Shine so bright

"Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you"

I feel I'm in a very fortunate position at this very moment. I'm going through a time in my life when a lot, lot, lot has happened to me. My life has changed so drastically twice in the last two and a half years. I've been through more than I could handle. Now I reached calm waters. I get to enjoy silent moments on benches thinking and analyzing. Why I feel so lucky is because I'm the one who get's to decide what kind of impact it has on me. Things happen for a reason…sure... but you're still the one who decides what that reason is. I'm being very open minded to say the least. Cooking up some juicy reasons on these dark benches of mine.

 I did what I said I would do the last time around and I cut my hair. It was a very exciting and happy moment for me.

I went back to the village I used to live in, to have it cut by my friend. What surprised me on my way there was the darkness that surrounded me. You don't realize how dark it get's when you live in the city. There is always light around. I even got lost on my way. Lost in a little village I lived in for 2 years. The mind really bends and flexes in all kinds of ways. Even in the the more erasing and forgetting kind of way.

When I drove back to Montreal I was less surprised. The wonderfully familiar feeling of warmth, pride and belonging entered my body. It was stronger than ever before. A real feeling of coming home, just the way I used to feel when coming back to Helsinki after a ride in the countryside, to meet the rest of the family.

My family never lived in the same city as I, so in a way it's still the same I just switch my Helsinki to my Montreal.

(my Helsinki, my Töölö)

(my Montreal, my Gay Village)

 "Taking time to do nothing, puts everything in perspective"

This moment of seeing the light in the end of the tunnel…what can I say…mine is shining so bright.

Embrace another fall

Embrace another fall, yet another ending, a fallen dream, a failure. Break-ups are quite the torture. That goes both for your home country and abroad. The good thing about age is that you have gotten through so many break-ups over the years that the heartaches in your pockets are so many, you loose track. The echoes in your head comes from so many different voices, you can't make out what they are saying. 
You just put on that familiar playlist with top ten break-ups songs you gathered over the years and enjoy a smooth ride into self pity mixed with guilt and anger flavored with a hint of relief until one day you reach the point of simply going, "Honey, we might be through but you won't hear me complain". This is the moment you know the torture is finally over and it's for you to climb up your favorite top, look at that wonderful view and breath in a fresh breeze soaked in the feeling of pure freedom.

I put my past in the past, embrace the future and enjoy the colorful fall along with its fallen leaves. 

I congratulate myself for making it through another difficult period, I embrace the strength of my heart and soul while looking at my hair abandoning my head one by one just like the leaves abandons the trees. Where my head succeed my scalp fails. I have heard about this phenomena of hair loss during big changes in life and now I get to live it. I decided not to freak out and just cut it off. I wanted to put past in the past right, so why not cut it off all together? Well I'm not ready to go completely bold but cut enough to give it strength to grow normally again. 
So next time I'll be sitting on this bench there will be less hair on my head, fewer leaves in the trees and we will be closer to embracing another winter.

That time of the month

It's the time of the month when I get to enjoy this view

What is it with dogs and their need to drink out of the toilet? God knows and he doesn't tell, as we tend to put it in Swedish. Well at least we Swedish speaking Finns, I don't really know how they tend to put things in Sweden.

So I share custody of the the dog with my dear-ass X, I'm the one who gets to hang out with the dog 2 days once a month and he is the one who gets the dog all the time, all the time. The reason for this is however the dog and his well-being. Where we failed as a couple we make up as dog owners.

I love taking my dear on walks in Montreal and he seem to enjoy it just as much. I find it funny how people come up to me to ask things like, "does your dog have problems with his back as it's so long?". I never know if people are kidding or serious and I always answer with a joke when I should be serious and vice versa. 

I'm as well the most antisocial person in the dog parks. I don't have much to say about dogs. Never had one before and don't think I will after this one. He is my one and only.

Fall is here. Beautifully colored leaves surround us. Some still in the trees others on the ground. You get to enjoy a more colorful autumn here in Quebec than you do in Finland, thanks to a wider range of leafy trees and the big amount of maple trees. 

Montreal is however not the best place for this color festival, you're better off in the countryside. 

  

I wanted to take Chuck up on the Mont Royal, but this time he had planned another route. We never made it up. We made it to the left and right and over and under, but never up. Bassets can be like that sometimes.

I was not in the mood to argue, after all it was his time of the month.

Changes, because it's worth it

"Love the people who treat you right.

forget about the ones that don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance take it, if it changes your life, let it. 

Nobody said it would be easy, they just said it would be worth it"

I saw this text this week and made the decision to remember, repeat and believe in it. 

I also made the decision to take a step out of the province of Quebec and visit Ontario with the destination being Ottawa. First time to do it since I moved here. Great decision and a lovely mini trip as Ottawa is only a bit more than 2 hours away from Montreal, by car that is.

In Ottawa you can find people waiting for the red light to change to green, before they cross the street, just like you can find them in Helsinki.  You can find arrangements for parking that works exactly like they do in Finland and not like they do in Montreal. Small details like this reminded me of the fact that Finns and Britts are closer mentality wise than Finns and French. No surprise but it put a grin on my face during my visit. I felt I got a mini vacation to Ottawa with a kind of a Finnish flavor to it.

What you can find in Ottawa and not in Helsinki is lots and lots of black squirrels. Cute but more shy than the Montreal squirrels. 

The Canadian flag tend to pop out a bit more than the Finnish flag does in either country. 

My trip to Ottawa was my first but hopefully not the last. It didn't change my life but it gave me a reminder of where I started and where I am today. 

Montreal and Helsinki doesn't have a lot in common.  I have in other words been given a chance and decided to take it, it will both change me and my life and I'm going to let it. 

No need to point out the obvious that it will be worth it. 

  

A new beginning … yet again

More or less two and a half years ago, I made the big decision of leaving my home country, Finland, with family and friends along with my company and came to the French Canada, also know as Quebec. People seem to need a reason for decisions like this, so here it is; I once upon a time came to Quebec as an exchange student and wanted to come back and study here. However 15 years went by in Finland and 2012 was finally the year I made it back. This version of the story never seem to be quite good enough, people need more. A man needs to be involved, right? I try to offer them Leonard Cohen. I'm a huge fan, so maybe crazy enough to move for my ever so lovely poetic hero? Well maybe so or maybe there was a boy back in my year as an exchange student, that I got in touch with again and decided to try to work out the impossible, a relationship. Mission impossible is in the past, now is the present and everything is very much possible, especially when you live in Montreal … alone… with the shared custody of a dog.
It's not for fun people keep on saying that life is full of surprises, they do it because it really is. 

I left a tiny village where I was living with this boy and our dog and decided to try out Montreal for the summer. See if I would like it. See if I could make it all alone. I loved it and realized I was making it far better on my own.

So here I am completely and utterly in love with my new city. 

Our love story has only just begun. It is more than just a summer romance, that much I realize as autumn is here but what lies ahead, life only knows and as they say… it is full of surprises.