Keep your window open, I'll still write to you at night. Even if you don't reply, I'll still write

Aug 11, 2018 23:29

8 years ago I tried to move to Canada. In a haphazard sort of way. Rushing straight from the stress of graduating from university (which in all honesty I probably shouldn't have gone to, but C's get degrees. That's a whole other post in itself.).

I was in love with a Canadian. The type of love they write about or portray in films, the type you write off as not being possible to exist. Then you experience it and realise it is possible.

I couldn't handle the emotions, the distance, stirred in with the stress of university. It seemed easier to try to make myself hate them and tell myself it wouldn't work, and give myself every excuse under the sun why it wouldn't work. There are other factors at play, so many little strings that form the rope. In my uni-stress brain I think Vancouver was some magical land where everything was going to be okay, and there would be no more assignments. No one ever said to me, hey, maybe you're stressed out? Have you thought this through? Maybe you should get a massage and take a week off to relax. I had a twitch in my face and had started grinding my teeth from the university stress.

Arriving in Canada, still with feeling strong as ever, the fire between us still alive, I set out on my self fulfilling prophecy of sabotaging things between us. Telling myself it didn't matter, telling myself it wasn't going to work anyway.

Couple that with the stress of moving, of not being able to find work (2010, still reeling from the 2008 GFC). Not to mention trying to move to one of the most desirable cities in the world. It was a terrible mix. Throwing myself out of one incredibly stressful situation into the next.

They had followed me to New Zealand in 2008 as the GFC hit. They experienced the same issues of not being able to find work, and returned to Canada a few months later. I told myself I could finish the 12 months left of university and join them in Canada. Then I failed 1 paper, pushing the 12 months to 18 months.

Every day not being with them and knowing it would be a year and a half ripped my heart down one side and up the other. It seemed easier to try and push them away.

So getting to Canada in 2010. It was clear there was still something there. But I was out of my mind. I have a hand-written letter which I never posted from that time. It really makes it clear to me how out of my mind I was. I remember crying one day because I had a sock with a hole in it and I had no money to buy new socks.

I acted in a bad way towards them. Then I had no choice to go back to New Zealand.

It's been 8 years of berating myself for it. Because I still love them. I think about them every day. The regret. Where we might be in life now if I hadn't acted so hard to push them away because it was too much. How things between us will never be what they were. I dream about them. The dreams are never bad, but they might as well be nightmares. It wakes me up at 3am. Then I can't sleep because things in my head play over and over and over between them and I. In the waking hours playing out over and over.

I visited Canada a couple of months ago. I saw them. I wanted so desperately to reach out, to touch them, make sure they were real, that things between us could some how be repaired, or were never wrong to begin with.

It's been 8 years of intense regret and soul searching. I'm so tired of it. I want it to end. But there is no end.
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