June 2000

June 22 / 2000

Growing up was the hardest thing that I have ever done.

When I look back I realize that perhaps it wasn't even the bullies that truly tainted me because you know sticks and stones may break your bones they'll never steal your innocence. I do know the exact moment that I lost that innocence though and I've spent the past decade trying to come to terms with it. It shouldn't have been my burdon to carry but rarely do we get to choose the demons that haunt us. I spent ten years being angry at the world, at myself, but in retrospect there's nothing I could have done.

Bad things happen to good people and innocent children. I guess I just didn't want to have to learn that lesson so young and in such a horrid manner. What did I take away from the experience besides this crushing weight on my shoulders? Years of issues, almost therapists and therapies, questions that tumble around my head without rhyme nor reason. Growing up was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

August 2000

August 18/ 2000

"I'm in the mood to build walls."

Did you build one around me, keeping me out?

August 19/ 2000

Walls.

Some people build safety nets, so should they come crashing down there will always be someone to save them (someone to catch them.) I build walls so the inevitable fall never even happens. I build walls.

The first wall I ever built was when Alex left, when I cried myself to sleep and wake each day, when I felt my whole world had fallen apart. Then Brian and I fell in love and I opened the drawbridge and invited him inside. He had been hurt and therefore he couldn't (wouldn't?) hurt me. But there are no rules in love or war and when he left and left me, three days before prom or later again sitting with tears streaming down my face in the hallway of my college, I became determined to build the wall even higher. So high in fact the no brave or fearless suitor could scale it.

Behind my four walls I was lonely. Yes, but sometimes loneliness is better than hurt. And life went on for five long years. No one that came after that was ever truly allowed inside again, they instead were given carefully measured morsals of my heart and my soul. Just never all of it because "all of it" was too dangerous. I might climb cliffs but I don't fall in love, not anymore. I miss the "true love" boat, everything else is just games.

That is how I used to think until I met the boy who with one thoughtful swing of the sledgehammer brought the whole wall down and I remained standing in the rubble, naked and in love. Even now as I lie beside him, my arms holding him as he sleeps I can't help but to look at him and wonder just how he will leav , just how the words will sound when they come out of his mouth. And I hope that I never hear them because I've given my heart and all the love within that heart to the boy with the sledgehammer. And should everything come crashing down I know this time it will hurt more tan Alex or Brian or even the two combined. It will hurt more than anything physical or emotional that I have ever imagined.

August 21/ 2000

I put off coming to bed tonight. It's two-fifteen now and even though I have to be up at 8:00am, I still didn't want to come here. Come into my bedroom where the silences are deafening and I can't hide from myself. This is the only room in the world where I can't hide from myself. I didn't want to come to bed because I knew I would cry myself to sleep tonight.

On Friday, you said you "were in the mood for building walls." Perhaps you built one that night. I was selfish AND I SAID SORRY. Tonight is my night for building walls. Only I know that if I build one around myself now, I might never let you in again. That scares me because I do love you. I only called you because I needed to hear your voice but what I heard was abrupt and unkind.

You treated me as if I was a foolish, stupid child. You said you'd never allow me to treat you like H did, so why should I let you treat me the way my parents or so many of my other exes did. If I am foolosh for being in love then fuck love and fuck life too! I just needed to talk and you gave me the cold shoulder and made me feel immature and stupid. It hurt, goddamnit. IT FUCKING HURT! You might as well have slapped me, if you want me to be honest.

I'm too fucking fragile and not good at this love shit either. And people wonder why I have no self-esteem. I take care of you when you're sick. I try to hold you when you're frustrated or sad. I spoil you and try to surprise you and I love you ferociously and constantly and when I reach out needing a voice, needing to feel that love then I'm rushed away and left talking to an empty phone line. Fuck.

Tonight I want to build my wall but I'm going to try and sleep instead.

