Your Past is Love

A while back, I briefly dated a talented, intelligent artist who, on our second date, said: “Liz, I don’t want to talk about the past. Not mine. And not yours. I don’t care who you once loved, what you did in your life before me, or what you thought. All I care about is who you are right now and what we are doing together right here …”

… as if I just magically appeared on planet Earth as a fully-formed human being sans the history it took to get here. I mean, how does that even work?

For some – many even – this idea of the past being left in the dust doesn’t sound so bad. It resonates with the Buddhist principle of not letting your past rule your present, as in “be in the moment” – one of the key self-help mantras of our age.

In fact, they made a movie about this kind of past-eschewing love called 50 First Dates, starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. In the flick, Barrymore’s character suffers from a memory-loss disorder due to some kind of catastrophe I can’t remember, but which leaves her without recollection of anything that happens after the disorder began (and, conveniently, in the bloom of her youth).

Based on movie-land logic, Barrymore’s forgetful character gets to fall in love with Adam Sandler’s love-struck character every single day as he woos her anew because she can’t remember the last date she had with him the day before, or many days, weeks, months before. Meanwhile, Sandler’s character, whose memory is intact, has the privilege of loving Barrymore’s character through time.

It's my guess, however, that Sandler's love won't last beyond 50 dates since pretty soon they'll have nothing to talk about because she can't grow, while he can’t help but grow (although his attachment to memory-loss girl suggests he may not want to grow).

They won’t have an accumulation of shared memories to recall as they sit on porches or in restaurants, or fights to have grown through and laugh about in hindsight, or any kind of history that gives weight and substance to a relationship over time. In other words, the present is nice, but it quickly becomes the past, which becomes the stuff of conversation and relating, which is the basis for love because co-creating memories and narratives is the very process of love making. And sharing (painful) stories about our past is the process of love deepening. So, how can you have love without a past?

This nightmare – yes, nightmare – of a love with no past, however, is a love that many of us (well, maybe not the Dalai Lama) carry around in our love-starved hearts. Nightmare Love looks like this: you meet someone you think is swell, but over time as they start to reveal themselves as the warts-and-all prince and princess frogs they are, you think, “why can’t you be the royalty I thought you were when I took a mental snapshot at the beginning?” Our fantasy of the beloved is like a digi pic – fixed in the eternal, colourized present. Or, if we are little more evolved, our fantasies are like the movies, where painful pasts are resolved in forever-happy presents. Until, that is, the movies go all Purple Rose of Cairo on us, with characters walking right off the screen and into someone else’s sunset. And that’s when real love actually steps onto the stage.

“Love is not safe.” That’s what my guru/therapist told me years ago after a terrible break up. Up to that point, I had been wasting away from anxiety and fear over something that had already happened – losing someone I never had. I was living in the past-perfect-continuous tense – as in “Everything had been going well until my world fell apart” – in which the past-painful event trumps any current reality.

Why do we fear our past so much? Because it hurt the first time around and we are scared it will hurt again if we don’t deep six it. We cope through control (or a false belief that we have control). Many of us had some kind of childhood experience in which we did not feel unconditionally loved (or worse). And we thought that lack of love was because of something we did. So, we tried to do something to get that love, which often meant trying to control others. Whatever it took. And, much to our detriment, we have kept up the habit.

For some, control comes in the form of forgetting. If I forget, I don’t have to feel that scary pain again. Easy. Done.

I admit I have this special capacity for forgetting, like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates. I often (always) forget what I learned the day before. Such as, “love is not safe.” Or, “surrender.” But unlike Drew’s character, I also don’t wake up each day blissfully ignorant of what happened the day before (the real day before, that is, not her day before: i.e. the day before her short-term memory loss began).

Instead, I wake up in a rage because I remember that I don’t have a satisfying career, or that I never made good on my Master’s degree in painting, or that I still have not finished my book. I wake up terrified that I have lost my passion, or that I never really had any. I wake up heartbroken because I remember that Andy died. I wake up hopeless because my family will never recover, we will never stop longing. I wake up exhausted and bloated because of all the sugar and/or wheat I ate the day before to distract myself from my pain. I wake up in despair because I cannot seem to break the patterns I have worked so hard to break. I wake up wondering if I am capable of love, lovable enough to attract love, or whether my destiny is to end up a lonely dog lady with a wardrobe of exceptionally stylish winter outfits for my hairless dog.

