Stop worrying. Start storying.
Your guide through transitions and endings.
Spring keeps forcing itself upon us. The first line of a poem I don’t write.
At 6 pm when I pick my wife up from the ferry I’m confused by daylight.
I feel like I’ve been woken up too early or interrupted while reading (two of my least favourite things).
November, December, January. Cold days and dark nights were for dates with a tall cute bearded man I’d met through a mutual friend.
The previous transition from summer to fall had been a difficult one.
I call those months Snake Season, a strange time of unknowable duration when I was being alchemized by loss.
I chose the cafe where I first met the cute tall bearded man for its sweet location.
I’d imagined us talking until it closed, then strolling along the seawalk to the pier, where, if all went well, he would kiss me.
I like him, immediately. Intelligent, articulate, encouraging and kind. Though I felt shy when I arrived, in twenty minutes I feel at ease.
The best sign: he asks questions, is curious. I don’t want to stop learning but I don’t want to stop talking.
As the barista picks up our empty cups and wipes down the table, cuing us to leave, my date asks if I’d like to go for a frosty walk. Yes.
We cross the highway, he points pier-ward. “Let’s go that way.”
When we reach the very end of the pier, we stop and look out past the Salish Sea at Vancouver Island.
Nanaimo’s lights shine steady in the distance. Buildings and landforms connect; their boundaries, indistinct against the night sky.
I don’t know why, but I touch my left ear. Discover the back of my gold snake earring is gone.
I pull out the curved upper body and think Snake season is over. Remove the right earring and shove snake parts into my left coat pocket.
”Tell me,” he asks. “What are you looking for. What do you want?”
How rarely are we asked what we want.
How rarely do we get what we ask for.
Kristina and I are at the Blackfish Pub drinking snakebites.
It’s the end of August, a few weeks since my romantic relationship with Jude ended.
”All I wanted was to go on a fucking date with my boyfriend.”
I have been too stunned, too sad to cry. Now that I’ve expressed this particular aspect of grief, hot tears.
”I know, Honey,” she takes my hand. “I know how much you wanted this.”
Jude lived 2000 km away in a small US town near the Rockies. They had booked a flight to visit me in Vancouver to celebrate our one year anniversary in mid-November.
Passing US Arrivals when I was at YVR, set to fly to Glasgow in July, my heart picked up its beat, anticipating the moment when I’d finally meet Jude. Touch their face. Kiss them.
One of the pleasures of planning their visit was the anticipation of what we’d get up to. After a year of Snapchat texts, photos, video calls, we’d have five whole days together.
In the backs of Ubers, on ferries, at restaurants, in hotels we would never stop touching each other. I would kiss them under the red lanterns of Victoria’s Fan Tan Alley.
November 19th—the day I meet the cute tall bearded man for coffee—was a date I’d been dreading for months.
The end of Jude’s time in Vancouver. The Tuesday they’d booked their return flight home.
To my surprise and delight, what I didn’t get to experience with Jude I get to have with the new man I’m seeing.
All we do is go on fun dates; each one stretches out for hours.
After a relationship where only digital intimacy was possible, this man wants to hold hands, make out and cuddle with me.
On the Davis Bay Pier, I answer his question. Tell him what I want and he opens his arms wide. Wraps them around me, tight, tighter than I’ve ever been held before.
I feel my entire nervous system relax. Squeeze him back. A pleasant drowsy tingle spreads through my whole body.
Everything is unfolding exactly as I imagined it.
I let go gently so I can look into his eyes. He says the words slowly, as though he is choosing each one with care.
”You look like you might be ready for me to kiss you.”
I can only nod. He feels safe; I feel turned on. Have dropped down too far into arousal to find words.
On the Winter Solstice, we have our first record pull date at Kristina’s cabin while she’s out of town.
The cute tall bearded man sits beside me on the edge of the bed. The curtains are closed; the light is dim, softening the edges.
I am prepared to share a small thing I love about every song on Sia’s Every Day Is Christmas album.
”I feel like she knows my soul,” I say. Then we fall back on the bed and I tuck myself in under his left arm. We turn toward each other, kiss.
God, I think, he is good at this. So sexy.
I thought Jude would be the first guy I’d sleep with after a two-decade break from men.
But that’s not on my mind when we move apart. I turn over, he wraps an arm around me from behind and I bring his hand to my breast.
”I never get to be the little spoon.” I nestle in against him, closer and closer.
We’d talked about physical compatibility on our second date. He likes it when a woman’s height, her bones, line up with his.
He is six inches taller than me; in bare feet or heels, we didn’t have to stretch to kiss.
That’s what I’m thinking about after we have sex for the first time.
