It has been one year and one day since I started this blog.
Today is the first day my blog goes bi weekly. As promised, I will be posting every Monday and Friday something random from my mind.
Today I want to try to touch upon a feeling–the feeling of travelling home after being gone too long.
It is no secret I have found it hard to move this far away from home. Sometimes in life you have to make sacrifices in order to get ahead. I will be getting a fantastic education while I am out here that will set me up for an exciting chapter in my life. It will give me more flexibility for where I want to live, and how I want to live. I need to be more patient.
That being stated it is always a wonderful feeling to go home. I am luckier than most people I know since I have two places I call home: Toronto, and Nova Scotia. I was born and raised in Downtown Toronto, and I will always be a proud Torontonian, but Nova Scotia stole my heart. This past holiday season my Partner and I chose to go back to both Toronto and Halifax.
First stop–Toronto.
I always have a sense of familiarity when I go back to Toronto. I know her streets, alleyways, cracks, and crevices as well as I know my own skin. There is a warm comfort when I go home to Toronto. I don’t have to worry how to get to where I am going, because I know every short cut. I am never lost. When I was younger going home was a horror. I felt stalked and haunted by terrible ghosts I could not control. The last few years have taught me how to let them go, and only remember the beauty of my past. Through an acceptance of what was, and how it has built me, I can wander the streets of my home town without fear. I breathe lightly. I walk slowly. I have nothing to prove when I am home. No one to show off to, or impress, and I can just be myself.
It is freeing.
This past holiday I took my Partner for long walks around the city, and we had late nights with my family. It warmed my soul.
If Toronto is an old friend, than Halifax is my favourite lover.
The moment I first entered Halifax over six years ago I was enthralled by her streets, old buildings, and that expanse of ocean…
She was not gentle to me. She razzed me with kindness. She was rough, but sweetened by the salted air. I could breathe deep in Halifax, drink my fill, and stare into the seemingly endless ocean waves. It is hard to explain the feeling you get when you live at the edge of the sea. The first year I lived there a good friend would take me on long drives at least twice a week to help calm my homesickness. He would take me down the South Shore, or up to Peggy’s Cove, anywhere we went I had a new sense of freedom. One day we were driving along the shore, the ocean sparkled to our left, the weight of the land to our right. It was in this moment he expanded to me why he loved being a Maritimer. He told me every time he went inland he felt land locked. He needed to see the endless sea in order to breathe. He said there is nothing like the feeling of having the ocean to one side of you with the weight of the country on the other.
You are on the edge, and anything feels possible.
There is so much honesty, and so much love in Halifax. The people are friendly, and the pint glasses are bottomless. My Partner and I raced along the streets, found old friends, and drank our fill. We all laughed so hard my face hurt for days. We sang off-key to the house band, and flirted with each other. At the end of our revelry we wandered down to the pier and stared off into the darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. It was more beautiful than I can explain, and it stole my heart again.
The trip back west was trying to say the least. Cancelled flights, delays, and lost luggage. After 48 hours of pain and fatigue we found ourselves back home in Edmonton. Our cat was so happy upon our return he purred deeply and drooled profusely as we hugged him and petting him. Soon after it sank in that I was back in Edmonton, and no longer home with my loved ones.
But I was not upset, I was not angry, or sad. I felt like I had learned to understand myself a bit deeper. I now respect my desires more than before. I have a clearer determination to be who I am meant to be, and I am excited to push forward with my life.
Going home is finding out who you really are.
We need to travel away in order to be able to return.
Until Next Time.
