In an effort to get out of my own way, I moved to Fort Mac when I was 25 years old.
For more than 12 months, I chain smoked cigarettes on our dusty back porch, in burnt toast air.
I gained insight to Newfie-speak, and broken Quebec French. I hugged my neighbours, laughed at optimists,
and cried with other lonely souls, searching for something.
In empty rooms I played guitar for no one. Drank like a royal, and ate like a trucker. I hit my knees in desperate prayer.
Caroused and frolicked in trailer parks and multi-million dollar homes. Watched the northern lights dance and twirl brighter than I have ever seen under a sky that never completely went to sleep in the summertime. The same sky that would dim mid-afternoon in the long, dry, winter; and would hibernate light for longer than any of us could bear.
I drank red wine out of white ceramic coffee mugs in crisp nighttime air. Lost and found myself more than a hundred times. Beheld bright stars and suffocated sunsets.
Fraternized with bad company, with politicians, and B-list celebrities. I kissed strangers, and fell in love with my roommates.
Wasted time like water in seedy bars, and at black-tie affairs in borrowed gowns I could not afford; I drank my weight in whiskey.
I found what was most important to me in a city that was larger and wilder than I can possibly boast.
My guilt the past few days has overwhelmed me with very little reason. It was only a year of my life.
So why am I so emotional?
Watching footage of apocalyptic flames lick away at Beacon Hill resonates so deeply within me, in a manner that I can't explain. It's all so heartbreaking, and unfair. I cursed the city forever for sustaining such loneliness in my heart.
But there isn't a doubt in my mind that the very city I claimed to despise was the very same city that set me free, and fixed me on a course to who I am this very minute.
And I am grateful.
