Oh my GAWD.

Girl #1 in University bathroom, maniacally applying peachpit lipbalm: 'So like, I'm taking medical anthropology, intro to english lit and intro to psych. You?'

Girl #2 in University bathroom, burning holes into the mirror from staring at her own reflection so intensely: 'Oh, like, I'm only taking one class cause you know, I'm like, working on my album.'

Girl #1: 'Oh! Like, totally cool!'

Girl #2: 'I know! It's pretty awesome. So, like, see you at church on Sunday!'

Girl #1: 'K, bye!'

27 going on 19

"And isn't it time we recognize, that we all lead such broken lives"?

-The Be Good Tanyas

I’m working this semester as a TA for a poli sci statistics course, up on Burnaby Mountain. I haven’t had very many occasions to get up there since moving to Vancouver – my own campus is conveniently housed downtown, right in Harbour Centre, where students creep in and out of classes relatively unnoticed by all of the conference attendees our building is constantly being rented out to. I guess that’s what you get for going to university in a prime piece of real estate in the financial district of one of the world’s most expensive cities, but for today, that is beside the point.

It’s funny and strange and sad to be around so many undergraduate students, now that I’ve got close to ten years on a lot of them. Most of the people in my class are 19 years old and I remember so vividly, like a bad, bitter, sweet and sorrowful taste on the tongue what it meant to be that age, when you had no clue who you were but were in such blissful denial of that possibility. And so, when I look around the room and see the girl with the bleached blond hair and the standard grey hoodie over an overpriced American Eagle t-shirt, the girl with the jeans her mom hemmed for her and brought to her residence room, the girl who laughs too hard and too loudly in class when the 30-something prof accidentally on purpose uses the word virgin, instead of version, the girl who rolls her eyes and flips her hair, picks at her nails and sighs audibly, because the whole tedious business of living, of life, it’s just all such a terrible bother. The guy who plays interactive dungeons and dragons on his outdated Mac, a present from his ailing grandfather upon high school graduation, the 21-year old European guy who oozes sex appeal and a power he is only beginning to harness but knows will carry him far, the girl who lays out her gel pens and colour-coded folders at the start of every class, who scribbles furious notes and tries to write away the sinking realization that it’s all a little over her head and she just isn’t cut out for this…as I look around this huge auditorium I fight back tears and hold back the desire to cry out, ‘I was one of you, once. I thought I had it, whatever ‘it’ was. I thought I knew it, knew it all, knew who I was, where I was going. I thought it would all work out.’

Because now, just a few years later and a few too many, I’ve realized that being 19 means being alive in a way you can never get back again. For I too, flipped my hair and talked about politics I didn’t understand. I too, scribbled furious notes, and never read them. But somehow, that sense of self, of myself, has faded away. And so, while I talk to these students, these teens and twenties about z-scores and standard deviations, about linear regression and homework due dates, what I really want to tell them is to hold on. To hold on to that sense of self, of possession. Because one day, just a few years down the road and a few too many, you might find yourself in a different city that will never be yours, with different friends and different tastes. You might find yourself without a net, without a safe place to land. You might find that you cry into a glass of red wine that substitutes as supper, find yourself out on a daily run when you realize you aren’t really running anywhere, you might find yourself with a boyfriend, a man who looks into your face and tells you he will perish without your love, and this is the same man who hurts and betrays you in a way you could never have imagined, never even heard of, at 19, and really why should you have?

And so on Tuesday morning, when I file back into that auditorium, and look around at the hundreds of faces, some bored, some keen, some sleepy-eyed, some smiling, when I take a seat and pull out my own notebook and pen, it will be with the realization that while I sit among them for two and a half hours every week, I sit aside, I sit outside, with the wisdom, the pain, the sorrow and the joy that sense of knowing brings.

The wonder years

I’m going home tomorrow, to Montreal, for my ten-year high school reunion. Unlike a lot of people who dread gatherings of this nature, I’m actually looking forward to it. While I still keep in close touch with many people from high school, there are many I haven’t seen in a full decade. People who have shed braces and puberty-induced pounds, trading them in for careers and baby strollers. People who never left the small town we grew up in, others who left the country in search of multicultural adventures.

