) that I AM talented, darn it, and not one of you is going to tell me I'm not. I will prove you wrong. I've done it before and I'll do it again, with or without your support. I began enjoying life and giving less of a crap what people think I should be doing or can do.

I started learning Thai, mostly for the heck of it. I took a college class outside of my program for the first time since 2016 and I met some really great people there. I started learning piano and found that I love it.

Life is rich, and full, and sweet, and I tasted just the edge of it this year.

On the Advent

We celebrate this time of year as the time Jesus -- God in the flesh -- came to earth to save us.

To save us.

From what?

What did we need saving from?

Don't give me the Sunday School answer that means nothing to you. Give me the answer that resonates in your heart. What do we need saving from? Do we need to be saved from a dire financial situation? Health concerns? A smaller house than we'd like? A job we hate? Something else entirely?

Let's phrase this another way: What is the ultimate problem in our lives that needs resolution? What is the biggest thing that needs fixing? Advertisers can tell you it's a thousand different things, but out of all those possibilities, which one cuts the deepest? Which one hurts the most? Which spot in our soul do we build the highest walls around, protect most fiercely? What is the sore spot that needs a salve? Is it really a material lack? Is it really financial?

Let's dig deeper -- why do we want all these material things in the first place? 98% of the time, if we're perfectly honest, it's so we can 'look good.' It's to keep up with the Joneses. It's to keep up appearances. But why do we feel this need to keep up appearances in the first place? Will anybody really die if we don't? Since the answer to that is 'no,' maybe the lack isn't money or things. Maybe we're just using the lack of money as a scapegoat, a cover story for the deeper thing we're really lacking.

Allow me to argue that the lack is soul connection. More specifically, love. Not romantic love (necessarily), but the deep love of a close friend or relative.

Did Jesus lay in the manger clutching a ten-step plan to get out of debt? Did God-With-Us hold in His hand keys to the latest high-end car? Did He bring us an interview for a less-crappy job? No? Then what did He come with?

Nothing -- except the heartbeat of God. The love of God, coursing through the veins that would one day be drained dry in an effort to communicate just how intense, how all-in, love is. He came -- to forgive our sins, yes, but to forgive our sins so that we could be reconciled with God. We know sin separated us from God, creating the void inside us to begin with. And we've tried to fill (or at least distract ourselves from) the void with money and prestige and sex and Netflix. But what we needed was not, in fact, money or prestige or sex or Netflix. What we needed was companionship, or, dare I say, love. Others might love us for a while, but the permanent, lasting love comes only from God and that deep, permanent love is our deep unspoken longing -- even if a lot of us haven't been able to pin it down yet.

The most important thing, the thing we lack, is a truly loving relationship, a deep connection and trust with someone. It's love and companionship that is our deepest need. Flash back to the garden, where God literally created woman because, in His words, "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18, 20-22). The second person was not created solely for sexual benefits (though in the case of Adam and Eve, sex was certainly a part of their relationship), the second person was created so that the first person would have a companion. Someone to love and be loved by. God didn't give the man a million dollars or time-saving devices/apps or a vacation in the Bahamas or the CEO position of a highly-profitable international company. He gave the man what he really needed, whether he would ever have realised it or not -- a companion. A friend.

What, then, is our great need? What did we need saving from?

Our terrible, tyrannical, unspoken loneliness.





(This also implies that we -- especially any of us who call ourselves Christians/children of God -- need to show love to others/each other, not just throw money and a politely-veiled insult at them and hurry in the other direction, but that's a WHOLE different blog post...)
(Also, I'm not trying to be all holier-than-thou in this post -- I honestly have a VERY hard time believing God does truly even notice me let alone love me. I'm not trying to be preachy and it's not that I don't know how hard it is to even hope that God might love me too. It's SO hard, and honestly I'm having a hard time believing some of the things I've said in this blog post.)

The Effect of Perelandra

Almost finished reading C.S. Lewis' Perelandra.

READ. THIS. BOOK.

I am not kidding. I do not care who you are. I don't care if you normally hate fantasy fiction (I do, actually). I don't even care if you normally hate reading. READ THIS BOOK. It gets off to an incredibly slow start, but once it gets going it grabs you by the soul. Not the throat, not the heart -- the soul. What the Chronicles of Narnia has lost by being so immensely popular, this trilogy has retained by being almost completely unknown.

