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hel_anaEPILOGUE
Walking past the swingset Joel and I would sometimes go swing on when he recognized that I needed to be out of the office. The sound of the city, and the faces from everywhere. Running down the stairs to make it onto the subway. Every time I go into the city, I yearn for it.
And then, standing at the subway door waiting for it to open, I realized what it is. It's not that I miss Toronto. (Though I sometimes do.) It's not that I miss the food. (Though I miss that constantly.) Nor is it that I want to be living there again. It's that I love the person I became in that year and a half I lived there, and the city is intimately tied to that transformation.
PROLOGUE
When I moved to Toronto in July of 2000, I was already changing. My separation was, in many ways, the result of that change. I'd spent years gradually becoming less than I should have been. My grandmother told me that she knew something was wrong between Shawn and I when I asked him if we could buy one of the five dollar pies my mother's service club was making.
Let me be clear: I wasn't blameless in this situation. I'd accepted the increasingly intolerable conditions. I quit the activities he told me to quit. I went out with him on his forays, looking for things to keep him amused. I drove him out to a field at 5:30 in the morning so he could fire potatoes into it with his trebuchet. And I stayed, and married him, after he slept with Gilda, and then made me meet her
I stayed in those conditions, to some extent, because I was terrified of what would happen to me if I left. How I'd pay rent and feed myself. I had no faith in my ability to look after myself, and so I stayed. And I'm not proud of that.
Then I got the job in Toronto, and discovered that I was very good at it. I had a level of respect from my co-workers that I didn't have at home. I started to notice that I walked differently, thought differently, was different, when I was in and en route to and from Toronto. And I noticed that it all went away when I came back in the door. I used to love going out by myself in Waterloo, because when I was out by myself, I liked myself. My efforts to hold on to that part of me inside of the house led to fights. Which led to me avoiding him by spending more time online, holding tighter to the elements of my job that were available to me at home. Things spiralled downward at home while they just kept getting better at work.
And so I found an apartment, and then told him that I wanted to move into the city. In a counselling session, because I was so afraid that he wouldn't let me if I didn't have a neutral witness. In the first week of July, I moved my books and my dishes, my clothes, and a futon mattress (the old one) into my new apartment. The first one I'd ever had all to myself.
Walking past the swingset Joel and I would sometimes go swing on when he recognized that I needed to be out of the office. The sound of the city, and the faces from everywhere. Running down the stairs to make it onto the subway. Every time I go into the city, I yearn for it.
And then, standing at the subway door waiting for it to open, I realized what it is. It's not that I miss Toronto. (Though I sometimes do.) It's not that I miss the food. (Though I miss that constantly.) Nor is it that I want to be living there again. It's that I love the person I became in that year and a half I lived there, and the city is intimately tied to that transformation.
PROLOGUE
When I moved to Toronto in July of 2000, I was already changing. My separation was, in many ways, the result of that change. I'd spent years gradually becoming less than I should have been. My grandmother told me that she knew something was wrong between Shawn and I when I asked him if we could buy one of the five dollar pies my mother's service club was making.
Let me be clear: I wasn't blameless in this situation. I'd accepted the increasingly intolerable conditions. I quit the activities he told me to quit. I went out with him on his forays, looking for things to keep him amused. I drove him out to a field at 5:30 in the morning so he could fire potatoes into it with his trebuchet. And I stayed, and married him, after he slept with Gilda, and then made me meet her
I stayed in those conditions, to some extent, because I was terrified of what would happen to me if I left. How I'd pay rent and feed myself. I had no faith in my ability to look after myself, and so I stayed. And I'm not proud of that.
Then I got the job in Toronto, and discovered that I was very good at it. I had a level of respect from my co-workers that I didn't have at home. I started to notice that I walked differently, thought differently, was different, when I was in and en route to and from Toronto. And I noticed that it all went away when I came back in the door. I used to love going out by myself in Waterloo, because when I was out by myself, I liked myself. My efforts to hold on to that part of me inside of the house led to fights. Which led to me avoiding him by spending more time online, holding tighter to the elements of my job that were available to me at home. Things spiralled downward at home while they just kept getting better at work.
And so I found an apartment, and then told him that I wanted to move into the city. In a counselling session, because I was so afraid that he wouldn't let me if I didn't have a neutral witness. In the first week of July, I moved my books and my dishes, my clothes, and a futon mattress (the old one) into my new apartment. The first one I'd ever had all to myself.
