SAYING GOODBYE

I started this blog a year and a half ago in preparation for my big move across the world to keep my little family together. It was supposed to be my place to be creative and not get too stir crazy as a stay-at-home mom. Surprisingly starting this blog, and reading other blogs, opened me up in more ways that I could have expected. Despite my lack of posting, and not feeling like part of the blogging community I really feel like having this blog has helped me grow and has pushed me to be better. I want to be get better at blogging, and maybe I will someday but considering the amount of changes that are occurring in my life now (I will elaborate shortly) I think at least for now my blog won't be my main priority.

This time of year is very special for people, it's back to school which is a new beginning and those of us not in school still feel nostalgic for the feeling back to school evokes, excitement and nervousness combined. It's time to say goodbye to the carefree relaxed attitude of summer and start tightening up and settling back into the real world, but it's definitely not necessarily a bad thing. Right now I'm finishing up packing my bags, emptying out my apartment and mentally preparing myself for life back in Canada as a single mom. Yes, the great German Experiment didn't work out, for a variety of reasons but none so glaring as the fact that I was completely isolated here. Right now I'm saying goodbye to the family that I have been apart of since arriving, I'm saying goodbye to  the man I spent the last three years with, and I'm saying goodbye to my last carefree summer before I step back into the real world. I can't say that I am going back home, because I'm not, yes I consider Canada as a country home but none of the individual cities in which I have lived are home, not even the one I grew up in. As someone who has never had much inclination to travel, I've done more than my fair share of packing my bags and starting life somewhere new, but now I need to maintain a level of stability, not for me but for the tiny human coming with me. We are going back to family, to a new "home" where I will have support and he will have plenty of love, but it still won't be easy. Perhaps I will use blogging again to document my new life, it may help me stay grounded after all, but no promises as my plate is already overloaded. Right now I can't make any plans, all I can do is pack and say goodbye and then just see what happens when we step back onto the airplane.

ON BEING REMARKABLE

In my eleventh grade creative writing course, for the last term of the year we had to put together a poetry portfolio comprising of a few of our own original pieces as well as some course mandated ones. One of our assigned tasks was to write a poem with an epitaph and although I learned now that the term epitaph was used loosely (she just wanted us to begin our work with a quote) it lead to one of my poems that has stuck with me though out the years. I, being the lazy student that I was, used the miss-attributed and miss-quoted quote (serves me right for using something from the opening of a Criminal Minds episode) "nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable" supposedly by William Shakespeare. Now while this was an overall fail in just about every respect it has provided me with my motivation in recent years when trying to decide how I wanted to live my life.

Trying to be remarkable fueled my university years, I lived unconventionally (read: slovenly), I dressed weirdly (oversized coats and tight black dresses), I partied too hard and I came up short academically...yet all of that is pretty well the makings of any university typical university experience. Then something happened that did set me apart from the rest, I got pregnant and suddenly everything I was doing to try to be different could no longer co-exist with the fact that I was bringing new life into this world. In light of that realization I did what I thought I had to do, I conformed, I conformed to what was expected of me as woman, as new mom and I hated it. I feel more ordinary now than I ever have my entire life, and while it is comfortable and safe I know beyond a shadow of doubt that this is not the life for me. I probably won't be breaking out the black lipstick on regular basis any time soon, but I want to make a genuine effort set myself apart from everyone and live my life for me. I have never felt like I fit in, and it really brought me down for a long a time but now I want for my son to be happy with who he is and who better to teach him than me. It's time to let my inner freak flag fly and to stop caring about what I am supposed to do, and start putting my energy in to what it is that I want to do, even if it feels ridiculous (like wearing dresses every day) because you can't be remarkable if you worry about being like everyone else, you have to stand on your own and shine!

DISPERSED

Two years ago, H and I were driving back from Toronto after doing the big boyfriend introduction to my fathers side of the family over thanksgiving weekend. Two years ago I was living pretty care-fre,e studying at university, partying with my girlfriends, caring for my cat. If you had asked me two years ago where I thought my life would be, I definitely would not have guessed here.

Fast forward to now, Toronto is a few countries and the Atlantic ocean away, university is but a distance memory while my books collect dust in storage, my girlfriends all live in different cities (seriously, I think the most I have is two in any city) and my cat is enjoying his new family with my old roommate and the rest of the clan (one human, three feline) who took up residence in my old place. I guess as you grow up you leave pieces of yourself everywhere you go, within everyone you meet and it is incredible to see how far you can reach as everything keeps changing around you.

Last week a friend from university came to visit, it had been a year and half since we had seen each other (not counting skype) but our relationship felt the same. We went sightseeing, discussed art, drank wine, gossiped and of course, talked about boys but we also talked about life, passions, careers and starting a family (I got a headstart in that department). All the things that seemed so far away while we in school are now suddenly upon us, almost as if adulthood snuck up on us while we weren't paying attention but while we both have had our struggles we both seem to realize that the secret to adulthood is not to actually feel like a grown-up but rather to keep figuring it out each day. My friends all have different lives now, different cities, different jobs and maybe we will lose touch but we will all carry a piece of each other wherever we go and (thanks largely to social media) we can watch ourselves be dispersed far and wide.

HELLO

I have been putting off writing my introductory post for this blog for several weeks now, and in the end chose to abandon it all together and go with something different for my first post. Sundays post was me announcing a new chapter in my life, where I am taking responsibility for my own happiness, now I would like to tie that in to why I decided to start a blog. In about 2 months I will be moving overseas to be with the father of my child but leaving everyone else I love behind. It is both a sad and exciting endeavor and I constantly flick back and forth between both emotions as the departure day draws nearer. This blog is for me, to express myself and encourage my creativity while I settle in and begin my new life, and it's for my family and friends to keep up to date with my life, my sons life and to give them piece of mind in regards to me being so far away. I do not know what I will end up writing about, I do not know what direction this blog will take me but I would like to figure it out.