Ordinarily I would start thinking, what can I take from here to improve my own writing? But to try to strip writing advice out of a work so -- there are no adequate words -- intense is to strip it of its weight and meaning. And perhaps that would be an unnecessary exercise anyway -- as I was just saying to my brother not long ago: whatever you're reading will, for better or worse, show up in your writing. Your output will begin to reflect what you're putting into your mind, your spirit, your soul. You don't even have to try for it, it just happens. I was telling somebody the other day that as soon as you start trying to be sincere, you're no longer sincere. That particular discussion was in the context of interpersonal relationships and communicating feelings through writing, but it also applies to art -- as soon as you 'try' to make something great, it automatically loses some of its potential to be great.

Instead, I'll try to document some of what this story has done to me.

For it did do things to me. I was reading Buechner the other day and he said something to the effect that things like painting and music are subcutaneous arts -- they get under the skin and slowly seep into your being. But writing is an intravenous art -- it goes directly into your bloodstream, in minutes, undiluted. If I ever doubted that, Perelandra has proved it to me.

I've never really been one to read trashy novels. My mother was a huge book-lover, a teacher, and a bit of an intellectual. My earliest memory of her is of her reading to us. We, her offspring, read copiously as children and teens (that was just what people did in their free time, wasn't it?). And because my mother was very aware that what you read influences how you think, she ensured that we had access to books of substance. Those were what she bought and read to us, and so those influenced our tastes as we began choosing our own reading material. As a writer myself, I can't stand trashy junk-food novels -- the mass-produced brain-clogging recycled intellectual and emotional pablum that serves only to give your eye muscles a little exercise but not your brain. But even though I haven't even been reading trash, this book makes me think 'this is what stories are supposed to be.' This level of intensity, this real, this rich, this deep, this poetic/allegorical to the mysteries of real life. It's like every story I've ever read to this point in my life has been a cheap facsimile of a real story.

I needed to read this story now, at this point in my life. It speaks to so much of what I've been thinking about and going through lately and puts a lot of it into perspective.

For a while now, I've been realising that I'm different, on a fundamental level, from most people. Even writing that sounds a little boastful, and I don't mean it to be. I mean it only as an observation. I'm beginning to realise that not everyone sees what I see (intellectually/spiritually/emotionally) -- they don't make the connections that I do. When artists say 'people don't get it,' they actually mean that -- people really, truly, do not get it. And it's frustrating because to me it seems to obvious, so simple, so logical, if only you pause and think about it a little. It's like I can see -- however dimly -- what goes on behind the curtain of the empirical world while most everybody else seems to not even realise there IS a curtain.

And although the layperson might think it's cool and fun to see things others don't -- I used to think the same thing till I realised I was one of them -- it's actually so frustrating. You can only converse with people in shallow terms on shallow subjects. As soon as you try to steer the conversation to something that actually does interest you, challenge you intellectually, they check out and tell you you're getting 'too personal.' It's like how a mother feels when they're cooped up in the house or the car with their two-year-old all day long -- it's like you can feel your brain atrophy because of the lack of conversational/intellectual stimulation. Except I experience this adult-in-a-room-of-two-year-olds phenomenon indefinitely -- the only person who seemed to 'get' what I see died three and a half years ago.

It's not something to brag about. It's more of a curse. (Yes, I do realise how cliché that sounds, but it's an accurate description.) It's like I'm doomed to forever be misunderstood and patronised. I've written before on how I often feel the weight of other people's pain and concerns -- things that don't bother my life but weigh on them -- so heavily that often I physically can't breathe.

Every so often, usually at a time when the weight seems heavier than normal, I'll ask God, 'why me?' Why did He choose me to be one of the misunderstood, one of the special ones? Must I be alone in this heavy calling to see so much -- and be completely unable to do anything with that information?

(Spoilers ahead.)

There's a scene in Perelandra in which Dr Ransom grapples with the same question -- why must he fight the spirit that threatens the planet's sacred, fragile innocence? Why not Maleldil? Why not anybody else? Why him? He's nothing special. And I recognised, on a gut level, all those questions because I have asked them myself. Why me? Why am I the one chosen for such a lonely life? Why must I be so completely and incredibly alone, in every possible sense of the word?

