It’s one of those days that are so beautiful, you forget all the other bleary, grey days that have come before or will follow after. Summer is dying, but it’s dying beautifully, splendidly, a burst of green leaves and green grass, sweet corn, watermelons, strawberries and sunlight, warm and bright enough to make you smile.
Sometimes I think I don’t appreciate life here enough. Today, I had a brief few seconds where I stood on the balcony of our apartment on the seventeenth floor and realized that where I live is breathtaking in its own way. I can see Lake Ontario stretching away into the distance, its shoreline punctuated by apartment buildings, a blue expanse with three bobbing white triangles. They’re dinghys, moored on the water, the Toronto islands beyond them. A few cranes sit on top of buildings so tall they need no further embellishment. The cranes are silent and unused because today is Sunday. The roofs of houses peek through a veil of treetops, red tiles dressed in green, a green that will soon be replaced by the fiery orange of leaves that will start falling in just a few short weeks. I know this will soon fade, that the loveliness of today will end, and soon only the starkness of winter will be all that the eye can see. Snow will blanket all. But for today at least, just today, I allow myself to feel content.
Today, I felt hope. Today, I felt brave. Today, I was the younger self I had left behind, the fearless female who believed the whole world was for the taking. I have been a different me for far too long, letting myself be defined by the needs of others. I no longer want to be that way. If things end (and they do), today will be no less beautiful for it.
This is something I have not realized, or something I’ve known but denied for a very long time. I focus too often on ensuring things stay the same. But they don’t. All I can really do is face each day head on and appreciate what’s around me, being happy for as long as I can be. That is how I felt today, even if it was just for a few seconds.
There is so much to live for. To experience. To smell, to taste, to see and do and revel in. It all becomes white noise, fading in the background in the face of all the boring things adults must do to ensure a roof over their heads and food in their belly. I don’t have the freedom of having someone else to worry about that for me anymore. So I do it for myself.
The sun sets on everything. Everything. It is the one constant in the sea of change we all find ourselves swimming in, as hard as that can be to accept.
So I will try to remember today, and the moment I looked up to find myself surrounded by beauty. I will try to remember it, when times are hard and I question my choices, find myself wishing I could press the reset button, or when I feel so much pain and anger that there doesn’t seem to be anything else to feel. I will remember today and remind myself to stop, take a moment, and look up at the sky, because perfect moments are few and far between… but they exist. They do.
Saving for Botox 