Holy shit. I've had this blog for 10 years. I haven't used it a great deal in the most recent years, but I never plan to delete it. Maybe I'll back-date my old livejournal entries into it. Maybe one day this will form part of my memoires. I don't know, but I'm amazed I've lasted as long as I did, even though I naively thought I would never call it a "blog" when I started.
I was studying computer animation when I began this journal. The world had changed a month and a half before, when icons of my childhood came crashing down. I was living in Toronto, working at the ROM and at Heretic and just barely existing at the poverty line. I was dating Rick. This blog would see me through that relationship, which taught me how to love a man and how to respect him for who he was, and then it would see me through the tumultuous long-distance affair with Gareth. (By the way, Rick, congratulations on your upcoming marriage to Kat !) It saw me in Toronto, working for a politician, and selling my art (or not selling as the case tended to be) at conventions. It saw me go back to school after a period of finding myself. It saw renewed enthusiasm for learning and direction and personal ambition. It witnessed death and loss, anger and joy and contentment. It saw me abandon security for risk as I moved first for an internship to Winnipeg and then terrifyingly far away to Whitehorse. It followed me back to Ontario into the life I now lead. I can look back and see constants relected here, and the changeable, and the things I thought would be forever that ended up the least permanent of all. I can see myself growing into my skin and becoming a person I both respect and admire.
A toast, then, to longevity and commitment, and the written word.
Showing posts with label gareth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gareth. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
On the passage of time and love
It's midsummer. The crickets have started chirping in the evenings and the nights are perceptibly shorter. When I drive through the country, the farmers are harvesting wheat, cutting their second hay and there is local corn at road-side stands. Where has the summer gone? Where has the time gone? In 25 days, I'll celebrate my 34th birthday. Many of my friends, if not most, are in long-term committed relationships, as am I, and probably half of them have children. I am measuring time in the growth of babies and the long periods between visits. It feels like yesterday that I was preparing to go off to my internship in Winnipeg, but it was six years ago.
Six years ago, Rick and I broke up. He'll be marrying his longtime girlfriend this Hallowe'en. I won't be attending, I guess. He once told me that he thought it would be weird to have an ex at a wedding, even if they got along. I have no reason to expect an invitation, but it makes me a bit sad I won't be invited. Six years ago, I met Gareth. Not long after, I had fallen completely and utterly in love with him. Five years on and he's not talking to me. His new girlfriend, I guess, feels threatened by me, despite an ocean between us. His family have told me that it's not just me, though, it's everyone. Since meeting her and especially since they moved in together in the spring, he's cut everyone out.
I was looking at Gareth's old deviantArt gallery, which he hasn't updated since 2006 when we were headily in love and full of dreams and wishful thinking. He had a passion and a drive then, which he's all but abandoned. What happened to his determination to make films? He's working for an insurance firm. I don't know. I mustn't judge. But it's certainly easier to cut off the people you love than have to examine your life and what they may represent, I guess. It's sad, I think. There was so much going on in his head when I met him, so much creative energy desperate for an outlet. I won't blame it on his girlfriend, it's not her fault. He was losing himself before he met her, but now all of his closest friends and family have lost him. Looking at his old gallery was like looking at the digital traces of a dead person, archived forever on the Internet.
In October, three years will have passed since I met Glenn. Glenn, who I took a chance on, because we both had relationship baggage. I didn't expect to love again after Gareth. I hoped, at best, to fill a void and to find a measure of comfort and satisfaction. We joked about my fear of commitment, yet I suggested we move in, I pushed for it to happen despite a long held fear of co-habitation. I forgive his foibles and love his cat. I push him and take him out of his comfort zones the same way he helps ground me and keep me from floating off. I am extremely lucky to have learned that, indeed, I could love again, and completely. Glenn is a deep, still water, difficult to fathom while apparently simple of need and desire. Nearly three years on and I am still learning new things about him. He isn't always easy to like, because there's a broodiness to him and he encircles himself in walls built of his own melancholy thoughts, but the love, support, humour, kindness and strength he possesses and shares with me makes a more than even trade. He adores me in a gentle way, never overbearing or smothering, just always there. I love him very, very much. I am lucky and I am grateful.
Now, if he'd only just get off the pot.
Six years ago, Rick and I broke up. He'll be marrying his longtime girlfriend this Hallowe'en. I won't be attending, I guess. He once told me that he thought it would be weird to have an ex at a wedding, even if they got along. I have no reason to expect an invitation, but it makes me a bit sad I won't be invited. Six years ago, I met Gareth. Not long after, I had fallen completely and utterly in love with him. Five years on and he's not talking to me. His new girlfriend, I guess, feels threatened by me, despite an ocean between us. His family have told me that it's not just me, though, it's everyone. Since meeting her and especially since they moved in together in the spring, he's cut everyone out.
I was looking at Gareth's old deviantArt gallery, which he hasn't updated since 2006 when we were headily in love and full of dreams and wishful thinking. He had a passion and a drive then, which he's all but abandoned. What happened to his determination to make films? He's working for an insurance firm. I don't know. I mustn't judge. But it's certainly easier to cut off the people you love than have to examine your life and what they may represent, I guess. It's sad, I think. There was so much going on in his head when I met him, so much creative energy desperate for an outlet. I won't blame it on his girlfriend, it's not her fault. He was losing himself before he met her, but now all of his closest friends and family have lost him. Looking at his old gallery was like looking at the digital traces of a dead person, archived forever on the Internet.
