University for me, like many, was a chance to start something over.
It was the opportunity to reimagine an identity for myself and recreate everything around me — the first step from small town weirdo to big city socialite. I spent my first year at UVic, which was about twelve hours away by car from my hometown of Castlegar, BC. The distance was relieving. I was ready to become a full-blown college man who makes adult mistakes and takes his education for granted.
The distance, for the most part, made the beginning of this transition easy. Being far away was nice, I felt free and in control of my life’s happenings. I could stay out until whenever I wanted, hang out with whoever I wanted and go wherever I wanted.
But the distance turned from freedom to a constricting prison in an instant.
Emotionally, my first year of university was like walking through a field of bear traps — just when I thought “there can’t be room for anymore bear traps” another one attached to a place on my body I forgot I had.
My first year felt like my body was covered in these bear traps, each one with a label: long-distance girlfriend, lack of motivation, school I hated and the ever-present dread that screams “what are you going to do with your life?”
But the biggest bear trap was less of a bear trap and more of a guillotine. It was late February when I heard the news.
My mom called me and said simply “me and your dad are likely going to get a divorce.”
I remember imagining this scenario as a young kid. In my fantasy, my parents would tell me they are going to be divorced and I, through the magic of generosity and love, would orchestrate a Christmas miracle that would make everything okay.
In reality, what actually happened was about three hours of impotent rage that included tearing down signposts, walking down to a popular bay and quickly leaving because I forgot I was scared of the dark.
Growing up, I always saw my parents as the paragon of marriage. They’d been together from their early 20s to their mid 40s, had both me and my sister, a house, a dog and loved to camp together. That’s how it seemed at least.
But what could I do? I was twelve hours away and they were still living together. Nothing was official, but nothing was alright. Everyone’s life was thrown into the air and through the magic of family dysfunction they stayed suspended — there were no pieces to pick up and nothing to catch. My family was in nuptial purgatory.
Twelve hours away from what really mattered, classes began to annoy me. Everything was soured by what I was secretly going through.
I don’t think I will ever be able to take a class in formal logic again without getting flashbacks to that spring.
My grades took a significant dip, adding to my stress as I was trying desperately to get into UBC. I was isolated. I could only tell my girlfriend but that made things harder because she lived in Vancouver, reminding me of the fact I lived on a fucking island.
No one knew about what was going on, my roommate at the time didn’t realize what I was going through until I told him a year ago — one month after everything was official. In a phrase, I was so good at bottling my emotions, I considering a job with Coca-Cola. I would simply go to class, come home, and sit on my computer — distracting myself by joking about farts and politics — go to sleep wake up and repeat.
Not a single person I interacted with daily knew what was going on with me. What reason did I have to tell anyone? Why would I? I was 600 kilometres east. 600 kilometres west was the middle of the ocean. What was the difference?
Come Easter, I thought I had some sort of duty to go home. I took an extra few days, citing “family emergency” with my professors and my family scrounged up the money for me to fly in.
It felt like how I imagine a newly drafted soldier would feel dropping into Vietnam: I didn’t know why I was going, what was happening or which side I was on. And like the United States' involvement in Vietnam, it only made things worse.
It was a five-night trip into the purest form of anguish. There were no good sides, no place for me to take a stand and no way for me to leave happy. It was the home I’d always known, the one I grew up in, but everything was wrong. Gravity had been reversed and everyone noticed. But no one said anything. And to take this Vietnam analogy to its logical conclusion, when I left I was Henry Kissinger — I had not accomplished my goal of fixing my family and the dominoes were soon about to fall.
I went back to school and finished the semester as best as I could, ending with an average that still got me into UBC. Two months later, my dad went up north to work and he would never come back to the house.
I spent the ensuing months thinking about what had happened. Was it better that I had been away? If so, who was it better for? How does this change the last 20 years of my life? There’s no clear answer. A part of me is still struggling to understand those few months in 2016, but it isn’t as all encompassing as it once was.
Although, as the distance in time grows between now and then, it becomes less painful.
Distance has helped. It allows time for reflection, and that goes for physical distance as well. It allows for me to digest, understand and engage with what’s bothering me as I’m able to.
This is the second year where I’ve had two Christmases and it’s starting to feel alright.
It’s a slow process, but it’s slowly made me realize that maybe distance is okay, and maybe so am I.