Tortured artist

Isn't it funny how whenever something isn't going our way or an ending is on the horizon, we tend to look at our life as if it isn't full, and we start taking all of these unnecessary steps to fill a void that can be minimized to a crack in our hearts? Be it whatever it may be - a heartache, a plan that didn't work out, a job that didn't fall through, we take just one of those items and accord it a world of importance as if that one thing is the reason for your whole entire life not being full. As if before that thing there was no life, and after it, you have to build life back up.

I'm guilty of that. A month ago, I got some shitty news and I used the pain of those shitty news to make another set of decisions that took my life from upside down to an even bigger mess. Two weeks later, I embarked on a journey to reach my "30 countries before turning 30" goal, and, my thought process was that my time away would give me some clarity about where I want to go next, what I want to do with my life and what my immediate concerns should be.

Spoiler alert: I have no answers for any of those things still.

I've tried all of the things that therapy taught me - to be gentle with myself, to take it one day at a time and not try to find all of the answers all at once. I frankly am rolling my eyes as I am typing this.

You know what I did instead? The day before turning 30, I drank myself into oblivion. I drank until the clock struck midnight and thereafter, and spent my birthday fighting for my life. I was receiving messages from friends and close ones wishing me well and putting words together in a bubble that were representative of how all of those people view me - as someone who is strong, bold, accomplished, intelligent, full of life, hardworking, loyal, admirable. The list went on and on.

I kept thinking to myself - what about this, about me, is admirable when I am holding on for dear life and need to run to the bathroom mid brunch because the decisions I made with my brain are not aligning with the state of my body?

That said, I kept going. I slept the day away in the 30th country and come dinner, I faced the people with whom I stayed up till dawn with earlier that day. We laughed about how absolutely destroyed I looked. They did too. At least I wasn't the one who spent the night under a bathroom sink. I guess hangovers really are that bad at 30.

I tried not to think about it. The pressure I felt to come back home with answers to the questions that my brain kept shooting at me. One question in particular kept creeping back up - what the hell are you doing Cez?

Well, if I knew the answer to that one, perhaps it would stop haunting me. And so, on the flight back, I thought it would be wise to ask the questions that would lead to yet another decision. To face reality (after I indulge in sweetness just once more). I ripped a band aid that provided me some comfort in the midst of my dealing with those aforementioned shitty news. If I've learned anything about myself in the last 30 years, it's that I am not someone who can be cool, calm, collected. And while I no longer lash out like I used to pre-therapy (we can laugh at this one), my overall being is still who I am at my core. I can't just not care. If I don't care or feel, I likely would not even want to waste my time on a particular person or thing. I'm intentional with my time and only put it towards things and people that I value.

And so, I've spent the last few days being absolutely miserable and alone. Some of it had to do with the fact that I am sick, some with the fact that I am also hormonal, and some had to do with the fact that I feel like I lived in an alternate reality for the last month that I now need to wake up from. Funnily enough, I woke up today knowing that I was inspired to write. It's always around the time that I feel like the shittiest version of myself that I am inspired to write. Call me a tortured artist. I certainly feel like one.

That said, my life has never not been full. Prior to a month ago, I was happy. I knew that no matter these shitty news and thereafter, I would be okay. Now, a month later, I still know I will be okay. Nothing really happened. I got news that I anticipated already, that I already talked about and was okay with the outcome if that was what it should be. I still have great friends, good support, a loving family and two doggos that I just wish I was closer to most days. Albeit a bit sad because of some mitigating factors, I trust that whatever fate has in store for me, will be exactly what I need.

What I will say about all of this is that perhaps we often give more power to things than we should. Just because something doesn't work out the way you want it to, doesn't mean that there is any void left to fill in your life. Just because you might feel sad, doesn't mean you'll never feel happy again. Just because someone or something hurt you, doesn't mean that the whole world crashed down. It's really never that serious and you and I should stop giving power to feelings of inferiority. I hope you take my advice cause I know I certainly should.

Give yourself grace, be gentle on yourself and as always, thanks for coming to my Cez talk xo.

I never wanted this

Every so often (usually like every few weeks), my boss sits me down and talks to me, usually over breakfast. These meetings are almost always supposed to be working breakfasts and most times, they instead turn to free therapy sessions. I cried last week - multiple times. The truth is that as much as I have no idea what I want, rejection never feels like redirection. It always feels like just that – rejection.

