The first two weeks, I was consumed. It was the same struggle that I go through every time I come home--attempting to reconcile where I came from with where I live. Attempting to understand where I started and where I am.
My life is dichotomized. My Cold Lake life versus my Toronto life. My life before and after. They're two separate, parallel lines, rarely intersecting. And there's ghosts around every corner.
I never belonged here, but I don't belong there either. Neither was a life that I felt like I chose for myself. One I was born into and one I fell into by accident.
The most difficult challenge of all has been grappling to find the words to articulate all this.
I still haven't found them.
I feel this way about anywhere I go. Maybe it's the military and having moved so many times against my own wanting - anywhere I "go back to" I never really "came from" and the ghosts lie in all corners. Even in the city I've chosen to make my home, I run into ghosts - it's like I've been displaced into the past.
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