The woman responsible for organizing this reunion first took on the task about four years ago, amassing email addresses and phone numbers so that when the time came, tracking people down would be a fairly easy feat. I remember filling out the information she requested, fantasizing about where I would be another four years down the road. I had just started working as an editor at a magazine, and was confident I would be made editor in chief by then. My handsome fireman boyfriend and I would surely be married, but not with kids – not yet. But we’d live in a house – an old stone one, and I’d be a fabulous cook and gardener, in addition to world traveler and I would also grow another three inches and drop 20 pounds. I would also somehow be a natural blond.

Fast forward four years – I left the magazine a year ago – just two months shy of a changeover that would have seen me positioned as editor-in-chief. The handsome husband-to-be kicked me out of his life in a fiery rage, and my heart has been broken a few times since. I moved to Vancouver to go back to school and my roommate and I eat bowls of cereal for dinner because neither of us can cook to save our lives. Most of the travelling I do entails visiting the man I'm dating who is from Newfoundland, I met in Montreal, and recently moved to California. Any weight I’ve lost has come from trying to live on a student budget and I haven’t spent a cent on my hair in months.

But somehow, this is all ok. Somehow, this is all pretty great. It will be sad and funny and sweet to see the tiny offspring of the girl who shared my Bunsen burner in science class, and the engagement ring of the girl everyone was certain was gay. But when it’s all over, I’ll be happy to return to my life, in all its uncertainty and all its quirks, only to fantasize about where the next ten years will lead me.

A few of my favourite things

I love seeing people walking down the street, by themselves, eating ice cream cones.
This makes me inexplicably happy.

Tiny ocean of tears

On my way into work this morning, I passed a young girl, maybe in her mid-twenties. She was sitting outside the Parliament buildings, in dress pants and a black blouse, her honey blond hair pulled into a ponytail. She had one of those doughy, open, honest faces that are so beautiful in their own way. She was sobbing into her cellphone, as quiet and controlled as she could manage - and despite that the person on the other line was doing all the talking, you knew her heart was being broken. First thing, on a bright, sunny July morning on Rideau Street, a chapter of this young woman's life closed, and it was all I could do not to sit down beside her and cry, too.

Who's in charge, here?

I do not consider myself a religious person. I have had fleeting moments of what I would call an increased sense of spirituality, but even those have been tinged with guilt, as I only seem to search for something bigger, all-knowing, or other-worldly when I'm hurting or confused.

And so, yesterday afternoon, as I found myself walking rather aimlessly around in the hot sun in the California foothills, wondering how exactly I got here, I felt that creeping sense that maybe (hopefully?) a good deal of this is out of my control anyway, and that somehow, some time (hopefully soon?) I will find myself propelled forward and away, to a new chapter in my life. Maybe a better one.

But I have to say – whoever it is who's in charge up there, I don't know if there's been a shift change, a maternity leave, maybe? Perhaps you're new at this, and I can make allowances, but just so we're clear, things haven't been going so shit hot down here, and so, maybe, when you get a chance, you could sneak another quick look at my file?

Because I'm pretty sure, although I guess you're the expert, but I'm fairly certain this isn't the way it was meant to go.

Remembering

I remember the dates of everything. This can be annoying to people around me, but I seem to have a remarkable memory for recalling the day, the month, the year of situations that had an impact on me.

And so, it has been very close to a year since the night his leg wrapped around mine underneath the table, cutting short the conversation I was having with the drunken girl beside me. As our eyes, colour still unfamiliar, met, I knew that the look on his face would remain a burned image in my brain for a long time to come.

The months that ensued were a whirlwind and ones also not soon forgotten. And yet, it's so strange that while I can recall so many of the dates, the times, the places, spaces, faces, the month, the week, the day, when it comes to the moment, oh, that cruel moment, when everything shifted, I cannot remember, cannot remember at all.