August 22/ 2000

Sometimes I just need to hear that things aren't weird between us. That things aren't fucked up. You've been under the weather. You've been dealt a blow to your well-being. I should be more understanding. I need to get my own shit together again, I can't possess you every moment of every day, no matter how much I like you because that would be unfair. I've never loved anyone quite as much as I love you. Sometimes I don't know how to behave because my insecurities get the best of me. I don't want to come off as nosey, suspicious, or untrusting. I just want to come off as being what I am - interested in your life. I am interested in your life. I don't know why I am so afraid that you are going to show up here tomorrow night and tell me that we're not working. I think I'm being paranoid. I hate the fear in me sometimes.

August 27/ 2000

I spent over five years waiting for Alex. I thought I'd wait forever than I met Jamie and I was set free. I was truly in love again for the first time since the mid-nineties. The Jamie got scared and retreated within himself, pushing me out, pushing me away with pleas for time and space. I was crushed, broken-hearted. I hit rock-bottom and fight or flight became the only nature.

Fight, I decided, fight for love. But not with words or fists, fight for love with love. I would wait. Still I fell apart, breaking under the weight of loneliness and remembered affections. But still I couldn't leave because I could not walk out on love, on the truest thing that I have felt in my heart in years. For love, for that one true thing I had to stay.

We went from being everything to being, to being together but taking some space, to being "sorta" together... wrong direction, wrong sentiment, simply wrong. I had to ask. Not "what are we?". Not "is this over?" but rather "do you want me to wait?"

"Yes, but I may never be ready."

Fine, I believe otherwise. I want to to believe otherwise. I believe love will get us through this if not tomorrow or next week or next year but someday. Someday you'll be ready to love me. And I'll be everything else you need in the meantime with no pressure. I'm good at waiting. I waited for Alex for five years. For you, I'd wait forever but only if you ask. If you asked me to leave, I'd do that for you too because I LOVE YOU.

I could probably take some pointers from Mike who waited two years for me to come around. Mike who waited for two years content to be my best friend, watching me poison myself with sour relationships. Mike could teach me a thing or two about dedication, maybe he already did.

Faithful to you till you're ready to love me or send me away. I'll be that.

The only thing you're sure of right now is that you never want to get married, easy enough, I'll never marry you but I might just hold your hand forever.

November 2000

Nov. 29 / 2000

OVERHEARD AT WORK: "That's what crazy carpets are for."

I need to run off to the dollar store and buy another scribble journal - this one is full up. Full up with words and pages and entries that I am not quite ready to back and read yet. My heart is still a feeble thing. Delicate, thin-skinned beast, it is. Life always has a way of getting interesting when I am not prepared for interest. I'm still paying the interest off on my heart's last purchase. I need to focus on myself.

Focus on being focused. Forget for a while about all the things I expect to be. Forget about being the Queen of Bad Timing and just be me. Kick back and have a little fun. Fun for a change. Fun.

There was a time I put my art before all else and then I fell in love and everything changed. Even now when I try to focus on my artistic projects and love: the loss of, the potential of, the heartbreak of, creeps in and keeps me distracted, unable to push myself forwards.

Nov. 30 / 2000

I get flashbacks, not the kind induced by doing too much acid as a teenager. Not the kind induced by any kind of drug whatsoever, unless love is considered one. I get flashbacks of happiness. I remember lying on my back talking to you on the phone for hours absolutely certain that everything was going to be alright from then on straight through to "forever after." Yes, once upon a time, I was absolutely convinced that fairy tales could and do come true.

Now I get flashbacks of happiness. They hit me like panic attacks, my breathe catches abruptly in my throat, the wind gets knocked out of my gut, and everything everything EVERYTHING goes grey. It matters little where I am, all of a sudden I am biting my lip (hard!) and fighting back tears (fiercely!) And I just want to get out of there, out of that place, as fast as possible. I feel haunted.

I AM HAUNTED - haunted by all the broken things with sharp edges. Haunted by the things that cut swift and deep when I am least expecting an attack. I am haunted by you, by the absolute bliss of you. The bliss of you which is the one thing on earth that is most foreign to me now. Tonight I am walking the ghosts again (and sadly, I don't have any fucking idea how to appease them.)

