Please Hold On-Reflections on a Voyage Back

Please Hold On-Reflections on a Voyage Back

After 2 years away, I finally made it back to the Vancouver, BC area. On March 17th, the 2 year anniversary of me leaving canada during a wild twist in my freshman year of college, I landed back at YVR airport. I worked my way through the terminal, customs, and out to the skytrain. 

God I missed the skytrain. I missed it so much. Being able to get around the area quickly while just sitting back and letting the trains go is so nice. It’s something I struggle to live without. Good public transit has become so important to me, and will be incredibly important for whatever city I choose to move to. 

When I got to my hotel in surrey, I was immediately reminded of what a microcosm of capitalism Surrey Central is. Homeless people sleeping in the shadows of High rises and luxury hotels that stand a couple dozen stories high. Consumption intersects with labor, boom intersects with bust, the ivory tower and the slum are next door neighbors. Surrey gets a bad rep, but it’s a fine city. So long as you can keep track of the human in among the wealth and poverty, it’s an incredible place. 

Good food is abundant across the lower mainland. The Vancouver area has a lot of wonderful local chains, small businesses, and so much outstanding Asian food. In a week I had Chinese, Japanese, and Thai food, and was impressed every time. The diversity of the population reflects the variety of food. Going from Boise, ID (90% white) to the Vancouver area (<50% white) is a radical shift in who I’m around. 

Being around the friends I made during my half a year in the area was incredibly refreshing. I’ve missed just sharing space and chatting with them. I cannot entirely quantify what they mean to me. But I know without them, Vancouver wouldn’t feel like home. 

Vancouver feels like home, but visiting as a tourist is pretty sweet as well. Science world rules. The Museum of Anthropology at UBC is fascinating. There’s no lack of things to do and places to see. Getting back to transit, the ability to get around without being able to rent a car is a necessity for all cities in my opinion. 

I’d be remiss if I wrote anything about Vancouver without mentioning Simon Fraser University. The university that brought me to the city for the first time over three years ago. The university that got me out of Madison at the age of 17. The university I still kinda love. The sustainable energy engineering program I started out in wasn’t for me. I’m not cut out to be an engineer. But it was great to be back in the SEE building and sitting in on classes I didn’t have to try to understand. The SEE building is sick as hell and I love being in it. The Burnaby campus is incredible too. Fresh mountain air, incredibly views, and more brutalist architecture than anyone could ever possibly need. Being back makes me want to apply there for Grad School. 

Though I’ve been considering grad school really since this semester started, being back on the SFU campus has really busted open that can of worms. However it keeps me thinking: am I considering grad school at both SFU and UBC because I really want to go, or because I want to live in Vancouver again? Of course I’m still considering grad school as a whole, and there are several American schools that have my eye (hey there Utah). Grad school is still a big question mark on my future. But then again my whole future is a mess of punctuation anyways. 

Returning back to Vancouver and being faced with the reality that I was only there for a week and would settle back down in Boise also opened my eyes to my attitude about Boise. For quite a while, I thought I disliked boise cause it couldn’t live up to the standard set for me by Madison. But really the standard that Madison set for me paled in comparison to just how much Vancouver feels like the right city for me. A large, multicultural city with good transit and incredible food that despite its size isn’t overwhelming is an unfair bar to judge Boise against. I’ve been unfair to Boise, I think internally the more that I hated boise, the more it affirmed that I had made the right choice by going to Vancouver for school. It made the regrets I felt primarily associated with having to leave, and not with the fact that Vancouver, despite all my love for it, was not at all perfect. I wasn't a perfect person living a perfect life while I was there. I made mistakes, I have regrets about my time there. But by erasing those regrets and instead attributing all of my sadness about Vancouver to the act of leaving I could absolve myself of blame for anything that happened there. There are things I should have done, there are people I should have talked to more. But we live and we learn. And I’m going to keep living and keep learning in Boise for the next couple of years. 

I’m just about to touch down in Boise. So my final thoughts are this: 1) Vancouver is incredible, the people, the food, the atmosphere, all incredible. 2) I’ve still got a lot to learn about myself and the city of Vancouver. And I’ll keep learning about myself through the city of Vancouver. 3) grad school is a big decision I’m gonna have to make pretty soon. 4) Boise is a good place for me to call home.  

