March 6th, 2010

“People who are half convinced of themselves only get half the things they want. – David Brock

It has been a nostalgic day.
Reading emails from what seems like a life time away.
Remembering goals from what seems like someone else’s life.
Wondering where to go from here, and what is it I truly want.

It was only one week ago that I was hit hard in the face with the real truth that I am far from being healed over Burbear’s death. I’ll never forget his trainer giving us the analogy of the good side & bad side of a dog, which I may have detailed here before, but here I go again with repeating myself and not really caring. It’s like I’m an 80 year old in a 27 year old’s body.

“Imagine you are a vet, on call, and get the page about a dog that was just brought in, hit by a car. You walk in, and it’s your dream dog, this beautiful dog with big eyes that are calling out to you to help. This is your perfect dog. And the side you can see doesn’t look too bad, a few artificial abrasions, nothing that can’t heal.

And then you look at the other side of the dog: there are deep wounds, a broken leg, and extensive damage that you know you could repair, but it may take years of therapy and multiple surgeries to even hope for a better life, and the dog may need to be euthanized from the wounds somewhere along the way.

Burbear has the most beautiful right side. He is a beautiful, loving dog. He is gorgeous and pulls at everyone’s heart strings. But his other side is so irreparably damaged, so deeply wounded, you can’t fix it.”

But god was that right side breathtaking.

The night we euthanized him, she just kept repeating how beautiful that right side was. My heart aches to remember just how beautiful.

For every pet I’ve lost, I have written a story about their life, usually sent out by email or posted on my blog as a tribute to their existence. They all have frames with their clay paw prints and my favourite photos of them.

Burbear’s pawprint still hides in its box.
His ashes still sit in a cedar container.
His story has not been written.

Tomorrow I am meeting a chocolate sharpei mix that is looking for a new home. I had promised myself another dog was not in the cards for right now, after toying with the idea of adoption a few weeks ago. But how things change, how my heart breaks with compassion and how I seem to be hard wired to fill whatever void it is I have with sheltering animals. (I’ve realized I will be hard pressed to find a man who isn’t scared away by the number of pets I have. When asked, I just give vague descriptions. That’ll do thank you)

But I’ve also realized that my goals can be achieved how I want them with the pets I have. I can be as busy as I like and structure it around them. Summing up from Frankie, who sings Burbear’s song “Call Me Irresponsible”, I’ll do it my way.

With them.

Current Music: Chelsea Hotel No 2 - Leonard Cohen

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I’m not calling you a liar, just don’t lie to me

February 8th, 2010

I made no secret of my discontent and desire to leave Victoria in the last year I was there. But the inevitable has occurred, I’ve been away for long enough that my hardened feelings have softened and I fondly remember driving through the Mount Doug Parkway every day to get to work in 2006, even though at the time the drive was so redundant it hurt my brain. I sigh a little remembering the beauty and silence of living in Sooke, even though I was so lonely it felt like I wasn’t even alive. I blissfully relive the few camping experiences we had amongst the mountains, streams and tall trees, even though after three hours I was horribly bored. I recall with a slight smile the beach near my work that I used to take the dogs, Burbear romping off leash and running in to the waves, Sandy ripping around on her long line, but actually the exhaustion of caring for both of them with their increasing needs was weighing heavily on me.

Mentally, can we ever “win”?

I don’t know that I would ever be able to find a way to live in peace on the island, it is too controlled for my liking, dependent on ferries and weather and lack of earthquakes. But it’s the altering of memories that always gets me, the silver lining that is forced on to the clouded memories. I am interested for my first trip back to the island and the emotions it will call up and the questions of what our actual beliefs are under our memories? I know in my heart that there were great times, but there were also the most challenging emotional times of my life, and the most successful, but in the end, Victoria was a suffocating city for me. In Toronto I feel like a self sufficient being that is in tune with others, I don’t feel like I have my own orbit way out in another galaxy. Most intriguing of all, I feel closer to my friends who are now further away. Maybe the distance has made us realize what is not to be taken for granted and builds on to a stronger relationship. Or maybe we’re all just old enough now to know when a relationship is important and needs to be maintained, having enough experience in life to actually maintain it instead of letting it slip to the side.

I know that’s the only way I would have found out about Florence and the Machine, thanks to my far away friends who foster our connections. Sometimes the gift of music is the one I value the most, so through tainted or true memories, morphing relationships, and breathing, here I stand.