I can certainly understand why forgetting the past is such an attractive idea, as it is for my artist friend who hinted at a dark family secret so horrible as to make him commit to forgetting at the expense of embarking on a relationship that could have helped him overcome that pain. He needn’t have suffered alone. But his commitment to forgetting blinded him to the possibilities of a healing love.

We shovel a whole lot of earth over the graves of our terrifying pasts, as well as the pasts of our friends and lovers, as if they were someone else’s nightmare. But one day, I can assure you, the thin, bloodless hand of memory will shoot out from the earth and grab your ankle and won't let go. Now that’s what I call crazy scary. You can avoid that, however, by not burying your past alive. Just a thought.

To illustrate my point, I offer you this true story:

After a week of ten-hour days in a car, driving from Toronto to Vancouver with two dogs suffering from diarrhea, one of which (mine) developed panic attacks at speeds over 100 kms/hour (which meant hours of panting and shaking and digging nails into my legs as he clamoured to magically escape through the closed window), not to mention eating grease-laden food followed by pounds of sugar to help ward off boredom and to keep us awake, not to mention sleeping in questionable motels at even more questionable prices and losing an hour a day as we sped west, adding to our growing exhaustion, I began showing my travel companion every last facet of myself that I loath. The Anxiety-Driven Nit-Picker, the Loaded-Question Asker, the Human Tornado who sucks all the joy from the ride while spitting out pieces of our psyches onto the road ribboning behind us. Without a car of their own, our broken psyches took a while to catch up with us.

On a gravelly shoulder somewhere in North Dakota, as we spilled out of the car so my dog could relieve his bowels once again, I stormed off towards the farm machinery in the near distance, leaving behind two shuddering dogs and one bewildered man so that I could sob in the company of rusty things. Everything I had tried to love in myself during my single years was leaving me as fast as Shy’s undigested food was leaving his wee, addled body.

It wasn’t until we reached breathless Lake Louise and undertook a three-hour round-trip hike at a 70-degree incline to breathless Lake Agnes that I remembered something I had forgotten. As I hyperventilated my way up the trail, I began reviewing my past for clues, cataloguing all the ways in which I have felt dissatisfied with partners for one reason or another, when it hit me. It’s not my partner I want perfection from...

...It’s me.

I could not have gotten there without a past to ponder. And without this newly remembered knowledge, I could not have undertaken the task at hand -- forgiving myself, being gentle with myself, loving myself. Oh, and trying to be nicer to my travel companion.

Which brings me to my definition of love, one I have learned through years of forced, active remembering (but one I have yet to practice with an open heart). The Buddhists entreat us to love the other without expectation of return. That is, love is not about what’s in it for you; it’s about seeing someone else as they are, nightmares and all, and accepting them as that. More importantly, it’s about seeing yourself as you are, nightmares and all, and accepting yourself as is. It’s about the intrinsic richness of loving, of giving, not about giving to get. But you will find you do get when you give anyway. Not from the beloved, although that may happen, but from the act of loving itself. Easy. Done.

So, what does this definition of love have to do with our past? When you reject something from your own life, you essentially reject yourself. And rejecting yourself bears no resemblance to love, nor does it breed love. Sure, something painful may not be where you want to dwell. But pretending that painful thing is not yours is like pretending the nose on your face is not yours. You can plastic surgery the surface of things, but that won’t change the fact that true love is subcutaneous; it exists despite your old nose, and even despite your shiny, new nose.

My artist date feared his past so much he focused on amputating my past in the hopes of misdirecting me away from his own bleeding stump. But here’s my question: what if we had fallen in love? Would he really have wanted me to forget our past then? Would he have wanted me not to remember the time we watched a new TV series together, laughed at the same jokes, then made mind-blowing love? As much as his denial of both our pasts alienated me, I will never forget him. I wanted the chance to love all of him, his past pains and joys, along with the man he was yet to become. He will always be part of my past, one that I cherish. As for him, I don’t know if he even remembers my name. He excised me like a piece of expertly carved-off cartilage.

Denying the past is tantamount to expecting Shy, my barky dog, to recite Rilke in the original German. A lovely fantasy, but it ain’t gonna happen. Whereas the past did happen, therefore, it exists; it is. Also, the past has its plusses. The pain I feel daily (hourly, minutely) thinking of Andy is also what keeps him close to me. The pain I feel daily about other losses and fears also provides contrast for my joys, helping me to appreciate those moments, not to mention helping me with lessons learned. I know that it’s hard for others to hang out with me sometimes when they prefer to forget what I choose to remember. It’s going to be hard for me to remember to love myself through that, and to love them, too. The pain of rejection can make us do terrible things to ourselves and others, like more rejecting.

