find part one here

For the past few months I’ve been trying to cope gracefully. I’ve been trying not to let school phase me, to keep blogging in a tidy corner of my life, to hold my own around the house, to be here for Mister, to work, be thankful, see my friends, to listen, and to keep moving forward. But life has been moving fast and when it starts to spin so fast I can’t keep up, my response usually consists of making even more unreasonable commitments in an effort to feel like I’m Achieving Lots of Things, as we all know that’s the mark of success.

While things have been stressful they have still been full of fun moments, but I’ve been hoping that jetting across the country would be as good a break as any. Given my history with Vancouver and it being baited with a long distance, terribly missed friend, an amazing old friend who left the prairies this year, as well as two of my favourite bloggers it seemed like the perfect chance to chat with a couple new people, and to restore my old friendships.

And it was a lot of fun until I started having trouble walking.

The end of the first day was coming up, I was feeling proud of myself and happy. I felt like in between the laughter I had made pretty good friends with Fab Brunette’s daughter (she asked if I was moving to Vancouver, or if I would fly over when she wanted to play. Be still my heart!) and had some seasonal beer with Hillary without freaking out and asking to come have a sleep over so we could stay up all night and braid each other’s hair and make friendship bracelets.

I finally met up with my long distance friend, took two steps into the Vancouver night and knew that something wasn’t right. I was extremely light headed, woozy and nauseous. I had terrible stomach pains and walking wasn’t going well. We tried everything we could think of. I had coffee, food, we got back to the friend’s apartment I was staying at, and nothing worked. Eventually I gave up, I’d sleep until my friend got home.

Only when he got home I was a little hysterical. I was hot and cold, non-coherent, unable to sleep from the nine cups of coffee I’d poured into my poor body, and coming up on twenty three hours of being awake. I’d managed to hit Twitter when I was still feeling optimistic, but after another couple of hours of tossing, turning, and getting more upset I send Mister a couple of e-mails packed with just enough of my confusion and sadness to confuse and worry him.

I’m nothing if not a rockstar of a wife and a low maintenance house guest.

After much talking to I accepted the glass of wine that had been sitting on the table for hours and fell into grateful sleep. I woke up feeling rested but like I had been hit by a truck. It was official, I was sick and a thousand miles from home.

I spent two hours on hold with WestJet trying to get home a day early, and eventually succeeded- which meant that in the same breath I succeeded in completely letting down an amazing friend who I hadn’t seen in two years. I saw her that evening and the next morning before I was back at the airport- essentially having spent over $500 on coffee with friends over the mountains. This trip was meant to be a get away from normal life, and it ended up with me disappointing people and running straight back to it.

So my trip was expensive, I don’t feeling better yet, and I had 15 hours of sleep in three days. But I also had a moment, crying and curled up on one of my oldest friend’s couches while he listened to me so carefully, when I realized that this is how our whole friendship started and that it’s kind of amazing that we’re that close again. It entrenched in me that distance has no meaning when it comes to how deep my friendships run, and that sometimes cheap Indian food & PJ’s are all you need to feel truly at home.

So while my trip wasn’t a traditional success it wasn’t a traditional fail either, and something in me feels like traditional success isn’t as interesting as working with whatever life throws at you. When things aren’t straight forward and easy, people have a chance to rise to the occasion and show you who they really are- either by not getting upset by your being sick even after the worst work week they can remember, or by honestly listening to their muddled friend spill her guts even after waking up at the crack of dawn to meet her at the airport, lugging her baggage, and working an extremely long shift.

I’m lucky that with friends like these, I don’t need a straight forward trip to have a good time.

With the life I’ve come home to, I think I’m just lucky in general.

{images: andy clark, martin creed}