But really, I do miss going outside to get the mail in only a t-shirt in January, the smell of the ocean heavy in the air, and my favourite activity will always be buying freshly baked bagels and eating them while overlooking the water.

Current Music: Between Two Lungs - Florence and the Machine

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The video game Paperboy got nuthin’ on me

February 2nd, 2010

It was just one of those mornings.

Have you ever walked out the door only to encounter that dog in the neighbourhood that you’re constantly trying to avoid? The one where you always note when they are going out for walks so you can avoid being outside at those times? (I discovered the reason I never seem to avoid this dog in the morning is because the owner doesn’t actually take it for a walk, but rather, walks up and down the sidewalk DIRECTLY in front of the building. So probably for about 30 minutes or so, they are out front of the building, blocking the way down the street. Mystery solved.)

So you manage to get your dog by with, miraculously, little reaction and are impressed with your dog’s focus, but have to change your route because the reactive dog is blocking the way you usually go.

A few feet down the street you bump in to a persistent city worker who just doesn’t believe that your dog, with hackles raised and constant barking, really doesn’t like strangers. So you give in and ask him to give them a treat (every experience is a new training opportunity!) and for a moment your dog is actually calm….before launching in to a new round of barking.

Oh well.

Then two more steps down the street and there’s a group dog walker getting her dogs loaded in the car…off leash of course. It’s always the smallest of the pack who comes running across the street to challenge your reactive dog, who kind of just stands there….shocked.

Just keep going…

Only to meet up with a small child, swinging his stick around yelling, “HI DOGGY! HI DOGGY!!!” as your dog whips its head from side to side, so revved up from the last few obstacles. You go to cross the street, only to see a muzzled dog looking at you.

All of this, which could have been avoided, if that damn dog hadn’t been blocking your route.

This is why we usually go for walks at 6am instead of 9am.

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365 blinks of the eye

January 20th, 2010

Today as I was getting ready I heard the news that it was Obama’s one year anniversary of being sworn in to office. All of the anchors began to talk about where they were when they heard he won the election.

It got me thinking about a year ago for me. I don’t usually do reflective year ends, I don’t have time or really care to go through everything I went through in the past 365. I know what I lived, I’m okay with that.

But today something struck a chord.

One year ago I was finally starting to feel settled in my new place.
I was teaching myself how to make meals.
I was still mourning the failure of my relationship, but was finding my own feet.
I had just finished an amazing theatre project with good friends, leading to another even more amazing theatre project.
I had started singing lessons again and felt my soul be free.
I was slowly starting to plan my move across the country.
I made a decision to go out to Calgary the next month to visit friends.

And from my journal:

You don’t realize how depressed you are, how complacent you are, how resigned you are until you are back where you should be in life, your life is on track and things are new and wonderful and beautiful. And then, when you’re in that place, you look back to where you were not two months ago, or even a year ago, and seems like the most drab place, how did I survive, how did I function, dear God, that was not life.

This is life.

This is life indeed.

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Beautiful concrete

January 10th, 2010

Was it everything you hoped?
Was it all that and more?
Too much? Too soon? Or too good to be true?

Was it everything you hoped for?

Today as I was driving back from a very successful training session with Sandy, the barren scenery we passed, dead from weeks of road salt with patches of snow peeking out, reminded me of a dream.

I don’t think I could have ever imagined how full I could be living here.

As the sun set between the trees, at one point tricking me in to thinking there were police lights behind me, I couldn’t imagine a way that I could be any happier. Earlier in the day I had “just popped in” to visit my cousin, which still blows my mind, then Sandy’s trainer told me what amazing progress she has made, wishing that every client made this much progress, and then I witnessed a little bit of nature on my way back to my concrete jungle.

We all have our problems, we all have our concerns, but the fullness I feel from my life here is incomprehensible to me.

I know it may seem cheesy to write a blog post about happiness, but too often in life we can’t seem to accept our own happiness and have to cause concerns and problems to fill up our time. I for one am constantly doing that, causing my own problems on a regular basis. But for once in my life, I feel in control of my career, my destiny, my surroundings, and in turn, my happiness.

It is in my hands and I posses it.

* * *
Friday I sat in a walk in clinic that a week before had only taken me an hour to breeze through, while this visit I was still waiting two hours later, and there were by far less people than the week before. What in the world, I wondered….

I was even more anxious as I was awaiting test results and I just desperately wanted to hear the words, “They didn’t find anything.”

