HerKind.com

Is it possible to suffer a broken heart because of a failed relationship with the city of your dreams?

Moving back to Toronto from Vancouver was like saying goodbye to a lover I didn't want to leave, but with whom I knew there'd only ever be heartache. Hard as I tried for five years to make it my home it simply never felt like it. It’s now one full year post break-up and I’m still not sure if it was me rejecting the beautiful city or it jilting me. All I know is I’ve spent my first extraordinarily long winter filled with a kind of longing usually reserved for the all too perfect man that somehow got away.

I know, I know, it was a bad West Coast winter. But that did not stop me from idealizing it. That’s just the nature of love.

This whole year has been a re-learning of sorts, how to live in the old city after enough years away to change it and myself, how to appreciate the vibrancy of here without the beauty of there. Most of all, how to just be where I am without wanting to go back to the place that, when all is said and done, I very deliberately chose to leave behind.

* * *

“I miss the mountains,” I lamented to a Toronto friend, a simple statement that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of my yearning but which is something I thought was universally understandable. Her far too practical answer was, “you live here now.” She’s right, me and the mountains broke up and I had to moved away from them. If you haven't lived in a place that doesn't get ridiculously cold and, worse, barren for 6 months of the year, then it's hard to understand what you're missing, or even that there are livable, viable places in the world to conduct your life (that aren't resorts, I mean). Lots of people I know in Toronto haven’t, so they just don’t get my desperation to see a green leaf or even a tiny bud sometime before May!

Sweet, well-meaning people tell me that it's been a decent winter in good ol’ T.O., not too many cold snaps or snow, but that's entirely beside the point for me. In October when the leaves started changing colour (admittedly pretty), and then falling off (oh dear!), I knew I was in for a long lush-less period of browning grass and cold, dark concrete, dirty, slushy snow that hangs around for eons. But I never would have anticipated the impact of it on my psyche - I guess I thought, well I was born here and survived 39 winters in a kind of desolation I never named, because I didn't know any damn different! So, what's the problem?

Well, I only learned to appreciate nature by waking up to its unrelenting beauty every day. Imagine my surprise to find out it really does change your whole perspective! Being smitten with Vancouver meant I became a convert to all its interests and concerns, the weather being its number one virtue.

Lovely D, my friend in Vancouver, said the other day, "well, it's raining here." Another helpful friend commented, "We have our own weather issues, it's cloudy.” Again, not the point. The rain actually makes me feel better. In Toronto it signifies spring and prepares the soil for blooms. But, my umbrella has been sitting under my desk at work for months now, and I would kill to be able to use it over dragging on coat, scarf, hat and boots for the 5th month in a row!!!

My dear West Coast friends, you probably don't know this but RAIN and cloudiness is far better. You see, it means things are perpetually green, spring comes early and it never gets all that cold. And oh, the cherry blossoms! It could be hard to underestimate, perhaps even take for granted, the affect of all that on your life. Here I was thinking I hadn't fallen into that trap. I was dead wrong.

I guess it’s all relative after all. A fact that by its very statement does nothing to alleviate my frustration, and it has to be said, sadness.

* * *

Vancouverites have a occasional habit of comparing themselves to Toronto and Montreal, feeling they always come up a bit short (of course, they deny this, but it is so true, though not at all true that they are lacking anything at all and in fact have the added value of heart soaring beauty at their fingertips) It seems like a pointless effort, since they are really apples and oranges. And here's why:

Each region of Canada has a way (and means actually) of life that is based purely on geography and climate. A road trip across the country is the best way to understand this. The things that concern us here in the so-called centre of the universe don't even register on the radar of rural Albertans, prairie folk, Islanders or west coast dwellers. This is the main reason why both sides of the country feel alienated, to one degree or another, by a centrist government and media. Who can blame 'em?

There are some differences that are so subtle it's easy to dismiss them - except that at the moment they are glaringly obvious to me. This morning, for instance, seeing the temperature was finally a balmy 1 degree above zero, I pulled out a top I haven't worn in ages, but that was a staple in my wardrobe in Vancouver - in any season. It’s not anything I have to explain to a Vancouverite but back a hundred years ago when the first frost came, I had to actually purchase winter clothes.

The thing about winter clothing is by the time you’re finished wearing it, you sure are ready to toss ‘em!

Folks in Vancouver have impeccable shoes, hair and very clean cars. Nothing is weather-beaten. It's one of the first things I noticed, with pleasure. Here at home, cars aren’t just a little dirty, they’re so covered in grit it’s hard to know what colour they are. I have perma-salt stains on my jeans and dress pants, not to mention my shoes are a mess. Plus… I’m usually in open toes by now!

But that’s only one portion of the heartbreak.

By the time I left Toronto 6 years ago, I had grown to hate winter and that fact was a big influence on the decision to live in a part of our country that pretty much skips that season.

I guess I forgot that part when I was contemplating a break up! Isn't that so typical? You never know what you have until you lose it,

The other week, I spent a day at Canada Blooms, a gardening trade exhibit. We were shooting stories for the TV show I work on and it sure felt strange to have to go inside at this time of year to see trees, waterfalls, streaming rivulets and flowers. It was so out of context for me that some of the displays looked downright funereal. At first struck by the crowd in the middle of the day, I soon realized I was one of them, desperate to see green, growing things; willing to drop any amount on whatever it takes to make my 2x4 Toronto garden look lush for as long as possible (AND I DON'T EVEN HAVE ONE).

