New Perspective

New Perspective

I never know where to start with these. 

My instinct is to select a topic and to start composing an essay. But I am no longer in school and this is a blog not a paper to be graded so I suppose I can just ramble off whatever nonsense I like.

I miss my home. I miss my friends and my family and the people and places that are familiar to me. Moving is fantastic and for the first little while you feel as though your entire life is a vacation filled with new experiences. Waking up each day is exciting and fulfilling and you don’t want to miss a single instant sleeping because there is so much to see and do. For an entire year that was my life. I had no interest in building social bonds or meeting people, I just wanted to experience this place on my own terms, find my own favourite hiding spots and take in everything around me without any outside influence.

More so I just wasn't ready to share my life with people anymore.

When you try and explain this to people who see you as an outgoing social butterfly it can result in some serious confusion on their part. Most people don’t understand what happened to make me want to withdraw from my social circles and focus more on my inner self.

I’m still happy and friendly these days, just much more selective about whom I let in to my life.

Up until recently, that was essentially no one.

Those who know me, know I am resolutely self-contained. I have an inability to ask for help and an equally strong inability to trust anyone offering me help. It has been this way for as long as I can remember.

For some reason, I consider asking for help in life to be equivalent to cheating. I truly believe that you are depriving yourself of a gratifying experience by copping out and letting someone do the leg work. As a result, I tend to be someone whom you ask for help rather than offer it to.

It may sound insane, but I have found that in most circumstances there really isn't anyone out there better suited to solve my problems than me.

I revel in the suffering that comes before the solution. 

I don’t know if it was how I was raised or simply an ideology I developed throughout my life, however I firmly believe that suffering builds character, self-reliance builds self-esteem and self-fulfillment builds self-worth.

So for many years of my life - practically the entire thing - the act of asking someone for assistance was like torture to me. I avoided it at all costs and resented myself for days after the fact at times when I did need help.

Moving away was just an extreme extension of this. When I left, I needed a lot of help in ways that I didn't know how to ask for. I was hurt and confused and I had lost my ability to trust even my own good judgment. I had put all of my trust in one person, thinking that was a way to limit my suffering as it relates to my correlation of self-worth to self-containment. However when that trust was broken I was deeply affected by it. I felt more alone and misguided than I ever had in my life. And rather than trust anyone else with my problems, I simply ran away. I ran as far away as I could go.

I believed the solution that would follow my suffering was more self-awareness. 

Thinking that solitude would bring clarity to the mess in my head, I avoided social interaction and opted to spend all of my time alone in the wilderness. For many months I suppressed my sorrows with new adventures and interesting experiences, spending hours upon hours alone, thinking that would help me come to terms with my troubles.

What I discovered when I had finally had enough of the loneliness and solitude was that I had made no actual progress in dealing with the issues I had brought with me from home.

In fact I had spent so much time alone that I felt I was even further away from being able to trust people – especially strange people I had no connection to. I struggled with the idea of dating immensely. I knew I wanted and needed a partner to share my experiences and thoughts with, but I was also acutely aware of my inability to allow someone into my life enough for them to want to stay.

I excel at keeping people at arm’s length, at changing the subject when the topic turns to me, and at deferring compliments, sentiments and niceties that are directed my way. I would pride myself on my staunch resolution to remain unaffected.

However, after reflecting upon myself for quite some time, I came to the realization that it was not inner strength at the root of my consciousness it was inner weakness. My self-isolation, and lifelong inability to trust others and ask for help did not stem from a positive place but rather was a reactionary consequence of my negative life experiences. With each negative experience came a realization of vulnerability that I saw as a potential weakness to be exploited. So like an engineer, I would analyze the constructs of my unhappiness and make a list of all I had done wrong to bring it upon myself. After I had established the cause of my pain I would resolve myself to never allow it to happen again.

A lifetime of this behavior and I found myself in place with hundreds of acquaintances. The only person who truly knew me was gone and had hurt me in ways that were preventing me from allowing myself to find anyone to fill their void.

I began to look at the people I considered to be weak – the ones who love and trust easily, who lean on their friends for support and aren't afraid to admit their deepest secrets and emotions – and recognize the strength in their openness to social bonding. I envied their ability to forgive and forget, to give second and third and fourth chances and to trust their secrets and failings to someone other than themselves.

At some point along this path of self-discovery, I made a decision to put myself into more emotionally dangerous situations. Almost immediately I was deeply hurt by someone I trusted and cared for. But instead of blaming myself and internalizing my discomfort, I did something I've never done before, I shared my thoughts and feelings with someone else, and in the process inadvertently made a friend. Unexpectedly, I found someone who I could share my experiences with who I truly believed understood them.

By talking about it with someone and listening to their advice and similar experiences I came to the realization that there are other people out there who think the same as me. Albeit not very many, but they existed!! By choosing to open myself up to pain and disappointment, I had also opened myself up to happiness and companionship. I now understood why people chose to rely on one another. The sense of comfort in having someone empathize with your insecurities and fears was something I had never really experienced.

I had found strength in vulnerability. 

Did this mean I was off running around sharing my innermost thoughts and fears with every person I met? No. Did I feel comfortable enough to trust someone completely from a romantic or true friendship standpoint? Also no.

But in the years since I have left home I feel I have grown immensely in my ability to simply ask someone for advice or to burden someone with my problems when I need a reprieve from the weight of them on my shoulders.