"The only way through is through," said my beautiful guru/therapist. For me, the only way through is not to reject myself. That’s the only thing I do have control over.

A Year of Living Dangerously

2010 was the year I decided to date again. Date consciously, that is. As opposed to accidentally -- like sleep walking -- which inevitably results in a few mysterious bruises the next morning. What I discovered in 2010 is what I already knew from dating in 2009, 2008, and, well, all the way back to 2002, when my life of serial monogamy came to an abrupt end:

Dating is dangerous.

While this discovery does not put me in the camp of Einstein, I do feel beholden to share my experience because dating is too often haloed in the shimmering light of sliver-screen fantasy. Especially when my married friends wax ridiculous about what a great life I must have as a single gal.

The truth is, dating is the work of a secret double agent skulking through enemy territory with no map and very little facility in the enemy’s language.

Put another way, dating is like waiting for the College streetcar. After five have passed going the other way and your toes have become rectangular ice cubes, you realize you could have been at your destination half an hour ago if you had just walked. When your streetcar finally does arrive and you sink with relief into the cold, red vinyl seat, the driver invariably announces that the streetcar will be short turning at the next stop. In other words, patience may be a virtue, but you’ll still likely pay a price.

If all my rich metaphor is still not getting my meaning across, let me explain it this way: The paradox of dating is that you have to spend time with someone in order to know if you want to spend more time with that someone. But the more time you spend with that person, the more dangerous dating becomes because if you discover that you don’t want to spend more time with that person, time has already been spent, and entanglement has already happened, and now you have a history with this person that you wish you didn't, leaving you a lot of regretting and re-visioning to do.

I know what you’re thinking: Jaded much?

Maybe, although jaded people don’t dust themselves off and try again. They simply stop the insanity. The activity of dusting off and trying again is the province of stupid people. And I am that province’s most patriotic citizen.

Nevertheless, when my married friends say they envy my single life, I no longer take offense, even though I know what they mean is that they think I have the freedom to try people out like an omnivore at a free steak-and-salad trough. But if my marrieds really wanted to honour my lifestyle, they’d give me a freaking medal.

"Let it be known that he who wears the Military Order of the Purple Heart has given of his blood in the defense of his homeland and shall forever be revered by his fellow countrymen." That’s the tag line for the Purple Heart medal, which one receives for courage in times of war, the medal I deserve because the war analogy is not an overstatement for dating, where advances are either too fast or too slow but always involve bloodshed.

To wit, let’s examine some of my own personal battle sites:

Battle at Mount Manipulation

I have a bad habit of falling for the wrong guy. Whatever the reason (which only my therapist really knows), it’s a battle I’m now consciously fighting, eyes open, bayonet pointed in the right direction this time – i.e. with pointy bit aimed away from my own chest (who knew?).

The only reason I have had to learn this lesson a bajillion times is that the lesson never arrives the same way twice. In the case of B at MM, a colleague spent five months ramping up his romantic rhetoric to the point of full-blown purple prose in an effort to get my attention. On one particular day, seemingly astonished by his own loving feelings, my suitor declared, “It’s funny, Liz, I don’t even want to manipulate you!”

A stupefied schoolgirl inside the enemy’s foxhole, I, at least, had the presence of mind to ask, “Why would you want to manipulate anyone?”

Based on his blank stare, I’m guessing he suddenly forgot how to speak my language. It was at this point I should have reviewed all my previous conversations with him, noting that they had revolved around his work dilemmas, his separation dilemmas, his family dilemmas, his dilemmas - him.

To his soldierly credit, my foxhole mate did mount a quick, if unsuccessful, defense: Didn’t I get that he was doing me a favour by telling me how he normally operates? Wasn’t I honoured that he had decided to put his manipulations aside for me? I mean, didn’t I get that I was the special girl he would NOT manipulate?

Gosh!

Thank god I had enough wits about me to not be flattered. I’m proud of that. But I’m not so proud of the next bit. Because for no good reason, I cut him some slack. His admission seemed self aware. And nothing seduces me more than self awareness. So, instead of wiping him out on the spot, I suspended my disbelief. In other words, I kissed him. And that’s when he went into full retreat. In less time than it takes to bayonet a gullible girl, I offered up my heart for a good skewering.