Our bodies fit together easily. Perfectly.
The night I learn my first book is going to be published, it’s our mid-January pajama and record pull date.
I bring mini-tourtieres on a pie plate. Show up in pin-striped and tiny heart pj bottoms and a plum tank top, my hair tied up.
He is adorable—so cute—in his white fuzzy Totoro onesie. Builds a fire, later changes into a plaid nightshirt. I call this look Log Cabin Scrooge.
He apologizes for the mopey-ness of Transatlanticism, the record he’s chosen to play for me.
“No, it’s good. It’s cozy. Everything we do is cozy, right?”
Later, as we cuddle on the couch, I tell him I’ve decided not to tell my family about my book coming out in the fall.
We’ve already talked about how conflicted I feel about the stories in my book I definitely wouldn’t share over tea.
It’s one of the most challenging parts of being a creative nonfiction writer: wanting to bring our full selves to our stories, anticipating how others will respond.
“Don’t you want them to celebrate with you?”
I feel the low level buzz, drowsy tingles, as he caresses my back. Strokes my hair.
Think: I’ll be more articulate about this the next time he asks about my book.
It’s February 1st and I snap a selfie before I dash out the door to meet him for coffee and a forest walk.
I look tired; I rarely sleep through the night. Still, I feel happy—gorgeous, even—as I turn out waves with my hot iron, choose a just right lip gloss.
He is warm, then distant at the coffee shop; he smiles at me but avoids contact.
When the trail narrows to single file we unclasp our hands. I turn to hug him, and he is barely there. Doesn’t kiss me.
At my car he tells me he isn’t sure how he feels. When he asks if we can play it by ear, give it a few weeks, I say OK.
But as soon as I pull out of the parking lot I know the right thing to do is to call him, end it.
We disconnect and something small, sharp, lodges in my heart. Then the grief throbs start up in my shoulders.
I pulled the Three of Swords—the card of separation and sorrow—and wondered, waiting.
I don’t sleep that night, asking myself how I can so clearly envision beginnings but never foresee endings.
I’ve survived my share of unexpected denouements. Am well resourced when it comes to moving through romantic loss and grief.
Still, my nervous system has its own process, its own timeframe, for recovery.
I unpack what happened with a few friends. Read Jaymen Chang’s I love this version of myself that you brought out and his Breakup Journal.
When I still feel stuck in circling thoughts, I turn to ritual. But I have nothing tangible for a releasing ceremony.
I weave a two-tone bracelet and tie it to my wrist. On the third day, the third quarter moon, cut it off and watch it curl up in flames.
But it isn’t over.
Unanswerable questions interrupt my thoughts during the day. Pleasure reels project sexy scenes I want to relive, but can’t.
He is standing at my car, smiling, reminding me again and again, I’m just not feeling it.
All memories lack what ifs and maybes. Lead to a dead end.
I thought by doing the things my mind and heart would follow my lead. Tie things up.
My confusion and sadness would end because I’ve signaled a clear message: Mind, Heart, listen, it’s time.
Still, the circling thoughts.
I try to just sit with the feelings for as long as I can. Then, when I can’t stand it and need something to shift, I lay a tarot spread.
I’m a writer and an artist; symbolism is my love language. For me, tarot is a form of visual storytelling that speaks to my higher wisdom.
I look to the archetypes to remind me of the range of human experience; guideposts on a journey we are all on, encountering different aspects of love, loss, challenges and achievement on our own paths.
What the hell happened? is no longer the question.
Each spread invites me to imagine unconsidered possibilities:
What do you see now that you couldn’t see before?
Don’t daydream about reconciling with an ex, the Reddit expert says.
DON’T fantasize about sex. You’ll release oxytocin, the bonding hormone, and delay your healing process.
I love the work of Jaymen Chang, whose books are profoundly wise and helpful.
But I can’t take his advice when he tells me to act as though the man I was dating has died; I hate the idea that he can only exist as a memory, a ghost.
First off, I know for a fact he is not dead. I sat in my car in the grocery store parking lot and watched him drive past me with his long-term partner a few weeks post-breakup.
Also: how could I pretend someone I care about is dead when my first love did die.
For decades I stayed stuck in unprocessed grief. What helped was imagining our unfinished conversations.
Living in the possibility that he understood the things I needed him to know.
It wasn’t until I allowed him back into my life through storytelling two decades after he’d died that the healing began.
The author of an article on the five stages of breakup grief tries to discourage me from negotiating the terms of a new relationship.
My openness to salvaging a connection with an old flame is the sign of an incomplete grieving process.
I feel pathologized for wanting to explore a friendship at some future time, if and when we both want to.