This, naturally, turned my thoughts to my own half-finished novel Kyrie. The main characters touch on similar questions within their own experiences. Those two characters represent a friendship that I long for in real life -- that platonic intellectual thing that is completely at home and comfortable with the other person in their questions, exactly where they are at, engaging with them but not lecturing. The entire novel is basically me laying out the kind of friendship I long for in real life but -- I'm realising -- may never actually have again. It's the relationship Ransom has with the Green Lady of Perelandra -- intellectual and innocent.

This further turned my thoughts to a specific friendship I'm in -- one that I hoped would turn into 'something more,' as people like to put it, but so far has not. Yet we somehow have remained good friends. This person has seen me at some of my most broken and vulnerable moments and was content to simply exist alongside me in those times, without lecturing or proselytising, just existing and listening (exactly the thing I need that apparently seems to elude everyone else despite my detailed explanations that this is the thing I want to you to do if I'm struggling). Lately I've been wondering if this is, in fact, that deep comfortable companionship I've been longing for. Perhaps we have been denied romance because romance would cheapen (or needlessly complicate) what we have. I have been trying to be more content with our relationship as it currently is -- not focusing on what I want it to be. In the words of the Lady, "The fruit we are eating is always the best fruit of all."

And there's the other question: am I alone?

In that same scene, Ransom eventually hears from the darkness what he must do and despite his fear, he knows (somehow beyond explanation, but I 'get' it because I've experienced that deep certainty myself at times) that he will succeed in his task. It's no secret that the voice out of the darkness is Maleldil, and it's also no secret in the novel who Maleldil represents.

Something in me still doesn't want this answer to be enough (a held-over scar from the Year of Hell), but it's a question I can't not even consider.

(Possibly more thoughts to come as I finish the story.)


REFERENCES
Buechner, Frederick, The Clown in the Belfry, 1992.

The Dance of Respect

Recently I was reading a dance magazine, and this one contributing author was talking about his experiences in contact improv -- specifically, the topic of consent and 'listening' to one's partner during creation/performance. I'm not familiar with contact improv at all -- I've never seen it done and certainly never participated, but one sentence in this article grabbed me by the throat and is now about two weeks into completely altering my life.

'If I know my NO will be respected and if you know I am actively listening for your NO, we can both relax and explore the dance, right to our edges.'

When I read this, I instantly thought of several (non-dance) relationships I'm in.

I can name several people in my life who probably cannot really trust me to listen for their cues (and actually respond appropriately), and this hampers the friendship. I can sense this stunted dynamic in a tangible way in some cases. As a child abuse victim, I'm often so concerned with self-preservation (because several key people in my life didn't listen to my cues so I had to constantly fight to be heard no matter how much they told me to stop) that I often forget others have boundaries and needs too... and as a result I (however unintentionally) perpetuate the horrors that come from not truly listening to the other person.

As this sentence has been seeping into my consciousness, I am struck by 1. how effectively it defines respect (which was an abstract and difficult to grasp concept for me until after I read this), and 2. how beautiful that can be -- to go as deep as possible together, to take the dance of life and (platonic and/or romantic) love as far as it can possibly go while not having to worry about whether or not you're pushing them somewhere they don't want to go, and simultaneously knowing that if you don't like where something is going, you're allowed to say so without reprimand. There's so much freedom in that. Again, as an abuse victim, I've spent 98% of my life not being allowed to say anything if I didn't like where someone was taking me; and not knowing if I'm pushing someone too far until they full-on blow up at me. I was constantly walking on eggshells. There was no freedom, no relaxing, and in a situation like that (especially if you're in it for a long time -- say, you know, twenty years), you get tense and you take smaller, shuffling steps, and you get smaller, as a human, as a personality, in an attempt to do less wrong ('maybe if I'm smaller/not in the way, they won't hate me so much').

How deep and intense and rich life could be if we all lived the way the quote describes. How much freer and happier we would all be because we would all know exactly where we are with each other and we wouldn't have to devote so much energy to trying to read into someone else's cryptic silence or trying to figure out how to say what you want to say without actually saying it.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not a perfect world and people are fallible humans that make mistakes and people will disappoint us and all that self-excusing crap... but can we collectively at least try? And if we screw up, try again?


Referenced article: 'Contact and Consent,' Vivek Patel, The Dance Current, May/June 2018, 37.