What did I learn from the Battle at Mount Manipulation? People say things. But they don’t necessarily mean them.

Always one to try to take a lesson from tragedy, what I gleaned from the B at MM was confirmation of what I consider to be a pretty healthy pattern, a new pattern I have worked hard to create in recent years. While other people prefer to go slowly, attenuating the truth of failure for far too many months before a relationship collapses, I have always preferred my truth delivered by FedEx. I’m with Malcolm Galdwell on the value of first impressions. They happen in the blink of an eye and they’re rarely wrong. So why waste time waiting for the details when you saw it all a flash? You could be out dating someone else instead! Or watching Mad Men!

Battle of the Energies:

Always one to choose adventure over good sense, I agreed to reconnect with a boy from my childhood who lives in the American west. We agreed to meet on neutral, exciting territory. I had already been in touch with him through Facebook for over two years, during which time we shared stories about our dating lives, getting into intimate detail and cheerleading each other with hopes for our respective happinesses.

What I actually knew about this man was this: 1) He studies alternative medicine. 2) He's into Buddhism. Two things into which I read a world of meaning, creating a human being who resonated in perfect harmony with my very own soul. I have nothing if not a really good imagination.

Within the first five minutes of our respective arrivals at the airport, and eager to fill the space of a thirty-year hiatus, Past-Life-Date-Boy (PLDB) tells me that he’s just spent the last ten days at an Ayahuasca ceremony. If you don’t know what that is (I sure didn’t, which is why PLDB explained it to me on the spot), it’s where shamans cast out peoples' demons with the aid of a very powerful and very illegal drug -- Ayahuasca. Turns out PLDB is a shaman-in-training, not to mention a dedicated Ayahuasca imbiber.

Huh.

And then . . . OH. MY. GOD. For real???

Kudos to me, though, because in that moment, I saw the flash. Un-kudos to me, however, for fishing my sunglasses out of my backpack and putting them on indoors.

Before I go any further, I have to admit to something that will become important to the story in minute. Two days before I left for that weekend, I dated someone in Toronto. By accident. When I told this to a friend, she politely said, “Oh, did you slip?” Well, kind of. At any rate, it was exactly the type of thing PLDB and I would have talked about via Facebook. In fact, I was looking forward to sharing the story with him because I knew he’d be thrilled for me. And I knew it would have no impact on our weekend.

An hour later, we were seated in a restaurant where I thought the time was right to lighten the mood. So I said, “You know, I’m so glad you did not arrive with shiny, white running shoes!” I was thinking of Seinfeld. Now I’m no fashion plate, but I do like a man in a good shoe, and PLDB arrived in beautiful brown leather brogues that made my knees buckle. As if to prove my observation was, indeed, funny, I threw my head back and cackled. But what I heard as my head lolled behind me was this: “That’s not funny.”

I immediately returned my head to its starting position and searched his face. Surely I misheard. Surely he was being ironic.

“No. For real,” he said. “That’s not funny.”

So, I stopped laughing. But he kept talking. “How would you feel if I had said that I was glad you were not 10 pounds heavier, or that I wished you wore Tommy Hilfigger, or that your shirt was ugly? I mean, if you are that superficial, Liz, then we really have nothing to talk about. I am a spiritual leader and I spend my time keeping my energy pure because I need to be present for the people who have demons that need casting out, people I am healing, which means I don’t have time for superficiality…” etc. and so on for about ten minutes as I sat there chin trembling, willing myself not to cry.

When he was done, I excused myself and went to the washroom where I did just that. Cried. Hard. Then I returned to the table and apologized. “You know, everything you said is true — superficiality is not cool.” A good beginning, I thought. “I was joking,” I concluded with confidence. I guess he didn’t know me well enough to understand my humour, which is why it’s important to remember that it can take a long time to get to know someone. Or, according to my fast-track approach, my insensitive joke revealed PLDB for the humourless jackass he is.

Back at the B&B twenty minutes later, PLDB says he has a few calls to make. I am in the same room, so I can’t help but hear him warning the person on the other end of the phone not to say the “A-word” (i.e. Ayahuasca). Why is that? Could it be because . . . IT’S A FREAKING ILLEGAL DRUG???

