I haven't been posting much crap-garbage I find around cause I haven't found much crap-garbage that I care about at the moment. So I'm just gonna write some junk. And I'm gonna continue to do what I bitch about on other blogs...I'm gonna post more pictures of me...but they're from the trouble years so it's worth it.
I was on the subway today when I finally realized it's 2008. You know how sometimes things to do with dates and time changing take a while to sink in? Like after your birthday you'll say you're 7 when you're actually 8 and you win a colouring contest in the wrong age group and you go up to the front of the school to accept the award for best drawing in the 5-7 year old category and your classmates stand up and yell "He's not 7 he's 8!" and they strip you of your title of "Best Colourer of a Muskoka Winter Scene" in front of everyone? Grade 3 sucked.
Anyway, I realized it's been 10 years since I left to go on an exchange to Switzerland for a semester of school. It was the best thing that's ever happened to me. I worked and paid for my flight out of my two-horse title-stripping town, lived with a francophone Swiss family, went to a francophone school, saw Milan and Paris and Zurich, snowboarded amidst avalanches, ate breakfast and dinner every day with a view of Mont Blanc from the table, showered after gym class with a guy I nicknamed "horse-cock", and began to come out of the closet. It was terribly liberating, and the return to the misery of Gravenhurst was a prison sentence. I specifically remember standing in the hall a couple weeks after I got back, staring at the alternating brown, orange, and green lockers, paining for my European life, and thinking "In 10 years, I will not miss Switzerland at all." That devastated me.
At that point in my life my experiences overseas were the most important thing. There was nothing bigger or more important than those memories, and there was nothing better than those memories. And for some reason I recognized that one day they would not be the most important things in my life, and I dreaded not missing Switzerland. I anticipated THE DEATH OF MISSING.
And it faded, the missing. I went to school in a bigger town where they had photography classes, I found friends, a boyfriend, got my driver's license, and so on. Then other missings took over. Friends moved, boyfriends moved on, I moved to Toronto. A series of missings and renewals, all the while Switzerland became a sharp point in my mind. I wrote to my host family less frequently, I stopped looking through the album, I stopped watching the video, I just stopped missing it.
The most interesting thing to me in The Death of Missing is that by the time missing dies it doesn't hurt anymore. You fear losing those emotions, but in losing the emotions you lose the pain. There comes a time when thinking of something you used to love doesn't cause you to well up or get excited or swell in the heart (or another) region. When I break up with someone I have loved (okay...when I get dumped) I at first dread the day I won't long to feel him beside me. But it just fades...and in the end it doesn't hurt.
I know it's neurotic...to miss something is one thing, but to fear not missing something is entirely another, then to dramatize the fading of that feeling is beyond reason...but that's how my ticker tapes (what?).
I won't say I'm not nostalgic about things even when I don't miss them. I can't say that plowing through my packet of photos from Switzerland didn't swirl up some sludge in my black heart. But it just doesn't kill me like it used to.
I wonder what I'll miss in 10 years. Maybe if they stop making Twix bars I'll miss those.
Anyway, here are those pics:
^Me with my lesbian retiree haircut and exchange partner Maria at the Creux du Van.
^Standing on the balcony of my room at my friend Estelle's ski chalet.
^Eating chocolate on the boardwalk in Morges.
The photo at the top is from the window of my host family's dining room. Mont Blanc is between the V the mountains on the right make. The mountains on the right are where Evian water comes from. Oooooooooooo!
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, NOBODY LIKES A NERD
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 1/09/2008 -
4 Comments:
you are the handsomest
6:30 PM
Quit bothering me, waffle-cakes!
7:04 PM
Interesting that you would fear not missing something, when the feeling of missing causes so much heartache.
1:36 AM
Hello, I was gonna post this a few hours ago, It's just that I had to sign in then I remembered that I had an account then got lost in the world of blogging, well trying to understand it actually. Ok I'm just rambling. I find your THE DEATH OF MISSING post really interesting I see so much of me in your thoughts, don't know if that makes sense. I would like to get to know you better. Well have a good evening/morning.
-Samir.
3:09 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home