Dear Daring Readers,
What does 2021 mean to you? To me it is a year that marks a decade of living abroad, and brings back the dreams and aspirations I have left behind since. September was heavy with memories of a very different time for me, a time a very different version of me lived in, that I cannot even imagine emulating now. I remember it well, though.
I do. Grit guided me and made me get up when I first moved to Vancouver, a shot of pure awe first thing in the morning, just to remind me that I had made it there. I felt like an imposter the entire time I was there, barely good enough to stay afloat, and incredibly inexperienced on all fronts, yet willing to experience the discomfort of trying something new every single day.
I had a lot of that coming my way as a graduate student, but my love for Vancouver sustained me well enough most days, and amply made up for my feelings of inferiority and shame. People did not understand what I meant when I said that I moved there for love; they always thought it was a person I loved, not the very place where I then lived. No matter how dire things got, I walked it all off. Walked for hours without water or snacks, going way past my limit, and often got lost, as a coping mechanism to keep my determination and awe alive.
Small things have always engendered a desire to live and experience things, and I like to think that Vancouver was so full of small treasures to offer, that I just couldn’t help but stumble on them often, and take notice.
In the pictures below you can see a place in West Vancouver I visited on a glorious day at the beginning of September in 2012, after a year living in Canada. I went to Whytecliff Park with a few people I lived with. I had never been in the area before, and did not know what to expect. At a certain point the urge to swim took over, and we gave into it, and decided to jump into the water fully dressed. I remember thinking that courses and responsibilities were about to hit me like a heavy wall of stress, it was only a matter of hours, but I felt light, unencumbered and free. When I jumped I loved the “elevator feeling” in my gut, and thought about how alive I felt. That day is perfect to romanticize the past, isn’t it?
I know I haven’t felt that spark of enthusiasm and liberating spontaneity often, not that intensely. I have, indeed, come a long way since then, and would not love to go back to that version of me, yet the lack of sparks remains on my mind, and brings that day back to the forefront. It’s like a bookmark I can never quite remove completely, because I haven’t read the story enough times. So I travel back to the moment I jumped, and think about the times I felt that kind of life force in me.
A couple years after those pictures were taken my intense love for “Van” had transformed into something less benign, and I decided to leave. At the time Vancouver was my one and only true love, yes, not exaggerating here. I left it to do something I wanted to do before I ever set foot in Canada: live in South America for a year. I chose Uruguay and moved there. It still felt somewhat pointless. The problem was that I couldn’t quite explain why I had moved to Montevideo.
While those pictures I often revisit depict me before my Canadian dream dissipated, I do remember the heartbreak just as well, and, oh, it was painful. I got depressed before I even graduated, and totally unraveled a few months after that joyful swim. I hit rock bottom, somehow got myself out of a very dark place, and had to give up on the only life I could imagine having: one living in Canada and working for an NGO. I understood I needed to move on, and did, without realizing it wasn’t my fault things hadn’t gone as planned. Millions of people were going through graduating and finding nothing on the other side, and at the time many blamed themselves (I hope you have stopped doing that, if you ever did). Individualism got in the way of seeing that a whole lot was wrong and couldn’t be rectified by creating more detailed lists of expectations to meet to get a decent job.
You have just got to find a way to stay afloat and change plans without rehearsals. The systems that govern your world are not just, and most of them do not work to your advantage.
I resigned myself to leaving a city I loved to people who could afford it, who had jobs I could never qualify for, and moved to a green and bustling neighborhood in Montevideo. Yet I did not know why. I kept walking and eventually found out why.
On a sunny day, in March probably, at the end of the summer in the Southern Hemisphere, I was listening to a poem by Shane Koyczan (this one), and had an epiphany. He said, “Risk is your endorsement of hope,” and I went, “YES!” That was my answer. I was in Montevideo to officially endorse hope! And the endorsement paid off. My time there was incredibly healing, thought-provoking, transformative, and, yes, FUN. The kind of fun you have when you jump from a cliff with nothing on your mind, and really don’t care that you are doing so fully dressed…
Why am writing about this? Because I miss it. The pandemic has taken all the energy out of me. Last week I found the word to describe what I feel: defeat. I feel defeated. I need to remind myself this is not a permanent state, and that in the past I did endorse hope, and found good company, laughter and drive.
I am still looking for ways to feel truly seen and empowered as the person I am, now that I have that decade of exploration on my side; in the meantime, I write about the times I felt that urge to just playfully exist as an unapologetic human being.
For years I thought I was going nowhere with my life. In 2021, I would like to say that my quest to endorse hope is going nowhere. Some days I feel like there is none left, so I can’t endorse an empty box, others make me feel like there could be some hidden somewhere. I’ll find it.
Dreaming of queer and trans liberation,
Dare to be b@ld
Poetry time!
I wrote this after I saw Shane Koyczan perform in Dublin a few years ago (it feels like a couple of lifetimes ago) and I cried so much that I couldn’t even say “Hi” to him without crying. He unlocked my tear ducts! 🙂
Going somewhere
Cry, cry for the times you haven’t, says Shane.
That’s not what he is saying. That’s what I hear.
Tears on stage allow tears offstage and,
oh, they are falling hard.
Shane, you bring a piece of Canada here. And I cry.
I cry for the mountain of expectations that was created there.
A life I never got to live evaporated.
I cry because I fell off that cliff.
I created the valleys for the depression I fell into.
I cry because I am only now recovering,
shelving dreams so small I can’t fall off them.
I cry because the fall hurts out of habit.
I cry, missing the feeling of going somewhere
with the certainty of going somewhere.
I cry, knowing that I have always been going somewhere
and just couldn’t see it.
I miss Canada, and simple truth does bring tears.
I cry. There is a climate emergency and I want to fly.
I cry. Someone I love is outside of fortress Europe,
overworked and tired, while holding the wrong passport.
I cry. Cuddling with that person made life tolerable
after two years of unbearable pain in a wet cave.
I cry. A job sends me home talked out and craving silence,
making words heavy with frustration as if I took something away from them.
Cry, says Shane, to show up as human
with emotions jumping out of you.
We are surrounded:
humans with no courage to be human.
They rule the world and we hand them power
because they are as uncomfortable as we are
dealing with emotions.
We see our rancor and bitterness after falling off
personal cliffs of expectations
and vote for a dark reflection.
We vote for destruction.
If we do shed any tears we do it in anger.
Cry, says Shane, he doesn’t.
Feel, says Shane, feel!
Amen, I say.
His skillful uncovering of the human in me
caused tremors in the land of the wounded.
Now that I am healing it shakes tears out of me,
fireworks of tears to light up my sky.
You!
Cry to defend crying from defamation.
Cry to shield its reputation.
Cry to affirm we are not too numb.
Cry for all the times we were told not to
and sadly obliged.
Cry for all the times we asked someone to stop
for our own comfort.
Cry, because we need to unlock our tear ducts!!!
Cry to show how it is done.
Cry to celebrate watching a human who is fiercely human
in front of rows of humans who want openness, not hiding.
Cry! And then turn to the people around you.
Allow them to do the same.
Cry, bring your freedom of expression up a notch.
Let it come.
Cry.
Dare to be b@ld 