It may be a very long time before I am ever capable of trusting someone the way I am supposed to. But I think if I spread it out, and put little bits of trust in the people I feel deserve it, then one day I will get to a point where I can find one person I trust completely. Until then, I am working towards being more open, more vulnerable and less self-compartmentalized.

Am I a healthy human being? Probably not. Am I ready to seriously share my heart with someone, not very likely. But the only way to find out is to try. I am tired of being alone and suffering to build my character. From this point forward vulnerability is my new source of strength. 

I leave you with those thoughts and the following quote:

"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable." 
                                                                                                                             -Joseph Addison

Today is a New Day

Today is a New Day

It’s been so long since I've updated this blog that I had forgotten it even existed. At my outset, I had been eager to keep a running journal of my thoughts and my life via this page. However, I’m afraid that my desire to compose essays rather than genuine ‘journal’ pieces has kept me from setting aside the time to produce something acceptable for consumption.

Today that all changes. It’s my intention to regularly contribute my thoughts and ideas whether they be grammatically sound and edited six times or not. As my initial goal was to treat this as a cathartic outlet, I feel it is only fair I give it one more shot.

So where to begin?

The day that I composed my first post I was nervous, excited and unsure of my future. Today, I am the same. It’s funny how we believe that certain events in our lives will somehow give us more clarity on who we are and what we want. At times this holds true, but most times these events just bring us more questions and desires and goals to be answered and fulfilled.

More than two years ago, after starting this blog, I packed everything in my life that I could fit into a van and I drove away from what was familiar to me. Leaving my family and friends and the comforts of my little cottage was one of the most difficult and simultaneously exhilarating experiences of my life.

To try and detail my life abroad for the past two years in one post would be a fruitless undertaking. I thought perhaps, instead I would share some things I have learned along the way in both my lifetime and my travels.

Loneliness is what you make of it. Commonly perceived as a negative emotion – and at times truly is – loneliness is something that you quickly learn to appreciate for a variety of different reasons.

Particularly because there is a variety of different forms of loneliness to be felt.

I suppose the most obvious place to start is human contact, or simply socializing in general. I happened to be lucky enough to have my dog with me. For a very long time it was just her and I. Transitioning from a hyper social to a completely solitary life can be a tremendously difficult experience emotionally and having my dog to talk to and be somewhat ‘social’ with made an incredible amount of difference.

Nothing can replace the familiarity of your closest friends. I am an outgoing individual and I’m lucky enough to meet new people daily in my everyday life. However, it took returning home and walking into my best friend’s house to fully grasp how it feels to truly be surrounded by home.

You see, loneliness can be geographically based as well. Spending endless amounts of time in strange and new locations can be the loneliest feeling of all. Getting lost, truly and utterly lost, is one of the most humbling experiences of my life. The fear and desperation and despair that you feel at your complete inability to help yourself is indescribable.

This leads to another form of loneliness – support. Traditionally I am a relatively self sufficient person. I was raised to be responsible for myself and I rarely rely on anyone for anything based on the sheer discomfort it causes me to do so. However, the few times I have truly needed someone in my life, I’ve always been able to call my father or Travis. When you’re 5000km away from these people, you have a jarring realizing that you are truly alone.

All of these examples I have provided sound negative, I’ll admit. But if you simply look at them in a different light you can see why I began this topic with a positive tone.

Despite popular belief, you do not become bat-shit crazy after spending hours and hours and days and days alone. In fact I’d be inclined to argue the opposite. Solitude gives you the opportunity to actually stop and listen to what’s going on in your head and your heart . Once you can appreciate how much is going on in there that you distort and drown out with television, social media and other forms of crap, you learn to truly appreciate solitude.

Being new places is exciting. It also allows you to never really be mad about traffic because you have no idea how long it should take to normally get there. I will admit that sometimes it is just nice to know where you’re going and the fastest route to take. Eventually you come to terms with your geographic failings and you just accept that until you’re willing to call somewhere home, you are always going to feel a little bit lost.

Being lost and alone or having your vehicle broken into, or simply sleeping alone in a tent in an unfamiliar wilderness are all incredibly lonely experiences the first time around. Conversely, finding your way home, and waking up the next morning un-mauled by bears are some of the greatest moments that life has to offer - true independence and validation that you can do it alone. You can survive and indeed you can have a little fun doing it.

In the years since I left my home, and started this blog, I have grown and changed as a human being. I am more self aware, I can say no when I truly mean it, and I do what makes me happy, not what I feel will make others approve of me.

Moving away has brought me freedom from the pain in my past that I thought I could never escape. The distance from the places and people that made all those memories in my life so prevalent has allowed me to distance my heart from them, make sense of things that didn't make sense back home and to let go of the things that I can’t change or understand.

Albeit I am also missing out on the great things at home, my family, my friends and my past life. I feel as though when I am here, every day is a new day filled with possibility for me. I am not held back by my past life experiences, instead I am set free by the possibilities of my future.

Am I happier since I left home and started a new life? I guess it depends on what day you ask me. Overall, my life has changed for the positive. I still don’t know who I am, or where I am going in this world, but I feel like I am starting to learn finally. Being true to myself and staying strong against whatever obstacles I encounter has been my goal since leaving. I feel like I’ve stayed true to that. Would I like things to start getting easier? Sure. Am I ready to start sharing my life with people again? I think so.

Today  is a new day and I welcome it with open arms.