Today I learned that anniversaries are important because they remind us not of the event but of the time passed. We are constantly experiencing milestones, important events that change who we are and how we see the world. A while ago I posted about the sad realization that yes terrible things happen to very good people and today is the one year anniversary of the beginning of that terrible time. I think of how that person has grown and changed and survived and I think about how my perspective on the world has changed. But mostly I think of time. In the end what is an anniversary? It's just a day that happens to be the same as something important and maybe something important will happen on this day of this year and maybe it won't. What is most important is the time in-between. The time where suddenly that day though always in the background maybe wasn't that important. The time where we grew and changed and learned and did not forget but learned how to deal. And we dealt. Anniversaries are a time to look back but only for a moment. Because instead of mourning (or celebrating) a day we can marvel in what we have accomplished in that in between time and be confident that the future will not only be the same but be better.
Yesterday I spent hours cleaning my room. I went up into those top shelves of my closet where I had old diaries and the get well soon fake flowers with the messages written on them. I took all my clothes and ironed ,folded and culled the things I don't wear any more. I was thinking about how a person is defined by their things. From style to economic situations we conform , we break free and we work for things. Here in the "developed" world we are a material culture, we consume , the throw away but most importantly we hold onto things. We keep so many unnecessary things that we can get lost in them. By holding onto old movie tickets, secret classroom notes or never sent letters we don't allow ourselves to move forward. Though I threw out so many physical reminders of past events,feelings or crushes the memories are still there. Some were good (though most were bad) and now they all seem a little more distant. I learned that there are times in our live when the past and present disappear and we are left alone with a shaky present to keep us company. The last few days before my senior year have been like that for me and I don't know when I'll be back in the land of the living. But what I do know is everything is clean. The drawers are organized and the school bag is packed with colour coordinated supplies and those are just the external thing. Inside seems to have undergone some pre fall cleaning too. Everything feels a little distant but the most important thing is that we will all catch up eventually.
Have you ever gone a long time without eating a certain food? Like an apple, and when you bite into that fruit after what feels like forever the flesh is less crisp, less tart than you remember and instantly you are filled with an insatiable craving for the memory of that apple before because when you realize that your memory was simply an airbrushed version you desperately want to go back to that time where somehow everything seemed simpler.
All of this is a lame attempt at an artsy analogy to explain the second lesson I learned on my vacation.
I learned that abstaining leads to dreaming and craving and that our dreams never match up to the real thing. very rarely the flesh exceeds expectation but mostly we are left with a profound sense of disappointment and a collection of past memories which suddenly seem so much simpler. But there is a comfort in this.
On my vacation I went to visit an old friend someone who I have always been very connected to it had been a few years since we had seen each other since then I had come out, recovered from anorexia and in general grown up. He had grown a few more inches bringing him far over his old height of 6'1 along with handling some big issues which aren't mine to discuss. He was my kindergarten husband and for those brief years when we lived nearby we were like siblings.We had seen each other sporadically in the few years since he had left and there had always been a KAPOW! connection. This year we lost that. Sure we had fun and it was lovely to see him but things were different.
When I left I didn't instantly miss him again and more than anything I wanted to have that perfect friend back in my life.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I've learned that saying is truer than one can ever imagine. But like I said before there is a comfort in this. In realizing that we have built someone into more than they are reminds us of limits and of humanity it's when we lose and mourn the loss of a larger than life figure that we see them for who they really are which is an ever changing,flawed,beautiful human being who maybe isn't the same person but then again neither are we.
So maybe these two new people can keep building their lives together.
It's been eighteen nights since I slept in my own bed. I've often imagined my future starving artist life in a dingy apartment sleeping on a futon or something. This vacation taught me that if I have to I will be sleeping on the street under a tarp but god damn it I will be sleeping on a good mattress with a feather pillow top. If I have nothing I have a good nights sleep. I'm going to do a few vacation posts so I can chronologically go through the various lessons I learned and the first one was that we need to remember how complex people are. When we spend our days surrounded by the same people we develop quick generalizations of them. So and so always cries or someone else just never stops singing. And sometimes these things are true. But nobody is a character in a film or television show. The complex idiosyncrasies that help to make up who we are can not be explained by a quick flashback scene or written off as comic relief. Someone won't stop making noise because they feel like they're never heard. Someone always cries because they can't stop their brain from over analysing things and their world really does come crashing down every five seconds. It's when we go beyond these two dimensional cardboard cut outs that we see people for who they really are and not the simplified version that we use to get through our day to day. Because in the end it's easier for us to be right, to skim the surface , to be cool and detached and thoughtless. It's only when we dig a little deeper that we realize the people who we thought we were closest with are the ones that we really need to spend more time getting to know.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Last night I held the largest social gathering I have ever held since probably my childhood birthday parties.
