I needed to clear my head yesterday afternoon, so I got ready and went out for a walk downtown, intent on eating my first gelato of the year. We’ve only just barely started spring in earnest, but it was already 30 degrees with the humidity, and the streets were filled with people in sandals, pushing strollers, eating out on restaurant patios, and admiring all the tulips blooming in the parks and city planters.
With mint chocolate and rosewater flavoured gelato in-hand, I wandered up the streets towards the park, deep in thought. I spied a chipmunk dashing through an expanse of tulips and wondered what it must feel like to be that little creature, to live that exciting little life in this comparatively huge city.
For all its wonder, for all the amazing innovations we’ve managed to make, human life feels, sometimes, so unnecessarily complicated. We so often long for things that we cannot actually have, or that were never for us to begin with. Our world isn’t just made up of a little territory, our home range, or a migratory path — it’s global. It takes practice to like and appreciate what you have when you are constantly shown all the other possibilities that exist. It takes practice to understand, as an adult, that slowness and quiet are luxuries, when the rest of your days are filled with packed schedules that don’t leave you any time to think. When you constantly think to yourself, how is it already insert-month-here?
It is Sunday, as I write this, and outside my desk window a light spring rain has been falling, making all the vegetation and brick buildings I can see look so much darker, more vibrant with the rain. After all the heat we’ve had this past week, the rain has been sorely needed. It is Sunday, which also means that I’m indulging in my weekly cups of coffee… meanwhile, Scout hunts birdie (his favourite toy, a red bird) on the bed.
Funny story about birdie…
That toy started off being attached, by a string, to a stick so that I could make the toy fly around and land for him to catch it. He enjoyed that well enough for a few days, but eventually started getting annoyed with me. At a certain point, he started catching birdie in his mouth, setting the toy aside, and then attacking both the string and the tip of the stick where the string was attached. Until finally… snap! He bit clean through the thick, springy string and liberated birdie!
Oh, was he ever pleased with himself! I cut the rest of the string off birdie afterwards, laughing, and he’s been carrying birdie around in his mouth ever since. He likes for me to throw birdie for him as well so he can catch it, tumble around with it, and then bring it back to me for another throw. The toy is starting to lose some of its stuffing, so I’ll have to sew it back up soon… I’ll also have to see if I can buy a backup, though I’m sure he’d realize it’s birdie-the-second, and be annoyed with me again.
Speaking of which, shortly after the birdie’s liberation day, I came home from work to find that Scout’s bag of insect-protein treats had been curiously torn open, the treats strewn across the living room floor. When I asked Scout what had happened, he gave me a look of practiced innocence and then went about snacking as I tried to remain stern and not laugh. I suppose the treat-fairy must have liberated the treats from their bagged oubliette. We may never know.
When Scout first came to live with me, he was very curious about the bathtub, and loved to get up on his hind legs to look into the tub (whether it was filled with water or not), but he wouldn’t jump into it. Brave as he is, he is nothing if not cautious. He had to carefully study the tub over the course of a couple of weeks before he finally jumped into it of his own accord. He absolutely loves it in there now. Whenever I go in to use the toilet, he’ll follow me (I’ve given up on shutting the door behind me) and then hop into the tub to play behind the shower curtain. He is not a fan of showers, because this means he has to wait outside while the water is running. Sometimes he will meow at me in protest. He prefers when I take baths so that he can stick his paw in the water and take a nap on the bathroom floor.
On my way back from my walk yesterday afternoon, I kept stopping to admire the cherry trees in bloom, the surest sign of spring that there is. The driveway of my childhood home has always been flanked by two dark pink cherry trees, so I grew up gauging the changing of the seasons by the way that those particular trees looked at any given time of year; I love their gnarled branches, and how both trees together used to form a canopy over the driveway, whether they were flowering, laden with leaves and cherries, or covered in snow and ice in the winter.
Before the pandemic started, I’d decided I was going to move to Japan and so in preparation had gotten rid of a lot of my things, taken a part-time sales job while I sent in applications and prepared for a JLPT exam (that, at least, I accomplished), and then… the momentum that societies worldwide had been functioning on changed or stopped entirely. Borders shut down. A lockdown was put in place in my city. The new job that I had started had to let me go because of lockdown-related shortages (thankfully, the government covered me and many others financially during those months). I had to cancel the trip I had planned and paid for to Japan for that month to go see THE ALTERNATIVE in concert (they had to postpone the concert, too). The last overseas teaching job I’d applied to turned me down shortly after, and I gave in to despair, my mental health deteriorating as the lockdown lengthened, the pandemic showing no sign of letting up.
It’s hard to think about that period of my life, for a lot of reasons. I feel shame at how I acted. I feel shame at the beliefs (not to say delusions) I came to hold. I don’t really want to revisit those here. But it took me far longer than it should have to understand that I had the ability to change and improve my immediate circumstances and wasn’t as “stuck” as I had come to believe; that started when I moved out of my parents’ house and into an apartment again and began living by myself. It was a relief to all of us. Even though it wasn’t what I had truly intended to do, it was a step towards the goal I’d originally had. That real subsequent isolation also allowed me to face a lot of things that I hadn’t allowed myself to face before then, and it allowed me the privacy to finally start online therapy which I hadn’t been willing to do in earshot of my family members.
