how the weeks move
The last 7 weeks beginning my life in Vancouver have been a rollercoaster. Highs, lows and everything that falls in between the two of those things. There have been mornings when I’ve battled with my mind to just get the hell up and enjoy the world, parallel to the feeling that staying under my duvet and hiding from it all is the only option. I seemed to forget that setting a life up on the other side of the world is far from easy and in fact takes work, determination and mostly, time. It takes time. There have been days where I have hidden in public toilets for a place to cry because I feel the world closing in on me. There have been moments where I walk home from work along the main road of Kitsilano, fingers stinging from the cold and throat throbbing from the lingering sickness I cannot seem to shake yet feel this immense sense of accomplishment, of joy. I am walking home, from work, two things I was desperate to have only a week ago. Days filled with conversations with new people, new housemates, new friends, people I didn’t know existed only a month before, people I know I will love. In the beginning, I wondered if I was even capable of it all, book a flight home and let’s pretend this never happened, but right now, it hurts to think that these times like all the others, will one day just be memories, memories of a life I chose to live.
Holly, things that feel good, really good, take work. Sustainable happiness isn’t something you’ll just get to have all the time when it comes to this, or for any kind of life, you need to work at it, work from the bottom up. It is a continual path. You’re never going to reach a place of contentment, not completely, there will always be more that you want. Gracefully know this and enjoy where you are. Back yourself. Give yourself credit for the things you have already achieved that one year ago you ached for, that one week ago you ached for.
I remind myself that it will always be this pattern of ups and downs. That is the balance of it all. The sun, the rain, the drought and the flowers. They all compliment each other. This reminder has helped me get through those lower times, those rainy nights and those gloomy days. I never know what the sun is going to look like when I’m there in the depths of it all, but I do know one thing, it does come. In moments I didn’t expect, like when the light rain dampens my coat on a walk yet I’m surrounded by snow covered mountains, an image I used to dream of late at night and there is no other choice but to smile about it. An old song you love coming on your shuffled playlist, taking you back to another glorious moment in time, somehow reminding you what it feels like to experience happiness, even if you aren’t right now. When you expected a cold, cloudy, grey day and for one moment, the bright blue sky peaks through, if only briefly, to remind you it is all temporary, all of it. The sadness but also the happiness too and the longer you ache to be somewhere else, physically or in the timeline of your life, the longer you are wasting the current moment you’ve got right now, a moment you’ll most likely look back on and miss what it was, a moment you’re taking for granted. Moving forward, I hope to have open arms for all of these moments, they shape me, in ways I don’t yet know but ways I’ll one day be thankful for.
If you read my blogs and enjoy them, please do reach out and send your love, it is always appreciated. - Holly