I'm not going to say how many people were there because then I would look like the biggest dork ever. Let me assure you though our small group made enough noise for a group of 20 to 40 people.
Last night was fun and wholesome and a great time to catch up before I go on vacation.
Last night I learned a lot. I learned that my friends are incredible and I learned why I'm friends with them
Even at our darkest our most sarcastic and our downright meanest there is a light and an optimism inside of us that is always visible. There is a uniting force that keeps us together. I talk about balance all the time in this blog and yesterday was a real lesson in balance.
I learned that a good evening is made by balancing pure youthful energy ( for example waiting for a friend and practically jumping her when she arrives) and darker teenage sarcastic stuff.
I learned that I don't want to put my friends second to just about anything but my family. I learned that I don't want to be with anyone who has a problem with that.
And I learned that when it's time to call it quits you just know. My venture into my first relationship was short and lukewarm. I had fun and it taught me what I wanted and what I don't want. I learned that what I want is someone who understands that I am neurotic, sarcastic, impulsive and cheap I want to be with someone who understands that my priorities (at least for now) are family friends and then relationship. I want to date someone like my friends because over these past (almost) two months I didn't feel what I feel when I'm with my best friends. In the end the breakup was short and filled with long awkward silences and it was very very anticlimatic. But I remembered what I said to a friend a little while ago when asked about my relationship. "It's a mix of falling and not falling of wanting and not wanting but I know that whatever happens it is important" This is what growing up is. Taking chances being unsure and in the end learning. It is through this that we become happier more intelligent self aware beings. I hope.
Today I learned that that though we don't get to choose our family we do get to choose how we interact with them.
In terms of friends I am reaching def con one here. You know cause most of the world seems to have vacations to enjoy jobs to work at or camps to attend. Oops maybe I should of planned something other than walking my dog and watching buffy for this summer. So right now it's me and the family. Well not really me and the family it's more like me and my younger sister. You know the one inspired this blog. She's starting her freshman year at my high school come September and I'm excited for her. I realized though that seeing as my school is so tiny I will probably see her on a daily basis more than once. This is very scary. I haven't had to see my sister that much at school in five years. eeks. With the future looming terrifyingly and the present a monotonous seemingly never series of days I figured I might as well begin to get closer to my sister. I learned that attitude is everything. I learned that this lesson is something that we have to learn over and over again. Every single day we are presented with challenging people and circumstances that give us the chance to break down barriers and we ignore them most of the time. I can't say that these past few days have led to the dramatic change in my sister and my relationship and she still does things that make me want to push her down a set of stairs but who would she be if she didn't make me want to do that? Family is important and they won't be here forever. You won't be here forever either. We need to make connections deeper than blood while we still can.
Today I learned that we are incredibly lucky. Not in a wow I live in an incredible house in Canada and I have an education and loving parents thing (even though I am very very grateful for all that) but in a way that we need to stop judging our lives (in this case our social lives) by what the media shows us. I've often said that being a teenager is quite possibly the biggest rip off (and at times relief) because it is nothing like television,films,books or even music tell us. You know as much as a homebody as I am I still feel the need to go out to do it all because as teenagers we're stuck between wanting to grow up and being so scared of getting old. We fear regret and we're taught that if we don't live our lives like the media shows us then we will have regret.
It makes sense because the point of the media is to sell us things and they sell us things by making us feel inadequate.
It's not right but it's true and it's only now that I would realize this.
My sister and I have been talking a lot lately and mostly it's started off complaining about the heat and then it turned to complaining about our lives, whether she's not totally happy with her current boyfriend or I'm bemoaning my social life. But just now I realized how great everything is. We see our friends enough, play a little work a little, date absolutely wonderful people, have lovely clothes and a lovely family.
We don't have the drama of a television show and maybe our relationships aren't Naomily amazing but they have potential.
We have enough
We have more than enough
I'm happy I saw this as early as I did and I hope my sister can too.
Caitlin Kennific was raised in the "poorest" area of one of the wealthiest cities in north america where she was fed a steady diet of fact and fiction the lines of where one began and the other ended slightly blurred She loves run on sentances and has always wondered why author descriptions are written as if post mortem this does not stop her from doing the same.