The pandemic disrupted all of my plans, and I gave into despair and delusion instead of using the time I’d had while out of work to get my novel written… to get literally any of my short stories finished. To cultivate self-respect that would be worthy of respect from others. To use the financial support I’d been given while temporarily out of my new job to write fiction, to sharpen my translation skills, and to study for the final level of the JLPT so that I’d have even more job opportunities. I will always regret that. Even if the things I did, the private letters I wrote at the time comforted me in a way and did come from a genuine place, however warped they were by things I was dealing with in my home-life. But I can’t change the choices I freely made back then. All I can do now is reconsider what my goals are and how to get there from here.
After several months, I was welcomed back to my full-time position at the office and began life as one of the “essential workers” in the city that could go in to my physical workplace even when we entered more lockdowns. I carried a letter from my employer that would confirm I had the right to be out and use public transportation even during lockdown periods; that was an interesting experience that I may never (correction: that I hope never to) experience again.
And finally, in my own space, though I wasn’t past the sense of despair and certain bouts of delusional thinking, I began to write in earnest again. Though this had to be done around my work and commuting hours. Still does. I’ve gotten into the habit of spending my Sundays writing because I don’t normally have the energy to do any after work during the week (lately I like to do a bit of translating before work every morning, though, to wake my brain up).
Do I want to teach, do I want to write copy, or do I want to translate? Do I want to try again to live in Japan, or do I want to move to a city like Vancouver, where I can get a direct flight whenever I have the time and the means to visit? I don’t know. I don’t entirely know. Scout hasn’t given me a clue either, but he’s a little adventurer, and I feel certain he would be up to trying whatever I decide is best for us.
I find it so soothing to see 木漏れ日sunlight filtering in through trees; to be in partial shade where leaves are lit up a bright green wherever the sunlight is trying to pass through, shadowy everywhere else. The lens flare in the photo above has such incredible coloration, such a mysterious birdlike shape.
I got home and gave Scout his supper (which he was certainly delighted about — and he’s gotten very good at doing the food dance before I even start to do my answering pirouette), then set about making mine. Since I was able to get my hands on a very nice 長芋nagaimo at the asian grocery store (along with packets of 焼あごだしdashi, which they hadn’t stocked in forever) the week before, I was able to make my first batch of お好み焼きokonomiyaki in a long while (I make mine based off of this recipe). I can’t get any 青のりaonori here so I top it with parsley flakes instead. I used to buy お好みソースokonomi sauce but I stopped because I could never use all of it in time… I suppose I should hunt for a good recipe so that I can make it at home as needed. In any case, okonomiyaki is one of my ultimate comfort foods. And this time, I tried making it with a red cabbage! I prefer using thinner, softer cabbage for okonomiyaki and cabbage rolls, but this very thick variety was all I could get my hands on. Still, with extra nagaimo and steaming time in the pan, it turned out soft and delicious.
And gorgeous. Look at that mysterious purple hue.
And my maidenhair fern peeking out from the top of the right-hand photo… it really did bounce back from what had seemed at the time like death. The rain has entirely stopped now, and it’s turned into an afternoon just as sunny as yesterday’s. Scout has switched to enjoying the fresh air coming in through the open window in the kitchen… and I’ve now finished drinking all my coffee.
Yesterday, it wasn’t just the effects of the pandemic that had me ruminating, but also the grief I wrote about in the previous entry regarding how it had taken me such a long time to get the help I needed for my mix of mental illnesses. The event that initially caused PTSD in me as a pre-teen would not have had the prolonged, lasting effect on me, would not have snowballed into cPTSD if I’d received the treatment I needed back then. If someone had chosen to set my proverbial broken bone back then, I would not be trying to treat all the secondary effects now as an adult. I was a child when it happened, I was a pre-teen; there was no way that I could get the help I needed for myself the way that I am learning to now.
For this, and any other type of grief, it is true that there are really only two ways to make it better. You have to be able to face it honestly, to honour how you feel, and move through it, not bypass it. It takes time, and it heals in fits and starts. I felt so angry, such hurt yesterday, thinking about what might have been. And so I wrote up a storm in my private journal, and I let myself feel all of it, and then… I went for a walk to ground myself in what actually is. I can’t go back and change anything, though that fact alone didn’t and still doesn’t melt away my hurt as if it were nothing. I just let my thoughts take their course and stopped to find all the small details along my walk that reminded me of the beauty and mystery that there is still to be found here and now. The things that make my artist-brain light up.
I think it is the province of dreamers and romantics to constantly imagine what might have been and what could be; this is an incredible skill to have. But it can hurt just as easily as it soothes. It can motivate just as readily as it can demoralize. When your imagination is strong, making peace with reality and moving forward in a self-compassionate way isn’t always the easiest task.
It’s okay.
It’s okay to take your time. It’s okay. You need to.
I am repeating that reassurance to myself as much as I am writing it to you, reader.