August 12, 2012

• Achievement unlocked!

  Tuesday, March 06, 2012

  Not only did I attain perfect form for this pose recently at yoga, but I held it too!

  

  shazam!

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  I think the reason why I don’t want to write anymore is because bad things still keep happening after I write about them. It’s too much effort to articulate and to extract all your feelings and thoughts, only to have them shoved rudely back into you before the process repeats again. It might be easier to just live with it and to be complacent. It’s too difficult to get closure.

  I live in Vancouver now, but I come back to my parents’ most weekend. I feel like a kid again when I’m listening to music upstairs with the door closed and trying to not care about parents arguing downstairs. I’m 21 now. You’d think these things would stop bothering you when the self help books for dealing with violent parents have long expired for those above the age of 18. 

  I’m too cynical right now to want to think about anything. All this activism, feminism, environmentalism, social justice – who cares? It’s too much, we’re all tired, and every inch of progress is met with another two steps back.

  I don’t know how people have the energy to be advocates all there lives — but that’s not true, of course I know how. I want to give up at the first sign of difficulty, but others simply can’t, maybe because their livelihoods are on the line if a tarsands pipeline goes through their city. Maybe it’s their own children that suffer when aboriginal schools only get a fraction of the funds compared with the mainstream schools. Maybe they’re just adults and they know that responsibility can’t be avoided. I do care, I do, but just not enough to keep going. That’s a luxury I can afford.

  Why did I cry why Jack Layton died? Because he’s a good man. But also because I wanted to know that there was someone one there doing the work that I don’t want to do. 

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  Today

  I find my optimism is tied closely with how well I’m getting along at the moment with people close to me. How can I even dream about getting entire communities hooked on sustainability when we can’t even get our parents to turn off lights when they’re not in the room without starting full-on family feuds?

  Cosmo and I are happy together. But sometimes it feels like a temporary refuge, creating our own island of happiness before waking up and going back to work the next day.

  But it’s different when I exercise. I feel strong when I will my muscles into being stretched and pulled beyond their limits. I love driving the dragonboat paddle with all my weight into the water and feeling propelled by my own strength. There’s nothing like chasing a disc into the ground to make global warming and hungry children not matter. 

  I actually feel genuinely, unreservedly social when I’m doing team sports (!). I’m not worried about people’s use of plastic bags or their consumption of McDonalds or how much they enjoy rape and prostitute jokes. It helps that we’re all dressed extremely casually because no-one needs to look down on anyone else’s clothes. What matters is how much we cheer and look out for one another on the field and if I’m trying hard enough to hurt through the next week. I love that delicious, secret feeling of all-over soreness because it reminds me that I am more than how much I’m angry, tired, scared, disconnected.

   

  It’s addicting, it’s liberating. I feel like I can run forever and never sleep. I want to stay there.

  • 4:01 am
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