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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Sloane's birthday week was full of all sorts of fun. Two parties, the arrival of her big-girl (bunk) bed, all kinds of presents and singing, and lots of friends and family around to celebrate. We got her an ice cream cake for the kids' party, which melted a bit overnight, but was received well by the 20+ children who came to the bash.

Sloane Lantau Bristowe Turner, three years old on March 19, 2008.

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Sunday, March 09, 2008

Stolen From Stephanie Nolen

On her personal website, Globe & Mail Africa correspondent Stephanie Nolen has an About page that follows this structure. Sitting around this afternoon building the pull quote list for the Daily Planet book, I rebuilt it for myself.

Spiritual Advisors: Margaret Mead, Karen Blixen, Allah

Advises against: Sneaking up on me (very easily startled, I’ve punched people in the face by accident).

Best piece of gear: Nikon D70. There are better cameras, but this one nearly bounces when dropped, and anyone can use it.

Can’t: Do math. Renew the car registration. Live close to everyone I love all at the same time.

Was a rabble-rousing student activist: Mostly in my mind, and behind closed doors. Women’s Studies: we got you where you slept. (Is that too… dirty to put on the internet? Mostly inaccurate for me, but I like how it sounds.)

Secretly: Is a trombone virtuoso. Fears caving.

Recommends: Bohol, Philippines. Skardu, Pakistan. The Blackfoot Truck Stop, Calgary.

Gets bloodthirsty over: Urban planning.

Happiest: Wearing earplugs.

Recently discovered: Adult friends with kids! Whoooooot!

Categories: Ash

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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Old(-ish) wisdom

(Thanks to Sean, who probably doesn't even remember storing the letters described here!)

My beloved cousin is having a hard hard hard time of a brutal breakup. We were talking on the phone tonight and she referenced an email I'd written to her a few years ago, when she'd been in the midst of a similarly devastating break. I remembered writing it but not the details - then she said she'd forwarded it on to innumerable people, and that she herself had read it many many times, and I was like, Damn, let's see this again! So here it is (edited to protect some of the innocent), not half bad as a empathetic treatise, I think:

***
Well, hell. It is of absolutely NO consolation, but we have all been there. And I'll say it again: I know that is of absolutely no consolation. ...Wait - I suppose I think it'll be of some, miniscule consolation, or I wouldn't say it. So I suppose I'm offering you the only thing I think I have to offer: empathy.

Lord, I have SO BEEN THERE. Not the same circumstances, but certainly that exquisite surreality and gonging emptiness. The pain is awful.

I told Turner about this and he said, "Ah shit. That sucks for her. ...Well, everyone has to lose their first love. Sucks though." Basically that's exactly it: only 6% of all long distance relationships last through university. I remember A finding that statistic at some point and sending the article to me - she was in a long distance relationship with her high school boyfriend, a lovely boy named J who became a typical hockey asshole named J and who broke her heart all over the road.

Me, it was my high school boyfriend, and he cheated on me in the summer after high school. It is a LOT more complicated than that - he was a pathological guilt-tripper and he meddled in my life in all kinds of deeply inappropriate ways in high school and at university. We both ended up at Queen's and he stalked me all through my first year - finally I had to have Queen's Security bar him from my residence building (he would still get in, though - he had no shame or scruples - and I'd find him drunk and asleep, later beligerent and awake, at my room door). Actually, it makes me feel young and sick just thinking about that whole time. He was awful, but that didn't make it any easier - wait, maybe it made it the SMALLEST bit easier. Gave me lots of permission to hate him. But I was still embroiled in the old relationship patterns in some ways, and yet I absolutely couldn't be with him anymore, and it was one of the weirdest, wrenchingest things I've ever gone through. [Ed. note: Boy did I learn LOTS from that one. All sorts of things about what I NEVER wanted to go through again, a whole treasure trove of invaluable learning. When girlfriends were being slain left and right through the 1990s with the myriod bullshit partners can sling, I was able to slalom right through. I'd seen (nearly) it all by age 18.]

