Separation Journal #3: A new chapter begins

This is the third in a series of personal journal entries. If you don’t know me well you may wish to skip this and visit some of the other categories such as Technology & Society, Travel or Canada.

As one chapter ends a new one begins, full of possibility.

Well, another month has gone by. And what a month. I never quite hit that two-weekly cycle… but this time there was good reason. Things were happening, relationships were changing, and sometimes life doesn’t fit into convenient two week chunks. This was the month where my life got back on track. So, where to begin?

I think the catalyst for everything that’s happened was my trip to the UK a couple of weeks ago. A trip away is always good for perspective. It was great to see my brother and my parents (the main purpose of the trip was my brother’s 30th birthday). It was really good to be able to talk about everything that’s happened with my family, and to do so from the familiar surroundings of my native UK (albeit in Scotland rather than England).

While I was back home, my thinking moved forwards. I noticed that in the months since we separated, I haven’t been devastated. I have been, on the whole, happy. And I realised that what I missed was the earlier days of our relationship – the love & passion and happiness that had gradually faded away. More and more, being separated feels like it was the right thing for both of us. And more than that, as I started to think about the future, I suddenly saw possibilities, opportunities that gave me hope (more on that in a bit).

But all of this fused together into a kind of acceptance of what has happened. I can see now that it is over, and I am ready to move on. My thinking has caught up with hers, I think we reached a point where we both know that our future is not together. When I returned to Canada, we had a heartfelt and tearful conversation where I shared this, and sad as it was to think about everything we had lost and everything that will now never be, we were in complete agreement, that we are ready to move on. One good thing about this is that now our heads are in the same place, it should be much easier to try and build and maintain a platonic friendship.

So that’s one strand of the story of my life this month. The other parallel strand also begins in Scotland. To celebrate my brother’s birthday, he’d hired a cabin in Aviemore for lots of his friends and me to stay over the weekend. One of the highlights was when we went mountain biking around Loch Morlich and through the forests, getting completely splashed with mud and soaked as we got rained upon or forded streams on our bikes. But it didn’t matter, it was just great fun, and it was so nice for me to enjoy the British countryside again. And we had lots of other fun too… sitting in the cabin drinking cocktails and playing Werewolf, going out for a meal in Aviemore, and checking out the fine nightlife options (ahem) offered in the village. It was a thoroughly fun weekend.

And in the midst of all this, I met Lisa. We had a real physical spark almost from the first time we met, real chemistry, and we really connected. She is beautiful, intelligent and funny. In the days that followed, first in the UK and then when I was back in Canada, we talked. And we talked. And we Skyped and we IMed and we MSNed and we Facebooked and we emailed. And we talked some more. And the more time we spent together the more we felt this amazing synergy between us. We discovered common interests, and outlooks (not least a shared love of writing and creative expression), and just felt incredibly peaceful, happy and excited in each other’s company. This is one of those connections that only happens once or twice in a lifetime. We’ve whiled away hours video chatting and lost all sense of time. It’s magical and incredible.

And so, crazy as it is, given we live in different countries, we’ve decided to make a go of it. We’re going out. She’s coming to visit me in Montreal in just a couple of weeks (can’t wait!), and I have a couple of UK trips coming up – so we have time to figure out how to make this work. But right now, we’re just incredibly happy, and enjoying the journey of discovery as we embark on this exciting new relationship.

I never intended to get into a new relationship so soon. But you can’t tell where and when and how Cupid will strike. And since I’d already to resolved to just live my life in the moment, and not get hung up on traditional ideas about relationships or what might happen in the future, it wasn’t a difficult choice to go forward with this.

I’m a different person than I was a month ago. I am truly happy. I am no longer looking backward, I am looking forward. I contemplate the future and it looks bright and exciting. Anything can happen!
I can tell I feel different because my music playlist on my iPod just doesn’t fit anymore. All these songs keep coming up about lost loves and painful relationships – these songs that seemed so right and so comforting – but now they just don’t fit. And I’ve been adding new songs, songs of joy and happiness and adventure, and those are my new companion as I go through my day.

I don’t know what the future will hold, but I’m not afraid any more. I go forward boldly, where I’ve never gone before!

To pick up on my analogy from earlier, I would now say that the reboot cycle is complete. I guess I booted back into a different operating system, but everything is new and clean and exciting, just waiting for new experiences and new ways of living to be explored.

Just to finish, a note on these journal entries. I originally started writing them to serve a purpose – to help me gain clarity on this difficult journey through separation, and get the understanding and support of others. And I thought that would be a long and painful road. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. The main thing though is that they’ve served their purpose.

I won’t be writing any more of these deeply personal journal entries on here any more. This new relationship and this new chapter in my life is not something that needs to or indeed should be written about in such detail. It needs space to grow and blossom in private.

I’m going to recategorize these posts as their own category, a record of my transition… and I’m going to return the Lifenotes to just that – a simple account of interesting things I’ve been up to lately. I might even manage to do one every two weeks… Thanks for reading and for all your support and encouragement!