you'll remember this moment of joy and optimism forever.

an ongoing and evolving digital scrapbook- my musings on Vancouver Canada, Canada’s West Coast in general, and how place has influenced my personal evolution from different distances throughout my life.

Entry 1:

When I was 17, a decade ago, I really really dreamed of living in a city as big as Vancouver. Once both my older siblings went off to college, my parents took me there for spring long weekend.

It rained almost the entire weekend, but I don’t remember being upset by it at all.

I had only ever been to the west coast once before. with my whole family. it was the year that Michael Jackson died, the month that Michael Jackson died, I had just turned ten- a few weeks before. It felt like summer back home, but only wetter. I remember it in flashes- metallic doors closing loudly -finding myself eye level with strangers torso’s before mom caught me and held me upright as the train started flying; feeling tense and guilty while my father made racist comments in public; standing across a freeway from my intended destination for the first time; water and water and water and water. Soft around the edges and tinted with magic in the way a ten year olds thoughts still are.

I started drinking lattes that second weekend visiting in 2017. In part to help bring some warmth into my hands that had never visited the wetness of the west coast and in a bigger part to pretend I was someone older than I was, cooler than I was, more important than I was. Someone with a job and a life and shitty wet apartment with a cat in this city that felt infinite compared to Canada’s Midwest where I’d grownup. Someone separate from who I was. Ahead. Distant.

I wasn’t a happy 16 year old. And I day dreamed a lot. I would dream and dream and dream about living in a city like Vancouver. I would dream and dream and dream about the type of person it would shape me into becoming. Someone who didn’t rely on the people that I did, someone who didn’t rely on day dreams to give their life meaning.

My art therapy journal entry for tomorrow 💙