Many Torontonians brag that their city has more “green space” than any other Canadian city. Really? It’s hard to burst their bubble by mentioning that a parkette that is dead six months of the year is hardly the same as year round green, flowers in bloom in February, and ocean and mountains a stone’s throw away.

Time heals everything, so they say.

Here's the crux of it: I never want to be a person who feels desperate for anything, least of all for want of a pretty flowering tree to gaze upon.

But there's also a deeper psychological issue at play here. I was brought up in a household full of extremes where I perfected the art of crisis management in order to feel any semblance of normal. To step out of the spiral I figured out that the extremes in weather too closely mirrored my early life. I had to find moderation in all things - the ubiquitous balance to which everyone in Toronto gives lip service, while postponing for months anything other than work. As crazy as it sounds, that included weather, maybe even started with it. I thought I had succeeded, so this winter (and the horrific heat and humidity of this past summer) have been as much a test of endurance, as a barometer of personal growth.

I'm serious!

The truth is, as beautiful as Vancouver was and is, I could never quite find a way to make it work. Otherwise, I would never have left. It was truly the biggest bout of unrequited love I've ever experienced. Geesh, you'd think I'd be happy it's over!

Spring has really never been more welcome, and having said that I will try to rest my fruitless and exhausting comparisons and just find a way to make peace with my decision to live here. Even though, for the life of me I can't find a sprout in the entire city of Toronto!

Still, part of me lives in hope that maybe one day me and Vancouver can get back together. It`s only a beautiful dream.

May 2007

Henry Porter, the debonair British editor of Vanity Fair, was a guest on the talk show I work on and while the lot of us were out for drinks after the taping he said something simple, yet so profound that all who heard it have found cause to repeat it at one time or another. He said that he was in conversation with his single male friend one night when his friend made a confession of sorts. The friend said that he envied Henry his marriage because, he said, when you live alone and are unattached, you have no witness to your life, and no-one’s life to witness. And it can be quite lonely and a little frightening.

True.

I call it the “check in.”

Something else: While reading a book called Solitaire, in which writer Marion Botsford Fraser takes the temperature of Canadian single woman, of which there is currently an unprecedented 4 million of us, one thing became painfully, depressingly, clear to me. People will say anything in order to avoid saying they are lonely. Out of 50 excerpted interviews, only about four women were able to even utter the word. These four women were over 50. If you’re young and single you may not use the lonely-word (those damn L-words are a big problem, aren’t they?). It seems to be socially unacceptable.

But the truth is we all do get lonely. Every single living being. Even cats and dogs get lonely.

We are not meant to live in isolation from one another. It is the most natural thing in the world to be among people, and to fall into couples. To touch and be touched. To have a witness and to bear witness.

What is unnatural is this denial and bravado we are all striving so hard to pull off. Like we’re fooling anyone anyway! Lest we should be considered crazy women with a small apartment, dinner for one, the cat batting about the ball of yarn we are using to knit doilies, or worse, booties for someone else’s baby. Lest we be perceived as drying up from lack of sexual activity. Lest we be considered social outcast loser women who sit at home every night crying into the hot water of our bubble baths. But, God forbid and heaven’s above, don’t, ever, ever, ever let anyone catch us being human, and being (don’t dare say it… okay, but only if you whisper) l-o-n-e-l-y.

I used to be one of these women who feared a word. Not anymore. Maybe because of this book, and all the transparent denial within it. I do get lonely. Sometimes capital L lonely. Used to be my lonely feelings were attached to a specific person. So, if I spent a great deal of time with someone and then we were separated, I’d feel lonely for them. Like a best girlfriend who went away, or a boyfriend after a break-up.

That was before my mom died.

As long as she was alive, I really never felt free floating loneliness because I knew I always had someone within reach. A witness to my daily thoughts, triumphs, sadnesses, boredom. laughter, tears, what’s for dinner. Someone to check in with. Someone to tell stuff, any kind of stuff to. Someone who thinks what is on my mind at any given time is important and interesting. And someone I can reciprocate this all to. Someone to whom I can give everything that is in my heart and on my mind. Knowing that they are willing, because of trust and friendship and love, to share their personal self and all their intimacies. I guess I’m past the point of pretending, for whatever reasons I used to, that this is not what I want, what I need. I am willing to be strong enough to be vulnerable enough to be human.

Free floating loneliness is troublesome though. It pokes its head in at times I don’t want to feel lonely. Like when I’m on a deadline for a story and I can’t shake the feeling of wishing someone was sitting over there waiting for me to finish so we could cuddle and play, or go for a long walk and talk. Free floating loneliness causes me to sometimes think that anyone cute can fill the lonely spot but free floating loneliness also has specific needs and desires. Free floating loneliness would like a brain, and a kind heart to go with cuteness. Free floating loneliness causes me to bug people to spend time with me when they are probably working hard at their job and their life, and free floating loneliness sometimes doesn’t take no for an answer. That can be annoying. Free floating loneliness these days is having a hard time being in a room full of couples who are touching each other, ‘cause free floating loneliness wants to be touched as well. And how can you ever pretend that you don’t want that?

None of this should ever be confused with “alone” which is a completely different animal and is usually never alleviated until some personal reconciliation happens. Welcome to mine.

November 2001