After he gets off the phone, he asks me why I look so tired. Here is my opening. It’s now when I deem it best to tell him about my accidental date, a story similar to ones I have told him on other occasions, ones he has previously enjoyed. This will really break the ice, I think. He listens, a grim look on his face, and then goes to take a bath. The next thing I know, it’s morning, and he’s sleeping on the floor.

Always quick locate the nearest exit (despite the fact that it takes me far too long to use it), I realize I have two very good friends in this city who would gladly put me up. When PLDB wakes up, I offer him the B&B, saying I will cover my half of the cost for the next two nights. But he is one step ahead of me. He tells me texted his friends the night before -- from the bath! -- informing me that he will be staying with them for the next two nights, not offering to cover his share of costs. Then he takes a shower (how did he get dirty between the bath he took before bed and the morning?) When he emerges from his shower, I boldly say, “I think things are going south . . . ” and that’s when the battle begins . . .

PLDB: Well I’m not sure what you expected, Liz. When I arrived, I could see that you were COVERED with someone else’s energy.

Liz: What?

PLDB: No judgment. But I’m talking about the guy you dated back home before coming here. No judgment.

Liz: Oh that? It’s nothing. I mean I don’t know what it is yet. But I thought you’d be happy for me.

PLDB: Listen, Liz, let me tell you something. Your energy is really dirty – no judgment – and I am a spiritual leader who needs to keep my energy clean. You are covered with that guy’s energy from back home, which is also really dirty by the way, and I can’t have that around me – no judgment. I need to stay pure. No judgment.

Liz: . . . I just assumed you had a girlfriend and friends with benefits back home …

PLDB: Sure I do, but the difference between you and me is that I compartmentalize. No judgment.

Liz: (Ohhhhhhh, I see how this works . . . )

PLDB: Listen, Liz, let me give you some advice: when you plan a weekend with one guy, don’t date another guy just before you leave -- no judgment.

And there it is: The Truth. Something I can actually understand — his ego is bruised. Fair enough. So, I apologize for my assumption that just because we live a continent apart and have not seen each other in over thirty years and are not, in fact, a couple, that I thought it would be okay to date another man in my own city. I was less sarcastic in person. In fact, since I generally assume I’m wrong about most things, I actually grovelled.

PLDB: I’m not upset, Liz. This is not about being hurt. This is about your dirty energy — no judgment.

Liz: Um, would mind refraining from using the word “dirty” because, in fact, there IS judgment in that word.

PLDB: Oh yes, I’m sorry. I forgot how important words are to you . . .

Rightly or wrongly, I’m always willing to take responsibility for whatever I have contributed to a situation and, therefore, always willing to put things right, if I can. So, I canceled the MoMA date I made with a friend while PLDB was in the shower because when I told PLDB about it, he asked, incredulously, “Aren’t you even going to give us a chance to recover?” So, I agreed to spend the day with him. And that's how I learned that a day spent with [insert appropriate expletive here] is a day lost.

After breakfast, Mr. Spiritual Purity bought a pack of cigarettes. And throughout the day, Mr. Non-Superficiality peppered his stories with all the people he hangs out with in Hollywood, including Harrison Ford and Melissa Ethridge, as well as casually mentioning the role he’d be getting in Nurse Jackie next season. And all day I did what I do best: I asked him questions about his work, his life, and his thoughts. And he asked me . . . nothing.

Just before the day ended, I posed PLDB a question about a woman he’d been seeing back home. Well, you’ll never guess. Turns out they met at an Ayahuasca ceremony. He was casting out her demons. Also turns out she was some hot, young darling of the Hollywood crowd who, for some mysterious reason, fell in love with PLDB. Huh. Could it have been the drugs??? So, they start dating, but she becomes so addicted to the ceremonies — I wonder why? Could it have been . . . the drugs??? — that her “wounding” surfaces and, guess what? she “dirties” PLDB’s energies. So he dumps her. Surprise!

I tried to find a way to explain my failed weekend with PLDB to myself all the way back to Toronto, but it was a girlfriend who put it most succinctly, “That’s just a drug addict.” Another friend added this clarifying nuance, “That’s just an asshole.”

There’s no question that some poor boy out there -- well, many boys, if we're going to be honest -- are cursing the day they met me, cataloguing all my faults, insensitivities, crazinesses, etc. But that does not make me feel any better about my wasted air miles and the fact that the MoMA was closed the day I finally jettisoned PLDB.

