The Break-Up Post

I recently got dumped. I know. You weren’t expecting that kind of honesty were you. The thing is, we all get dumped at some point or another, and there is no shame in it. Unless you do desperate things to try to win him back, like constantly show up uninvited where you know he'll be or pretend that you're pregnant like Kelly from "The Office" (which would be hard to explain when you're saving yourself for marriage). Then yes, there is shame. Lots of shame. But let me just tell you something you didn’t know: unrequited love sucks. Seriously, you’ve probably never heard that before. Ancient poets steered clear of that subject in the past and current songwriters find that it’s too sensitive a topic to discuss over the radio. So let me guide you from the land of ignorance into the land of enlightenment (which has the word "light" in it, so you know it’s good, whereas ignorance comes from the word "ignoramus." I know, I took Latin in university). It’s like this, see: here you are walking along the shores of love and happiness when one day the mean, break-up fairy steals away your hopes and dreams with words like, “It’s not you, it’s the person you’re trying so hard to be. I can't stand that person.” Or, “I’m not ready for a relationship. And when I am it sure as heck won’t be with you.” Or “I decided I don’t want to have kids... with you. I don’t want to have kids with you. Sorry, was that unclear?”

Now that I have tons and tons of relationship experience, let me tell you something else you didn't know: relationships are hard. You thought walking along the shores of love and happiness was all pure sailing (wow, what a terrible mixed metaphor, it's not even practical, who would try to sail on the shore? An idiot that's who, and we're all idiots in love). But no, there are barnacles along the way and pokey rocks and sand gets in your shoes and, if you sit down to take a rest, you get punished for your laziness and sand gets in your shorts too and we all know sand in your shorts makes you so angry and you're probably hungry because your only food source is fish and most of the fish along the shores of love are dead (something to do with they're all burnt out from bad relationships. But why are you eating the fish you might date? Are you a fish too, and a cannibal at that? Or are you interspecies dating and also eating the species you date? It doesn't matter, I'm a creative writer. That means I just get to say things, they don't have to make sense) and at any time a giant wave could come sweep you off your feet... I actually have no idea where I wanted to go with that one. Maybe the wave is death. Maybe it’s true love... Take it as you will, it all really comes down to one thing: life can be hard. And the only way to combat it is to be content with whatever comes your way. For instance, right now, I'm trying my darnedest to soak in how much freedom there is in being single. I only knew this hypothetically before, because I hadn't really been in a relationship. It took being in a relationship and then coming out of one to realize the truth. Not that being with someone can't be freeing too, if it's the right person at the right time in your life. People are constantly deploring their singleness, like to be single is the worst state of being on the planet. And it kind of makes sense. What else in life is greater than that desire to be loved by someone? And if you don't know God, then how would you know that you are already loved by Someone far greater than any man or woman on this earth could ever love you? I would rather be single for the rest of my life than stuck in a relationship I shouldn't be in, even if it's a good one. I would rather be single for the rest of my life than be with someone who didn't want me back.

I didn’t plan on ever going through a break-up. As strange as it sounds I was okay with the idea of waiting for my future husband until I was forty if I had to, and continuing to believe there was something terribly wrong with me (not my looks obviously, I mean my personality). I was okay being ignorant of the pain of a relationship gone wrong. It’s not like I was ignorant of unrequited love or loneliness (however if I could I would have saved myself from that too). People say that the bad things that happened to them are worth it because it made them who they are today. Did it? Or did you just become who you are despite your pretty lousy circumstances? They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We had to go through two world wars before doctors realized that what doesn’t kill you sometimes gives you Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That should be the new saying. One thing is for sure, bad things happen but God brings good out of every situation. God doesn’t need bad things to happen to fulfill His goodness. In fact, He’s so good that He doesn’t just bring good out of good situations, He brings good out of the worst of the worst. Just like the verse, “When you are weak, then He is strong,” doesn’t mean that your weakness makes God stronger. God is always strong, we’re just too stupid to recognize it when we're all pumped up on ourselves. As I've heard before, God is a gentleman, He stands at the door and knocks. Sometimes I wish He would ram the door in, but then for all I know I might just get offended that He wasn't gentlemanly. So He waits, and knocks, and often it's when we're at our lowest that we are willing to let Him in for tea. If he rammed the door in, He might have broken the teapot.