Still Memories

I used to do a lot of photography. Some of you old-timers here at the edge of the dream may remember back when I was very seriously looking at doing it professionally. I always, always had a camera in my hand. My parents had bought me a Nikon Coolpix for my sixteenth birthday, and it practically became a permanent extension of my arm.

My specialty was candid event photography. I loved catching people in their natural state -- talking, listening, laughing, playing, working. I suck at posing people (mostly because I suck at interacting with people in general), and I find still life/nature/architecture/animal photography insufferably boring so candid photography was the only option left and I sort of fell into it. At family gatherings, at home, at church, at youth group, with friends -- everybody who knew me for those years of my life was so used to me having a camera in my hand and taking pictures that they barely even noticed the camera anymore. This worked in my favour, as it meant I got even more natural photos of them.

But when I went to college, I suddenly felt self-conscious about the camera. Would people sue me for taking pictures where they happened to appear in the background? Would it be weird for me to walk around a college campus taking pictures of people I barely knew -- at times without their knowledge?

Even as I made friends, I could never sense when would be a good time in the relationship to bring the camera into play. They'd never seen me with it -- not like people back home had -- so they would likely get self-conscious. So I never did.

Lately I've been missing it.

As I near the end of my college years and watch friends leave every year, there's always this part of me that's saddened that I have no pictures of them. I don't mean the posed grad photos the day before they leave, I mean the candid ones, the ones that showed them as they really were -- talking and laughing and listening and concentrating and simply soaking life in; the ones that really showed who they were, their personalities and fleeting facial expressions. I see these things every day now, but the time will come when I won't be able to and my memory will fade. One day I won't be able to reference them in real life.

In my second year of college, one of my uncles walked out on my aunt (his wife of well over a decade). No warning, no explanation, no other woman, no plan, nothing. Just up and left. This event shattered the entire extended family on that side. The extended family had been very close -- we'd regularly get together at my grandparents' house on Sunday afternoons and eat pizza and talk and play the classic unofficial keep-the-balloon-off-the-floor game. We talked and laughed and played games together, and this aunt was a central part of it. She was the fun-loving aunt with a big, ready laugh. But because she had married into the family, when the split happened, my uncle was the one my mother and grandmother stayed in contact with rather than her -- even though they were angry with my uncle, they still felt a blood obligation to keep in contact with him. My other aunt and uncle on that side wholesale ditched. I've only seen that couple, their children (my cousins), and my divorcée aunt once since before the divorce -- and that was at my grandfather's funeral (yet another loss). All I have left of over half of my once-inseparable extended family are the pictures -- the pictures I took of all these Sunday afternoon gatherings with that Nikon. Pictures of my aunt pulling faces, of my grandpa and uncles playing cards, of my grandma in the kitchen, of the cousins playing cars on the floor.

That's all that's left.

When I first joined Facebook in my mid-teens, on a lark, I looked up someone I had been in a dance class with as a child. She accepted my friend request and sent me a message. I replied, and she replied, and I replied again... and we developed a close friendship, sharing joys and sorrows and being there for each other on 'off days.' Our friendship mostly developed and continued through emails, but we did occasionally manage to connect face-to-face. She, too, was an avid photographer, so of course we always took a few pictures of those times (though not many).

Brittney died unexpectedly in February 2015. Those few pictures of those few times we adventured together in person are all I have left to remember her by. Her face, her sense of style, the spunk that shone through her eyes... my only way to see my dear friend again is through those pictures.

On the other side of my extended family, there is a cousin who never made it to age ten... she died suddenly in April 2015. And it wasn't until then that I realised how few pictures I had of her. Though I had my camera in my hand all the time at those family gatherings too, she was such a whirlwind that somehow I never captured her. I went through my entire photo library (probably some 20,000 photos at the time) about a year after her death and found about 23 pictures with her face in them anywhere -- and only about three of those really 'featured' her (and weren't in terrible lighting or motion-blurred). Those three pictures are all I have to remember this spirited child who left such a void when she breathed her last.

As time marches on and I say more goodbyes -- however temporary -- I want to get back into photography again, to capture my newer friends in their ordinary brilliance. Because tomorrow is never promised to anyone.

But how to start...?

The Survivors of the Survivors

Last week someone very close to me attempted suicide. I was the last one to see her alive before they found her unconscious on the couch three hours later. I have not seen her since.

