All in Life Notes
If you’ve visited my blog lately, you may have noticed the tumbleweeds drifting across the open space where blog posts should be. It’s been a solid two months since I’ve posted anything on here, and I really wish I could chalk it up to writer’s block, to being uninspired, to being too busy. But alas, I won’t be getting off so easy. In the past couple of days, I’ve finally decided to face the truth: I haven’t written anything because I’ve been a bum. These are my confessions.
“You would’ve done the same for me.” I am ashamed of how many times this has been my reply to the words “thank you.” I am ashamed of this because of the implication that I carried out an act of kindness because I would expect the same from the person I did it for. “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” Looking back on all the times that I uttered, “You would’ve done the same for me,” I wonder if I measure up. I have been humbled by the memory of times where I had nothing to give, and needed so much.
A few years ago, I went through a very difficult time in my life during which I was so full of hurt and pain and loss that I couldn't offer anything to anybody if I tried. I lived with a family friend for a few months to escape a toxic home life. I was often like a ghost in their home, moody and unpredictable, but they loved me like one of their own anyway. I spent many sleepless nights awake with friends who understood that I couldn’t bear to be alone when the nightmares haunted me. I spent hours on the phone with friends who helped me carry the weight of my heartache, never complaining about the fact that I was easily distracted and often disinterested in their lives. I was sensitive and distant and hard to get along with, but in spite of that, people took the time to give me love.
Last weekend, Mother Nature unleashed her fury on Toronto in the form of an ice storm. Everything in the city glittered under a thick layer of ice and the streets were as slick as skating rinks. We were reminded how nature’s force can be both strikingly beautiful and amazingly destructive. Trees, heavy with the weight of the ice on their boughs, simply snapped, falling onto homes, streets and, most frustratingly, power lines. Thousands of people were left without power as temperatures dipped below zero. I was one of those people. In fact, our power was off for eight days.
Of course, that came with its share of frustrations. For one, we learned the value of sharing body heat, as the temperature in our apartment plummeted. Pizza boxes piled up in our recycling bin as we had no means of cooking, even after we got a generator to power the heat. Navigating our home by candlelight and crossing our fingers for warm water from the shower head were both equally annoying. And of course, there was no wifi. We, like so many others, were unplugged.