What else have I learned from this terrible, awful, horrible heart-break that I would never go through again even though it made me stronger? How loved I am by friends and family. The fact that anyone would cry for me just because they know what I went through, amazes me. Somehow we're always amazed that others would do things for us that we know we would do for others. What else have I learned? Forgiveness. Forgiving the person who hurt you most. And forgiving yourself for all the mistakes you made along the way. Forgiving them for not realizing sooner the things they realized in the end (because then you would have been saying, “Well why didn’t you realize that from the beginning?” which would take a lot more prophetic power than my coffee at work has). (If that didn't make sense to you, you didn't read my previous post so shame on you for reading this one). (If you did in fact read my previous post and it still doesn't make sense, then I completely understand and I'm sorry. Besides, this isn't a TV mini-series, you really don't miss much when you skip an episode). Forgiving the person for not giving you time to realize those things too. Forgiving them for making promises they had every intention of keeping. Forgiving them, and yourself, for believing things that weren't true. Forgiving them for changing. Forgiving yourself for making anyone's life harder at a Christian camp program for eight months where you were the leader and he was the student and it made everyone else feel super awkward and created unnecessary tension. Oh wait, no, that was just me. That doesn't apply to anyone else.

So what do you do when your heart is broken? You give your heart to God and know that He will heal it. You entrust it to God and know that He will never break it. And in the end anything that brings you closer to Him is worth it. It doesn’t mean it had to happen to get you there, that there was no other way for you to be closer to God (although it could mean that, I don't know); it doesn’t mean you would do it over again; it just means that the entire purpose of your life is to bring you closer to God. How you get there is called life. And life is sometimes hard. God knows - seriously, it’s called “The Incarnation” people. And that's my twenty-three cents on relationships.

Or that time I..

Just remembering some funny moments. Like that time I lost my balance standing on the bus and actually fell on some strange man's lap. Looking back, there were so many things I wish I had said to smooth that over. But really, is there any smoothing over sitting in a stranger's lap? No. No there is not.

Or that time I decided to pick up my friend's travel mug and turn it upside down to see if it said what it was made of on the bottom. As mugs often are, it was full of coffee. I will never live that down.

Or that time I took a coffee onto the double decker bus and dropped it on the upper level, spilling it all over the floor. It meant that every time the bus went forward or came to a stop, everyone watched the coffee creeping further up and down the aisle and eventually spill down the stairs. You have no idea how horrifying it is to have to tell the bus driver that you had an accident. 

I should really stay away from coffee. And buses. Especially together...

Or one I really like: instead of saying "Have a good day" at the end of a call at work, I accidentally said, "Have a good idea."

Or that time I was really sweaty after biking to work so I decided to use the shirt I had biked in as a towel just to realize I forgot the shirt I was going to wear and now had to put back on the shirt I had just used to dry myself.

Or that time I watched some guy ahead of me step in dog poo in the middle of the sidewalk and as I watched I thought "Poor sucker never looked where he was going," and immediately stepped in the first part of the same dog's poo because I was too busy watching the other guy not looking where he was going. I tried to get his attention to commiserate with him but he pretended I wasn't there and that nothing had happened. Pride goeth before the fall but not before you steppeth in poo.



This is me, a failed bear.

Or that time I volunteered to wear the teddy bear mascot costume at a Christmas fundraiser for the Queen Alexandra Foundation and tried to convince a skeptical little boy that I was in fact a real bear. I mistakenly said something about bears celebrating Christmas and decorating Christmas trees. He replied (with disdain), "Bears hibernate during the winter." Nobody told me I was talking to Dwight Schrute's illegitimate child.

Or how as a child I had an obsession with carving my name into things, particularly our furniture. At the time I wasn't thinking that this was incriminating myself, I was solely thinking of one word: fame. I carved "F+R" (R for the boy I liked in grade two) into a cabinet and when my mother confronted me I tried to convince her it was someone else. Of the ones I remember, I wrote my name in our doorframe, our storage unit, my desk at home and at school, a bunkbed at camp and many trees. When I was thirteen I got in trouble with the park ranger at Miracle Beach campgrounds for carving "Faith + Mike" inside a large heart, into a tree on our camp site.  Mike was a boy I liked on a camping trip after knowing him for three days and, as we all know, 95% of all park rangers are bitter about young love (this is true, I swear). The day before he left he serenaded me on the beach with his Catholic school horror stories. He had a concaved chest and said his best friend was a girl with big boobs who offered to donate some to fill the hole. These are the kind of boys I like.

You will also find my name in many cement structures around my old complex: the rock wall in my back yard, a corner of the basketball court, my friend's patio, the curb on my street and outside my aunt's old house in James Bay.

I refuse to be forgotten.

Makeup: Why I'm a Hippie

The look of realization that your mother is a
failure because you are on "Toddlers and Tiaras."

