I move through the seasons of change with defiance. I am a person who enjoys settling within the comfortable familiarity of routine- repetition and predictability are my best friends. However, life is never stagnant. Despite the discomfort that is to follow all major changes - both good and bad - time will keep moving forward. The clock stops for no one but a dead battery. I have sat many times with this unsettling sensation, and at twenty-three, I have passed through four major changes in my life that have shaped me into the woman I am.
I am a reaction to my life, the consequence of mistakes and celebrations. To be human is to understand that you will face great pain in this life, but you feel joy even more deeply.
I was four years old when my brother entered this world. I had a plastic necklace that chafed the back of my neck and pigtails that tickled my ears in the wind. I can remember pieces of climbing into the hospital bed with my mother and watching as she handed him into my arms and lap. Like a movie I watched long ago, fragments come to me: his thick head of hair, strong little hand, and a sensation of joy that overwhelmed me.
As we grew up, we were close. Years went on, and I considered him my best friend. We would build Legos that frustrated me and play school classes that annoyed him. I can never remember feeling as though anything was a problem back then. I know I was hurt by actions, but I had no real concept of good and evil.
But even as the cracks within me began to appear, my family tried their hardest to make sure I had no reason for tears. I remember vividly driving along the coast of Myrtle Beach with my father. Father and Daughter embarking on the road trip of the year. I felt car sick and bought my first teen magazine. Played arcade games at the Gay Dolphin. Felt the sand between our toes. It was the second-best memory I had formed, after my dear brother’s arrival.
I had friends outside, but at the end of the day, I would always choose him before all else. Despite being the oldest, I have always admired my brother more than words could begin to describe.. But as we got older, the age difference grew more obvious, and something began to settle within my mind.
I couldn't sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t speak.
Throughout childhood, I had been the star of my own production. Every camera and spotlight found its way to me, and it was as though I blossomed beneath them. I radiated and basked in recognition. Then it was as though a switch flipped.
One day, I woke up, and everything was simply dark. There was no catalyst I can think of- perhaps the growing use of social media or the mature books I would sneak from the library and hide from my parents. Or perhaps my mind has simply always been broken, and I just couldn’t notice until puberty hit. For whatever reason, I grew to detest life as an idea and being.
Days that I now deeply regret wasting were spent languishing above a scale and reading The Bell Jar as though the answer to my sorrows may hide beneath the pages. I no longer raised a hand to volunteer or spoke among the crowd when given the chance. I had changed before I was ready, and my mind struggled to keep up with the pressures of high school and social intentions I had not thought of before.
I slipped cigarettes out of my mother's purse and matches from the fireplace- a reason as to why has yet to be discovered. Most of all, it was a good excuse to ignore the important matters before me. It was a reason to skip class and avoid the lectures well-intending teachers would give, it was a reason to skip the lunchroom anxieties and the lunch packed with love my mother had given me. It was a reason to lose myself.
I graduated high school with honours, in spite of feeling like I was simply scraping by. For the first time in eighteen years, I thought about living beyond the teenage crisis years and building a future- a matter I had never dared to dream of.
Though we met when we were young, my ex and I began dating two years into our post-secondary studies. He was an engineering student, and I was a teaching student, and neither of us was happy. What I had always dreamed of as domestic bliss turned into a domestic nightmare slowly before my eyes. With half-truths and finger-crossed promises, at nineteen, he convinced me to move into an apartment I could not afford with a man I did not realize I did not know.
I did not know about the drugs. I did not know about the drinking. I did not know about the hate. I just knew about the sick, lurking beneath reckless accusations and half-closed eyes. I knew the sick in his hands when they would wrap around my throat mid argument, and the sick in the pen when I read about how much gratification and joy my untimely death would bring him. It was different from my own sickness- the sick in my breath after meals and the sick in my sunken face and blistered knuckles. But even with the pain and the terror and the chance of death- I stayed. The reason why being debateable.
I knew love was not pretty- it was a brutal force that tore through my family like a tornado, leaving us scattered and slowly finding our way back to each other. I had spent years in a feud with my own father because love is just that destructive.
Which is why I was surprised when he visited.
On a bad night, I started an argument. Gentle words and soft-bodied, I asked about everything. And with hands as large as my face and a grip as strong as a python, I could feel the familiar sensation of drowning in a lack of oxygen. The colours and lights of my apartment slipped away from me, and I woke up in a truck.
My father and I were driving along the coast of Myrtle Beach again. He asked why I would let this happen to myself. For three days, I tried to explain it to him- love, dedication, adoration- but he repeatedly told me he knew it wasn’t true. I was scared. Scared to be alone again. I woke up shortly after that- to be told I had been out for no more than three seconds. The days I lived in my asphyxiated mind still haunt me.
There is a pearl on my finger now, and I hand-sew lace so I may make my wedding dress when the time comes. God called me beyond myself- the suffering of winter put me in just the right place to meet my husband. One day, by chance, I went into a store I typically did not bother with a short walk from my apartment. I was five months single and learning just how wonderful I am to be around. I had begun writing again.
A pantry emergency forced me from my seclusion, and while in the checkout line, my eyes made contact with the most gorgeous man I had seen. Curly brown hair and a smile that warmed the cool spring air. He laughed at my awkward jokes and took extra caution when packing my items, and when it came time to leave, I struggled to collect my receipt and go. But just as I got in my car to take off, a plan for cookies and a note to the cute grocer already brewing, he ran out of the store and nearly jumped in front of my moving car. With a panic all too familiar, he asked for my phone number. And with an equally terrified voice, I told him.
Since that day, we have become inseparable.
Seasons change. That is how life marches on. One moment, the world is made up of imagination and fun; the next, it devolves into anguish and instability. I still fight my own sick, I will never be comfortable sitting at the dinner table, and I will never go a day without my medications. But I have learned to live with my sickness. Though with every chance, shame enjoys slipping in the cracks of the door.
But I take comfort, for I know that within my own suffering, it is all planned. My God had something far more wonderful in store for me than I would ever have been creative enough to go for. Had I not moved into that falling-down shoebox apartment, I never would have met the love of my life or found safety within a man's arms again. All things happen with purpose; it is your job to seek out the purpose in chaos. Only then will tranquility feel so natural. But my winter still haunts me, and must exist alongside my peace.