Late for dinner

And it's a bit too late, now, for teenaged insecurities and changing in the bathroom. It's a bit too late to become an adult bulimic or a red wine alcoholic. It's a bit too late, but you've missed it somehow even though you go over and over it in your head and can't quite pinpoint where it went. And yet the hands you love so much that firmly grasp your weakened shoulders to push you away are real - they're there and the intent is clear even though your head feels fuzzy.

And so why, then, is everything around me settled? Why are there weddings, and babies and dining room sets and living room carpets and fridges bought on credit and loveseats paid in full?

Captured

"It's ok for you to say what you want from me. I believe it's the only way for me to be exactly what you want me to be."
-Wilco

It's strange how a camera can capture a moment where everything in your heart felt perfectly at peace. And how that brief flicker of an instant throws colour on all the grey, murky doubt, casting a bright, welcome shadow.

Seesaw

'I trust no emotion. I believe in locomotion.'
-Jeff Tweedy

So of course everyone around you thinks you're completely crazy and the sympathetic smiles and the hands that cover yours make your stomach turn to water. But, for some reason, you cannot erase the memories of wine-fueled summer nights on a front porch and the tangled mess of clothes on the floor. Of iceburg-chasing boat rides and CBC Saturday mornings and too much coffee and an easy smile that has burned it's memory into your brain, forever taunting.

Cool

Overheard in a conversation amongst fifth graders on a Vancouver City bus.

'Everybody thinks he's so cool, but, but, but he's not. He's married!'

To you.

And to you, because I know you’re here, I miss you, despite it all.

There are moments when I realize just how much you got me through. And I can hear your voice in my head telling me to get it together, to seriously get my shit together because it’s starting to become ridiculous and on the days when I do manage to hold my head just a little bit higher, to you, because I know you’re here, well, that’s thanks to you.

Gloss

'It's become so obvious, that you're so oblivious, to yourself.'
Wilco

And it’s funny how you cross over. How you swallow a bit harder and smile a bit brighter. How you pretend. How you laugh, how you say what you don’t mean and you say it again until you’ve convinced yourself. Or at least, him. And how you feel so betrayed that he buys all your crap. Because it isn’t great, it isn’t even good and the high ceilings and the bamboo floors and the sunken living room and the fireplace – those things are someone you don’t even know.

Someone you aren’t sure you want to know. And what you want to say, what you want to tell him is that you want poor heating and bad lighting and doors that don’t lock and windows you have to slam shut. That Porsches are dumb and Parisian balconies are for jumping off of. That you want scruffy hair and lopsided smiles and you just aren't sure anything else will do at all.

Away from her

"What was I thinking, when I said it didn't hurt?"
-Wilco

My dad is an airline pilot and when I was a kid, and he would go away on trips, I would pack and sneak elaborate snacks into his suitcase when he wasn't looking. Snacks made of delicacies such as Chips Ahoy! cookies and swiss rolls, things that undoubtedly could not be had in far-off places such as Chile or Calgary.

In my mind, these carefully packed bundles were sure to provide some small, cherished comfort that would serve to ease was must surely be the worst possible pain of all - being away from me. So imagine my dumbfounded confusion when I padded, slippered and pyjama-ed down the hall early one morning, to slip one of my carepackages into his flight bag, and there lay the startling, sweet evidence that my existence was not all-consuming on the other side of the world. Maybe not even at home. The four, chocolate chip cookies and homemade brownies (I had really outdone myself that time) from last week, remained untouched - their love and reassurance untapped.

It's funny, how you can feel like a six-year old girl in a 26 year-old woman's body when someone who means so much, too much, really, lives on the other side of your country. How you can be reduced to a cookie-pushing mess unable to see, unable to grasp, how that someone, can be ok, being without you. And you somehow manage to hold back from infusing their dusty corners, and you smile smiles that are too bright. And no one notices but you.

And so, and maybe some space, Heather. And California, maybe, Heather. El Dorado. And can you watch my dog, can you feed her, walk her, love her? What about the grey, what about the yellow? And is my hair ok? How about these shoes? You think? And my ticket, the airport, five-thirty, really? And, of course, of course. Oh, but of course. There is gas in the car and money for pizza if you want, and the wine-opener is in the righthand drawer. Oh, and there are cookies in the cupboard.