i listen to music and everything feels a little bit better. comforting melodies, life-affirming tunes. the sky is grey outside, but the air is warm. a welcome form of dissonance. my own life has felt dissonant lately, leaning into tendencies i should’ve really left behind by now. london was a place where i could practice new forms of faith, and i seem to have thrown all that away as soon as i returned to toronto. but i read the Bible for the first time in a while today, and there was a passage all about how God is always waiting for us to return to Him, to choose Him, to love Him. i was strengthened and made new, and i feel like i can make toronto a place of formation too – a place bursting with new life, with the fullness of it. i do not have to be the same person i once was, the lost kid growing up here, desperately grasping at the dark, just because i’m home. i can let the light pour in here too.
met up with bre on wednesday afternoon and we started by catching up at ruby soho for their happy hour, sitting at the best spot on their patio for people watching. i kept seeing cute guys walking by and saying they were my type: men with hockey flow and big mustaches, stocky builds, a little rough around the edges, somehow a different quality of attractive from the guys in london, maybe a little warmer, a little more inviting. or maybe i’m just projecting. i joked that maybe i should move back, maybe it would be easier to date – but i remember my love life before leaving and it wasn’t very promising, and i shouldn’t be so boy crazy anyway.
bre noticed one of her regular pilates clients passing by and stopped her to chat. she convinced us to move to earl’s for their happy hour with the promise of lychee margaritas, but we later learned they removed those from their happy hour menu. and after getting a little tipsy at these happy hours, we decided to walk over to ossington for old times’s sake.
first stop was get well, where i have many memories of getting sloshed and playing free arcade games. i also distinctly remember spending a night there years ago ordering triple rum and cokes and yelling at bre when she told the bartender to stop serving me. later, i rented harry potter to fall asleep to at her place, and the next morning i woke up and threw up in her sink. i clogged it and went into bre’s room and said, “hey bre, i think your sink is broken. i’m going to go now, bye,” before leaving her, still sleeping, to clean up the mess later. a fond memory.
we wanted to sit on the patio, but there were no free tables, so we ended up sitting with a man named braulio, who’d only moved to toronto (from brazil) three months ago. we got to talking about all sorts of things, including music, and he invited us to a concert he had a spare ticket to at the garrison that night.
always up for a little bit of adventure, we said yes, and so got swept up into the orbit of this random brazilian man. we had to source another ticket to the concert, which ended up being a bit of a hassle because they only took cash at the door, but we figured it out. the concert itself was interesting and fun; experimental music i typically wouldn’t listen to on my own, but that was part of the adventure. we made friends with the guitarist of the main act and told one of the openers (a harpist with a beautiful voice) that she looked great and did an amazing job.
things got a bit blurry at the concert, as they tend to do, and i’m not sure how we said goodbye to braulio (who was so friendly and fun), but bre and i ended up getting late night chinese food, and then i made the misguided decision to go to woody’s by myself. it wasn’t very busy, and i mostly remember sitting broodingly in a corner watching the drag show until i figured i should take the initiative to have fun and made friends with bunch of guys including an ecuadorian man i made out with.
and the night went on and on and i made slapdash decisions against my better judgment, chasing some form of – what? validation? affirmation? the fickle high of being desired, releasing my body to the dark, encroaching night?
at around 5am, i finally headed home, grabbing a mcdonalds mcgriddle along the way, clinging onto some semblance of warmth and comfort. i got home and lay on the bed in a cloud of my own folly, spent and exhausted, excited for sleep.
the next day, i had lunch with joff at an indonesian spot at village by the grange.
it was nice to see him after the wreckage of the night.
later, i met up with renee at the comrade for their happy hour, and eventually (after stopping by renee’s place to walk the dog she’s currently dogsitting), conor met us at oldtown bodega, where we split a couple of bottles of wine. it was nice to catch up with the both of them, and it felt like really no time had passed at all. easy friendships are so wonderful that way.
after a couple of hours, we met up with a bunch of conor’s irish friends who were in town for a wedding at scotland yard pub. conor cicci was also there for his birthday and renee and i stayed after conor and most of his friends had left, to dance with all the birthday people. apparently it was a throwback night and they were playing 2010s bangers. we reminisced on the time when all that music was modern and current, when the pop girlies still regularly released optimistic and anthemic pop bangers.
got swept up again and ended up at drom taberna for the afters, where i bumped into an old friend from mcgill and made bad choices. at some point, renee collapsed into an uber home, and i went with conor cicci and a couple of his friends to a random man’s condo. we only stayed for a little bit because it was kind of dead and very late.
thankfully, the condo was close to my parents’ placed so i stumbled home and picked up a tim hortons medium double double and a sausage and egg breakfast sandwich along the way.
so that’s what this week has been. nights that go on for far too long, retreading all my worse paths, collecting more chaotic stories full of some things i want to keep but also many things i could very well do without. a familiar exercise in excess and abandon, refusing the call of moderation and self-control, always starting off breezy and whimsical but then taking it too far. parts of it are admittedly fun, but it feels like a relapse, the same old kind of adventure instead of committing to perhaps a better thing and seeing how life might open up in a new way – maybe more boring from an outside perspective, but more life-giving and, in the end, more fulfilling and aligned to who i’m meant to be.
it’s hard because i love all my friends, but i don’t love who i am when i get caught in riptides of my own making. i learned to live life a certain way here and now i need to relearn a different way, but i’m my own worst enemy.
perhaps i know i’m on the cusp on of some great change and am holding onto a sense of control and agency and indulging my rebellious streak. perhaps i’m trying to get something out of my system before surrendering everything to the life i know i want. perhaps i’m simply weak and prone to making these familiar mistakes in these familiar places.
or perhaps i simply needed to know for sure this is not the life i want for myself anymore.
recently, i wrote this:
the spark of a familiar conviction, the ache of something new. life in all its fullness, reaching, reaching out. looking inward at the three pillars of my own undoing, making vows to finally let them go. a nascent excitement, half trepidation; don’t want to get my hopes up, but here before me: the blessing of a new month, fresh start, another chance.
and all the while, a verse:
forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. see, i am doing a new thing! now it springs up; do you not perceive it? i am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
here, a promise, an encouragement, a hope. what great possibilities, expanding horizons, to find my way, to drink from the stream. to finally embrace that beautiful surrender. the age-old question: what would happen if i try something different?
i whisper prayers and cling to my maker, beseeching Him, “make me new.”
i’ve kind of fucked up september, but here i am again, and it’s never too late or too early for a second (or a third, a fourth, a millionth) chance. at some point, i really must decide what i put my trust in, my faith in. what will i commit to? more and more i’m realizing i cannot be lukewarm. there is little room for compromise.
here is a new thing. do i not perceive it?