what is broken is now whole

I think it’s time to leave again, to go back into exile, to return to the lands outside my Archipelago. I have let my chance to build a grown-up life in Vancouver slip by me. Not only with Kody, but with everything – I have not moved far enough past the Gates, and I have let myself get into the habits of relying on my university connections to provide me with the laughter I need in my life.

I think that in order to continue rebuilding myself, I have to leave Vancouver, to go back to the States, to return to life as a grownup, as it was before, as it should have been had I not taken a wrong turn or two in 1999, in 2000.

And for this, I am afraid – I am afraid to leave, to go back out on my own, but I may have to. To return again with a more solid base, with my looks restored out from under the fat, with the confidence that I am liked, that I can make friends, that I am not ordinary and should never settle for less than I deserve. To be able to tell myself all this and more, and to hold the memories of two years in Vancouver – two wonderful, fun-filled years – will help me if I resume the paths I left to come home to heal.

I came back to UBC broken, to take up again that part of my life I left unfinished when I dropped out to move to the States. Now, I will go back to the States to pick up that part of my life I fell from when I fell apart in Dallas so long ago, broken by homesickness and loneliness and a longing for stability.

I don’t know when I’ll leave – but I know what the cards tell me – that seven months from now, by the time the days are at their longest, I will stand in an American city, one among millions, be it Seattle or San Francisco or Los Angeles, under a different sky from the one here, under a sky stained by sodium lights. I know that I have, irrevocably, ruined myself for ever being happy in Canada – that I will want, always, to trace my future in the States, to take what education my homeland has given me and sell it at the highest price possible in a market of American commerce.

Years from now, I will come out of exile again to settle in Vancouver or Victoria, in my world, in my Shire. But now, I feel like I need dragons to defeat, worlds to explore, challenges to face. I need to find a new quest and take it on. Twenty-five is far too young to settle down in my own version of a happy ending.