"LOST ISLANDER / FOUND SILENCE"
[22/4/2025]I'm going to start a new habit: every time I go on a trip, instead of recounting every excruciating detail in chronological order, I'm going to stake with certainty firstly which vacation detail I found to be the worst, and secondly, which vacation detail I found to be the best.
So, first on the agenda is thus follows - I did NOT get to hold a tarantula. I will now initiate discussion on my lack of tarantula-holding, after which there will NOT be Q&A segment of this presentation.
Oh, I seem to have gotten ahead of myself. I went on a vacation to Victoria this last week to get some sun and hopefully burn off some clouds of depression in the process. It seems to have worked! It was... surprisingly healing.
When I tell people "oh, yeah, I'm from BC," it's usually followed by, "y'know, Vancouver?" This statement also purposefully neglects much baggage and many complications that surround the pressing question of where I am from, exactly. Technically I'm a New Englander but I don't remember any of it; when I visited my old house out there last Summer, I didn't remember or feel a damn thing - it was all newness (including the cannoli).
Moreover, Vancouver being next in the weighted order of years-lived, makes the statement "I'm from Vancouver" teeter precariously on the border between technicality and lying. What's more is I don't even know if many people would consider the part of town where I lived Vancouver-proper, as I lived in one of the rare districts nearby to the city that did not require a hedge-fund's worth of liquid capital in order to pay rent and be able to eat any amount of food. So, to say my knowledge of Vancouver's food scene boils down to our neighbour who'd sell us home-made smoked salmon may disqualify me for even more reasons based on the standards of the theoretical average Vancouverite.
Next, I hate telling people in Edmonton that "I moved here from Idaho," which is a fairly contentious statement for many reasons, both personal or otherwise. I lost eight years of my life there and I'll be the first to tell you that it's a tarpit where compassion goes to die. My therapist already hears enough of it from me. And no, I will not be hearing any "but Craters of the Moon is beautiful!" lowballs (despite my agreeing), and certainly not any "but grocery and housing prices are better!" rhetoric thrown my way (which is just plainly untrue, by the way, unless you'd want to live in a cardboard box with black mold in it).
So, here is my confession: I am from Victoria. I have finally decided that, after visiting there again after six years, those ten years I spent living there on three separate occasions did mean something to me, if not largely defined who I am and what direction I wish to pursue in life. I also really, desperately, violently, wholeheartedly, miss the taste of fresh west-coast seafood. I'm an islander at heart.
But where I'd lived in Idaho was where my fiance grew up too; he'd stumbled back there to family because of the tarpit of that state, but there's not much to see. The sightseeing and pointing out of his ol' stomping grounds was mostly places like corner stores that somehow never went out of business. or schools where traumatic events happened. So it was a funny thing, being back there in Victoria, to show him the parts that I'd loved and forgotten about for so long until teary eyes saw the familiar colours of alleyway corners, aching fingers felt the rusted and barnacle-encrusted handrails, and weary feet felt the sand, the clay, and the salt-spray of the Pacific Ocean once again. I didn't think much about the Great Basin then, other than dispelling the lie of "hey, it ain't so bad down in the desert" that I told myself to keep sane. Instead, I tended to think about all the good times I had there on the island.
Admittedly though (and this is partially admitting to myself as much as it is a confession to the world), I don't think I'd ever want to live there again, and this last trip really did confirm that feeling. This is what I'd have to tell all the old people in Idaho who'd I mention living in Victoria to, and they'd go "isn't Butchart Gardens just beautiful, and what a beautiful city it is!"
I tell people "Victoria is where Canadians go to die." Like, there's a lot of retirement homes in Oak Bay, and it's kind of weird when you grow up near those retirement homes. People seem happy there; blissfully, ignorantly so. It's so easy to keep quiet near the coast when the waves fill the space with their gentle noise. But I loved them, and I still do. I got to touch the ocean, feel it in-between my toes after so long, right in the place where I first touched the Pacific Ocean. I cried when I did; I'd been waiting six long years.
So, secondly on the docket, wouldn't it be fitting that, for what I do declare to be the best moment of the trip, that my now-fiance would propose to me there by the tidepools? I think so. What a fitting circle to match the one on my finger.
I found peace in those waves gently lapping against stone, the same quiet peace I felt back when I was a child, when I was just an animal. I thought I lost it forever there, but I found it again right where I left it.
When I get home,
I try to think all those happy thoughts.
But when I do,
I just wanna call and tell them to you.
- lyrics from the song "Take Good Care" by Soft Fangs.
For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.