December 2000

Dec. 4 / 2000

Just when I get settled, just when I get comfortable, just when I get relaxed and FINALLY HAPPY - it is time to leave. I need to get away more. Travelling is like Valium for the restless soul. I feel reborn everytime. Every highway is like a birthing canal for my inspiration, every new city is another place to stain my reputation. Beautiful things are friends and the open road. I never feel more alive, more in tune with possibility then when I am cruising down the highway with the stereo turned way up. There are a few elusive moments when the world drifts lazily by your fingertips and it seems anything is possible, all you have to is reach out and touch it. It seems like the whole world is holding its breath, just waiting for your move, waiting for YOU to happen.

Only on the road can I tell myself - "Don't wallow, don't sulk, don't think, don't worry - JUST LIVE!" That should be my mantra everyday.

Before I left I was thinking about how I deny myself things. I think of everyone before myself. I can do anything or deny myself of anything so that my friends inturn can have anything they want. Why do I do this? Why do I put everything before myself? Being a little selfish can't be too bad. I need to be a little selfish. I need to place more value in my own self-worth. I can't be everything to everyone. That leaves nothing left for me.

I need to stop thinking about it and start living and as the saying goes: "let the chips fall where they may" or whatever. Life SHOULD be a messy thing. That's what brooms and mops are for.

Dec. 14 / 2000

"Hey now, hey now now,
sing this corrosion to me."
- from 'This Corrosion' by The Sisters of Mercy

Walking to work this afternoon, if I were to have stepped off the sidewalk, the snow would've been halfway to my knees. I thought back to that week where it was so cold and the wind chill factor was so high that we decided not to go to school because we all got frostbite before getting halfway to the bus stop. All bundled up and we were still bitten by the cold. Now sometimes I wonder if it is colder inside me than out.

Where did that precocious little girl go? You know, the one who seemed so destined to prove that curiousity only killed cats. Where did that rebellious teenager go? The one with fire in her eyes and dreams that were worth dying for. Where did time go? I blinked and I was somewhere else. I blinked and I was someone else.

He says he still sees that spirit in my eyes. He says that it's just been temporarily pushed aside by pain and hurt and distrust amongst other things. I don't feel that way though, particularly, when I stand in front of the bathroom mirror for an hour or two searching. What is it he sees and why am I blind to it? Nevermind that even, I just want to know how I got to this place. It seems like sometime four or five years ago I stopped walking and life just picked me up and carried me here. It's like one morning I awoke and thought, 'What am I doing here, I never wanted this.' It's exactly like that. If only I could have the last eight years back to play again... I want to spin the bottle one more time, I don't like who (what) I got stuck in the closet with. I am the Queen of Stupid Mistakes and runner-up to the Throne of Bad Timing.

I've always said that I want to live a life with no regrets. But is that possible???

Everyday I walk to work with my walkman on. I like to shut out strangers, get lost in music instead. Today I put in a tape that Brian made me. Bri was my high school sweetheart, if there really is such a thing as high school sweethearts. The second love of my life. He made me all these brilliant little mix cassettes complete with cover art and listening instructions. They were the best gifts ever. I think I have about 8 of them in total. So I trudged through the snow with memories from high school bleeding into my brain from the headphones...

Jesus Built My Hotrod - Ministry
This Corrosion - The Sisters of Mercy

It takes me right back and I wonder how we all got lost and led off track. I lost touch with Bri about 2 years ago. He changed more than I ever had. I was still that angry alterna-freak-girl. He had been that, then a raver, then started leaning more towards the hip hop sensibilities. He hung with a crowd that I could no longer relate to. We drifted harmlessly to silence. Eventually he moved and never bothered to call and tell me his new number. That was alright though because ours was a thing very much defined by a certain point in our teenage histories. It no longer carried the same weight or intensity for us as adults. When with him, I always found myself missing the young, angry artist he had been. He had grown into something more. Something that I could respect but not connect with. We will always have that history I suppose.

