When Friends Become Family

The truth is I’m not okay. The truth is I’ve never been more scared in my life. The truth is some days I just want to break, let everything push me over.

But you want to know another truth, another truth that holds me together when the tape starts to peel? My life is filled with some of the most beautiful souls I have ever encountered, in this life or the last. They bring me joy and excitement. And they bring me something else entirely, something that can’t be measured, or weighed, or paid for. They give me hope that there is always a brighter side, always something greater than all the bad, that good really does conquer over evil.

And yeah, this sounds super cliché. It sounds like something out of a commercial, something written on a poster with a picture of a sunset in the background. And yeah, it is a bit cliché. But it is also beautiful. Because even though I’m not okay and I really don’t know when I will be, I know that I have these people who will never let me fall. And should I slip and fall face first, I know they will be there to pick me up.

Real life problems. They aren’t something people can just erase. They aren’t something that can be put aside with a smile and a hug. And believe me, I know that. But that smile, that hug, they do something else. They don’t shield you. No, that’s not quite what it is. The problems are still there at the end of the night. And only I am the one who can dig myself deeper or begin the long climb back up. But I can tell you they sure do make that long, treacherous climb something worth struggling through. They make the climb a little bit more doable, leaving behind small footholds and strong branches for me to lift myself higher.

They show me there is something to push for, that there is something amazing out there. And that is beautiful.

In a world where I could easily fall apart, they hold me up. And they don’t even know they are doing it.

It’s the best part of love, of family.

When True Love Does Exist

For so long I have yearned for a love that would move mountains, for a love that seems like it has only ever been sung about; a love that brings tears to the eyes of those who witness it, who appreciate it and envy it. I always thought love was a fleeting substance, like the universe was teasing its occupants with this unobtainable feature, this fictional substance.

I look at myself, almost 23 years old. I look at the years of my adult life, look at the love I thought I had, the love I lost, and the foolishness around the emotion. I have a lot of thoughts running through my mind at all hours of the day and I would be lying if I said the majority of them didn’t settle on the topic of love. Who is worthy of love? Who deserves my love? Who’s love do I deserve? When will love happen? What is the true meaning of love? Will love be enough?

I like to think I have my priorities straight when it comes to the thought of love, a beautiful and vibrant emotion that means so much more than a union between two like-minded individuals. But those four little letters mean so much.

I love my friends, and I would do anything for them, but it is through their secret little actions that the love becomes a blinding energy when we are together. I love the way my best friend always knows how to make me smile and I love how alike we are. I love how we read each other’s minds. I love her cute little laugh. Such a love, such a bond, that is rare for some to understand without feeling it themselves. Yet her and I are not in love. We do not have a desire to join our hands and become one. We both understand that we are two pieces of the same soul, or soul family, and we love each other in ways that only family can.

But then there is that red hot love, the emotion you feel when he looks at you, when you make eye contact or he puts his arms around you. But this love is the one you have to look out for. It consumes, and although it can be invigorating, it can also burn. And I have been burnt. But I’ve also seen things that you only read about in story books.

Right after my relationship ended I didn’t want to believe in love. I had thought he was the one, until one day I knew he wasn’t. That one day when I started caring more about appearances than the actual people. I stopped caring about myself, stopped recognizing that I was no longer in love, I was just in love with the idea of it. I pushed the idea around in circles, hoping that the longer I sat on it the more chances I had to fix it. I believed that the “love” I was in was maybe just in need of repair. I believed in fate. I believed in soul mates. Why would the universe send me someone I wasn’t meant to be with? Why was I the one, who wished so long and hard for an endless love, who was slowly watching her vision of love fall apart?

When we parted ways, the idea of romance fell away and I replaced it with a love of a different sort: a love of myself. I threw my mind and emotions into the same energy, but one that filled me with light, with happiness. I began to realize that it wasn’t just about being in love with someone, but it was simply about being in love. With the world, with yourself, with your life.

I fall in love every day, with adorable customers or actions of one of my animals. I love the way I am beginning to surround myself with people who have quirks and qualities that I repeatedly fall in love with, with the stories we share and the photos we’ve taken. I fall in love every time I take another look at those photos, when I remember the emotions felt during those times of bliss. The love felt as we hugged it out or laughed until our sides hurt. That is love, plain and simple. That is love in its purest form, where you love, and you accept, and flaws don’t have any meaning.