He keeps telling me that I’m not supposed to have it all figured out and I believe that, but this brain of mine, it has a hard time accepting that. How do you explain to someone that you are self aware of all of the things you are discussing, but that it gives you absolutely no solace or comfort? My brain is on overdrive trying to figure out something it does not have the capacity to figure out. And so, I write. I know I haven't in a while and I guess it really took a crash out to come back to this safe space. I stopped paying for my blog because I haven't written. It's been a long time since I took my thoughts to paper.

It feels poetic, this emotional torment. On one end, I want a lobotomy. On the other, I want to feel every feeling there is to feel. Is this it? I have been thinking about signs a lot. I keep seeing angel number formulations, signs that are supposed to give me some ease. You’re in the right place at the right time Cez, everything will work out as it is supposed to.

The truth is that I never really wanted this. I didn't want to go down this path in life. All the same, I really didn't know what I wanted either. I'm one of those people that loves lots of things but never loved anything enough to make it stick. I love writing but like everything, it turns into a chore, a less than expressive form when it comes with deadlines. When you have to make tweaks that someone wants you to make to something that is so authentically you. When the light in your eyes dims just a little with each and every time that something or someone tells you that all that work was just not enough. I'm afraid that this does not apply to just writing. It's everything all at once. Just - not - enough.

This isn't a cry for help. I've cried enough frankly. I've never been characterized as weak, I don't think I ever really even associated myself with that word. I've always been the big sister, the protector, the survivor, the one that everyone comes to. All the while, I have always hated feeling like someone feels bad for me or that their empathy is supposed to give me some sort of feeling of relief - that someone is thinking of me and wants me to do better, to be better. Even the thought of that makes me feel uneasy. I am not a wounded deer in the headlights.

It really is poetic. The tough girl act as some may call it, the need to be seen, but not touched. The need for validation but not feeling validated when given as much. The desire to be held but not be told that everything will be okay. I don't need a promise of a better tomorrow, I'm still thinking about today. Poetic. Perhaps a little heart-breaking.

Mind the gap between my brain and my heart

I think the saddest part about returning home from a trip is the realization that life just keeps going and the clock keeps on ticking. People move on and continue their lives with or without you in the picture.

I was really looking forward to coming home from this last trip. Not because there was anything wrong, but rather because London always breaks my heart a little and I know that if I overstay my welcome, I might actually dread coming home. London was my last stop of this trip and the place I always long to go back to because of the way my heart feels while I'm there.

If you've been here for a while, you'll know that London is the place I first had my "Lizzie McGuire" moment - as I have referred to in the past. You'll know that a piece of my heart was always left in London. That was seven years ago. When I reminisced with my friends there about that, we all couldn't believe that we have left seven years take this space in our lives without any visits from one to the other. Life gets busy and frankly, had it not been for this cheap return flight that I found out of London, I probably would have left more years pass us by until my eventual return to London. The more years that passed, the less I thought about what London meant to me back then, but also thereafter.

I will say though that the beauty of long-distance friendships is that no matter how many years go by and messages that become more and more infrequent as the months and years pass us by, somehow, someway, you can always find your way back to each other and it always feels as if no time at all has passed. No grudges held, no expectation, just the desire to have your paths cross again at some point in time, in some corner of the world.

My nephew came to pick me up from the airport, despite us having last talked maybe a handful of years before. He hugged me and welcomed me back to London. Catching up felt weird because where do you start when literal years have passed and you know nothing of one another other than the scattered Facebook posts you interact with a few times a year? The car ride felt both short and long at the same time. There was a lot of ground to cover and a lot of awkwardness to get through since we have changed a lot since we'd last seen each other. He decided to start shaving his head and I have been growing grays for some time. Before I knew it, the front door opened and my aunt welcomed me with open arms and a smile that felt so warm - it felt like home. I've always thought of home as a fluid concept defined by moments, people, and less so by places. When she hugged me and asked me if I like schnitzels, I really felt like home. Over the course of the night and as my cousin eventually joined us, we took a walk down memory lane, sharing stories of our childhood, the places we've been and the places we wish to go. We talked about the present and where we wish to be in the future. Glasses were emptied and refilled, laughs were shared and the light in the room felt a little warmer than when I had first stepped in. It felt even more like home.

The problem with any one place when I am travelling is that as comfortable as it may seem, it never really is like the comfort I feel when I am sleeping in my own bed at home (in Toronto that is). And so, I tiptoed through the night to the bathroom and stubbed my toe once or twice because the layout of their home was not nearly the same as mine. I washed my face with hand soap cause after all, I was only staying there a night and taking out my skincare from my suitcase was a nuisance I didn't want or need.