In grade eight I started wearing makeup. For three years I suffered under that dictator. My eyes always bothered me but I didn't want to face the reality that I was allergic to mascara. For most girls being allergic to mascara would be like saying you might as well wear a paper bag over your head. As I'm sure most girls know, if I ever went without makeup people thought I was sick. No, that's just me without makeup you insensitive jerk, naturally pale and sickly looking. Then at the end of grade ten I got pink-eye. Yes, folks. Pink-eye set me free. You see, when you have pink-eye, you can't wear mascara. Did someone pass gas into my pillow? Maybe. But all I know is I will be forever thankful for their flatulence. I remember going to school without makeup that first day and feeling like the whole world was looking at me. The whole world wasn't looking at me, but a few people were, and like the other times I'd gone to school without makeup they assumed I must be dying. But, miraculously, after a couple days no one noticed, they were too busy noticing I wasn't dead. And then I just kind of... didn't start wearing it again. For once my laziness was working for me! The next year I went to a different school where everyone just assumed I had always been a sickly child and kept it to themselves. It was like the Faith Identity, like the Bourne Identity, but starring me. I got a hair cut, told people I was an orphan who used to be in the circus and started calling myself by my middle name. Wait, hold up: if you know my middle name then you know you can't trust that last sentence. Unless maybe I shortened my middle name to "Seppy," in which case, the whole thing becomes believable again.

The Second to Last Unicorn

I tried to read The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle which was written in the late 60's, probably the best time in history to write something about unicorns, but I couldn't finish it. I'm so mad because he totally stole the title for the book I'm writing. I just hope the title "The Second to Last Unicorn" is still available. I heard about the book from someone in my writing class who asked me what kind of books I like to read (I said I liked fantasy, the classics like Dickens and Austen, as well as pretty much any good fiction). And she recommended it. Who was I to argue? I mean besides the fact that it's one of my favorite love-hate pastimes (arguing). But I didn't actually think the book would be from the perspective of a unicorn. Let me give you a glimpse into the mind of a unicorn. "Hi, I'm a unicorn. I eat grass and sparkles. I'm spiky. And magic!" But maybe I am going about this the wrong way. Maybe if I read it as a kid's book, I would be like, "Whoa, what a good book," like the first Harry Potter book. I know some people didn't like the first one as much as the later ones, mainly because the first is written as a kid's book, and the later ones are more young adult (I think I would pee my pants if I read the later ones as a kid, but so many kids do! I mean read them, but the other also applies). I happen to love the first Harry Potter for its good editing and polished writing. I find the more I develop my own writing, the harder it is to read some of my favorite books, as well as the fact that I'm reading them as an adult. It is one of those sad facts of life, that things you love as a child just don't hold up as an adult. My favorite is rewatching movies I watched as a kid and thinking it was a good thing I didn't understand half the things they were talking about. It's like finding out the trusted mounties are actually just corrupt, sexist cowboys. And that's why I love unicorns. They can't be corrupted. They poop rainbows.

A Super Crafty Christmas

I have been busy writing a Christmas story for the Christmas Eve service at my church and I had to kill a lot of babies to get there. Wait, you know I don't mean real babies. Did you even read my last post, Girl Meets Boy Meets Awkward Meets Boy Runs Away? "Kill your babies" is an expression. Sometimes you have to delete parts of a story that you love because a) they just don't fit the story, b) you have a word limit, or c) deep down you know they suck. I'm excited because it will be my first time reading something of my own to a large-er group of people. I'm happy because it's actually a very small group of people and if I make a fool of myself I can threaten them to eternal silence. The story is about one little boy's effort to make his little brother's Christmas wish come true. I often end up writing stories about children, probably because of my immaturity level. Something about seeing things through their eyes makes me happy, and I find I usually care more about stories with children in them. Or romance. If there is not the possibility of romance in the first few chapters of a book, it is 75% more likely that you have lost me. However, I will usually persevere, I'll just be disappointed as I do it before I get so caught up in the story I forget to be disappointed.

The Adventures of Chompo and Olivia: Downsizing

I'm just in the middle of moving. It's horrible. Don't do it. The worst part about moving isn't how much work it is, or the fact that I am leaving the home I have lived in for my entire life, but that the place I am moving into is even smaller than the place I have now. And that's saying something. Downsizing is always painful, but downsizing to the point where I have to give up my entire collection of stuffed animals? That, my friend, is cruel. You may say I am too old to have stuffies. If you did, I would have to use great self-control not to attack you with angry words. You are never too old to have stuffies, especially if they are the ones you have had for many years and have already pared down as much as possible without losing your soul in the process. How can I possibly say goodbye to such innocent, vulnerable creatures, wholly dependent on my love? How do you tell someone, that you care about deeply, you're going away forever? Gently? With a rose? In a funny way? Like it's a hilarious joke? Or do you just let it go. Because saying it would just make it worse... Probably the funny way.

If you didn't get that it was courtesy of Michael Scott from The Office. Except instead of "how do you tell someone you're going away forever," he says, "how do you tell someone I told you so."

This is how: through the mediation of hamsters. You may know these particular hamsters from Chompo and Olivia's Christmas Adventures in which they first became famous.

The Adventures of Chompo and Olivia: Downsizing

Chompo and Olivia were moving. Pack, pack, pack, chomp, chomp, chomp (oops that was Chompo biting one of the boxes, hamsters are not very good packers), when suddenly they heard desperate, squeaky voices that chilled them to the hamster bone.