It's funny though, each person I have ever loved or shared a bond with has left me something, some part of them has grown into a part of me. An expression or an interest or a musical taste. So I suppose the people we date really do define us. Bri, for instance, left me with my love for Saint Etienne and books by Tom Robbins. Alex gave me The Stone Roses and abstract expressionism. Alex was also the one who told me that I should write. Michael left me with Red Dwarf and Mariocart and songs by Bongwater. Jamie introduced me to so many new authors (new to me anyhow) that I can't possibly list them all here and to the musical stylings of Wyclef Jean. See, everyone leaves a mark. A tiny imprint on my personality. So I am a stew of not only myself but of everyone who every touched me, moved me, inspired me and loved me. And yet being all these things, I still feel hollow. I want to know why that is.

I also want to know what parts of ME live on in other people? Have I ever been a muse or an inspiration or anything more than a warm body to sleep beside at night? I wonder.

I really want to get myself back on track and if that means not loving anyone for a while then so be it. I don't just want to be setting myself up for another fall. You see the night after we met, Jamie and I sat in the very spot when I am penning this now. We sat here talking. And even after knowing him for only two hours, I was more certain than I have ever been about anything else in my life that he was "the one." Apparently my instincts have never been more wrong. And hell, if you can't trust your *own* instincts, what the hell can you trust? Something must be very wrong with me to have been so far from actuality with that. You see, the one thing that I always had going for me was my instincts and intuition. Sharp. I'm the kind of girl who could tell bad news was coming TWO DAYS before it did. I knew my grandfather had died before I picked up the phone and I've always simply known when I was about to be dumped - before any words were spoken even. So how could I have been so off the mark with this one?? And more importantly, how will I ever trust my instincts again? I don't know. I need some time to figure that out because without those intincts how will I know who to trust and who to allow inside

I hope I keep journals until I am 90 because it will be most interesting to see how I get through this. And even more interesting to see how much of that youthful ambition, charisma, and vitality I can re-attain. I wonder how I am going to turn out, end up, be. I wonder but am not about to rush life forwards just to find out. For the time being I can continue to trudge through the snow with my walkman cranked up because sooner or later my life will be kick started again. Perhaps next time I'll even be ready for it.

Dec. 4 / 2000

Just when I get settled, just when I get comfortable, just when I get relaxed and FINALLY HAPPY - it is time to leave. I need to get away more. Travelling is like Valium for the restless soul. I feel reborn everytime. Every highway is like a birthing canal for my inspiration, every new city is another place to stain my reputation. Beautiful things are friends and the open road. I never feel more alive, more in tune with possibility then when I am cruising down the highway with the stereo turned way up. There are a few elusive moments when the world drifts lazily by your fingertips and it seems anything is possible, all you have to is reach out and touch it. It seems like the whole world is holding its breath, just waiting for your move, waiting for YOU to happen.

Only on the road can I tell myself - "Don't wallow, don't sulk, don't think, don't worry - JUST LIVE!" That should be my mantra everyday.

Before I left I was thinking about how I deny myself things. I think of everyone before myself. I can do anything or deny myself of anything so that my friends inturn can have anything they want. Why do I do this? Why do I put everything before myself? Being a little selfish can't be too bad. I need to be a little selfish. I need to place more value in my own self-worth. I can't be everything to everyone. That leaves nothing left for me.

I need to stop thinking about it and start living and as the saying goes: "let the chips fall where they may" or whatever. Life SHOULD be a messy thing. That's what brooms and mops are for.

Dec. 25 / 2000

Downtown Toronto on Christmas Day looks like Earth the day after the apocolypse. Only a few scattered cars rolling down the salt-dried streets. White streaks on black pavement. Pale white skin again a black wool coat. I'm the only one on the sidewalk. It's just me and the old man speaking in tongues huddled in the corner of the subway entrance.

An ambulance breaks the lulling effect of voices filled with foreign words, it careens forwards, the sparse traffic does not part like the red sea, it remains static. It's as if everything is slowly dying on Christmas Day.

The woman at the pharmacy stared blankly through me when I wished her a Merry Christmas. I'm the ghost of Christmases forgotten and I'm going home.