When morning came, coffee was shared around the same table from the night before, now blurry with the thought of dehydration from the alcohol that filled our glasses just eight hours before. Hugs were exchanged and before I had time to process it all, my suitcase was once again in the trunk of my nephew's car and we headed over to my girl friend's house that I hadn't seen in seven years. Hours passed before we caught our breath to even think about doing anything else. We couldn't stop yapping. I guess that's what happens when you let so many years pass by. Her hug felt like she had been waiting for me forever, warm and filled with love. The truth is, we only technically met seven years ago when my childhood best friend introduced us, so technically, it's not like we were ever the best of friends. However, in that moment of reunion, I felt as if I was hugging my long lost bestest friend. Everything felt new in all the most familiar ways. She now lived elsewhere in London and my childhood best friend that introduced us all those years ago, had since moved back to Romania. She spoke differently but I couldn't pin what exactly changed because as much as I keep mentioning it, seven years is an awful long time and while it felt like only a month went by, everything was different even if our hearts were purely still the same.

Over the next few days, we got drinks, we went out, we smoked enough ciggies in between yapping sessions to truly create a smokehouse. I saw London again with her and heard the ever so familiar "mind the gap" through the automated voices of the metro. I love girlhood and the ability to connect with a single look we exchanged when a hot man passed us by or if we were ever so bothered that a single look was enough. I loved being in her presence and feeling like the nights were always young and coming home didn't necessarily mean that we had to go to sleep. There was no beginning and no end. I felt so invigorated in her presence. I wish she knew how much she healed me during those few days.

Our time was shared with a new friend too, a sweet girl I was introduced to by a mutual friend over the course of the pandemic that I had met in person only a week before coming to London, despite having been online friends for the last three years. I think the coolest thing about this kind of girl friends is that we genuinely have no room for evil. We cheer for each other in the background, we exchange wishes of well, we uplift from thousands of miles away. And so, with meeting her, I was able to introduce my two girl friends to one another and hoped that in my absence, they would continue to hangout and form a beautiful friendship. After all, they do live in the same beautiful and heartbreaking city.

A knot formed in my stomach as the days got closer to getting to see the last person I had to see in London. Him. Though we had been in touch on and off quite regularly over the last seven years, none of the scenarios I had playing in my head quite accounted for the moment I spotted him walking towards me. My insides were unwell. He was older, taller than I had remembered and finally grew into his body of a full ass man. The crinkles around his eyes indicated the long hours he works on the daily. He was rigid at the touch, similar to how we left things off, seven years before, in front of the art gallery that I now refuse to go back to.

Stolen glances that I just had to have because I couldn't believe he was real, the playful winks he'd send my way from across a room of art and culture enthusiasts. The gentle arm he wrapped around me once we sat down at the front of the top of a double-decker bus that drove right past the Big Ben. The way our fingers intertwined and the slow burn of a kiss on the lips I wondered if I'd ever get to kiss again. And then, the next morning, wondering if it all was a fever dream. A promise that this was not goodbye, but rather a "see you soon".

He winked at me once more as he started stepping backwards and I took into account that a piece of my heart would once again be left in London, this time at a train station. Something was different this time though - I left that piece there willingly. He didn't rip it out of my chest, he didn't beg for it to be given to him. This time, I was willing to walk away without a piece of my heart cause the truth is, I didn't long for it anymore.

On the way back to my girl friend's house, I picked up some redbull. I had 24 hours left in London and I fully intended to make the best of what was left. She made me a coffee and breakfast and we got ready to take on the day. I feel butterflies in my stomach from the memory. It was so mundane and normal and yet, I couldn't help but think of how much I miss having someone around me more often. I guess I really didn't know that I had been feeling lonely in my day-to-day life until just then.

One last meal in a crappy chinese restaurant, one last yap session with my two girls, a pack of cigarettes and couple of cocktails. Before I knew it, we were saying good bye again. We promised not to be sad, we'd see each other soon after all. We wouldn't wait another seven years again.

It's been about a month since I've been back home and my heart still hurts a little when I think of how blessed I am to feel this way. To be able to book a flight and board a plane solo and go to countries around the world where people that I've spent time with maybe just for a day or two in the past, they take me in to their homes, they show me their cities and bless me with new memories to carry back home with me. How fortunate and rich am I to be able to have these experiences, share these moments and truly have my heart ripped out of my chest with each and every trip.

I hope that each and every one of you reading this gets to experience this one day because you will feel richer with each and every one of these beautiful unique moments. I hope you feel love, joy and the yearning for life.

As always, and although I know I haven't written in ages, thanks for coming to my Cez talk.