But then I see what is missing. It is not for a lack of love, but it is for a lack of the last piece of love. The love that consumes. The love that moves mountains, that people look at and all they can do is stop and smile, because the love is one that is so bright. I hear the songs and part of me has a hard time envisioning this love, but I have always been a hopeless romantic and I have always held the idea of love in my heart. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I see this love around me, in two, if not more, separate couples that circle in my group of friends. I see this love and it gives me hope that this feeling is more than something just written about in songs.

I know I will find this love because I believe if you dream it, you wish it, you will end up doing it. And I know, with proof shown in the aforementioned couples, that a love like this truly does exist.

You may not believe in love, trust me, I didn’t either. But now I do. And even though I’m not in a relationship, I have to remind myself that there really is no rush because I know that when I do find the person I am meant to be with, we will have a love that moves mountains, a love that others look to because they know it is one for the books.

| cassie

The Kind of Love You Deserve

You deserve balmy summer nights sitting lakeside with someone who gives you butterflies; nervous fingers reaching to interlock with yours, sweaty palms, gentle squeezes; unashamed confessions of admiration, sincere compliments, persistent and kind honesty.  You deserve a night of stars dancing on rippling water, shivers rolling down your spine, the moonlight illuminating sideways glances and uncontrollable smiles. You deserve inside jokes and laughing your stomach into knots, cheeks red and faces glowing. You deserve a night of childhood stories and secrets shared, weird habits exposed, scars revealed. You deserve falling-irrevocably-in-love moments you thought only true of screenplays and fairytales.

You deserve late Saturday nights watching the sun set and rise again, first and second and twentieth kisses shared among fireflies and twinkling starlight. You deserve enveloping embraces, cool breeze waltzing between your limbs, nose pushed against threads of cotton carrying your new favourite scent. You deserve hours of thoughtful conversation, every sentence punctuated with eskimo-, butterfly-, every-kind-of kisses.

You deserve sleepy Sunday mornings drifting in and out of consciousness, shifting between dreams, always fitting puzzle-piece-perfect against one another upon waking. You deserve dancing in your pajamas while making breakfast, sunlight leaking through the windows, the smell of coffee in the air. You deserve singing 90’s pop songs with spoon and spatula microphones, whirling around one another, cracking eggs and sprinkling spices. You deserve entire days in bed kissing birth marks and scars, tracing constellations out of freckles with your fingertips, learning the taste of each other’s laughter.

You deserve sun-kissed adventures, last-minute and kind-of-irresponsible vacations, booking flights and mapping routes. You deserve overcoming fears and taking risks, venturing into great unknowns together. You deserve salty kisses on tropical beaches and bike rides through small towns. You deserve road trips through deserts and big cities, 30-hour flights across oceans and continents. You deserve card games at bus stops and walking hand-in-hand through seaside markets. You deserve hundreds of different backdrops to your love story and hundreds of different languages to tell it in.

You deserve first, fifth, thirtieth anniversaries, homemade gifts stitched together with love and surprises thought out months in advance. You deserve the overcoming of obstacles together, the ebb and flow of lifelong love. You deserve afternoons painting bedrooms and wiping colours off each other’s earlobes, evenings assembling Ikea furniture with glasses of wine. You deserve building forts out of moving boxes, backyard camping, and picnics on your living room floor. You deserve memories of a quiet afternoon nestled together in bed, shadows dancing on the pages of your books, the feeling that in his arms you’ve found home. You deserve pinky-promises kept and mistakes forgiven, kisses stolen and a hand always held.  You deserve decades strung together with old photographs and love notes, wrinkles carved from laughter.

This is the kind of love you deserve.

| alex

On Hopeless Romantics:

I think most of us, at one point or another, have been hopeless romantics. And to be honest, as a freshly turned 22 year old – I think a small part of me still is. We still crave those cliche movie moments, want hand written letters, wish for a bouquet of flowers just-because. We want poems written about us, dances under starry nights, kisses in the rain, and a song sang to us on quiet evenings. A part of us really wishes for it. (On shooting stars, at 11:11, no doubt.)

But hopeless romantics are just that: hopeless. What the hopeless part of us fails to realize is that people can love you, and not buy you the moon. People can care for you, and not press flowers in books they wrote dedicated to you. People can still be romantic, without taking you on a trip to Paris. Love comes in big and little moments, in extravagant and simple gestures. It comes in holding hands on walks at dusk, in kisses in the morning, in laughing so hard your ribs hurt, in hugs after a long day, in singing loudly to music in the car, in sharing a sip of coffee, in brushing back hair on hot days.

I’m not saying that romance is dead, or that these people don’t exist. I’m saying that you should appreciate the romance in every way possible.

