The centre could not hold

I'm shedding the blisters and easing into my new life

Hello friend, 

On my last night in Toronto, after dinner with one of my best friends at my favourite restaurant, my blood blister finally fell away. I’d pinched myself with pruning shears a month earlier, cleaning up the garden. Doing what small things I could to spruce the place up. 

I probably should’ve been focused on packing for the move across the Atlantic, but it felt necessary at the time. It felt important that I leave some part of my Toronto life in a decent state. So, I cleared the mess of tomato vines and milkweed tangled across the lawn and made it ready for the tulips to take over in the spring. I don’t know why I fussed over flowers I’ll never see, but I did. And for my efforts I carried a black spot on the mound below my index finger. 

It’s been two weeks since I left Toronto, and things are slowly falling away. Beyond the blood blister, I’ve shed stress and weight. I’ve lost urgency and anxiety. There is so much to do here, but it will happen when it happens. The DART, of all things, has taught me that you’ll get there when you get there.

I wish I had exciting things to tell you, but there have been no grand adventures. Even the hurdles have been small and silly.

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to use the handle on the front door of my house. Once I’d figured out how to lock it from the outside, it still took me a few more days to figure out how to lock it from inside. The child safety controls on the stove top were so confusing and I felt too stupid to ask my housemates how the damn thing worked again, so I just didn’t bother trying to cook for the first few days. I also learned that a press is just a cupboard and that no pressing occurs in a hot press. It’s just a warm closet. 

In lieu of adventures, I’ve found a bit of ease. I landed in a lovely house filled with kind people who have made me feel very welcome. I have reconnected with old friends and I’ve met new people who will be friends (they just don’t know it yet). I tried Guinness for the first time. It turns out I like it a lot, and I’m sure it’ll be the cause of many a poor choice.

But there is more I’d like to lose from Toronto. I’d like to shed the uncertainty and self consciousness I acquired there. If I could lance myself and watch the shame and fear and loathing ooze out of myself, I would without hesitation or anesthetic. I would watch as the cynicism poured out and the embarrassment of taking people at face value left me. I would kiss the wound all better, imbuing it with the optimism and recklessness my heart ran rampant with before I moved there. Given the choice, I’m not sure if I’d undo all the hurt of the last few years, but I’d love to be more than a husk of the person I was. 

That city made a fool of me—or maybe it just exposed my innate foolishness—but I suppose life makes fools of us all. 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

In the days and weeks before everything fell apart, Yeats’ poem (and Didion’s San Francisco) would pop into my head at random. The cicadas would be howling and the wasps swarming, and everything felt utterly precarious.

I could no longer balance the competing interests of my heart and all I knew was that I wanted to be away. Away and outside. Fresh. Submerged in salt water and whipped by wind. 

This weekend, to celebrate two weeks in Ireland, I’ll be outside. I’ll be hiking in Wicklow and meandering around the Howth cliffside. I will feel cold air on my face and I will have the two things I have craved more than anything since leaving home—mountains and the ocean.

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Best thing I’ve heard lately

“I feel it in my forearms.”

- a woman, regarding the caffeine in an espresso martini

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Catchers of fancy

Seeking the most interesting outcome? Send a note to the chaos demon. Reading and living for the plot. An insurance agent so strange in his formulation, he couldn’t be fictional. Have you found your thing? (My thing’s sound effects, here’s a T-Rex.) Just a little love for Joan Didion.