Full circle

One of my close friends moved out of the city this past spring. We had only gotten close over the last year or so but her move really affected me. I was at a place in my life where things were starting to make sense in terms of friendships, people, places and the things I was doing. I felt a sense of belonging and her leave left somewhat of an empty place in the space I had finally considered to be whole.

This past Friday, my best friend of a decade moved as well. She moved even further away than the place in which we met, our home town that we both left in the pursuit of Toronto. This one really hurt although I know I'm just being dramatic because I know she did something that will benefit her in the end. She deserves to feel whole too so I know that if this new city has the ability to give her that, then she needs to pursue it whole-heartedly.

I met a friend for birthday drinks over the weekend at a college bar that I absolutely needed to show to him and coincidentally was also across the street from where he just moved to. This is a friend that I made at home and that moved to Toronto just a few weeks ago. He seemed both happy and sad to be in the city and expressed how much our hometown makes much more sense for him as opposed to the chaos that is Toronto. He asked me what it is that makes Toronto home for me. I didn't have to think too deeply about this since I had been thinking about it for some time, even more so I guess this year. Over the holidays last year, I ended a friendship with someone that lived just down the street for me. In the spring, my close friend moved away up north, and just two days prior to this conversation, my best friend of a decade also said sayonara to the city. Needless to say, I had been thinking quite deeply about the reasons that keep me in Toronto.

I told him about the people that left and the emptiness it created. I also told him about the memories left behind and how my heart hurts a little every time I remember something good. I also told him that it fills my heart up with joy knowing that those memories were created in such a special city and I get to re-live them every so often simply by being in those places. I told him that at some point, things come full circle and quite frankly, his very being across from me, was filling up some of that emptiness.

While I lost some people, I didn't lose them forever. They're still friends, but friends in a different city, no different than those I left behind in Windsor when I left. That doesn't mean the friendships ended, but rather that we can get together again and again with every short visit. As for Toronto, well, he just moved to the city which means I'll see him more often. A few months ago, a different friend from Windsor also relocated to the GTA and just this past weekend, another friend of ours moved in with her. Look at that. Before I had the time to mourn the fact that some friends simply had to pack their life up and go, new ones moved right in and erased that feeling of emptiness.

In starting to feel like life is coming full circle, I told him that outside of the people, Toronto really is exactly what I needed when I left home. It is the city that allowed me to grow and spread my wings and become tough. I laughed, I cried, I loved, I got my heart broken to pieces in this city. I made friends, I ended friendships and friendships were ended with me. All in all, I found a place that I can call home, where I feel like I am home and that accepts me for me. I have good people around me, both in the city and afar, a support system, I am happy.

I think it's kind of cool to have these full circle moments of realization, of gratitude, of overall appreciation for who you were, are, and have the potential to be.

As always, thanks for coming to my Cez talk xo.

I think about you sometimes

I used to think that the version of my perfect man that existed in my head, didn't exist in real life. That was until Christmas day of 2021 when I swear, I came across someone who completely altered my brain chemistry on what I actually desired in a partner. I think that while I always had a checklist of things I desired in a partner, before that day, everyone else was simply put, a compromise.

Let's rewind. I had recently came out of a relationship with someone that I loved a lot while in the relationship but also couldn't stand by the end of it. Looking back at it now, that breakup was long overdue but you get used to people so the absence of the good was what I was so hurt over, despite there being a lot of bad.

I came across this magical Christmas unicorn gift of a man completely by accident and I think, he felt the same too, at least at the time. The reality was that we were both broken people who found solace in one another at the time. That romance was short lived and I don't regret any of it. I think it's better to have experienced it than to never have come across him at all. Since then, I have hoped that I'll eventually come across someone just as good, kind, affectionate and everything else that he was, if not better. While I haven't yet had that luck, my heart remains open to the possibility.

I don't really know him anymore, we cut contact some time ago. That being said, I'd be lying if I said I don't think about him often. I really don't think anyone has made me feel like I was the only girl in the world in the way he did. It's a really special feeling. I don't think I ever felt that secure either. Nonetheless, I raise a glass to the next guy and invite him to the challenge.

I'm healed from that and I feel fine knowing that he likely won't be in my life again, but I do catch myself sometimes thinking about what he would think of a particular song or about the chicken recipe I never got the chance to get from him.

Experiences make us whole and build our character. They help us become better humans. We live and we learn and we evolve and love and everything else in between. There's so much more I want to share about him but those are details I keep to myself. The memory of him is for me and not you. I just want to get across that he was that kind of dude you can actually picture the rest of your life with. I wonder if that's just his way of being and every girl that has met him since has the same opinion of him. I really would love to be a fly on the wall sometimes as creepy as the narrative of this does sound LOL.

