And more words.

Okay, it's official-- I miss writing.

Well, that’s a bit of a deceptive statement. It’s not like my fingers have exactly become unfamiliar with the keyboard. It’s more that my writing as of late has been of the “why-I-am-going-to-be-the-most-fabulous-intern-ever” genre (or, you know, the neuropsych report I am technically writing in my office as we speak… if anyone asks). So much self-promotion gets a little tiresome. Perhaps I just miss being a little more honest, verbose, jaded, sarcastic, and more flexible on my use of punctuation.

Of course, this is about the least convenient time ever to try to squeeze an additional hobby somewhere in my overflowing life. I fear a little that adding even a tablespoon more of demands or obligations may result in a full scale flood, which may explain why even thinking about opening up my Google Reader feels slightly like drowning.

The multiple tabs open on my computer right now shout at me: DEADLINES. DECISIONS. RESPONSIBILITIES. This may explain why I want to aimlessly write again. It hearkens back to times of what seem like leisure (if my life has ever really been leisurely), when I would curl up on the couch, drinking tea and barefooted, with nothing planned for the next hour except to get a little lost in ideas.

It is funny noticing the changes that not writing brings out in me.

I pay less attention a lot of the time, to conversation going on behind me, the scenes flying by my window. I almost block these all out, with headphone, sunglasses, games on my phone.

Still, some days I come home, and douse the Duke with words, sentences, anecdotes.

I haphazardly recount stories to friends, who seem a little bit perplexed by the randomness of it all.

I keep other thoughts to myself, not sure what the purpose is in expressing them.

I think a lot. Probably too much sometimes.

I miss the interactions I used to have with people who knew me exclusively through my words. Some of us do keep in touch, but things naturally tend to fade when the main source of connection disappears. I miss not needing to worry if someone “got it”, for as convoluted as my ramblings may sometimes be, someone always did. I miss 2am emails and laughing at my computer screen. I miss those lightbulb over the head moments, when a piece magically writes itself.

I miss my words.

Why me pre-coffee and noxious chemicals don't get along

6:42 am.

I'm staring at myself bleary-eyed in the mirror.

I notice the remnants of yesterday's mascara smudged around my eye, so I grab a cotton pad, douse it in liquid, and press it against my right eye.

IT BURNS.

Wincing, I manage to pry open my eye, and splash some water into. I turn my good eye to the counter to see not a small blue bottle of eye make-up remover, but a large pink bottle.

I have just put nail polish remover in my eye.

I've never been so happy to not read "Please avoid contact with eyes" in my life.

Unpredictability

It was a typical date for us in its lack of typicality: Afgani food and an independent zombie flick. We walked home, hand-in-hand, through our shortcut in the courtyard of a generic condo complex, the full moon's light bouncing off the patio windows. He was speaking of deja vu, and how he believed that certainly times in your life are more prone to deja vu simply because you recollect them more frequently.

"I think I will think back to this year often," he says.

I have a tendency towards not just trying to remember past events, but trying to place myself back in the same head space I was at the time. I try to pretend as though I am blind to the outcomes that came to bear, as if I can't remember how everything turned out in the end, as though I am naive when I am back in these stories. Perhaps this is why I write, because it is the closest I can ever come to being back there again, without hindsight sneaking in and tinting things just a little.

"I think the weirdest thing about reminiscing about this year is that we are never going to be able to capture this uncertainty that overlies everything," I say. "We'll instead look back knowing how it all turned out, and it will turn into a scene from a movie, with false bits of foreshadowing weaved in. You remember things differently when you know how it ends."

But right now, fingers interwoven on a Sunday night, we don't know how it ends. We just know that 365 days from now, I'm going to be somewhere far away from this courtyard, and he is going to be somewhere else. We may be a short train ride away, or instead separated by security checks and several hours in the air. I may be in the Prairies or in an Eastern metropolis. He may be in the United States or in Canada. The logistics will follow.

This uncertainty walks that tight-rope between blessing and curse. In some ways, I feel lucky for having given myself the flexibility to live somewhere else for a year, to be able to gather the stories about the nuances of another city, and then to move on yet again, to join him somewhere else new. There is something romantic about the idea of him and I in a new place, about becoming home to each other in a city where everything else is new and still lacks a those firm connections.

But then there is this year apart. People all echo the same generic statements. "It's just a year," they repeat, despite the fact that they haven't even considered moving to a different neighbourhood. A year is still 365 days, which is 365 nights not waking up beside him.

I also notice that this uncertainty is starting to carve out boundaries between me and others. My mother, who I only see once a season if I'm lucky, despite me only being 8 hours away, grows quieter when I discuss the ambiguity of my future. Some of my friends seem to be inching away, as their lives become more concrete. They speak of raising kids in proximity to one another, of buying houses nearby, and I am subtly distanced from them, my next ten years still remaining an abstract concept, with seemingly exponential possible outcomes, which become tiresome to consider after a while.

Then again, maybe the one concrete thing I have right now is that uncertainty, that excitement, that unpredictability, those multiple possibilities. Maybe I shouldn't be in such a rush to nail my life down. Maybe I, too, will frequently look back on this year of unwritten possibilities. After all, we all have decades of predictability to come if we want it.