I share with you these little morality tales because I do wonder about dating as an enterprise that demands enormous time, usually more sums of money than I’m comfortable with, more often than not fattening foods, and, of course, exposes one to some truly fucknutty fucknuts. Which is why I like to move things along at lightning speed. I don’t want a potentially time-wasting and fat-making activity to clog my Mad Men schedule for more than a night, even when the show is not scheduled to air again until 2012.

But then comes the dusting off, as always, which I did recently, because I’m a glutton for hope, if not punishment. This time, however I met a man who . . . wait for it . . . asked me a question! On the first date! In fact, he asked a zillion questions that night. And for the past three months, he has asked a zillion more – a quality I have not seen in a man since 1996. Also, he pushes me . . . to excel at the things he recognizes are valuable to me: writing and painting. And although his background is not literary, he has taken the time to read my book draft and give me feedback. Honest feedback.

While I wait for his other, very sexy man-sandal to drop, I am enjoying the peace this dating ceasefire has brought. My new guy does not make declarations, never mind purple declarations, he can't back up with actions, which, so far, have been honest, sweet, consistent, and solid. He has never made mention of my dirty energy, not even when it might have been appropriate to do so (I’m thinking of the minor hissy fit I threw in Mexico when our tennis instructor lobbed my guy all the balls, or so I thought. Turns out, my guy thought I was getting all the lobs. Perception is everything. But he didn’t throw a fit. He put his arms around me and said, “You were so great out there today!”)

If dating dangerously for a year – or ten – means I had lessons to learn, I’m really hoping I’ve learned them. Choosing someone who actually takes an interest in others is definitely worth a few battles lost because it could mean I might actually win the war. Or, even better, change my fucked paradigm completely so that I no longer see dating as the enemy. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves . . .

Still and still . . .

Technically, what I’m doing is not ashraming.

First of all, ashram is not a verb, although I’ve made it one (the way I did with pretzel, as in do NOT pretzelize yourself to please someone else. It never works).

Second of all, an ashram is a place where one goes to find seclusion in order to undertake close spiritual study, often including yoga and meditation practice. I did not go to such a place. I stayed home, which is why my friend Kim refers to it as "homeshram." But I did meditate during homeshram. Not daily. Just once with a group.

But the overall Lizshram plan was most definitely to undertake close study. Of myself. Of how I'm doing. Of what I need in order to be okay. To make this so, I unplugged from Facebook and emails and chose not to see anyone socially for a week. I wanted time to write, paint, think, cry, and maybe even finally hang the one piece of art my fire did not consume.

The piece survived my fire because it was in Toronto. I had been storing it with extended family while at grad school but wasn't able to retrieve it when I later moved to Montreal because it wouldn't fit it into my packed-to-the-gills truck. It never occurred to me that the quarter-inch thick (i.e FLAT) art work leaning against the back wall of the extended family member's garage, which is the size of most people’s houses, would be a big deal. It wasn't. It was a HUGE deal to him. And since I couldn't get it out of his garage because I had no money to transport it, he took matters into his own hands and simply gave it to his son, who was too young at the time to see why this was tantamount to theft. I can write about this now because the issue did finally get resolved and the love was restored all around.

The art piece – a blurry image of what looks like two figures standing on a beach, the tension between them palpable and moving – was made by a divorcing friend who gave it to me after I gave her refuge in my home before she was deported back to England. When my own so-called life partnership ended, I got the piece in my own so-called divorce. So, as you can imagine, having something of such symbolic import then taken from me by my family caused a lot of heartache. Feeling helpless, I decided to get all Buddhist on my own ass and told myself it was better the piece hang on a wall than languish in a garage. But, the truth is, mostly what I thought was, How could they?

Today, however, I realize that this so-called theft saved my art from burning in my fire. The fact is, sometimes we don’t see the reason behind things for years and years. That’s why I have learned to wait things out a little longer.

It also reminded me that there's always more than a few ways to tell a story. When I’m overwhelmed, I tell it like a horror movie or a soap opera. When I have had enough time to feel, cry, and heal, my heart opens and I become more grateful, which makes my stories more generous.

The last few weeks have been overwhelming. And I’ve been angry. Correction, the last few months. Since Andy died. And before that, too. Facing the thought of re-building after my fire often sent me to my bed for days of weeping, movie watching, and popcorn scarfing. In contrast, Andy’s death didn’t make me cry for months on end. Or even weeks. In fact, after the first few tears, it stopped them altogether. His death has been so big that I have gone numb.

