Home

It's been so strange. Not being here nor there. For the first time since I started travelling independently, I have no "going back" to go back to. I talked about it with my mom, and she said she felt the same way. Like, it kept hitting her that this was it- York was her home now, and had she made the biggest mistake in coming here? In fact, she said, England didn't really feel like home at all until almost a year later when she and my dad made a return trip to Canada to visit me, among other things.  In returning to the place where she had thought would feel most like home, it hit her that it didn't feel like home at all. She had no house there, no work, no belongings. It was, she said, a great place to visit, and see all the friends she had made over the past 8 years, but it didn't feel like home. York did. And she was glad to eventually go back there, after a couple of weeks.

I can feel that way a bit. Again, I have no physical abode to return to there, and only my poor sister Dani is still stuck there out of my family members. I have the majority of my friends who live there, but I have started to make a few friends here too. I have a job of sorts here, and I love the food and lifestyle much more. People are more reserved here, so I like shocking them with my openness. I feel fresh and bright and, strangely, a bit American. Bold. I can't even begin to blend in as soon as I open my mouth, so I've reached the point where it's just like Alright already, I'm a foreigner yes, get over it and sell me my darn kale.

It's a different life than what I was leading in Alberta. But it's not worse. I quite think that I will enjoy my few months here. I'll keep you updated.

Calgary- Closer to Halfway Home

It's over. And I'm shaky, from caffeine and adrenaline withdrawal and sitting in the Calgary airport closer to half way home.
I shed those tears weeks ago, and so conversations held were adult, calm, rational. Today though, sitting in the Winnipeg airport, it hit me for one second, and I felt like someone had punched all the air out of my stomach and I curved over, bent slightly forward trying to get air. I think I gasped once, delicately, quietly, and closed my eyes, squeezed out two tears, then recovered. Went back to reading Watchmen and eating my goldfish crackers.
Those times I memorized pieces and articles of chunks of skin, and the way the crease in the corner of the eye met the bridge of the nose, the few faint freckles, the pointed perfect elf ear, the melted mouth so sweet- I wish I hadn't. I want to erase it from my mind. You cannot forgot what you so diligently committed to memory.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, tonight you are mine.