Instead I heard the words, “They aren’t really sure what they found”, and a referral to a surgeon to see what he can deduce.

And while everyone was posting colours in their facebook statuses, I sat with my leg bobbing and jumping nervously in a waiting room, hoping that the lump I had found in my breast was nothing (let me tell you about the worst timing for an internet meme ;o) ). The doctor who did the ultrasound saw no malignancy indicators, but the imaging was not totally successful and he recommended a recheck in a month’s time. The loving, caring GP I saw at the walk in (who took at least 30 minutes per patient he was so thorough) suggested I just skip to the next step, seeing a surgeon, instead of waiting a month and possibly having to see a surgeon then.

So I took a gulp and got a copy of my ultrasound report and have an appointment in two weeks time to see what the surgeon says. The next step may be a mammogram, it may be a biopsy, but it is just the next step and I’ll take it as it comes.

For now I am just grateful that from walk in appointment to ultrasound to surgeon appointment took just under a month’s time.

How lucky life can be.

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December 19th, 2009

After Amber died, I withdrew, tried to change everything. Hoping I’d sort it out, find some deeper truth. It was a mistake. I should’ve gone back to normal – to here and now, because that’s all we can ever really count on. Things need to go back to normal in your life.

- Dr James Wilson, “House”

I have been grieving for a few weeks now. Time seems too fluid to remember exactly how long.

On a Sunday afternoon, after spending an hour and a half talking with a trainer that I thoroughly trust, I made the heart wrenching decision to euthanize my Burbear. My little boy.

I called everyone I could think of in my phone book to sob on their shoulder.
It took me 45 minutes to find my way back to the highway that should’ve taken me 15 minutes.
I was hysterical for the next few days.
I took an extra day off work to cope with the emotion.

On a Tuesday evening, with my mother and Burbear’s trainer by my side, I held my dear Burbear as he slowly collapsed to the ground.

I made the choice to end my dog’s life, and it was not an easy one.

If you knew Burbear, you knew a kissy, lovey, big headed, snuggle pants who always wanted to be by your side. What you didn’t know was the anxiety ridden, fearful, reactive dog that I was constantly training, constantly working with, constantly hoping would improve.

This entry isn’t going to be about the reasons why I chose what I did. Living with dogs with extensive behaviour problems is a personal journey, an exhausting one, and I couldn’t make the journey any longer. If you want more of an explanation, I’ll give you my trainer’s phone number, she can explain it without the sobs. This entry is about life afterwards.

I found a great deal of inner strength and peace after the hysteria tapered off. Tuesday evening I was calm and focused, probably in shock, but prepared to give Burbear the calm, focused energy as he left us. After it was finished, I walked out to the car to get Sandy and show her that Burbear wasn’t with us any longer. I remember walking to the car, my shoulders felt like they were up around my ears. The tension held my body up like puppet strings. At one point I stopped, afraid I was going to vomit.

Sandy sniffed around the room and didn’t much care for any of what was going on. She really just wanted to go home okay thanks.

So it was done.

I was a zombie for a few days. I worry that I don’t cope well with death because I haven’t experienced much of it and I’m terrified of it to boot. I can’t even begin to comprehend the concept, so I sometimes wonder if I don’t accept what really has happened. Then I’m reminded by the wonderful people in my life that grief is a personal journey and there is no one magic path, no “right way”, just your way – whatever way that is.

The other night my friend Vanessa & I picked up his ashes and pawprint. As I went to open the urn to see his ashes, we realized the wooden box was screwed shut and we both started laughing hysterically that you have to get out your toolbox just to view your pet’s ashes.

One of those moments.

So tonight I took out my screwdriver and opened Burbear’s ashes. There is a deep wood smell to the box. A long combination of letters and numbers written in sharpie on the inside of the base – Burbear’s number. And as I took out the bag of his ashes, they weren’t what I was expecting. I have had a number of animals cremated, all by the same company in Victoria, and they weren’t like what I was used to. I held the bag and thought to myself, “This isn’t right! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be! They look like a bag of flour, it’s too fine, it’s not ash-like enough!” I began to cry at the injustice of it all: even his ashes weren’t right. I couldn’t fix his life and now I can’t fix his ashes.

It’s the unexpected that can push you over the edge. The things you could never even fathom. I would’ve never thought that the state of his ashes were what upset me the most in the weeks to follow his death.

