some of this is true

A couple of days ago I walked across the dull green bridge that spans the Halifax harbour as a cold, barley spring wind whipped up from the water and brushed against my face, almost numbing it and making it awkward to talk, on an otherwise pleasant day. It’s been a while since I’ve walked across and I forgot how long it takes, how when you think you’re almost finished the bridge slopes down again and you can see that you’re not even halfway there. And when we got off and turned the corner a young Mormon man — a boy, really — from California in a suit with a black plastic name tag stopped to talked to us about praying and God and religion and he said “sweet” when we laughed hard and told him we were just sort of talking about the very same thing, though I suspect in a very different way.

It was probably the last time I’ll walk across that bridge before, in just four short days, I catch a plane and fly over lakes and prairies and forests and mountains and touch down into a British Columbian night. The past few weeks have been filled with lasts, at least as a resident here; the next time I’ll be a visitor, a tourist. The last time seeing this person or that person, awkward goodbyes, which, for me, are usually the only kind. The last time at favourite sushi restaurants or pubs or coffee shops. Last night was my last night in this apartment with its falling-apart ceiling and tattered carpet and noisy, metal-head downstairs neigbours, who had the nerve, for the first time yesterday, to ask me to turn down the music, which wasn’t very loud at all, in fact. My last piano lesson is tonight, and my last shift at work is Sunday. The last time I was at the public gardens throwing bread to the ducks as park staff walked by ignoring this flagrant violation of the law, I didn’t know I’d be gone before the gates would open again. The last time I went to the Pyramid cafe just down the street and had a vegan breakfast was months ago, and I didn’t even have any warning before they plastered paper up against the windows and shut it down. And the last time I went to karaoke at a shady blues bar downtown was just a couple of weeks ago, and I knew it was a last, so you can bet I sang my heart out.

But then, after four short days and I find myself in a new city, tired, there will be firsts, dozens of them and probably more, which is exciting, exploring and carving out a space for myself, and new people. And soon those firsts will just be the way things are, and it will feel good to be planted, to be settled, after months, or longer, of feeling like one foot was already out the door. But right now one foot really is out the door, and on Monday both feet and the rest of me will be, too, and I’ll be on my way West.

The last time I moved across the country was almost four years ago, here to Halifax, for school, and you know the rest of the story and I ended up staying, working. In the weeks before I boarded a plane eastward on a one-way ticket, my brain still coming to grips with the gravity of the move, the open-endedness of it all, someone, I can’t remember who and I can’t remember why, asked me a question: “What if it doesn’t work out?”

What if it doesn’t work out.

Up to that point, this wasn’t even an option I had considered, things not working out, but then it was in the front of my mind and I conjured impossible scenarios of everything just falling apart as this phrase bounced around in my head. What if it doesn’t work out. Images of bankruptcy, of future unemployment, failure, loneliness, returning home defeated, and of course it’s not going to work out, I thought, how could it?

It did work out, of course, and I caught my red-eye flight in the middle of a thunderstorm and landed in Halifax early and picked up my rental van, on a Saturday, and got started. By the day’s end I had a sofa and a table and chairs and a TV and groceries and everything else I thought I might need that I couldn’t buy the next day, and that night I was at Ginger’s having drinks with people I mostly didn’t know and it was so hot outside. I started classes two days later, an internship three months later, and after eight months I had a job, and friends, and had already moved apartments.

And almost four years later, there are just two weeks left in this oceanside town before I catch another one-way flight in the other direction, and land and settle in before getting to work and getting to know a new city and meeting new people. And it’s already working out, things are largely taken care of, so there’s not much more to worry about except for deciding what to pack and what to leave and filling in the holes in the wall where pictures are now hanging and cleaning that spot behind the washing machine that I’ve never quite been able to get to, or never bothered to, and in the meantime taking stock of everything I’m leaving behind.

I went to Vancouver and now I am back, and maybe when I’m not so tired I will tell you about it, or maybe not, but things went well and everything worked out and I’ve posted some photos for you to look at. Click me.