Keep saying yes

When I first moved to Toronto four years ago, a good chunk of my justification for why I loved the city was related to the CN Tower (you can laugh at that, I know it's kind of silly). I wanted so desperately to make it out of my hometown and live in the big city that I was willing to compromise on a whole lot of life in order to get to where I wanted to be. I got accepted to a really great Master's program and told my parents that I was leaving. They were supportive of course, but I would have done it regardless of the support. I'm not entirely sure what I was envisioning for my life here or what that initial goal actually was. I guess I just really wanted to be close to the hustle and bustle of the city.

My love for Toronto has taken many different forms over time. I remember there was a point in time when the Yonge Street Warehouse was my absolute fav place to go to and now, wow, it sure is a throwback to think about. I've grown and I've changed here. The city has shaped the person that I am today. While I love Toronto and I'd say it has been a steady sort of love, I haven't always been that fond of it. I've had bad days, heart breaking days and even days when I considered taking off and planting roots elsewhere. I guess that's normal though and in the end, I stayed because Toronto has become home (at least for now).

I was having a moment the other night walking the streets of Kensington Market and I thought to myself about those core moments that just make you love a place that much more. In the first couple of months of living in Toronto, while the weather was still warm, my friend Sophie invited me to her friend's place in Kensington to share a bottle of wine. Her friend lived in the upper unit of a house and it had a rooftop patio with twinkly lights and lots of plants. I remember the wine was white and room temp and I really needed ice in it. It was a really nice night and one glass of wine turned into three and by the end of the night, a couple of that girl's roommates got home, two Danish guys and, the five of us just chatted away for hours on end. I don't remember the music that was playing, but I do recall a speaker. I don't remember the conversations, but I do recall that it was the first time since moving that I felt like I would really enjoy living in Toronto.

About a month later, I met a girl who asked me to hangout with her super last minute. I remember that I had just gotten home from a different event and agreed to meet with her since my makeup was already done and I just had to make my way down to her. One thing led to another and before I knew it, we went from a bar, to a house party, to a club, and in the end, we had mexican food as a nightcap. It was around 4am when we were laughing in the restaurant, eating our enchiladas, and talking about all of the things that had happened throughout the night. We laughed so hard that I got the hiccups and couldn't stop to save my life. No amount of water was helping and I just kept laughing.

I've lost count of the amount of core moments I have lived through over time. The thing is that life moves really fast and sometimes, when something really great is happening, you have to take a step back and look at your surroundings. Take in the temperature outside and how the sun feels on your skin. Look left and right, up and down, and remember why you're there in the first place. Recognize if your giggle is genuine. Why does it feel so good to be in that exact moment in time? I guess that's how core memories are made - when you just take a moment to take it all in and appreciate it for the memory it will become later on.

The other thing is that it doesn't take something grandiose for it to become a core memory. Sometimes just a few minutes of laughing in unison is more than enough. The important thing is to laugh, to live and to not let an opportunity pass you by because quite frankly, you never know when saying "yes" may just be the best thing you'll ever do.

Go big

I just came across a snippet of a podcast episode in which a girl asked for advice on what she should do if she just found out that the person she thinks might be “the one” got engaged. I know this description is super anti-climactic, but the podcast host essentially told her to “go big” and reach out to the guy and shoot her shot one last time. If he reciprocates the feeling, then great, but if he doesn't (since he totally did propose to another girl), well then she would at least finally have that finality she longed for.

It seems like forever ago now but at the end of January of this year, I had to do something similar and that’s so insane of me to think about now because it feels like this happened forever ago. I guess I’m finally in a space and time in life where I can openly talk about it without feeling any type of hurt.

I met someone pretty great about a year and a half ago that unfortunately, just didn’t work out. I wrote about him before cause he left a pretty big mark on me. Despite this being outside of my character, I tried to keep in touch, and he also reciprocated that from time to time. I guess I felt that if I could get over the hurt of not having him, I could potentially keep him in my life as a friend since he did seem like a great person and it could be a pretty cool friendship. My feelings were too strong though and I couldn't separate them from what a friendship would entail. I was too on edge... it would have never worked.

I did like him a lot, but I had a lot of growing and healing to do at the material time and I don’t think that I put my best self forward back then. It is what it is though and I learned some valuable lessons along the way. At the beginning of this year, we had some interactions that left me questioning essentially whether he might want to pursue something with me romantically again given that about a year had passed since we initially tried to make it work. That being said, he wasn’t giving me much to work with and I grew impatient because a year had passed and we were still sort of in touch and my feelings weren’t going away and I needed to know if there was anything at all to still potentially pursue. Friendship wasn't an option.

I wrote a big old text. I read and re-read it probably 100 times and adjusted the wording. I paced the room in circles deciding whether or not to send it. I wanted to shoot my shot one last time so that I can have the peace of having a definitive answer. Did he want me or did he not?

Spoiler alert – he did not.

And that is totally okay. I needed to hear him say that (or rather type it out).

I had created this illusion in my head that if he was still actively checking up on me, he might still be considering the possibility of “us”. I was wrong. I guess guys just do that.