So by all means, be romantic – with your whole entire being if you want. But please remember, that being romantic should never resemble being hopeless.

| danielle

An Open Letter To My Younger Self: Fragility & Relationships

Letter #2: Fragility & Relationships

Dear 17-year-old me,

You’ve probably just started to accept and realize that you love to look up and write down quotations, that you are a sucker for anything sentimental and inspirational, that you are moved so deeply by words. In this constant search for inspiration, you’ve come to understand now that a popular topic of discussion is self-love and its connection to relationships. People are always talking about learning to love yourself, embracing your flaws. And they are always talking about the idea that only through loving yourself can you truly love another person, can you maintain your relationship with them. You believe that this idea is absolute truth, that it is beautiful and positive.

And it is lovely, this idea of being so confident in yourself and so accepting of your flaws that everything else just kind of falls into place. It’s supportive, hopeful, and a beautiful thing to strive for. It’s just not always realistic. Because sometimes circumstances make it extremely difficult to love yourself. Sometimes it’s impossible to have a positive self image. Sometimes people just crumble.

You have yet to become a little bit cynical, to experience anxiety, to sit in a room confronted by your insecurities. But you will live through all of this one day. And I want you to remember in those moments of fear and confusion, in those moments when all you can do is hate yourself and everything that you’re feeling, you are still entirely worthy of someone else’s love.

I think that this idea only being able to maintain a healthy relationship if you love yourself first is deeply flawed. I think that healthy relationships can be maintained in the face of insecurity and self-doubt. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t strive to have a healthy body image, that you shouldn’t strive to have a positive self-image. Because you certainly should. You will feel happier and more confident, and that will serve you well in every aspect of your life going forward. But I just know that you won’t always feel this way; your confidence will waver, your strength will fail. You will get to a point in your life when you will struggle with anxiety, you will entertain the idea that you may have a mood disorder. You will cry constantly, you will question every decision you have to make, and you will hate yourself for it. And because of this idea that you’ve come to accept as absolute truth, this idea of needing to love yourself before another person will love you, you will feel like a burden to your partner. You will feel like you aren’t good enough, like you are an inconvenience. And on top of everything else, someone who considers themselves emotionally and/or mentally fragile should never have to feel as if they are also unlovable.

One day, you will find yourself with someone who supports you endlessly. He will encourage you in all of your dreams and aspirations; he will always withhold judgement; he will be unfailingly present; and, when you are drowning in self-doubt, he will help you to love yourself again. He will crawl into the dark spaces of your mind and sit with you there until you’re ready to be honest about your feelings, he will encourage you to challenge your existing notions of beauty and to confront your insecurities, he will love you when you aren’t strong enough to love yourself, and he will live in constant celebration of your existence.

You are worthy of your own love and respect. But in those moments when you don’t feel strong enough, when your emotions and feelings of self-hatred overpower you, know that you are still worthy of companionship and adoration. It is possible to find solace and encouragement outside of yourself. Having someone who will lift you up in your lowest moments is not a sign of weakness, but an indication of a strong and meaningful relationship. And you will find that relationship one day.

You are smart, full of life, and entirely worthy of love. You are all of those things completely and extraordinarily. In those times when you don’t have the strength to believe in your value, know that your strength will return. You are brave and strong and you will unearth your courage a hundred times over. And one day, when the timing is right and the stars align, somebody will be ardently by your side to help you rediscover it again and again and again.

| alex

An Open Letter To My Best Friend

Dear Best Friend,

I went through something particularly difficult a couple of weeks ago and you were thousands of miles away from home, away from me. From voicemail tag to travelling in separate countries when we seem to need only each other, we’ve always had a knack for bad timing. But I reached out for you anyway, like I always do. And you were there for me, like you always are. And that got me to thinking about our friendship and all the things I have to thank you for, all the things I never say often enough, all the things I owe to you. You deserve to know all the ways in which you’ve saved my life, mended my heart, shaped my dreams.

Thank you for your unwavering support in all the decisions I’ve had to make, all the dreams I’ve wanted to pursue. I have never met anybody so unfailingly hopeful for other people’s futures. You have helped me to make choices I didn’t want to make and have remained by my side through every outcome. You have lifted me up and kept me standing tall through all my moments of shame, all the times I’ve been let down, all the times I couldn’t bear the weight of my pain and insecurities. You have celebrated every achievement and milestone with me, and sometimes even for me. You have made me feel loved, appreciated, and accomplished. You have fuelled my dreams and illuminated all of my darkened paths.

