Is this normal? When
I fly across Canada, I love watching the map on Air Canada’s little tv screens
the entire time I am on the plane. I
have no interest in watching movies or shows. I just want to watch the map that
shows all these remote communities across our vast nation. I like the feeling of progress, watching the
distance we’ve travelled accumulating. I
like looking out the window and figuring out what community is this whose tiny
lights I see. I feel especially
nostalgic when I fly over Rainy River, Ontario, where I spent every summer
until I was in my early 20’s. I say a
silent hello to my grandma who is buried there, and think about the memories of
travelling to see her on the Grey Goose bus from Winnipeg. We’d pass through Steinbach and Piney
Manitoba, such random places that Air Canada chooses now to highlight on the
4500 km journey home I’m making. I think about what the hell has happened to me
since I lived this uncomplicated, simple life in Rainy River, catching
tadpoles, climbing hay bales, and lying for hours on the black rocks at Lake of
the Woods.
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| Rainy River |
So here I am, 9 days into 2016, watching the little map on
Air Canada’s tv screen, watching Quebec move farther and farther away, seeing
Rainy River, Ontario approaching. 2674
km to go and then I am home. I think
about how many times I have flown across Canada this year…I can’t believe the
distance my own life has travelled in the past 11 months. I think about what a roller coaster this life
is and this year has been. Being married
seems like such a foreign concept now. I
start to think about whether I wish I was still married and if I had my old life
back. It’s a resounding “no.” True, I miss being exclusively loved by
another human being. I miss snuggling. I miss the ease of a second pair of hands to
help with the kids. I miss having
someone to talk to every day about the mundane things—the basics of sharing a
life together. But I see now that life
isn’t about being married. Or being with
someone. Right now I think life done
well is about loving reality. Loving the every day stuff and the every day
people in it. There are the escapes and
wild rides to break things up, but I am not sure if this is what life is about
all the time. Wondering what might have
been if I stayed married…but it doesn’t matter. It’s gone and not coming back. That
is my reality. I need to love that.
There was one traumatic day last year when I realized just how
over my marriage was. Before this day, it was as if there were little cuts in
my heart and I was slowly bleeding, just slowly trying to figure out what was
going on in my life and what I was going to do about the fact that separation
was inevitable. But on this day it was as though a large bullet punctured my
heart and I bled so much I physically could not move and my breathing was more
like gasping. I have never felt so angry or devastated as I did that day. It’s
like I fell into a deep hole and I could not climb out of it by myself.
But I see now that being in this deep hole was exactly where
I was supposed to be. When it hurts this
much and it’s this uncomfortable, you have to change right away. I see now that I was not going to change
unless life was so painful I had to move. So, let’s just say I made some moves.
Within two months of falling into this “hole” I found myself feeling hope and
happiness. To come from such a place of
brokenness, these feelings were so euphoric.
I was astounded at how quickly a person’s heart can stop bleeding and
begin to heal. It was the greatest self-validation
I’d given myself in about 10 years. “Look
at me; I am strong; I have power. And I am beautiful.” But
the thing about any emotion, happy or sad, is that it’s fleeting. Neither can be sustained, because we are
always moving, our environment is always changing. There never is this ability to put a
checkmark in the “I’m happy now” box in life, and be done with it. And, the same goes for the “I’m really sad”
box. So suddenly I was feeling happy,
and at the same time I became very fearful of losing this fleeting
feeling. I was so scared that I would
slip back into that dark place I had come from. I felt this need to chase the
things that created all these happy feelings in me, and keep something alive as
long as I could. It has been over a 6
month losing battle. I see that now; I
have been trying to control the actions and feelings of other people, and I have
been trying to control my environment. I
can only control my actions. My choice
to pursue those things I can’t control has probably stalled my progress in
loving my life on my own…that every day life I so need to love.
So on the last day of 2015, I chose to head to Quebec and
Ontario on a week long trip to spend some
time with my family out east. It was the best way to start 2016. I’m getting pretty good at vacationing on my
own sans husband. That used to be such a fear…having no one to share happy
vacation times with. But I actually
prefer the lone wolf traveller—who would have thought! Those of you who know me know why I went to
Quebec…I went to confirm that I am ready to start 2016 standing on my own two
feet, out of the dark hole feelings I had earlier in the year. I went to
confirm that I don’t need anyone or anything to help me be happy—I can choose
people to be in my life or I can opt out and feel joy either way. And it worked. I can’t tell you how freeing it is to realize
I’m going to be totally fine on my own because I’m never going back to the dark
hole I was in earlier this year. I had hours
on the long plane ride home to process what has happened and what I’m going to
do in this new year. I realized that if
people who came into my life when I most needed to be saved from the dark hole
go away now, I am ok. I will not fall back into that place I so feared
returning to. I can stop chasing and trying to control the situation. I have done some hard work since the summer,
rebuilding my life. I had a massive opportunity to grow, and I am capable of
making things better. I have a long way to go before I can say I am totally
healed but there is no pressure to hurry this up.
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| beautiful Quebec! |
So what should I do now? I should stop thinking of myself as
this washed-up single mom sitting on her laptop on the west coast. Life is going to pass so quickly, and I don’t
want to look back and wish it all went differently…or not know where it
went. I like Keanu Reeves’ quote I read
the other day – “none of us are going to get out of here alive.” So we might as
well make living about what we have and where we are right now.
For the first time, I left Quebec and Ontario and I was not
in tears. I got off the plane, found my car at Victoria’s
airport, sat in it alone, and did not feel despair of any kind. It feels good to be home and I am ready to
start 2016, on my own, and far away from that dark hole.
xo
