It's hard not being maudlin sometimes. Maybe it's the environment; when the only thing that guides your day-to-day life is your own willpower, it can be a rough, winding road.
Take tonight for instance. Tonight was a great night for work...until I heard the silence creep in. Sitting there, slowly making itself felt, it just found me. So of course it asks the usual questions:
"Are you happy doing this? Do you know how many people you alienate from your life? What is it that you want that you can't get while you're around others? Don't you wonder if you've been left alone for too long and just don't understand life and/or people?"
I had a friend a while back who told me, essentially, that I was so busy trying to write about people and understand them that I hadn't been able to see how far out of touch I was WITH life. It was something I didn't have a retort for; I still don't, to be honest.
I just...I wonder. I guess all of us do, sometimes. I wonder if I'm just too far away in myself to ever reach out to anyone. Or maybe, and this is another distinct possibility...I've just lived in the same place for too long.
I'll tell you why.
I've lived here...in Toronto...for almost my entire life. The amount of time I've spent away from this city would be about...I'd say 3 years, tops. 3. Out of 31.
There's not a single place that doesn't have a memory associated with it. Everything is old; everything has the scent of the past. It doesn't matter if it's a new building...it just means it's taken over an older space. I can trace every single memory around here. It's...almost sad. It is sad. The past weighs on me here, too heavily.
It's hard to break those ties. Hard to break those associations. Even harder though, is saying goodbye to good friends.
My friend Paul took off for Japan 4 years ago. My friend Karen took to BC. It wasn't goodbye, so much as, "see you later".
Maybe it's time for me to do the same thing...the question is, where do I want to start..?
Take tonight for instance. Tonight was a great night for work...until I heard the silence creep in. Sitting there, slowly making itself felt, it just found me. So of course it asks the usual questions:
"Are you happy doing this? Do you know how many people you alienate from your life? What is it that you want that you can't get while you're around others? Don't you wonder if you've been left alone for too long and just don't understand life and/or people?"
I had a friend a while back who told me, essentially, that I was so busy trying to write about people and understand them that I hadn't been able to see how far out of touch I was WITH life. It was something I didn't have a retort for; I still don't, to be honest.
I just...I wonder. I guess all of us do, sometimes. I wonder if I'm just too far away in myself to ever reach out to anyone. Or maybe, and this is another distinct possibility...I've just lived in the same place for too long.
I'll tell you why.
I've lived here...in Toronto...for almost my entire life. The amount of time I've spent away from this city would be about...I'd say 3 years, tops. 3. Out of 31.
There's not a single place that doesn't have a memory associated with it. Everything is old; everything has the scent of the past. It doesn't matter if it's a new building...it just means it's taken over an older space. I can trace every single memory around here. It's...almost sad. It is sad. The past weighs on me here, too heavily.
It's hard to break those ties. Hard to break those associations. Even harder though, is saying goodbye to good friends.
My friend Paul took off for Japan 4 years ago. My friend Karen took to BC. It wasn't goodbye, so much as, "see you later".
Maybe it's time for me to do the same thing...the question is, where do I want to start..?
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I know how inertia can be. It ties you down, and you get comfortable with what you know. I see it in a lot of people who seem miserable about their situation, but unlike you, haven't quite realized that a solution was available: getting up and trying somewhere new.
I was thinking about it, and I realize that in the last 15 years, I've only spent about 3 in Toronto. I was either in Waterloo, or somewhere out here in California. I've moved 9 times in the last 10 years, now that I think about it. Needless to say, settling down hasn't been a big part of my lifestyle.
Questions to ask: Are you comfortable enough with yourself to be alone for the first little while? It does take time to make friends, after all. To find new hangouts. To hit a groove with work and personal life. How do you handle change? If it sends you into a depressive bout, moving might not work out for you. I'm pretty adaptable, but even for me, moving to SF (which is very Toronto-like in its own way -- much more so than, say, Texas) had culture shock issues. But I moved passed them.
Of course, there's also all the small details of moving cross-country, or to another country. What do you do with all your shit? Is it legal to stay there? How much will it cost? How will I pay for stuff? Etc. Who knows... maybe the exercise of figuring it out will give you an answer: try something new, or find something new in Toronto.