So much so I can still barely look at his pictures, although I did recently force myself to tape a pic of Andy in his plane to my wall because I was convinced I’d paint my way through the numbness. But I can no more paint him than I can look at him.

I think of Andy more now than when he was alive. Correction, I think more about our childhood, during which time I became myself through him. I am putting emphasis on our childhood because anything that belongs to my childhood belongs to Andy as much as it belongs to me. Andy formed my thoughts and ideas. He was my teacher, my tormentor, my refuge, my other half. With barely two years between us, it never occurred to me that he was anything other than my own brain and beating heart.

When we were around 9 and 11, Andy hatched a plan to get up at 5 am so that we could go exploring our gated community in Manila. We’d walk around the well-kept streets lined with Spanish-style houses, also walled and gated, with bougainvillea and oleander spilling over concrete or edging between iron gates. I can’t remember what we talked about. It didn't matter. We were a tribe.

On one particular morning when we got home from exploring, Andy put on a record and told me to listen closely to the lyrics. "Billy Don’t be a Hero." When the song ended, I asked Andy to explain it to me. He told me it was about a soldier going off to war. And that he died. I burst into tears. I thought of Andy going to war, and of him dying. What would I do without Andy? He probably laughed. Not mean-spiritedly. Andy was not mean or insensitive. He just didn’t cry his emotions.

A week before ashram, my friend Abi gave me Tracy Emin’s sort-of memoir called, "Strangeland." In it, Tracy traces a trajectory from being the daughter (and twin to a boy who ends up in jail) of an eccentric Turkish businessman who loses his fortune and more-or-less abandons his family, to surviving her childhood with her English mother who is forced to squat in her husband's abandoned house while working a series of terrible jobs in order to care for her kids, to Tracy chain smoking and drinking and fucking her way through her constantly breaking heart, only she breaks it a thousand times more through her own misguided attempts at cauterizing her childhood wounds.

I am not a chain smoker or a drinker or compulsive fucker, but I do have other unhealthy ways of numbing my pain.

Tracy writes about one of her loneliness dreams – (I have those, too!) – in which a boy she loves invites her to go with him to the sea wall in her home town. Tracy is so moved by the wall's beauty she says, “it’s beautiful,” just before the boy plunges a knife into her stomach. As blood pumps into her hand, instead of describing how she feels, she writes, “The sea is begging to disappear.”

[Thank you, Shawna Cooper, for this most evocative pic]

My bed has also begged to disappear. That was a few years ago, long before Andy died. But that thought is no longer possible. Andy has effectively saved my life by losing his. We can’t have another death. Even me.

Tracy wakes from her loneliness dream and says, “The fucking bastard: tricked by my own loneliness, and it fucking knew.”

Yes, loneliness does fucking know – it knows where you live and which doorbell to press and which dark alley to take you down in order to finish the job. It comes looking exactly like the love you crave and then it laughs as it beats your once-beautiful face into something no one could love.

Tracy writes, “Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart would just stop beating? I am longing now, but for whom I don’t know. My whole body craves to be held. I am desperate to love and be loved. I want my mind to float into another’s. I want to be set free from despair by the love I feel for another. I want to be physically part of someone. I want to be joined. I want to be open and free to explore every part of them, as though I were exploring myself.”

Yes. Tracy. Yes.

I feel it still, but I fear I also lost the ability to long, to believe, to hope. I have longed so hard for some people that I wonder if have spent not only all my longing on them but my innocence as well – my eye-popping belief in a love that would be transcendent, connected, and divine, while my stupid heart stopped at nothing to give, give, give, and give.

A few weeks ago I remembered how I used to make gifts for people I loved. For a man I once loved, I made a series of shadow boxes with his first book of poetry inside each box. In the first box, the book was pinned to the back wall like a butterfly specimen, and a small key hung on a nail beside it with a locked padlock on the outside of the box. It was called Fetish Object. In the second box, the book was flayed open with each page cut into petal shapes, every two pages glued together with a copper wire in between that helped me shape the petals once the glue had dried, the excess wire curling out from the pages like golden stamens. Transformation. In the last box, the book was again at the back of the box, but in front of it were layers of acetate hanging at intervals, and on which I had photocopied my love letters to him, a kind of palimpsest of love you had to look through to get to the picture of us I had glued to the cover of his book. It was of us dancing at his book launch. Love Letter.

For the next lover, I made a painting of his son.