In any case, I know it was very different with you and M. What's the same is this: we find love when we're young. And it is such a great relief. It can be the only jewel that, to that point, we've ever really had for ourselves. Something that isn't our family's, something that didn't come from outside. Someone loves us, me, you, and it is extraordinarily powerful to be the recipient of love, particularly the first time you allow yourself to love back. The idea that love powers the world and inspires people to art suddenly has true meaning and resonance. You can see the incredible energy it brings to your own life.

And when we're young, we're naive. Sadly this is true of all of us. We want to believe that because it's wonderful, it must remain. Even when it isn't wonderful. For our needs, to keep from being empty, to keep from needing to look again, to keep from finding other parts of our own souls and healing them. For me, I know that my home life was destructive and isolating in high school and when I found someone who loved me and wanted to be with me, it made me suddenly feel like the whole world was possible. That I wasn't trapped in the cage that was my family's idea of who I was and what I was capable of becoming. I could make my own dreams.

...And I know that sounds RETARDED at this moment to you, sitting there broken in your apartment in Montreal and in the midst of a very real, very painful, heart-rending breakup. But empathy - remember, the empathy, it's all I've got to give to you. Here you go.

There is solace: it passes. "This too shall pass" is an amazing and powerful mantra to repeat in your head while you walk. I don't know why, but it works and works and works. Each step: This. Too. Shall. Pass. This. Too. Shall. Pass. I think because it lets you focus on something small, and concrete. Just keep walking, just keep going with the words. Repetition, chanting.

When I left Turner and my whole life in Toronto in 2002, I was shattered. Like, smithereens of everything all over the place. But I could pull it together to go into gas stations and pay for my fuel, I could hold it together to visit my aunt for five days in Thunder Bay and go out with my nursery school friends and relatives there and not breathe a word of what had happened, I could keep my shit in place while I stayed with grad school friends in Winnipeg and babysat their kids and helped make meals. Inside there were parts of me that were totally dead, and the death and grieving process was ongoing. But I was 28 and I'd been through this a few times.

It's always different, because the people are different, and you yourself are different. It's excruciating in different ways every time. But having been around the block, I had some coping skills. I could compartmentalize. I was glad for the struggles my life had given me to that point, because I could keep going through this time of leaving Turner for the strength those other struggles had given me.

But it was fucking hard, don't let me whitewash it! I was glad to have finally made the decision and that I'd acted with dignity, but I was in shock, pure shock! I'd left the man I thought I was going to spend my life with. What the fuck do I do now? Where do I go from here? Is the pain going to end? Will I ever heal from this one? Etcetera. A teenage goth poem. A country song without the twanging soundtrack, and so on.

When I first left Toronto, I went to Barrie (an hour north of the city), and stayed for a week with Sean's family there. Sean left for the Czech Republic in 1993 when he graduated, and my world stopped. He was the best friend I'd ever had, and at that time, Eastern Europe was the edge of the earth. Letters took a month to go back and forth. There was no email. It was like he'd died - truly as though he had died and it was one of loneliest times of my life. It was ghastly, the loneliness. We knew he was leaving, and we knew I was staying, but it didn't stop it from hurting and hurting and hurting and hurting and hurting. He needed to go and I needed to stay, but that didn't make it any easier.

So why am I telling you about Sean? Because at his mom's house in Barrie, he stores all the letters I sent to him that year. I found them one day when I was looking through his books. And I read them. I re-lived every day of that fall semester after he left, and it was excruciating. But in my own words, in my own handwriting, I saw myself slowly overcoming the ache, walking lighter and happier. Becoming older, growing, healing myself. I remember myself coming down the steps of the library one day, thinking of Sean, and suddenly being happy and not bittersweet, just happy about him and glad we'd had the time we had. Finally happy. And alone, and glad I was alone, because I could appreciate what we'd had, all the more.