I will say though that sometimes, the memory of someone is best kept intact and not altered. Who knows, if we crossed paths again today if we would be the same people? If we would think the same about each other? Maybe it's better to let him occupy that small piece of brain space that allows him to be good, great even.

I'm not really sure what you should take away from this, I just felt like writing about it.

As always, thanks for coming to my Cez talk xo.

The perfect time might never come - and that's okay

I think it was about 2012 or 2013 when I first gained an appreciation for travel. I was still quite young but I would say it was around that time period that I decided I wanted to eventually see the world. In 2012, I was in my senior year of high school and had befriended a really cool Bosnian girl that was a junior at the time. We became bestest of friends since we were able to bond over our shared eastern European backgrounds and soon enough, we were spending most days together.

I didn't know many other Europeans back then and felt like I was losing a part of myself and my heritage by not being friends with any other alike individuals. But alas, along came my Bosnian friend and overnight, my sort of emo sounding music taste turned right into the unce unce of EDM. I loved being around her because I felt like I was understood and could finally be myself fully around someone that could relate (and that wasn't family). She re-introduced me to the music that shaped my upbringing but that I left behind in trying to assimilate to the Canadian way of being in 2008. I was far too young to understand that I could still like EDM and be Canadian too. I thought that in being Canadian, I had to listen to a whole lot of the music that the other 12-17 year olds were listening to, or at least the ones I was hanging out with (Alexa play music by City and Colour, Abandon all ships, A day to remember, Hedley, Simple Plan).

And so, my friend introduced me to Tomorrowland - the biggest EDM festival in the world. From 2012 onwards, Tomorrowland has been a dream, a bucket list item that I hoped I would one day get to experience and live through in real life.

In the years that followed, I lost sight of the travel dreams I had. I was preoccupied with pursuing higher education and since I wasn't working, I didn't really have any money to my name. I knew of a lot of people who pursued their education abroad but unfortunately, my parents did not have those kinds of means to send me abroad too. Hell, I couldn't even afford to move to Toronto, let alone Europe. I didn't really mind though because I loved my university experience and all of the memories made along the way. Everything happens for a reason right?

I finished my undergrad in 2017 and that was the first time I really considered picking up my old dream of travelling. I hadn't been back to Romania since I left in 2008 and I figured that having completed a degree and with no life experience, I might as well go back to my roots and really explore my heritage. I was still young though and fairly naive. I spent two months abroad and only saw parts of Romania, Bruges in Belgium and London, UK. I'll tell you one thing - if I had two whole months nowadays, I would be able to see all of fricken Europe. I will blame my lack of initiative on being young, dumb and naive though. That being said, I had one hell of a fun time during those two months. Like I said, everything happens for a reason right?

Fast forward a few more years, I began ignoring the travel bug yet again. I started thinking that travel is much more fun if done with other people and I started spending time and losing time on waiting for someone to join the ride. Before I knew it, a worldwide pandemic hit and I couldn't go anywhere even if I wanted to, despite not having gone anywhere literally since 2017. When the freedom to travel got taken away from me, that's when it really hit that I needed to stop wasting my life waiting.

Waiting for my friends to join in, waiting to have more money, waiting for the perfect moment to come along. The truth is that the timing will never be perfect and anything can go wrong at any point in time. That's just life and if you try to fight the waves instead of learning how to float around, you might drown.

So I said fuck it. I started booking trips while sitting in front of my desk at work. I started telling my boss about it once the flight was already non-refundable and he had no option but to let me go. I booked a couple of weeks away with only $100 in my account cause that's what credit cards are for right? Money will always make their way back but these wasted years will not.

Here I am at 28 years old wanting to reach 30 countries before I turn 30 and only being halfway through that journey. Here I am realizing how much time I let get away from me and precious years where I could have seen the world, all because I was either too naive, too broke or too caught up in my own head to realize I could do this all on my own.

It might be over a decade later but, this year I am going to Tomorrowland Brazil. A month from now, I will make the 2012 Cez proud. I will finally go, I will finally experience Tomorrowland.

If you take anything away from this, let it be this: you will never be this young again. You might not even live to see old age. While this isn't meant to be pessimistic in any way, you truly never know what tomorrow brings. If you were to be gone tomorrow, would you be at peace with what you have accomplished? Would you have wanted to do more, to be more? Don't let life pass you by because you think it isn't the right time to do something because in all reality, the right time might never come. Make imperfect, perfect by simply choosing what you ultimately desire and live your fricken life to the fullest.