Having finally gotten the exact text that I needed to move on, I felt at peace. I was seeing someone during that time that I wasn’t sure I was fully invested in since I was still actively thinking about the other guy so, on the same day, I ended things with him. Two ends in one day – woo! (that was a sarcastic woo)

I haven’t really actively dated since. Some dates here and there. It’s been peaceful and quite nice. I’ve been travelling a fair bit so I think I like the freedom of falling in love with someone new in every new city or country I visit. It’s fun just having no tie to anyone. The freedom to pursue whoever, whenever. To not have a boundary on the conversations I could have or the kisses I could share. I think I needed to have that time to fully find myself and be on my own to know what I ultimately would desire a partner for.

I don’t really think about that guy anymore. Ok I'm lying, I do still think about him sometimes but not in the same way. While I don't have any regrets about what happened, I do sort of wish that I kept the door open for a "hello, let's grab a coffee when you're in town and catch up". I do think that he would have made a nice friend but I burned that bridge in the midst of me licking my wounds. And again, that's totally okay. If burning that bridge is what I needed to heal, I will give myself the grace of accepting that.

While I digress a bit, the point I want to make is that I don't think there's anything wrong with putting your cards on the table and telling someone exactly how you feel. I think we live a lot of our lives in fear of a perceived "what if" that may or may not happen. If you just say it, you'll have the opportunity of finding out either what you hope for, or what you fear most. If it's the latter, you can now start the process of healing, rather than continuing to live with the what if. I'm not ashamed or embarrassed to admit that I would have wanted him to pick me and that I felt dumb when I realized that I could have said that exact thing months before and gotten my answer then. Instead, I waited about a year to speak up because I thought that in that year, he might have some grand realization that I was the love of his life. That's not to mean that during that year I didn't meet anyone new or talked to any other guys, but, in the end, I was always one foot in and one foot out because there was still that thought of "what if".

As a final thought, I guess just do whatever the fuck you want. Tell people you love them if you do, tell them you think about them if you do. There isn't enough love in the world and everyone can be appreciated a little bit more than they are. I think the most beautiful thing about my writing is my ability to share in the most raw and vulnerable way. I have been lacking that lately and I am glad I am finally putting out a piece that highlights some very raw and vulnerable moments where I put my heart on the battlefield and it got shot to pieces but it was a beautiful thing. It makes me, me and I love that vulnerable girl.

As always, thanks for coming to my Cez talk xo

I wanna be a kid again

Adulting freaking sucks. There's no pause to it, there's no one to comfort you by taking over your responsibilities and there's no real end in sight. If anything, the responsibilities just keep on piling up. The reality is that once you become an adult, that pretty much is your full time job. To think that at one point in time, I dreamt of being an adult and now, I just want it to stop.

We really glamorize being an adult when we are young and that's mostly attributed to the fact that we no longer really have to listen to our parents when we are adults and are free to make any decision we want. What we often don't comprehend is that our parents have our best interests in mind and childhood really is the only time in our life that we don't have to worry about money, decision-making and the consequences that can become part of that.

It's funny really that back in the day I wanted the independence to make my own choices and now, my parents are my first call whenever I have to make a decision. Last week, I was faced with a bit of a harsh reality that is putting some things into perspective for me in terms of what I really want to do with my life going forward and whether Toronto is the right spot for me when it comes to that. I love the city but it is awfully expensive to live here and while I have a clear cut way up financially, I often wonder if that path is too slow.

And so, in being faced with having to make a decision, I called my parents. I told them my options, my thought process and they respectfully disagreed with me. I cried because I disagreed with their thought process too. I didn't really solve anything by having that phone call other than of course, I got a different viewpoint. In the end though, I still had to make my own decision. At the end of the day, my parents, while they have my best interest in their hearts and minds, they also grew up in a different world than mine and their experiences shaped their mindset, while I had an entirely different set of experiences that shaped my mindset.

I cried. I curled up into a ball and cried. Cried until my head hurt and I inevitably had to stop. The reason? I didn't want to adult anymore. Plain and simple, that day, I had enough of the adulting world and I just wanted to be a kid again. In the days that followed, I planned to go home to Windsor this weekend and be with my family. There's a certain comfort associated with being home in my old room, with my parents making all my meals for the few days I am home. It almost feels like I am a kid again. While it isn't necessarily a reality, I guess it feels like a break from reality.

In the meantime, I started feeling better. Every day, I got one step closer to making my decision and I kept sleeping on my thought process every night in order to wake up with a clearer idea of what I actually want. I am the type of person to make very rash decisions, so this "sleeping on it" process is fairly new to me in the adult decision making world.

I feel better now, although the final decision isn't quite set in stone just yet. I feel confident in what I have to do though. I guess to some extent, I just don't want to fail. I have seen so many people move to Toronto and lasting maybe a year before they inevitably moved out or back to their hometowns. I don't want to quit. I don't want to be someone who gives up. I want to do right by me yes, but I also want to ensure my success in whatever capacity that is.

Adulting sucks because you become your own boss. You are the one that becomes entirely responsible for your happiness, success and all of that. You can't really depend on anyone else and it can be lonesome sometimes. That being said, hard work, ambition and a whole lot of "sleeping on it" become your best friends in the adult world.

Eventually there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. You just have to give yourself grace through it and understand that even if it takes a while, you will still reach that light.