Musings on the 14th of February

 It’s been a while since I’ve posted any of my writing here. I’ve been so focused on my essays for class that I haven’t done much introspective writing. 

Today I don’t know what I'm going to write. It’s 11:36 p.m. on a school night when I’m starting this. I certainly won’t be done until the morning of valentine’s day. I should be in bed and I should be asleep but There's just some things that I need to get out there and into the world.  I've got a lot of thoughts right now none of them are particularly constructive or good but maybe this rambling text will become something coherent by the end of it.  

I guess the first thing on my mind is that I feel like there are people who I should be able to call my friend and that I would maybe like to call my friend but either I'm not putting in enough effort or they just don't like me or who the hell knows. There's just not that connection there and there's something missing. It makes me feel bad even though I know it shouldn't make me feel bad. And that’s the worst type of melancholy cause it sticks in your teeth and digs at your gums until you bleed and there is a faint taste of iron in your spit. But it's just as much their fault as mine, at least I want to think it is. Because it also makes me feel bad for my friends who are there for me. Who don't make me question where I stand with them and that I know that I can trust. It feels like it isn’t fair for them that I'm questioning my friendship with others more than developing our friendship. 

I think another part of it is that I tend to have these Cycles. I start hanging out or interacting with a group of people and you know things start off good. I like the people, they like me and then I start getting overwhelmed. And when I get overwhelmed I shut down and when I shut down I retract, pull back, isolate. Then through no fault of their own they move on and they keep connecting and forming those bonds with each other. Meanwhile I'm just not engaging in that group and that means that I fall out of the circle.  

It's been, at this point, over 750 days since I last went on something that I could call a date. That has been kind of hanging around me. That I haven't been able to have that type of connection in a long time. That's just how it goes though there's some context in there and most that has been during a pandemic that is devastating this country. But such a round Milestone number of days, and the realization that it's over 2 years. That just has just been staying with me. Because I know that my value isn’t determined by that. But maybe those 750 days are a monument to the realization that there's work that I have to put in if I want to live the life I want to live, and if I want the people around me to be able to live the type of life that I think they deserve. 750 days it's a hell of a lot of days. And this isn't to be on any sort of incel bullshit that women don’t want to date me cuz I'm a nice guy or bullshit like that. And I certainly don't want pity or anything like that. I understand that the problem isn't in the women that I am interested in. I'm not concerned about being dating material or anything like that. I'm just concerned that I’m not where I'm supposed to be and it's causing issues. I can't be in the right headspace to pursue that type of stuff if I'm not happy where I am and if I'm not willing to put in the work to be happy where I am. It’s a very realistic possibility that I go another 750 days before I go on another date.

I always, always, always try and remember that history is for the living. It really truly is. I guess I need to remember that love is for the living as well and that relationships are for the living and that I need to live. I need to do what is necessary for me to finally take the leap. I need to breathe in the air and smell the flowers and take the steps that all lead me to wherever I'm going. There is a proverb that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I think that's the biggest thing. Maybe a streak of 750 days ends with a single step. Or maybe a single sentence, who knows. 

I don't exactly know what the right term for what I'm going through is. Could be alienation, could be seasonal affective disorder finally coming around and kicking my ass like it always does. I might just be here, writing through a sad moment. That's okay. I hope that when I go to bed and I wake up in the morning and I just go throughout my day that I'm going to feel better. I don't think there's any guarantee of that, but maybe the hope for it is all that I need. 

Happy Valentine's Day y’all. 

With Love, Aaron 

An open letter to You, who will never read it

Dear You, who will never read it, 

Tonight I sat outside my front door and drank some hot cocoa. I had a perfect view of one star. Trees and buildings and awnings framed that one white freckle on the night sky. It is inevitable when I stare into the sky, that I think of others who might be looking up at the same sky. I thought of my friends who I left behind, and who have left me behind. But mostly I was thinking about you. It always agonizes me; what might have been. Sometimes when I think about you, it’s like a bowling ball to the stomach. It knocks the wind out of me. Sometimes, like tonight, when I thought about you, I chuckled. There’s so much that I didn’t know, and still don’t know that it amuses me how hung up I am over something that never happened. Maybe my frustration is that it never had the chance to happen. The dominoes didn’t fall that way. And that’s probably okay. The past can never fully inform the future. But the infinite stream of might-have-beens that make up history help me imagine what might be. And maybe what might be is me drinking hot cocoa looking up at that same star many months or years from now, with you by my side. 

