February: This was one of the hardest winters I've lived through. I was marooned on Anxiety Island, desperately working my CBT processes, trying to hold back intrusive thoughts that were literally screaming "KILL YOURSELF" inside my brain 18 hours a day. Noah was deep in a tantrum season, I was a solo parent 5/7 days, the house had the ghosts of a million cockroaches in it, the days were only fifteen minutes long, I was working through some super complex feelings about a former friend, I was packing to move, and there were three ice storms in three weeks. This was the month that 2015-2018 really came and sat on my chest: when I realized that I either had to get right with my life, or I was going to be unsustainably unhappy for a long time. (Or, maybe, a short time.) In the midst of all this, I managed to write an article about women in aerospace, which was a distraction from alllll that.
March: We moved to a new house, still in Stratford, still renting. However, this house is bright and creaky in a pleasant way, with odd nooks and crannies and an enormous attic for wild rumpusing. The kitchen window faces south over a large backyard, so every afternoon, the place where I spend the most time is flooded with brilliant yellow light, or at least with the orange smudges of a winter sunset. Noah started preschool, and for the first few weeks, all I can do while he's at school in the morning is watch Queer Eye and rest. After this ruined winter, preschool gives Noah and I the space we need to like each other again, which is a relief.
April: The buds return to the trees, the clocks have shifted, and suddenly, I am alive again. At Easter, I have a shouting argument with my in-laws about my marriage/life/move to Stratford/general personality that left me utterly drained for the rest of the week and back on my heels until, well...I am writing this in December and I'm still slightly unsettled, to be honest. Families are so strange, and I'm not the first person who has struggled to calibrate a relationship with their in-laws, which is tough fucking work when we're trying to figure out how to navigate different definitions of love and safety and good choices. On a friend level, we all got VERY into Game of Thrones.
May: I start work on a new creative project, which is a family cookbook, illustrated with papercuts. This brightens up my brain in a huge way. I love teaching myself new skills! And I got my G1 for the fourth time. I love taking literally 20 years to learn a very basic skill!
June: I meet with Claire Tansey and talk about food writing, and she's very complimentary and encourages me to do something with my talent; so far, I've been basking in the glow of that meeting and done precious little actual writing/pitching. I learn how to knit brioche socks. We take Noah on his first 'camping" trip, in which we sleep in a tent in our friend Emmett's front yard, and Noah treats the whole excursion as an excuse to eat seven hot dog buns in 36 hours and turn the tent into a bouncy castle. It turns out that putting a three year old to bed inside of a de-facto light box is not easy. Thank god he was still nursing then, or else I don't think he would have slept the entire weekend.
July: I join the YMCA for a trial month and start going three times a week; this sounds impressive, but at least one of those weekly outings is just me dropping Noah off in the playroom and sitting in the lobby reading Bon Appetit. I finish the family cookbook. I start PTSD counseling, and it's scary as hell. My grandmother has a hip replacement; my grandfather dies. My mother is swept up in the feelings of loss, and I feel helpless to help her carry the burden of grief.
August: I get thirteen pounds of cucumbers from a farming friend and spend a week making relish and pickles. We go to the cottage. My best friend is pregnant and it's so fun to watch her little bump grow. I listen to Harry Potter audiobooks and it's an amazing way to spend my knitting time. August is one of those months where nothing really happens but since there's no structure to our days, everything stretches like taffy and we pack in a lifetime into 31 little calendar squares. Noah stops nursing, which is a bit of a sadness but he was three and half, so yeah.
September: Noah re-enters the preschool and we settle back into a rhythm, which is a good thing. My sister takes me to the Carley Rae Jepson concert and I sob through at least three songs; then we get very drunk and I stay out until two in the morning, which I hadn't done since 2015. I continue to feel like Stratford is not quite the fit that I want it to be: people are busy, and we aren't part of anyone's regular friendship rotation. In January and February, this would have made me so hopeless; in September, it makes me feel more resolved to find my folks and dig deeper with the ones I have.
October: There was a federal election and I felt a lot of weird angst about it. Living in a small town in a large county means that I can't really pretend my politics are universal, which I could kind of get away with in certain progressive corners of Toronto. I did a lot of research and ultimately went with my heart, which was not an effective strategy by any metric. I start listening to a new Harry Potter podcast during my morning walks. The fall is long and fairly warm and the trees in Stratford are absolute babes. I get an actual haircut. We fail to deliver on an artisanal Transformers costume for Halloween, but Mike brings home a store-bought Bumblebee outfit and saves our hides.
November: We go to a friend's wedding that was held in the LIBRARY and there's a DRUMLINE and it's magical. The wedding is basically a co-op reunion party and it's super nice to see that the guys I loved when I was 22-26 are all pretty much Good Dudes now, and the women I loved in that same time period are all doing great, and I left that wedding feeling held and part of a friend group. It was a delight. My mom and I go on the most poorly-planned girls weekend and it turns into a wonderful sleepover in St Marys, which is perfect. The PTSD therapy kicks into high gear and I leave my sessions feeling like I have been drained of all my blood, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like maybe I will be able to survive the next big crisis, whatever that it. I feel more relaxed, and much happier. (And my best girl had her baby!)
December: My dad comes and stays with me for two weeks, and we spend our time walking around town and eating simple carbs and chatting, and he's wonderful to be around. My dad was kind of a distant/always-working figure when I was growing up, and I've often been closer with my mom, but we've spent so much time together in the last year that our own father-daughter relationship has bloomed in a special way. Our bike trailer gets stolen off our front porch, which is devastating because it's our "car;" my parents go out and FIND IT, which is a miracle. We spent Christmas in Toronto with my in-laws, which is a 7/10 experience for me, but Noah gets four new Transformers, so he's in a great mood.
This year, I spent a lot of time feeling out of place: wishing I could be in Toronto with my friends and siblings; wishing I could be in Stratford with my kid-life and house. The integration I want to have happen here isn't quite jelling, and I should put in a bit more work and a bit more time, and also honour the meaningful roots that are taking hold. I also was more selfish this year: taking time for knitting, for creative projects, for working out, for cooking, for therapy. This type of selfishness will scan as obvious and necessary, because those things nourish me in a very real way, but the last couple years have been so unbalanced that reclaiming that space and time for basic needs was an act of empowerment. (And I knit a bajillion things this year, which was absolutely wonderful for me.) And, finally, the therapy that I've been doing has made a real change in me. Everyone spent the spring and fall complaining about rain; all I saw were trees blooming.
On January 1, 2019, I saw a fox running on the train tracks into the city, and it felt magical; that same day, a homeless man who looked like a wizard pointed at me and shouted "GOOD YEAR" and it felt magical, too. I turned the calendar knowing that I was not okay, but that I was going to get better, and I was right.