Thank you for your authenticity, your sweet sincerity. Your encouraging words and your revealing confessions move me to tears. You are perfectly childlike in your honesty and openness, in your confessions of love and expressions of pain, in your demands for your heart to be heard. I will forever admire your candor, your ability to wear your heart so bravely on your sleeve.

Thank you for your incandescent heart, your bright-eyed and eternal optimism. Thank you for believing in fairy tales, romance, true love; thank you for believing in happily ever when I didn’t have the strength to believe in it myself. Thank you for experiencing hardship and heartache and pain, and remaining unhardened and trusting anyway. Thank you for always seeing the best in people, for always seeing in the best in me.

Thank you for always being present in my life, for your faithful existence alongside me. You know better than most the contours of my heart, the weight of my guilt, the shapes of my fears. Thank you for loving me anyway.

Thank you for your unfailing enthusiasm and involvement in all of my passions, fascinations, pursuits. Thank you for reading the things I write; thank you for thinking they’re something to be proud of. Thank you for listening when I want to rave about the new TV show I just started watching or the book I just finished reading; thank you for nodding along in excitement and asking questions. Thank you for always being willing to drive around and listen to new songs I think you’d like; thank you for always having new songs that reminded you of me too. Thank you for never putting down the things I love; thank you for always sharing in my enthusiasm, for always singing and cheering and laughing just as loud as I am. You are the kind of girl who would never let another person feel foolish or alone if you can help it. I love that about you.

Thank you for your companionship and understanding in my darkest hours. Thank you for letting me bare my heart to you, for all the secrets you’ve kept, for all the flaws you’ve embraced. Thank you for stringing together words that stitch my heart back together and thank you for knowing when nothing needs to be said. Thank you for letting me be sad sometimes, for understanding that “pain demands to be felt”. Thank you for all the tears you’ve let fall and all the ones that you’ve wiped away. Thank you for always encouraging me to ugly cry if I need to. Thank you for crying with me.

Thank you for continually being one of the best people I’ve ever known, for always inspiring me to be better. Thank you for guarding my heart, but also for helping me to feel brave enough to open it. Thank you for always believing in me, for always encouraging me, for somehow always knowing what it is that I need. Thank you for sitting in silence with me when I’m at my worst and feeling alive with me when I’m at my best. Thank you for all the sun-kissed and laughter-filled days on my roof. And thank you for all the star-lit and infinite nights driving down 22x. Thank you for it all.

Gratefully and eternally yours,

| alex

On Time:

“Don’t waste your time. Your time is the most valuable thing you have. You will never get it back. So be selfish with it. Don’t just give it away to people who don’t care.”
– Brijesh

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine on relationships and what happens when you give more time to someone than they do for you. I’m sure we have all been through it: with a friend, family member, co-worker, and of course, a significant other. We seem to have all the time in the world for someone and yet we are on the bottom of the list to them. And maybe you’ve been on the other end of things: you’ve been a priority for someone, but they haven’t been one to you.

We spoke about always rearranging schedules to fit others, of how we never got to be the ones who chose, who others had to change their plans for. And Brijesh told me a really beautiful truth: Don’t waste your time on someone who doesn’t care about you. Because the fact is, if you want to make time for someone, you will. And that isn’t a harsh line, because life sometimes has other plans, but when it really comes down to it, you will make time for those you care about. And you know when someone cares or when someone is just blowing you off. Listen to that voice in your head that’s telling you the truth, whether you want to hear it or not.

Time is one of the only things we can really truly give to others. Time is the only thing we won’t ever get back. Time is one of the most important things we have. So if you aren’t happy with someone, don’t stick around. Life is far too short to try to wade through the sadness in a distorted notion of being heroic. There are some things you can’t change, some people who don’t want to change. It’s not up to you to fix them. And you’ll only end up wasting time and getting hurt. And I don’t say this to make you believe that helping someone is wasting time. It’s only a waste of time if they don’t want help and you end up sad.

So surround yourself with people who love spending time with you, who don’t make you feel less, or sad, who believe in everything you do, and encourage you. With people who inspire you, who you have the same interests with, who enjoy the same routines and adventures you do. And please remember that you are worth spending time with, you are more, you have the ability to be happy, and you really can do anything you want.

So don’t waste time with people who don’t care about you. Give your time to the people you love, and who love you back.

| danielle

On Break Ups:

If you know me at all, you will know that I have recently gone through a break up. Without diving into my life story, I will say a few things for everyone who has, is, will be, going through a break up.