Next year I plan to save up to return to the island to sprinkle some of those ashes at the beach, near the reserve where he was born and abandoned, where we first started our journey is where we will end it.

I did the best I could with Burbear. I gave him as much as I could of myself, I kept him safe for as long as I could, but I couldn’t change the world, nor his view of it. I couldn’t control his fears. In the end I gave him peace the only way I knew how.

He deserved more than this world ever could’ve given him.
Rest in Peace my brave boy.
Be free from all of your fears.

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The Sound of Silence

November 28th, 2009

Things around here are going as they may, and having no internet at my new apartment means I lost track of posting. I did, however, manage to find a wordpress app for blackberry this weekend, so that may change.

Speaking of change…

The furry fam and I have gone through many ups and downs in the past few weeks. Burbear was having a hard time with life and I was at the end of my rope with him. Having a dog with impulse control aggression coupled with separation anxiety is absolutely exhausting, and similar to having a special needs child. I cannot leave him home alone while I work due to the possibility of him having a freak out and barking for hours upon hours, but I cannot hire someone to “just take him out” due to him wanting to eat other dogs. I hit rock bottom with it all and in a desperate attempt at normalcy made the decision to up his medication.

Hindsight being 20/20, it was a decision made out of desperation and in the week following I saw what kind of dog I could REALLY have. It made current Burbear look pretty awesome, and I take back some of the nasty things I may have said! The medication is back to its normal dosage and we are working with a trainer, one who has had an impulse control dog in her past, so we are on the same page and I am doing my best with what I have.

That aside, I am still trying to find my city legs. Everything is still foreign and I am mostly just shuttling back & forth to work and getting my apartment in shape. One box at a time….

My one box at a time philosophy made me realize one of the reasons I don’t finish tasks: once the task is done, what now then?

After I came down from the excitement of finding a job & an apartment, I felt this incredible void. It made me think a lot about how I approach life, is it one goal after another after another, or am I taking the time to appreciate the accomplishment? Instead of facing that reality, I just don’t finish it, that way I don’t have to worry about what comes next. Ironically this all came together after I finished season 5 of House on my laptop and didn’t have any new TV shows to watch and I panicked. That’s when I realized I never wanted things to end so I wouldn’t have to start something new.

I also inquired about a very sweet cat with a Toronto Rescue Agency, one that fit the bill in all respects: special needs, laid back, good with cats & dogs. But alas, he was being adopted. I just felt a kinship to him I guess.

I am gearing up my Christmas music, so excited to bust that out, and found some new albums to add to the mix this year. One of my current favs is A Christmas Duel with Cyndi Lauper & The Hives, which is in the vein of my all time fav Christmas Song Fairy Tale of New York.

I married you last year
Bet you thought I was sober, right?
But I was drunk as a skunk and I made a mistake
This could all have been over

Ah honey please don’t excuse your behaviour
Cause I hired a hitman and changed your will

It’s now all in my favour

So whatever you say, it’s all fine by me
Who the f@#k anyway wants a Christmas tree
Cause the snow keeps on fallin
Even though we were bad
It’ll cover the filth, we should both just be glad

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What is important? What’s really important?

October 28th, 2009

I haven’t finished a thing since I started my life
I don’t feel much like starting now.

So you know when you ask the world for something, and it takes its sweet, sweet time delivering it, for reasons that only it knows? And then when you DO get what you wanted, you get it all at once and it’s so painfully overwhelming that you want to curl up in a ball and cry all day, whereas before you wanted to curl up in a ball and cry all day because you had nothing? Yeah. Love that about life.

Walking out lonely has worked like a charm
I’m the only one I have to let down.

But watching you makes me think that that is wrong.

I can go on with my insecure nature
I can keep living off sympathy.
I can tell all the people that all of the success
Is a direct reflection on me.

But watching you makes me think that that is wrong.

I have never feared failure, because there is always something to be learned. I have learned incredible life lessons from both of my “failed” relationships, from “failing” at friendships, “failing” at auditions, “failing” at deadlines, “failing” at social situations, the list goes on. All of those situations have opened doors to new adventures or important changes. But what I truly fear is the awful word “success”.

What is important? What’s really important?
Am I not to know by my name?
Will I ever know silence without mental violence?
Will the ringing at night go away?

Once you achieve, once you create something beautiful, something meaningful, once you touch people and affect people, once you are at this level, you have to maintain it. That strikes fear deeper in my heart than any failure you can name. Once you reach a level of having “expectations”…..I don’t even have words.