In October, three years will have passed since I met Glenn. Glenn, who I took a chance on, because we both had relationship baggage. I didn't expect to love again after Gareth. I hoped, at best, to fill a void and to find a measure of comfort and satisfaction. We joked about my fear of commitment, yet I suggested we move in, I pushed for it to happen despite a long held fear of co-habitation. I forgive his foibles and love his cat. I push him and take him out of his comfort zones the same way he helps ground me and keep me from floating off. I am extremely lucky to have learned that, indeed, I could love again, and completely. Glenn is a deep, still water, difficult to fathom while apparently simple of need and desire. Nearly three years on and I am still learning new things about him. He isn't always easy to like, because there's a broodiness to him and he encircles himself in walls built of his own melancholy thoughts, but the love, support, humour, kindness and strength he possesses and shares with me makes a more than even trade. He adores me in a gentle way, never overbearing or smothering, just always there. I love him very, very much. I am lucky and I am grateful.
Now, if he'd only just get off the pot.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Stardust
Stardust might very well be the lovechild of The Princess Bride and Gormenghast and as such, 20 years since the release of The Princess Bride, it might just be the heir to the fantasy-romance throne. As a fairytale, it is quite predictable, almost from start to finish, but it's not really about how it all shakes out in the end, but the journey it takes to get there. And it's about love, unfettered and unconditional, dreams and being all that we can be. It's also about goats and gay pirates - go figure.
Three years ago, I would have loved this movie but thought it just that, a fairytale. And then I met Gareth. I hope he sees Stardust and, just as I thought of him throughout, I hope it makes him think of me. I hope he and I have a future, but if we don't, at least, in that possible bittersweet ending, at least I will have had my star, for a little while, here on Earth.
Three years ago, I would have loved this movie but thought it just that, a fairytale. And then I met Gareth. I hope he sees Stardust and, just as I thought of him throughout, I hope it makes him think of me. I hope he and I have a future, but if we don't, at least, in that possible bittersweet ending, at least I will have had my star, for a little while, here on Earth.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Emotional Me
I wrote a poem tonight. The thing about me writing poetry is that it rarely happens and I'm either intensely hopeful/happy or deeply troubled. I can count on both my hands the number of poems I've written in my lifetime. The best, and sadly long-lost, being the one I wrote after spending a strangely special night with a musician that I didn't quite date. But I was hopeful. Tonight's probably isn't very good and it's pretty depressing. I guess the kids nowadays would call it 'emo' or something. ;) I really hate that term. But it is pretty emotional and it's sure not happy.
For myself and for him, I've decided to think in terms of being single. Gareth needs the space to do what he's got to do and I need to get over being heart-broken all the time and hoping for a future that may not come to pass. I need to get on with things. I'm reminded of that year when Tracy vanished from my life... Of course I want for this to end similarly, with it all working out the way I hope and pray it does. I'm setting myself up for disappointment, though, so I'm trying very hard to move on. I need to put the same emotional distance between us as he is, I need to free myself and prepare for a different future than I'd wanted.
No easy task.
Anyway, I'm not going to share my poem. It's private. But I'm not looking forward to another lonely winter in Whitehorse, that's for sure.
Instead, I'll give you the incredibly apt lyrics from the Mika song, Happy Ending:
"Happy Ending"
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together.
Wake up in the morning, stumble on my life
Can't get no love without sacrifice
If anything should happen, I guess I wish you well
A little bit of heaven, but a little bit of hell
This is the hardest story that I've ever told
No hope, or love, or glory
Happy endings gone forever more
I feel as if I feel as if I'm wastin'
And I'm wastin' everyday
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together.
2 o'clock in the morning, something's on my mind
Can't get no rest; keep walkin' around
If I pretend that nothin' ever went wrong, I can get to my sleep
I can think that we just carried on
This is the hardest story that I've ever told
No hope, or love, or glory
Happy endings gone forever more
I feel as if I feel as if I'm wastin'
And I'm wastin' everyday
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together.
A Little bit of love, little bit of love
Little bit of love, little bit of love [repeat]
I feel as if I feel as if I'm wastin'
And I'm wastin' everyday
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
To live the rest of our life,
But not together.
For myself and for him, I've decided to think in terms of being single. Gareth needs the space to do what he's got to do and I need to get over being heart-broken all the time and hoping for a future that may not come to pass. I need to get on with things. I'm reminded of that year when Tracy vanished from my life... Of course I want for this to end similarly, with it all working out the way I hope and pray it does. I'm setting myself up for disappointment, though, so I'm trying very hard to move on. I need to put the same emotional distance between us as he is, I need to free myself and prepare for a different future than I'd wanted.
No easy task.
Anyway, I'm not going to share my poem. It's private. But I'm not looking forward to another lonely winter in Whitehorse, that's for sure.
Instead, I'll give you the incredibly apt lyrics from the Mika song, Happy Ending:
"Happy Ending"
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together.
Wake up in the morning, stumble on my life
Can't get no love without sacrifice
If anything should happen, I guess I wish you well
A little bit of heaven, but a little bit of hell
This is the hardest story that I've ever told
No hope, or love, or glory
Happy endings gone forever more
I feel as if I feel as if I'm wastin'
And I'm wastin' everyday
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together.
2 o'clock in the morning, something's on my mind
Can't get no rest; keep walkin' around
If I pretend that nothin' ever went wrong, I can get to my sleep
I can think that we just carried on
This is the hardest story that I've ever told
No hope, or love, or glory
Happy endings gone forever more
I feel as if I feel as if I'm wastin'
And I'm wastin' everyday
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together.
A Little bit of love, little bit of love
Little bit of love, little bit of love [repeat]
I feel as if I feel as if I'm wastin'
And I'm wastin' everyday
This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending.
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending.
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever.
To live the rest of our life,
But not together.