Never

Here’s a map of your life. Memorize it. And then erase it from your memory because it’s useless. And then never say "never" . . . Never is the new “now it’s going to happen for sure!”

I swore I would never move back to Toronto. Never, never, never.

I have this game I like to play: Part 1) what was I doing this time last year? And Part 2) what will happen this time next year? The first part entertains me for minutes at a time from the pure shock value of how little I know about what the future holds. And yet, despite experience continually demonstrating that the future is always beyond my wildest imagining, I persist in playing the second part, especially when the first part, or the immediate present, are both painful enough to require escape fantasies.

This time last year I had amassed over two months of e-mail correspondence with my childhood sweetheart. This time last year I was the holder of a plane ticket to visit said childhood sweetheart on the other side of the country and due south, into his country. We had not seen each other in over 25 years. I would spend his 40th birthday with him. How never-never land is that? I was living in Montreal at the time, writing marketing material for a company in Halifax and teaching painting classes one night a week around the corner from my apartment. I loved Montreal. But I believed true love could make me leave my beloved adopted city. I never thought an apartment fire would hasten my departure.

This time last year I was readying myself to re-meet this childhood sweetheart at the end of November, but did not yet know that I would return to him again in December (before my fire), and then again in February (after my fire). This time last year, before I met him in the flesh, I wondered if he could be the one, but I did not yet know I would actually plan to marry him two months later, and that I would then leave him a month after that, three weeks after I moved to his city to spend my life with him. (He's lovely, BTW. Truly wonderful. The problem was me.)

I never expected, as I turned 40, that I would move back into my father’s house. I never expected that my bread-and-butter marketing contract would dry up in the summer, leaving me to wonder what was next. I also never expected that the painting project I would assign myself as a way to see if I could become a working painter -- a project that seemed positively saturated in fame-and-fortune potential -- would be such a struggle that I would ultimately abandon it.

I also never expected, this time last year, that I would go to Berlin five months into this year and again six months after that. I never imagined I’d ride my bike all over that city and make it my own . . . by my self!

Recently, I applied for a job that, this time last year, I never would never have expected to be qualified for this year. Yet they seemed to want to hire me. And then I did something I never could have predicted: I withdrew my candidacy for reasons that seem so mystical I have told only a few people who I trust not to have me committed.

When I think about it, I have always felt dogged by this feeling that my talents, such as they are, never go deep enough. For instance, I am not one of those painters who knows everything about art history, or about the history of painting in particular, or about contemporary painters, much less about painters in my own city, or even about paint itself. I have heard other painters wax poetic about painting structures, colour relationships, their ties to Abstract Expressionism or Photorealism or Postmodernism and other such things and I have berated myself for not going deep enough in my chosen métier. But then I realize, I don’t love painting the way I love writing.

Except that I don’t go deep in writing either. I have not studied journalism. I took one creative writing course a thousand years ago but I can’t remember anything about it, and I could never expound on writing techniques – such as plot arcs, character development, sentence structure and other writing-related techniques – in an informed conversation with anyone, let alone a shop-talk conversation with another writer. I know nothing about writing except that I like to write.

I never thought I’d be a writer of books though I’m the process of writing one. I did think I’d have a painting career, which is funny when I don’t actually paint enough to have shows in which people might actually get to know my paintings. But I also never thought I’d teach painting, yet I have and I loved it.

I never thought I’d get over my so-called life partner leaving me, but I did.

I never thought I’d be living in a spectacular apartment in Toronto for the same affordable price I paid in Montreal, but I am.

I never thought I’d meet my friend’s brother’s dreamy best friend, an engineer who, in university, knitted his girlfriend sweaters (yup, you heard right) but a decade later I not only ended up working for him but also co-writing a training manual for home inspectors with him, as well as developing a life-long friendship.

Recently I bought a book that is changing my “never” thoughts (Martha Beck’s “Steering by Starlight”. If you can get over the flaky title, you are in for a wild, life-altering ride. Trust me.) For every “never” that attempts to define my world view (which is another way I make myself feel safe), there is a “it could happen” and a “why not?” and a “now that you’ve said never, it will happen for sure!”

This time last year, I had no idea what I wanted to be. I still don’t know. Except that I know I love to write and paint and travel. I would love to get a job that paid me to do all three. It seems impossible. Will there never be an editor ignorant of the blanks in my résumé who somehow stumbles upon my erratic blog and decides on a hunch that I’m just the person to send to Australia to write a travelogue from an un-in-depth perspective? Will there never be an editor who wants to see travel pieces liberally peppered with side stories about depression, or insights about the differences between, say, almond croissants in Melbourne and almond croissants in Montreal? Will I never find an editor who wants me to write about how I searched for years to find R, another childhood love, who lives in Australia, finally locating him through Facebook this past June, and who responded not only with sheer delight but with a plane ticket to his country where we would fall in love, marry and live happily never after because the truth is his response was not only lackluster, but it was obtuse and, frankly, rude, instantly shattering every fantasy I'd ever had about our future happy reunion. Besides, I think he’s married. And I swore I’d never date a married man. But I have. My last two boyfriends were technically married when we got together, giving me, in one case, the exquisitely painful experience of being the rebound/transition girlfriend who never stood a chance. Never thought I’d be that. But I was. Such fun!

Now I employ "never" the way a parent deploys reverse psychology. This strategy may never bring me what I hope for, but it also just might. Although I know that I don't know what's gonna crop up next, I do know my expectations will get the smack down, and that what happens will be beyond my anything I could have thought up. I’m just not that imaginative.