I was with A for 3 years. And I have nothing bad to say about my relationship with him, there isn’t anything really bad to say. I loved him more than I ever knew I had the capacity to love. As far as first relationships go, I had the best I could have ever asked for.

But here is something they don’t tell you about all-encompassing love:

It’s not enough.

And I don’t say this with bitterness, or anger, with jadedness, or despair. I say this with a brutal reality that I was forced to face, when I wasn’t really ready to face it. Love is not enough. Because there is more to life than love. And I know many of you will scoff and roll your eyes, that many of you are romantics who believe that ultimately love is the most important thing. And yes, maybe ultimately it is. But life is not lived through “ultimately”. Life is lived through so much more. Through this moment right now. Because life is full of money problems, and career choices, family issues, and personal disturbances.

Love is not enough because it isn’t the only thing we have.

You may love someone, but you may choose your career over them. You may choose your education, or your dreams over them. Because life is filled with so many things that sometimes we can’t have it all. Sometimes we drown in the options. Maybe love is that floating lifejacket in the distance.

But you’re better off just learning how to swim.

You can’t hold onto love and only love. You’ll be stunted, unfulfilled, empty, and forever wistful. There is so much more out there in the world, you can’t anchor yourself to only one aspect of it. And even after this long reality facing spiel, I will say this:

That even through it all, love is incredibly wonderful, and almost always worth it.

So love with everything you have, forever and then some. But please be aware that just loving someone isn’t enough. That every day you will have to work hard to make sure that every part of your life can coexist together, can blend in a way that works for both of you. And even if it doesn’t work, I hope you can look back on it fondly and with genuine affection.

Love freely, completely, and always.

Because though love is not enough, it is damn important.

| danielle

A 25th Birthday Surprise!

It was Adam’s birthday this weekend and I thought 25 years warranted an extra special surprise! A couple of weeks ago, I secretly booked us two last-minute flights to San Francisco; I’m horrible at keeping secrets from him so having a small time-frame worked well for me. The flights were reasonably priced and I found us the most beautiful place to stay right in the heart of the city on Airbnb! I talked with one of his friends about our plans to avoid scheduling conflicts, I snuck into his house the day before we left to pick up his passport, and I packed a bag for the both of us a couple of hours before our flight and hid it in the backseat of my car. The only hint I had given him was a cheeky little one: we’ve done it before (we stopped in San Francisco on a road-trip a couple of years ago). He had absolutely no idea where we were going! He was blindfolded as we were driving and when he opened his eyes, we were at the airport and he was holding a San Francisco guidebook with our flight itinerary inside! It was the most exciting surprise I’ve ever planned and it totally paid off; we had such a wonderful weekend away together!

We started our morning with breakfast at a nearby cafe and then we walked over to Lombard Street. We ended up never being able to catch a cable car, so we continued to walk until we reached the bay and rented bikes! We biked all the way to the Golden Gate bridge and then decided to stroll across and enjoyed the view.

We were exhausted after our ride and so after eating lunch, we headed back to the apartment and had a nap (we seldom go an entire day together without napping). We finished the evening with a stroll through China Town and then a visit to the very windy, but incredibly beautiful, Twin Peaks! The view of the city was amazing.

We were only in San Francisco for the day, but it was such a wonderful one! Adam is my favourite person in the world; he is so kind, talented, funny, and caring. He is the absolute love of my life and I feel like the luckiest girl to have him as my best friend. I had the most wonderful time celebrating his birthday with him!

I hope you also had an amazing weekend and that you spent it with someone you love!

| alex

A Walk in the Park

We have yet to have a nice, heavy rainfall in Calgary. Although I’m slightly disappointed because I want so badly for everything to be clean and green again, our city doesn’t experience the loveliest of rainy seasons; it can get a little too cold, a little too dark. So after drifting in and out of sleep well into the late afternoon, Adam and I took advantage of the sunshine and clear skies on Sunday and decided to go for a walk in Fish Creek. We entered the Shannon Terrace area from 24th St — I think that’s one of my favourite areas of the park. It’s quite dense, has the perfect picnic and fire spots, and is right by the river.

Anyway, Adam and I are huge dorks and love wearing matching clothes. We happened to stumble upon a dress and men’s collared shirt with matching patterns while we were out shopping the other day and just had to get them. We decided on Sunday to put on our new threads and have ourselves a bit of a photo shoot while we were out wandering through the park. It made for such a beautiful afternoon and I’m completely in love with how all the photos turned out! Here are a couple of my favourites:

I hope you had an equally relaxing, fun, beautiful weekend and I hope you also spent it with people who mean the world to you. Happy Monday!

| alex