The article calls it bargaining.
In polyamory, we call negotiating the terms of a new friendship with an ex relationship anarchy.
Every relationship gets to exist on its own terms. We can decide whether a future relationship with a former partner will include emotional intimacy, touch, sex or any other aspect it included before.
Maybe that sounds like bargaining to some people, but I think of it as healthy, mature and emotionally intelligent.
I call it intentional relationship design.
I imagine the two of us at a cafe in three months, six months, a year, picking up where we left off.
I don’t know what I might want in the future, or when I’ll feel ready to talk to him. But I do have a clearer idea of what I want in my romantic life now.
All I know for sure is that I’m so tired of shutting down my imagination.
I allow myself to envision the best case scenario—one in which two people who explored an attraction for each other don’t have to die to get past what was.
She can tell him how much she loves Transatlanticism and give him a copy of her book; he can take her for a long hike and deep chat, minus the making out after.
They have time and space to continue their interesting unfinished conversations.
In creative nonfiction, we call this perhapsing—allowing our imaginations to fill in the gaps of what could happen or can’t be known.
We are free to speculate on all the possibilities in our writing; imagination is as important as verifiable facts.
After six weeks I realize that by not allowing myself to daydream about him, or to express my feelings, or to write about it, I’m not doing myself any good.
One of my favourite quotes is attributed to Carl Jung: Healing lives in the realm of the imaginal.
There is comfort in enjoying the memory of being held so tightly.
To imagine that a friendship might include snuggling up by the fire, telling each other stories, in some other season.
I resisted writing about this for an old familiar reason: to avoid shame.
Isn’t it interesting that the word “avoid” is related to “void”—the emptiness no one wants to feel?
Here’s what I mean about shame.
To admit that you adore someone who seemed to feel the same but changed their mind once they got to know you might be a little bit embarrassing.
Writing about someone is an admission that a relationship mattered to you. It doesn’t ignore or diminish that truth.
At the same time, it emphasizes the emotional gap between two people.
Amplifies the disconnect of feeling.
The deepest possible wound I can imagine: he reads this and thinks She’s pining over this? I barely remember it.
All good reasons NOT to take your clothes off in public.
But I have to get naked.
Writing the story always opens a door that other kinds of healing work can’t.
A memory returns and I don’t push it down.
We’re keeping each other warm under a fuzzy blanket in the tent we pitched on the beach.
Fairy lights hang above our heads, illuminate the inside; we’ve been talking about sex, sharing what we like.
”Sometimes I cry. Something just cracks open in me.” My shins are hooked around his as he lays on top of me, propped up on his forearms.
”You have really big feelings, don’t you?” I nod, and he smiles at me like I’m adorable.
I have always felt my feelings were too big; that they need to be contained for people to like me.
It’s OK that I have big feelings, I think. He sees me and isn’t scared.
In that moment, he isn’t. He gently brushes a strand of hair out of my face. Kisses me.
My friend Petra describes herself as having Main Character Energy.
She refuses to suppress her big emotions. Turns toward the passion, the sadness, the joy, the grief.
Why should I feel ashamed to have felt something for the man I dated, confided in, slept with?
I’m the main character in my story. And so are you.
The other night, just like when I was a teenager, I sat propped up on pillows in my bed and wrote down everything I remember about every date.
I write in the third person so I can stand apart from myself. In truth, I’m someone else now, and the woman who dated this man is a character.
In other words I am storying, not journalling.
I redirect my worries about his reasons for pulling back and instead beam love at the woman who kept showing up with her big, open heart.
I watch her baking scones and meat pies and stirring hot chai with cardamom to serve him in Kristina’s “World’s Okayest Sister” mug.
I see how much she wants this to work, asking for what she needs, even when it’s scary. How much she wants to give him what he wants.
I understand how brave she is, bringing a heart that has broken and healed several times to this adventure they are on, for as long as it lasts.
From this perspective, a witness to this character’s story, I feel sad that he no longer wants to write it with her.
For that brief season, she had the time, the healing, the desire to offer him the very best version of herself.
Once I’ve written it all down, a new insight: there is nothing I could have done differently or better.
By writing this story I’ve given it some other place to live outside of my head and heart.
I wish I’d written it sooner, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the Spring Equinox. A new season is here.
And next time I find myself in that stuck place, I’ll remember.
I love this: how you were able to reframe by writing in the third person (storying!) and giving yourself permission to speculate. Thank you for getting intimate and sharing. And also, I love the concept of relationship anarchy. Of course that should be a thing!
Since I began reading your work, my views and definitions of self-photography (selfies) has completely changed.