She survived -- by pure luck. This incident has made me fully realise that I don't really believe in grace anymore. There's luck, or chance, or fluke, or whatever you want to call it, but grace -- grace is unpredictable. It's almost never there when you need it. That changes grace into chance, because honestly, that's what it is. It's a desperate hope, but there are zero guarantees. While she survived this time, the thing is, I get the sense that she is at risk to re-attempt. They keep pushing back her hospital release date. I get that they need to take every precaution, but the fact is, she is still in danger. They won't admit it. But that's why. I'm not stupid. I've done enough research and have enough experience to know that the nonverbal cues and psychobabble codes mean.

Nobody outside of the hospital staff thinks of that. Nobody thinks of the crippling fear that she may re-attempt -- that I may miss it again. I feel bad enough for missing it the first time. I call myself her friend, yet I wasn't there for her when she clearly needed it. I know suicidal thoughts. I know depression. Even if there were no signs, I should have sensed that something was off.

You're expected to just be happy that she survived. You don't question how or why or how to stop this happening again. You're just expected to be happy and carry on.

The thing is: You. Can't.

I said this (on a daily basis; for two years) after my cousin died. Everyone kept telling me to get over it because after all, God is sovereign, right, so that means you automatically cannot be sad about it because God figured it was best to kill a nine-year-old for no reason and you just have to accept that with no question. God figured it was best, so you must paste on your happy face and go out and be happy. No tears. No sniffles. No sadness. Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land, everybody. And I fought, with heart and soul, this crap idea that it was 'too negative' to be upset over the DEATH OF A NINE-YEAR-OLD CHILD. I have pretty much lost that battle -- still nobody believes that it's a big deal. They certainly don't believe it's a big deal that my mid-twenties friend attempted suicide and survived. She survived, right? So what's the problem? She survived.

Yes -- this time. But we have absolutely zero guarantee she won't pull this stunt again.

I hate music right now. Usually I turn to music for comfort, but lately I play any song ever, no matter what genre or what the subject matter is, and by the time they hit the first chorus I hate it and myself and everything else on the planet. The only thing that turns my brain off long enough to keep me from following in her footsteps is watching Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on YouTube. Literally the only thing keeping me alive is a cheesy '90s sitcom.

Because of who it was and the situation, there very quickly became counsellors and residence directors involved and they're all pushing me to 'talk about it.' I want to... but I don't know how. They all say they want to be there for me. But nobody was there for me when Brittney died. Nobody was willing to listen to me after my cousin died. Nobody insisted I get counselling after my grandpa died (suddenly, when I was out-of-province. I was the only grandchild who did not get to say goodbye). Why are they all of the sudden so concerned about me now? It's too late now -- I've already learned to internalise everything. I've already forgotten how to talk about how I'm grieving. Nobody wanted to listen before, I'm not about to delude myself into thinking people want to listen now. Everyone's so concerned about whether or not I'm okay... listen, I haven't been okay since my uncle was diagnosed with cancer in August 2014. I haven't been okay for three years. I'm not going to suddenly be okay now, less than a week after my good friend attempts suicide with the WORST timing possible for my mental health.

There are resources up the wazoo for people who actually lose someone to suicide. But nobody talks about those very close to someone who attempts and survives. How do you deal with the fury that consumes your every waking thought? How do you quell the desire to scream obscenities at them because no other words are adequate to describe the gut-wrenching heartache they have deliberately caused? How do you deal with the sheer terror that they'll re-attempt? There is relief, yes, but it's so, so fragile. You know they're still in danger, but you don't know for sure how much because you are at the mercy of what they actually tell you. And she told us nothing before her original attempt. Nothing. Because of how we 'freaked out' this time, she'll say even less before the next attempt and she'll probably make her plan more watertight. How do you deal with the guilt that arises from the lack of gratitude in your heart even though you know you should be thankful that she is still breathing?

One of the people trying to help me wants me to come up with a suicide safety plan for myself. Excuse me? Where was the safety plan for my friend? I'd worry about that first. She's more important than me right now. After the crap I've gone through for the past three years, now suddenly you're worried about me? Sorry, it's too late for me to believe you'll honestly be there for me through all the crap. I've had enough people give me the 'I'm here for you always, in everything,' and then when I vent to them they turn around and tell me 'you're too negative; get out of my life.' Are you there for me in everything or not?