And the one after that, I made a painting of his daughter.

After that, there was no one I wanted to make anything for.

When I was ten, my mother finally let me get my ears pierced. Andy bought me a pair of earrings from the grocery store just outside our village. Even then I knew I could not wear them and never did. The posts were not made of good-enough metal. The fronts were flat, white plastic discs with green leaves printed on them. I loved them because Andy bought them for me. But I didn't think they were pretty, and that made me cry. Secretly. Almost like I knew I would be punished for that thought.

Later, back in Canada, when we were teenagers, Andy had his best friend make me a pendant in shop class. It was silver, shaped like a telephone. I loved talking on the phone in those days (not anymore). He gave the pendant to me for Christmas. I wore it constantly. I kept the earrings and necklace right to the end.

It occurred to me the other day that my fire spared me anything that would remind me of Andy. Earrings and pendant gone. Not to mention all the love letters from people who once loved me, and all the art books they gave me. The fire made it as if I have never been loved at all. Where is the concrete proof? Andy gone. Letters gone. Dedications gone.

Andy will never stand up for me at my wedding as he did for Justin. This missed "milestone" seems to be not only about how I wanted to impress Andy, to show him that I was capable of succeeding at life (however conventional, and however much I challenge those conventions), but also about how I wanted him to see me joyous, blossoming in the light of a beloved. With their wives and children, it seemed that Andy and Justin now belonged to their own tribe. I wanted to belong with them. But mostly, I wanted Andy to tell a room full of people that he loved me. Yes, that's what it's about: to hear Andy love me. I know he did. But still . . .

Andy will never again spend time thinking about the perfect gift for me. But what does that matter when what is given can so easily be taken away.

I'm almost done my ashram, but I am not sure I am any further along. And that may be because I am not sure where I am going.

But despite it all, I am grateful. Or try very hard to be. Because I don't want to spend whatever time is left feeling bitter, or numb.

I am grateful for the message another Liz Phillips sent me the day before ashram began -- a young woman almost exactly twenty years my junior, who bears my name, who friended me on Facebook for fun, and who wished me well, almost like receiving a message from my younger self.

I am grateful for Dawn, my sister-in-law, my soul sister, who sent me a bouquet of Lisyanthus (pronounced Lizzy-anthus, funnily enough) – flowers that look like A-line organza skirts circa 1920. Dawn, who makes me feel feminine when most of the time I feel like a bull in a china shop.

I am grateful to Cody, my chosen brother, who makes the kind of jokes that Andy did and Justin still does -- perfectly timed, always off colour, ripping the laughter right out of me in spite of myself. Cody, always there when I need him, and most often when I haven't even noticed a train barelling down the tracks. He has restored something I thought I had lost along the way: trust.

I am grateful to Abi for always recommending exactly the right book. But exactly. And at the exact right time. Like she knows what my heart needs and when. "Strangeland" was made for Lizshram.

I am grateful to Zane for Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha," which I also read this week, and which reminded me that in everything there is both sinner and saint, lightness and dark; and that what binds all things and all people, joyous and painful, is love.

I am even grateful to the men who have loved me and left me because I honestly believe they protected me from themselves.

And I am grateful for Shy, who always knows when to crawl into my lap and curl up into a little ball of safety, cracking my chest wide open with a love I am only beginning to learn -- the unconditional love of caring for another being.

I am especially grateful for all the unconditional love that has come my way from my embarrassment of family and friends -- my father, Justin, Jacline, Mark and Tonya, Kim, Lilly, Diana, Rosemary, Freyda, Sara (all the Saras) and all the hundreds of childhood and adulthood friends who have crossed my path to lend me a hand, to give me refuge, to love me no matter what -- my definition of riches and my very reason for living.

A close friend of Dawn’s in Ottawa shared a story with me a few weeks ago about her grieving friend. This friend was told that in the Jewish tradition it is a sin to spend your life with the dead. In other words, you must grieve. But not for too long. Because while you are alive, you are supposed to live. You can't follow the dead to where they have gone. So don't try.

Being a terrible Jew, I have no idea if this really is Jewish folk wisdom. But I am grateful for this story, which I pull out each time I feel the pain of being alive when Andy is not. The thing is, Andy was always the first of us in the family to live -- to really live! I still don't know how to live like he did. But even from where ever he has gone, he's still showing me the way as he lives through Dawn -- who has become as much a part of me as my own brain and my own beating heart.