Magdalena O!

Since I can remember I’ve wanted to leave this city. I came here as a youngen and never really left. I’ve travelled Europe many times, but I’ve never lived anywhere else but here since I moved. Yet, I’ve never really attached myself to it as a place of ‘home’. I’ve allowed ropes to tug at the roots so they don’t expand any further like newly planted trees in the suburbs. Why have I been so afraid to admit to Canada? Admit to Toronto? I’m constantly asked about my background, and without hesitation, “Polish Jew” comes out. I can’t let go to include Canadian in my identity. I would place hundreds of adjectives but there would never be a place for Canadian. It’s a common thread that the Canadian identity is a mixed bag and nationalism is pronounced as admitting to any other ethinicity but Canadian.

Toronto is my home. (I must admit, it feel really strange to write that). It’s where I decided to stay when applying to university. I didn’t even apply to out of the city universities because if I wasn’t going to be in Toronto I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I craved Toronto and all my friends that lived in the city, everything that was the antithesis of the suburban life I hated in Mississauga. Toronto meant partying all night long, good music, better clothes shops, cafes, freedom and the inspiration to explore myself and not be an outcast. And Toronto provided me with all that. It provided me with the lifestyle I wanted, with the experiences I imagined to have. But after a couple of years of living in Toronto, the novelty of partying and experimentation with drugs, art and music all the time wore off and I came to be bored with Toronto and slagged it relentlessly.

When I met my boyfriend at the end of 2003, one of the first exchanges we had was of how we both wanted to get out of this city and move to Europe. I explained how badly I’ve been wanting to move to Europe, something that became more pronounced after my first backpacking trip in the summer of 2002 and going to New York a few months after that. I became obsessed with moving to Europe, with living there, with being in my homeland. Yet, the thought of living in my actual homeland of Poland never crossed my mind. It was always London, or Vienna, or Paris or something much more grandiose than Toronto (in the way I saw it).

….so much more to fill in here…

I’m sorry Toronto. I love you. I love that you’ve raised me and taken care of me. I’m so spoiled to have you by my side. You have made my life so easy and for that I shouldn’t blame you, I should be able to take that and move on. I’m afraid of moving in the same way a kid with a car and the basement to themselves with workaholic parents just can’t seem to move out. I was always so self-assured in how much better my life will be when I leave here, when I leave the ease and monotony that I’m surrounded with. But I was wrong, my tunnel vision got me. Now I see, now I am excited for you Toronto. I am excited about the music scene I am in, something I’ve also slagged the last few years. I’ve finally come to a supportive group of like-minded friends. I can call up anyone at anytime and have someone by my side. I can bike to any place I want safely. I am understood. I am inspired by you Toronto. But at this time, I must let you know I have to leave. Maybe it is better that I leave during this time? But I’m not rushing out the door, I’m going to take my time, I won’t be haste with my goodbye.

…..so much more to write….

Throw the honesty sheath on me, let it fall on my face, my limbs, let the threads touch my lips and cover my eyes. Let all of the stored thoughts come out. At that moment, when faced with comfort in telling the truth you somehow remember the thought you had forgotten, you remember the way you imagined things to be, the expression on your face in the repartee.

I paced around my hallway this morning, gripping my hearts heaviness. All of my cells are consipiring to touch you. They’re consipiring because they know me. I walk down the reflective subway stairs and everyone is you. The old lady limping using an umbrella as a cane is you. The two kids in neon sport jackets are you. You have become everything. I close my eyes and my body tightens. It’d open them up again but what’s the use? Am I on the right platform? All the signs say your name, all the ads are promoting you.

The girl in front of me is sticking out her legs. I scan the smooth skin and remember your hands caress, the way you gripped underneath my knee. She’s got a substantial bruise on her right leg, just like mine. I want to hold onto it, so I can know how you felt.

Tell me everything. I desire your bloodshot effervescent eyes to stare into mine. Dig into me. I want you to dig so hard you come back around from the beginning again. I want to go in circles with you to see what I missed the first time. I want to walk around and up and down your body to know all of it. I want to pry open every hair follicle so I don’t miss any skin.

“Let me just lay on your bed for a bit. I feel tired.” She hops to the other room. The comfort has never left her. Laying on her side, to make sure her tennis skirt doesn’t reveal too much, not now. The navy bed sheets are crumpled and the mattress peeks out from underneath. She grabs a hold of one of the pillows squeezing it underneath her collar, looking up but then quickly buries her head into the bed.
“It still smells exactly the same. You haven’t washed this in a while have you?”
The music is still blaring and she whines to turn it off, making a counter-clockwise gesture with her fingers. They talk about his sister and her plans on making it in Paris. She giggles with envy. Their conversations appear as deep discussions but they both know it’s just small talk.
“I should go.” She says hesitantly, looking around his room, trying to take it all in. The plants hover over his desk and his computer, winding around the makeshift shelf that could fall any moment. The blinds are grayed with dust and cigarette smoke. Records stacked up on the floor, some in milk crates, some edged along his bed. Old hip-hop records she wishes she could just ask him for hiding underneath his clothes. He catches her scanning.
“I was going to do laundry today but then I just couldn’t stop donwloading all this raggae.” He sighs as if he really is bothered by his negelect.
“I really should go.”
“Ok.”
She doesn’t get up and instead lays horizontally on the bed with her eyes closed and dangles her feet off the side spreading her arms out. He’s torn and she knows it.

Erica Jong writes about Anne Sexton:

…Once, when I wrote to her about my terror of publishing a second book of poems, she answered: “Don’t dwell on the book’s reception. The point is to get on with it–you have a life’s work ahead of you–no point in dallying around waiting for approval. We all want it, I know, but the point is to reach out honestly–that’s the whole point. I keep feeling that there isn’t one poem being written by any of us–or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem–a community effort if you will. It’s all the same poem. It doesn’t belong to any one writer–it’s God’s poem perhaps. Or God’s people’s poem. You have the gift– and with it comes responsibility–you mustn’t neglect or be mean to that gift–you must let it do its work. It has more rights than the ego that wants approval.” But the ego must be fed so the gift can do its work…

How can I be a writer? A close friend of mine in high school who I only became close to after she admitted to cutting herself to me after reading my website and my stories, used to tell me, “People may think you are a bitch, but your striking honesty captivates me, please don’t ever change.” And here I am, still thought of as a bitch, but more of a bitch because my honesty has now become snootiness and not full of youthful perception.

How do you start stripping? How can I wash the soot off my heart and unclog the tar in my thoughts? So much hiding. So much actions and reactions and experiences written up vaguely, erasing the mannerisms of love but keeping… keeping what? Lies? I detest that word. It’s not lies I bear with me but enablers of memory loss, enablers of emotive dissasociation. How can I be truthful in my writing when I am so fucking scared to really, really get to the core of myself? Of my lover, of my parents? Will I be able to face my mother someday and tell her how I feel, or maybe even ask her sincerely what she really wants? My therapist says I think of too much all at once, making it all turn into one mess and that I’ll never be able to untangle my core this way. I’ll become so little and my “singular” problem so huge, I’ll become the pea under the princess’ bed. My anger will turn into rue, and then the princess. All my life will be the hundred mattresses all stacked on top of me, and me as the bothersome pea, me as the blockage to life. Me as the discomfort to happiness and peace.