Sorry there's no real ending to this. I can't think in a straight line right now. Too many thoughts are running too fast and I can't catch them and hold them long enough to follow them to their logical end -- all I have are fragments.

Plus I can't stand endings.

The People Of God

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle.
That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

(Quoted in dc Talk's 'What If I Stumble?,' 1995.)

Lately, as I navigate my calling as an artist (and all it entails), coming to terms with the trauma in my past, the faith community that has by-and-large told me God can't love me because (any number of stupid self-centered reasons but mostly because God made me an artist), and the loss of several friends because I'm 'too depressed,' I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with the whole thing.

I grew up in the Christian bubble. I freely admit that. In a lot of ways, I'm still in it. But I don't like what I'm seeing. It doesn't make sense. And it's not necessarily God that I have a problem with (although I do still have trust issues with Him due to my cousin's entirely unnecessary death in 2015). It's the people.

The people of God -- oh, that's a lofty title. The people who reflect God -- all His love and compassion and kindness and joy and wisdom and justice and gentleness and patience. The people entrusted with His work of restoring broken people and reminding them they are valuable. The people originally called 'little Christs' because they were so much like Him.

You know who the people of God really are, on an individual level?

They are that person at church who tells you you are too negative and that you need to be more happy or else you can't be friends anymore.

They are that church leadership figure that actively stifles your gift (and no-one else's) because they have a 'feeling' that 'people might not like it.' (Not 'is this a direction God wants us to go?' not 'is this gift forbidden or approved in Scripture?' not even 'does God have something to teach us through this person's use of this gift?')

They are that other church leadership figure that talks behind your back -- telling your friends not to associate with you because you're 'too negative.'

They are that friend who's been through darker valleys than you have, who literally stops talking to you BECAUSE you're 'too depressed' -- then gets upset when you go to someone else for support.

They are that friend who, even after learning you're in therapy following a suicide attempt, keeps telling you to 'get over it.'

They are that best friend who basically cuts off the friendship -- hoping you won't notice -- and when questioned, their excuse is 'you're too personal.'

They are that person who told you they cared about you and then began literally grading every email you sent them, based on 1. whether they were 'too long' or not, and 2. whether or not they had a 'good balance of positive and negative.' Without addressing anything you actually said in the email.


I sense a theme. God's ambassadors are consistently telling me that I'm annoying and too talkative and too deep and too negative. Ergo, this must be the way God feels about me too. I mean, that's what His representatives are telling me.

You know what's really stupid?

All these same people keep telling me 'God loves you...'

To Those Who Survived The Darkness

As a person with severe high-functioning depression, I am often told dumb things like, 'just be happier,' or 'if you were more friendly, you wouldn't feel so lonely,' or 'it's your own fault, you know. You're too negative.'

Things like this always hurt, but I'm willing to forgive someone for saying them IF that person has never experienced depression themselves.

But in recent months, I've been hearing them from people -- good friends, even -- who know depression. They've walked this same path as me. Some of them have walked an even darker valley than I have. And by the grace of God, the sun is shining on them again. They have found a purpose in life, a reason to live. And that's fantastic. Really, it is.

But the thing is, they forget.

They forget what it's like to hate yourself so much that you literally cannot move. They forget what it's like when even a change in someone's tone of voice makes your mind spin out of control, wondering what you did and why everyone hates you all the time. And because they've forgotten, when one of their friends is in the same dark place, they spew out the same feel-good maxims that they loathed so much when they were in that same darkness.

Don't do this. Don't forget what it was like. Don't go back to that place yourself, but please remember it enough to stop you being insensitive to those of us still drowning in it.

To Love. To Fail.

After surviving a car accident in June 2010, I vowed that I would be an encouraging person. That no-one who encountered me would leave me without knowing they were loved and cared for and important.

When Brittney died, I tried to renew this vow. But the guilt that dogged me for failing to be as kind and caring as possible to her sucked my resolve dry. I had failed. And there was absolutely no redemption to be won. There was no hope of a second chance.

When my cousin died two months later, it only reinforced this. I wasn't close to my cousin, but I could have been -- should have been. I cared for her deeply, but she never knew this. And again, I was left with no hope whatsoever at a second chance to let her know that at least somebody on the planet cared for her. Yes, her parents and siblings loved her. But love shouldn't be limited to that.