I moved here to create, to live, to make connections with the people I love and the people I have yet to meet who I will love too. I moved here to “succeed”. But most days I’m too afraid to do it.

It’s up to you.

Current Music: Incomplete and Insecure - The Avett Brothers

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It’s such a waste of time

October 18th, 2009

Hard to update much when everything you do is self focused. I’m either working on my play or looking for a job or looking for something, ANYTHING to do.

Ahh Brooklyn, Brooklyn take me in
Are you aware the shape I’m in?
My hands they shake, my head it spins
Ahh Brooklyn, Brooklyn take me in

This past week was quiet – no major trips in to the city, no plans with friends, just laying low. I like to think it’s gearing up for some kind of insanity that sits in my near future. This feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff, just waiting to be pushed off, the free falling that is soon to occur, but you have to sit and twiddle your damn thumbs until it does.

Load the car and write the note
Grab your bag and grab your coat
Tell the ones that need to know
We are headed north.

Yes this is a blog post to say I have nothing to say. It is more self reflection and obsession. Yesterday I talked about all the opportunities I had to come back to Ontario earlier than this past fall. But hindsight being what it is, I can see how wrong it would’ve been.

One foot in and one foot back
But it don’t pay to live like that
So I cut the ties and I jumped the track
For never to return

When Jon & I talked about breaking up (about 5 months before we actually did), I remember telling him that I would go back to Ontario and that would be it. So when we did break up I started packing suitcases, prepared to be moving to Ontario shortly after. It was a fear reaction, having no place to go, no one to lean on, no idea how my life could possibly go on.

When at first I learned to speak
I used all my words to fight
With him and her and you and me
Ahh, but it’s just a waste of time
Yeah it’s such a waste of time

Yet those times of my life are the ones I will remember most vividly. Sitting in my “new home”, having no idea how I would make it mine, how I would make life mine. Those are the memories and emotions that fuel me now. Being the helpless female, having lost my way from my man, who was supposed to shield me from all the awful things life would throw at me. Who was supposed to support me and hold me up and keep me going.

Three words that became hard to say:
I and Love and You.
What you were then I am today,
Look at the things I do

Now I am a complete. I don’t need a second half to be. It’s been a long journey, a worthwhile one.

Current Music: I And Love And You - The Avett Brothers

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Where do we go from here?

October 7th, 2009

This Friday will mark 3 weeks since I set foot back in Ontario to start a new life from the ground up. It has been a surreal journey as time feels like it has just paused. I receive bills in the mail and I think, “Oh, really? Already?” Every morning I wake up seems much like the day before, as I sit there experiencing what it feels like to have one’s head on sideways.

I have said many times that I believe in risks, that I never shy away from something just because I’m afraid. I live in a perpetual state of fear of the unknown, if I actually let it paralyze me I would never move forward. Instead I embrace my fear and try to use it as a motivating tool. But here I sit at a point in my life where I have stalled. I am unsure of how to move forward and with so many large choices, I am paralyzed by indecision and emotions.

To make a mountain of your life is just a choice
But I never learned enough to listen to the voice that told me
Always love, hate will get you every time.
Always love, don’t wait till the finish line.

I think I have finally pinpointed a few key matters that I’m addressing and trying to move forward, baby steps, as a friend tells me. I’ve been trying to see more people who inspire me, keep my days fuller while looking for jobs and visualizing where things should go from here, along with keeping the “lines of discussion” open with the universe.

I’ve been held back by something
You said to me quietly on the stairs

I am preparing for an epic reunion with my good friend Andy Cole, and have been going through old photos, music and all things Andy. He inspired me to do many things, his music and the music he introduced me to have gotten me through many hard times, and the memory of my last night in town with him has not only lasted 8 years, but will last me (and inspire me through) many more.

Self-directed lives
I want to know what it’d be like to
Aim so high above
Any card that you get dealt you

Every day there are amazing reminders of why I made this choice, why it will eventually serve me and the world around me. But I will honestly confess that I didn’t see what a slow, painful process it is to get there. Being an adult sucks, it’s scary and overwhelming, while at the same time I can say I have never been prouder and more content with such a difficult choice.

Plus, everyone keeps telling me that it’s at the last minute, when you’re desperate, that everything manages to come together.

Ahem.
Waiting.

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