Love, 

Aaron 

How about that weather huh?

 Every Monday through Thursday I bike into campus to attend class. I’m studying History at Boise State University. To be entirely honest I had never even once considered going to Boise State when I was applying to schools during my last year of high school back in Wisconsin. I applied to three schools, got into one, and began my freshman year of university at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. I lived in Surrey and took most of my classes at the Surrey campus that housed the Sustainable Energy Engineering program. I’m not entirely sure why I applied to Engineering programs. I despise math and I’m not super interested in science. 

I chose to apply for SFU because it was in the Pacific Northwest, an area that’s always felt like home. I spent the better part of seven months in BC. Most of that time it was cold, rainy, and gray. Most days it was alright, but it would grate on me, until one day it would hit me like a truck, and I’d desperately want to see the sun. I enjoyed my time in Canada, there were highs and lows as is true of any time in my life. But the highs were higher than other periods in my life. And the lows were briefer. Then March came around. On St. Patrick’s day, a holiday synonymous with americanized symbols of luck, my life took a sour turn. To the south and the east. 

I moved to Boise, Idaho when the pandemic initially shut down the world. I was living with family, but Boise took a long time to feel like home. Not wanting to return to the engineering program or attend an international school virtually, I transferred schools. I considered culinary schools, a smaller state university back home in Wisconsin, and of course Boise State. I got accepted into the Boise State History Program, finally studying something I cared about and was good at. The first two semesters were not good times. The latter half of the spring semester was alright, but most of the eight or so months of the fall and spring terms were boring at best and crushing at worst. There were highs sprinkled throughout, but they were few and far between. 

I moved out of my Dad’s house in Boise this August, and into an apartment near campus. The apartment feels more like home to me. I can walk places and feel like I’m actually in a city instead of the soulless suburbs. My apartment is only about an eight minute bike ride from the far side of campus. There is a great deal more sun here in Boise than in BC, and most days so far this semester the weather has been gorgeous. But today when I woke up it was cold and rainy. I made sure to wear clothes that would keep me warm and dry. I left a couple minutes earlier than usual, so that I could bike more slowly. The chilly air felt comforting on my skin. The familiar feeling of raindrops slowly coating me was a welcome change from the constant sun. I’m still not any closer to the home I left some 18 months ago. But, today the weather made Boise feel a bit less like Boise, and a bit more like home. It was enough to remind me that, just like living in British Columbia or in Wisconsin, Boise will have its highs and its lows. It reminded me that I shouldn’t miss the forest for the City of Trees. 

Musings on the 20th of September

Birthday mornings used to be marked by having my breakfast made for me by my mom. The food was always accompanied by hot cocoa. Over the years those hot cocoas turned to mochas turned to black coffee. I always enjoyed having those breakfasts with the family, and the dinners in the evening. The food was always hot and the atmosphere warm. 

Then came a year when I had my birthday coffee with just my mom, in a new house with no memories of birthdays prior. On my 17th birthday I felt alone. My sister was taking a gap year volunteering with the NCCC and Americorps. And the dinner with my parents was decidedly colder. Civil, but cold. 

The next year I turned 18 in a country where I wasn’t an adult til I was 19. I woke up alone, ate alone, and drank my morning coffee alone. That night I drank a bottle of root beer I had brought with me from Madison. It was a soothing taste of home in a strange land. A thousand miles from my closest friends, and still weeks away from meeting my new friends, it was another lonely birthday. I was happy to be somewhere new, somewhere I knew would be better than where I had been. 

Last year I turned 19 in a room in my dad’s basement in a city I never wanted to live in. I had a glass of water when I woke up instead of coffee. Once again I was far, far away from any friends. This time I wasn’t without family though. That didn’t make me feel any less alone. I facetimed my sister for several hours that day. It closed the distance but didn’t warm the atmosphere. 

Tomorrow I’m going to wake up alone. In an apartment that is just me and my stuff. I’ll still be in a city I never wanted to live in, and going to a university I never planned to study at. I don’t think I’m gonna have any hot cocoa or coffee with my breakfast. I don’t know what I’m gonna eat for dinner either. But for the first time in years I won’t feel alone when I wake up on my birthday. And I hope that that’s enough for me.