In Canada for nearly two weeks, and nearly two weeks of tears. I can’t remember the last time I cried so hard, so often. 

That’s a lie. 

December, 2018.

Gut-wrenching, endless torrents of tears of hopelessness and despair. Days when you don’t wish you were dead, but you’re not happy you’re alive. 

This time the tears were different. 

They were tears that well up instantaneously upon the sight of someone so dear that has not been seen in years. Tears from laughing so hard you cry. Tears that cloud your eyes but not your vision as you recall happy memories. Tears of sheer gratitude, that fall when you are feeling completely overwhelmed by the number of infinite tasks you must complete in a finite amount of time, and someone swoops in and lifts a task from your shoulders.

I also thought there would be stalker tears. You know, the tears that fall as you sit silently outside a place you associate with someone. Someone still alive, someone that you have no contact with, but someone that was, and remains, and always will be, special. 

But there were no stalker tears.  Don’t get me wrong, I did some stalking! But rather than tears, sometimes there was even a guffaw while I shook my head realizing that the flaws that had ruined our relationship still existed. Perhaps, even better yet, there were other times while I sat and looked and felt nothing at all. 

There were many, many sad tears of goodbyes and departures. But at least sad tears are not the gut wrenching sobs that make you think your heart will never heal and your soul is slain. Beyond the sad tears there is still a future.

Before I left, someone suggested to me that it would be interesting if I wrote a piece on my perspective after going back to Canada.

Can one go back? Definitely. There were meetings with people that I have hardly talked to in the years since I left, but we sat down and went back into our routine of happy companionship as though we had sat together only last week.

But I didn’t return to go back. I returned to tie up loose ends and finally ship the stuff I couldn’t live without and cut metaphorical umbilical cords so that I can continue to move forward. Overall, I don’t know if one can go back. But I do know that one can return to a place feeling like they have conquered the demons from which they ran. Because that’s how I felt. I feel I returned triumphant.

Our greatest weapon against fear or stress or despair is our ability to choose one thought over another. I will continue to release the past that makes me cry and focus on the present that makes me smile.

Goodbye, Canada. I suppose there may be a time when our paths cross again. 

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