When I think about my life, what do I think about? Lush ferns, peony petals on burnished wood, and open windows. Cool basements made sweltering by burning wood stoves. There's vanilla extract, dark, paper-lined cupboards, and twinkling nights, all stars and clean air, shadows and long driveways. A childhood fear of the dark, of witches, of being called on in class but not having the answer. A beliefs in my beginnings and roots. An uncertainty, but assurance in the value of my future and that strange and naive sense that everything will be okay. The past flashes like pictures on a screen, while my mind tries to focus, grab an image, hold on, dissect it. I try to remember what I wore, how the weather was, if the grass was covered in dew or frost or snow.
The day I left was hot. June 3rd. My outfit -- a vague recollection of bare legs, tanned arms, and a flouncy skirt. Not sombre. Light. The wind rippled the fabric around my thighs as I walked to the subway and my mind reeled with the past, the even further past, and the future. The present, what was happening, at that exact moment, did not register with me. I headed west, where everyone seems to go when the air around them whispers change. In my case, west of High Park, Runnymede, Jane.
The next month was a haze of melancholic lows and euphoric highs. In an effort to steady myself, reinvent what it meant to be me, I shopped. Free of another person for the first time in four years I spent money compulsively; clothes, coffee, magazines, books, anything. I went out early and came back late. I listened to the same albums on repeat: Chad Vangaalen, Bjork, Bon Iver, Yeasayer. Soul, conviction, honesty. Things I was scared I had lost. I was overwhelmed by the prospect of single hood but it was the dawn of summer, and sunlight was keeping me afloat.
I moved three times in June before settling into an old home in the Annex, all exposed brick and overhanging trees. I knew none of my room mates and subsequently felt relief. Anonymity. Summer and all its heat and brightness and lack of restraint had an effect on me. I grew my hair and let it reach down my back in bronze strands, and when the warm wind blew hard, it whipped around my head, getting stuck in my lips.
In those hot months I walked long and far. Down Markham to Queen, west to Parkdale, Roncesvalles. Sometimes across to Kensington, through the university campus. Sunny days saw me crave chaos, noise, while cloud cover led me down deserted student avenues. Often I had no real sense of direction. The city opened itself up to me and I inched towards renewal.
When people ask me how my summer was, I pause and reach back. It was good, I say. Different. To those I know a bit better, an explanation: a serious breakup, a nomadic season. I stretched my legs, only to tuck them back in.
Today, it's early Autumn, and the heat of summer is already buried under wool, damp leaves, and a heavy dose of reality. The summer months had me untethered, wavering in a limbo between past and present. October is steadying. It casts a golden amber glow on the world that's not concealing or smoldering like the haze of a humid Toronto summer, but rather exposing. The crisp mornings wake me up, shake me out of the stupor of July and August, and bring with it the alarming realization that I have no idea where life will take me.
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