Now remember, I was reading these letters in the midst of having just left Turner. And I was suddenly SO PROUD of myself, it was overwhelming. I had this flooding rush of pride that was physically palpable. Of the me in the letters, and of the me sitting there reading them. I wanted to reach into the letters and hold that 19 year old Ashley, so heartbroken and lonely and alone, but not for long... After Sean left I went on to become a leader at university, I did well in my academics, I found superb friends. I met & dated K. I went on to the Philippines, and grad school, and found Thaba and then Turner. I moved to India. My life became extraordinary! The girl in the letters had NO IDEA what amazing things were just around the corner and in the years to come. Clearly: This. Too. Shall. Pass.

What timing, what a great lesson to remember. Reading those letters gave me the extra strength to push on from Barrie and come home, all the way home, to Alberta. I'd lost Turner (I thought), but I certainly still had me. It's hollow and of little solace now, but that "you've still got yourself" stuff is true, true, true. You never know what's going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. You don't know! You don't! Really!

Not only that, but the Nietsche quote of "that which does not kill you, makes you stronger" couldn't be truer. Stronger and stronger - life gives you these opportunities to shed a layer of skin on your heart, so you can grow bigger. This experience will make you stronger in every area of your life, more resilient, more endurant. [Ed. note: not sure if "endurant" is a word, but you get the meaning...] My hard-earned advice is this: go inside and let your body and mind tell you what you need to do. Look for what you need to DO, every moment. Wash your face, have a shower, brush your teeth, just keep going. Don't be afraid to be sad: cry as much as you want, do all the crying you can. And be angry (it's inevitable, get there, don't fight it). Buy a bunch of plates at a Salvation Army and then go behind your building and smash them all, all over the pavement. (I've done this a few times: very cathartic. I recommend it.) Yell. Seriously: GRIEVE IT. Grieve it hard! This is your first love, gone. That calls for some serious recognition of the gravity of the situation: the relationship, the memories, and now the loss.

Use your time alone wisely so that you can be a normal functioning person when you "have" to be (ex. at school in the middle of a presentation). But when you're on the Metro and you're mad, don't be afraid to just sit there and be mad. Be sad. Cry in public - that's quite okay. People may look at you but fuck 'em - are you ever going to see those people again? Probably not. You need to take care of you, so if that means taking a credit card and checking in to a hotel for a night, do it. If that means eating at the cafeteria at school every day instead of taking your lunch, do it for a while. If it means going out dancing and drinking too much, do it for a while. Go and do what you need to do, what you want to do.

But very important: don't indulge yourself too much in the stupidnesses that make us sadder - mooning over photos, letters; calling drunk (if you can stick to it, let me suggest a GOLDEN rule: never drunk dial! Nobody wins, and it's just embarrassing later); telling people the long and sordid complete story, etcetera. Of course, we all do these things and they're somewhat necessary (if only as a retrospective example of "what not to do", next time, when you're thinking back on this in years to come), but try to keep it to a minimum. Don't wear out your friends.

One more thing: harness this. Heartbreak and grief are incredible guides to use in your art. Walk, take photos. Paint if you do, draw if you do, keep writing. Write as much as you possibly can. Focus. Use any smidgen of interest in anything unrelated to him to be the excuse to go investigate that thing: the biodome, St. Urbain, the underground city.

It's hard not to look back, it's hard not to want the comfort and familiarity. We all do - we're all human. Don't be surprised if the holiday is tough, being home at the same time. You may end up getting together - it's not uncommon. But don't let yourself hope too much. You can't change other people (boy did it take me a LONG time to learn that one!!). If he needs to be apart, so be it. Love yourself. It gets better slowly, so slowly. This too shall pass: hold on to that.

I love you! I know it SUCKS right now. Just keep on keeping on. Hugs from out here! Write to me. love Ashley

Categories: Ash

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