By the time my cousin died I was so physically depleted and emotionally wounded that I withdrew into myself. I had failed -- twice. I'm realising this school year that perhaps the thing I fear the most is failure -- of any kind, in any area of life. To have those two relational failures slug me back-to-back convinced me that I was a failure. So I gave up. Better to not try and not fail than to make a vow (even to myself) and go back on it or mess it up -- that is, fail.

I withdrew from everyone. I waited for someone to come break my shell, to draw back the curtain and direct the sunlight onto me again.

...It's hard for me to continue writing this. On one hand, I'm still waiting. Will someone care enough to reach out to me, even through the darkness? (The logic is, if I drag myself out, it's selfish of me. What if nobody wanted me to begin with and then I just show up again, uninvited? FAIL. But if someone else comes searching for me -- that means they missed me. That means they wanted me.)

But on the other hand -- I still want to be that loving, caring, kind person, no matter what the other person is like. On some level I don't want to ask more of people, emotionally/relationally, than I can give back. (To take more than I give is -- you guessed it -- failure. No, I can't win.) I still want to 'give my heart' (as my college program director puts it) -- but 1. I don't think it's worth giving, 2. I can't handle losing anyone else, and 3. what if I screw it up again and accidentally alienate the very people I really care about? That is: what if I fail again? People are pretty graceless as a whole. Ninety-eight percent of the time you have exactly one chance. Foul it up -- say one word with the wrong tone of voice -- and you're automatically a 'killjoy' (at best) or 'toxic' (at worst).

If I could find a way to make people feel loved without screwing it up and without having to get my heart broken again -- I would leap at the chance. But I know it doesn't work like that, so now I have to choose between the two. It's an impossible choice. Either one leads to failure.

Socialising In A Dark Silent Room

There's something I've been wondering about for a while now, and my hope is that you, dear readers, can explain it to me:

How is watching films a social activity?

I'm serious. It makes no sense. You all gather in a dark room and stare at an inanimate object for two hours while yelling at each other if anyone dares breathe a word. How in the world is this socialising? You don't even LOOK at each other, never mind interact. And forget meaningful conversation -- if you ask a question it's usually in a whisper and accompanied with a hushed apology, plus an annoyed 'just watch!' from either the questionee or the other people you're 'socialising' with.

I don't know about you, but when I'm with a group of friends and they say, "let's watch a movie!' my heart immediately sinks because that's when I realise they would rather watch a story they already know by heart than interact with me and share their own story or learn mine -- even after I took time out of my day to be with them. And it's even worse when the first film finishes and everyone says 'let's watch another!' because then it's not even a case of watch-and-discuss, it's a case of the-lives-of-these-fictional-characters-are-more-important-to-me-than-your-life. Films are a way of ignoring someone in a socially acceptable fashion and pretending you have a great friendship. But you're not only wasting your own time, you're wasting theirs.

My parents' generation didn't watch films. They 'had coffee.' They would invite people over, sit down at the kitchen table with some baked goods, and drink tea or coffee as each guest preferred. And they talked. Long into the night I remember my parents forging and strengthening friendships at their kitchen table and at the kitchen tables of their friends. It takes just as long as a film, but it's SO much richer. By the time you're done 'coffee,' you know the other person's joys and struggles, hopes and dreams, things that make them tick and things they're good at. And you've formed an alliance. Now you're in each other's corners, so to speak, and if that person needs help, you're not only more likely to notice, you're more likely to know how to actually help.

This is how we build community. When was last time you actually bonded with someone by ignoring their existence?

I'm not saying we should completely stop watching films together. I have a friend I watch Doctor Who with whenever we can, but after the episode is over there's usually a good long chat, not just 'well, that was fun. See you later!' In moderation, films can be a good kickstarter for a conversation that leads to friendship. But don't gyp yourself out of that conversation. That's the important part. The film is preamble. The conversation is what builds and sustains a relationship -- any relationship.

The film can be paused. It will always be there. But your friends, your family -- they will not. Trust me on this. Tonight could be the last time your paths cross. Don't spend all of it ignoring and shushing them in the name of 'hanging out.' The day will come when you would give anything to hear their voice again, to see their face again -- but it will be gone. Don't shush that voice or hide that face in a dark room while you still have it with you.