A 2020 to remember

I gained 2 sizes this year.

I went from a size 8 to a size 12. My friends - God bless them, they are the best - say that much of the weight went into my tits and my ass. They say I look amazing, my figure is fuller, proportional and sexy, as if I was a curvy model.

I want to talk about my weight as a way to begin this recap. My weight has always been problematic and yes, I do suffer from a diverse range of mental health disorders associated with food and body image. These combined with my borderline personality disorder (BPD) make a bomb hard to defuse. My body image, my looks are always a bit hard to deal with as they remind me of things I’d rather forget. Things I managed to leave behind to never look back, closing the door on a part of me that doesn’t exist anymore. But I gained 2 sizes.

If 2020 brought some weight, it also brought solitude, loneliness, depression, a heightening of my BPD and another existential crisis that I didn’t want to experience. I thought I had gone through it all, with sheer force of nature. Accepting failure was now easy, I was able to see red flags from a mile away, I worked hard and yet…

The emptiness, the void, the feeling of not being anything more than someone defined by her body or her physical appearance daunted me. The last year of my twenties was a hard one. It confronted me as to who I was, what I was building for myself, but also what would be my legacy for the years to come. What do you do during a pandemic when you are confronted with this? Well, you decide to throw everything to the garbage.

I lost my job during the pandemic. When 2019 ended, I was sure I finally got my dream job, but I lost it to a virus. When I had to turn around, I was suffering from a serious depression. I had no motivation and nothing made me feel alive. I had been ghosted by someone who managed to go from really liking me and texting me every minute to becoming distant and barely talking in a matter of 4 weeks. Nothing really mattered, emotions were burning my body from the inside and so, to calm down, I turned to the only thing I knew I was good at.

I picked up writing again.

I applied to CERB and got the money while applying to various jobs and reconsidering everything I had done until this very moment. I wrote. I wrote about everything. Poetry, essays, reviews, anything that seemed necessary to get out. I just wrote. I would start writing stories and wouldn’t finish them. I’d go jumping from a narrative to another. I’d read books until late. I had finally managed to get my head around taking this writing of mine more seriously. For the first time in my life, when someone asked me how I was feeling, I could genuinely answer that I was happy.

Happy. There was a sense of calm and peace that had entered my life like never before. I stopped dating completely and deleted dating apps from my life. I took my therapy more seriously, I ate more and spent socially distanced time with friends. I read everywhere and bought more books from local bookstores. I started getting into natural wine as a way to better understand what I drink and to control my addictive personality. I also took a keen interest in Twitter, having abandoned the platforms years before.

I started tweeting shyly and then, I just stopped limiting myself. If I wanted to be who I am, I couldn’t hide my voice. I was soon turning 30 years old and I had to finally assume my extremely weird personality. What I thought was weird… was actually charming. By interacting with everyone, posting about my greatest passion - music - and finding my voice, I quickly found myself some new friends and allies. People were genuinely interested in reading me and hearing what I had to say. This support got me to write more, but also think a bit more about who I wanted to be.

When I got my first article bought by Cult MTL thanks to Erik, a friend I made on Twitter, I knew something had changed in me. It happened the day I was supposed to leave for a trip to Ireland, a dream of mine. This new opportunity opened a new door, a door I had hoped to open once in Ireland, finding my true calling on the land I always wished to see. In the end, the door opened in Montréal, the place I call home.

I found myself a job in October and since then, it’s been a lot of work, Work on my writing, work at the job, work on myself, work on the relationships that matter, just work. But also work in trusting myself and the value that I bring to the table. 

My therapist told me during the summer that I dated people I wanted to be - journalists, musicians, PhD students, successful entrepreneurs, people in creative fields other than mine. I decided to break the pattern by becoming who I wanted to be. Through this exploration of my identity - my last one before entering my thirties, I found myself being a writer, a journalist, a punk, a feminist, an activist, an ambitious woman. I also found myself to have complex identities related to my roots and to my background. I come in multitudes, multitudes I am proud to be.

As we are ending 2020, one of the worst years ever, I just want to say that as much as it was awful, I still think it was a great year. At least for me. Yes, I didn’t go to many shows, I didn’t go to bars, I haven’t dated as much as I wanted, but I took time for myself and those I care about. 2021 will be the continuation of 2020. I will still write. Bigger things are coming. I’m a board member of Rock Camp, I have amazing collabs coming up with major publications and yes, I am writing a novel. A novel that I hope will be released in 2021. A gift to myself and to all the versions of me for a new decade.

For once and for all, I can truly say, I’ve beaten up my past, this horrific past that is now behind. It only comes back to haunt me in dreams, dreams I wake up from in the morning in my bedroom, knowing they were just nightmares.

So yes, I gained 2 sizes this year...

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I just want to name a few people that really really made a difference this year. So, I guess this is the acknowledgement part of the year.

Thanks to the usual, mom, dad, sister and brother. Our relationship grew stronger as much as we are different. I found my place back at home.

Thanks to Billie and Adam. Because I truly don’t know what I would do without you both. The love I have for you is exponential and never ending. It’s indescribable. I cannot quantify it. Thank you for wanting to beat the shit out of everyone for me and for laughing at my bad jokes.

Thanks to Chloé, Mallika, Jason, Mike, Adriana, Elodie, Josiane, Elo, Kevin, Leah, Christina, Maria, Patricia, Arianne, Maryse, Aggy, Despina, Ariane, Haben, Isobel, Susannah, Anouck. You have always been here for me and I know I can count on you forever.

Thanks to Katy, Kate, Julie, Cassandre, Carina, Heidy, Christianna, Olivia, Nataly, Vivi, Melanie, Erik, Sophie, Joseph, Josiane, Fiona, people I’ve met this year in weird circonstances, but that quickly took a place in my life… thanks for the conversations, the jokes, the opportunities, the funtimes, the weird convos about all sorts of things, the late night confessions.

And finally thank you. Yes, you. You, reading me, enjoying my words or just peeking into my life. Every time you read what I write, you encourage my work. I write while thinking of you, mindfully. 

2021 is going to be a wild one. Thirty, here I come.