Rebuilt

Wilfred dress (similar)
Chanel heels
Linjer rings (c/o)
Chanel earrings
Location: Osborne Village – Winnipeg, Manitoba

Between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-five, I burned down immense swathes of the landscape of my life. I moved back and forth across the country multiple times in those years, ping-ponging between cities and between very different possible versions of adulthood. Two of my most significant friendships ended. And another relationship, which had gone on for far too long, finally faded away, but not without reminding me with a kind of brutal finality that there was no way to repair it; that there never would be. I threw myself one last birthday party, when I turned twenty-five – it was a lifelong tradition for me, to gather all my friends together to celebrate in the early fall. But after that, after everything that happened, I never did it again.

Honestly, for a long time I didn’t feel much like celebrating.

I don’t think about my twenty-five-year-old self very often. I remember that she was profoundly unhappy, but I recall less about why, because I’ve moved on, at least theoretically, from all the events that transpired leading up to that birthday. And I say theoretically because while it’s been years since I’ve given more than a passing thought to that fall, it impacted my life in the intervening years in ways I didn’t recognise, some of which are more significant than others.

When you burn your life down, it needs to be rebuilt. And that rebuilding doesn’t happen over night. I turned thirty-eight yesterday. Over the weekend, I threw myself a birthday party for the first time in more than a decade. It was a small, unambitious event – I try not to overdo it with anything, now; I’ve matured enough to know that overdoing leads to overthinking, always a recipe for disaster for me – with the people closest to me in the city I currently call home. We drank wine, we ate snacks and… that was it, really. Normally, it wouldn’t have been significant enough to need to be recorded for posterity. But it was significant, because the fact that I wanted to do it means I have, finally, rebuilt. And the life I have now, the people in it, make me want to celebrate.

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow.”
– Celeste Ng

I didn’t burn down so much of my life for fun, but because I’d reached a point where I couldn’t see a path forward that didn’t involve destruction. The situation was dire, and I knew I’d participated in letting it get to that point. The simplest way to avoid repeating history was not to let anyone else ever get so close to me. I’ve rebuilt my life over the past thirteen years, but it’s been a slow, methodical process. For so long, I found it hard to trust people, especially new people. I approached every fledgling relationship warily. And so I held many, many people at arm’s length, treated them as single serving friends, always happy to meet up for a cup of coffee but never to go any deeper. It’s safe, living that way. But it’s not very interesting, especially for an extrovert.

The fact is, if you want people in your life, you have to be willing to meet them halfway. It’s a lesson I learned belatedly, but as I move into this new year with my life rebuilt, it’s one I’m embracing wholeheartedly. My birthday this year feels almost like a rebirth. I’m emerging from my protective cocoon, not ready to take on the world so much as to let people into mine more readily and easily.

Cheers, my dears – to new beginnings.

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