an overdue self-reflection post
And so, for my next trick: a quarter-life crisis extravaganza. I’ve decided to move across the globe with a boy I met last summer. You’re not gasping, I’m gasping.
Now, this wasn’t a recent decision. The seed was planted in my mind by one of my students in late July, only a couple weeks after having started seeing my current partner. By this point I had had lessons with this student a couple times a week for 9 months; she had daughters around my age and she gave me big auntie vibes. She’s adorable. We talked often about our personal lives. I’m comfortable doing this with my students because second-language acquisition is already a super uncomfortable experience and I want to be as comforting as possible. ANYWAYS, I had expressed my excitement to her that I was seeing someone that I really, really liked for the first time in a long time, and she was very happy for me. (She’s been quite invested in helping me transition into a comfortable life in Montreal, always giving me recommendations on restaurants to eat at, national parks to visit, etc, and even trying to set me up with her nephew). On the flip side of this, I mentioned by disent for the fact that it would be short lived as he had plans to move to Japan for a year in the fall, and that realistically we would only have a couple months together. Her immediate reply was, “Well, why don’t you go to Japan also? You love travelling.. You visited Japan before...”. I didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t wrong, but the thought hadn’t really crossed my mind. Sure, I really, reeeaaallly liked him but, to move to another country with someone I had just met... insanity. But, the thought never left my mind. I really could move to another country with him. There’s absolutely nothing holding me back.
Flash forward a couple weeks to late August: We’re on our first trip together, sitting around our campfire under a million stars in a campground in Magog. It was my first camping trip in over ten years and the air never smelt fresher, my heart never bigger. Music played softly on our speaker and we sat simply just enjoying each other’s presence. The song changed to a song already special to us and I could feel the energy around us shift, and he turned to me in the dark and told me to stand up. I had a feeling what was about to happen but I didn’t want to jinx it. He put his arms around me and I could feel his body trembling as he looked me in the eyes and told me he loved me for the first time, immediately breaking down into tears after. I held him tight and said something dumb like “well you already know I love you” because I had told him a couple weeks before. It didn’t bug me that he wasn’t ready to say it then. Because I could already feel it, and he already showed me everyday that he did. In any case, exchanging these words didn’t really change my mind about anything I already knew. If anything at all, it was how well organized, responsible, and resourceful he demonstrated himself as being that I knew I would always be taken care of no matter where we would be together. And after he left to the washroom later than night, leaving me alone in the tent, and me nearly bursting into tears when I heard an animal outside, confirmed that I felt a hell of a lot safer around him too. He was home to me in this faraway province that felt more often foreign than not.
As our relationship and lives progressed and our love inevitably growing, going to Japan together for a year seemed like more of a natural idea than twiddling our thumbs in Montreal not knowing what we wanted to do with our lives. Trading this frozen wasteland for sakura blossoms and cheap sushi sounds almost too good to be true. And most importantly (to my parents, probably) is that English teachers are much more in demand in Japan, and paid much higher than they are here. So really, we’re all winning.
I really don’t know what the point of this post was other than just get some jitters out of my fingers as we’ll probably be buying our one-way tickets to Tokyo tonight. I’m just a little bit in absolute awe of how much my life has changed in less than a year because I found someone who values and loves me as much as I do myself (which is a lot thanks to solid friendships and therapy). Going from just fucking around to having a plan of action; a plan full of adventure and further self-discovery. This is exactly where I want to be and I have trusting myself, trusting love, and enjoying the journey more than focusing on a destination the thank. Here’s to 3 more quarters and many more cities with the man of my dreams 💕
snowghoul
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romaincrisis
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