Far more than just a week long venture to Alberta, this trip genuinely changed me in a number of ways - all of which, I strongly believe, are for good. It helped me to better understand the bounds and limits of my health as it currently stands, when I'm active (aka, not bedridden or housebound) for multiple days in a row, for starters. Yet that was just one of many things I felt I came to understand better as our time in the gorgeous city of Calgary progressed.
I'm firm believer in personal change and growth (a point I touched on this post from last July about the wisdom that comes with getting older). Even if you're highly content with yourself and your life as they are right now, objectively, every last one of us can still blossom and expand our perspectives to an even greater degree.
Due most significantly to the fact that I'm chronically ill, a great deal of my life is spent at home. The four walls and roof of my abode are my world for much of (and sometimes all of) any given month, and though I have the invaluable companionship of my beloved husband, two cute pets to snuggle, plenty of books to read, hobbies to pass the time (when I'm feeling well enough to do them), and of course my beloved internet and the universe that it puts at my fingertips, there are certain things that, in many cases at least, can only be gleamed and absorbed to their fullest when out and about in the world.
I was reminded of some of those, and in the process discovered more about myself, while in Calgary. Interestingly, and very profoundly for me, I also discovered that returning to Calgary - a city where I'd spent a couple of years filled with some of the hardest and best, saddest and happiest days of my whole life, when I was in my late teens - helped my soul to feel a sense of resolution that I didn't even fully known it so powerfully needed.
You see, I left Calgary, far less by choice, and much more because of circumstance. I was struck, as if by tumultuous lightning, by the first in a long series of severe chronic illnesses about a month after my eighteenth birthday, at a time when I was living on my own in Calgary and fully supporting myself by working. Dreams of future schooling, employment and life goals ran rampant through my young heart and mind. Though I tried my very hardest to continue to work and support myself after my health quickly crumbled beyond immagination, by the time I was nineteen, doing so any longer had simply become impossible.
I was heartbroken and crestfallen about leaving (to return to my hometown), but tried not to dwell too much on the negatives I was feeling at the time. Instead, almost dutifully, as if the universe was pulling a set of invisible marionette strings, I packed up my teeny tiny basement suite, handed in my notice at work, bid farewell to the few friends I still had left (most having split rather quickly as my health fell apart on me), and with emotion laden tears running down my face, took one last long, painful look at a city I loved with every fiber of my being.
For at least two years afterwards, I woke up nearly every morning, for one brief, solid moment feeling like I was still in Calgary, still on some semblance of the exciting trajectory I'd been plotting for myself as a young adult, after a childhood fraught with a thousand demons and a million nightmares.
Time pushed onward though, my health grew poorer, and though I never felt sorry for myself and the road I was forced to take, I also never stopped thinking about Calgary. Sure, it may have popped into my memory less frequently, the particulars of certain familiar haunts growing dimmer in my mind's eye, and my yearnings for it subsiding to a degree, but always, in the sleepless hours of countless nights, it would have a way of floating to the surface of my thoughts and staying put until the sun rose.
After a while, I realized I wouldn't be living there again anytime soon, and I moved on with my life, calling numerous other spots home.
When we first started discussing taking a road trip this year, a few different destinations topped our list, with Calgary eventually winning out. I didn't steer this choice, at least not consciously, with my memories at the helm, instead I felt it was an ideal destination for both Tony and I, as it was just one province away, could be reached in a few hours of driving, held numerous attractions (and shops!) we'd both enjoy, and would give my husband the chance to see Alberta for the first time.
I wondered in the days leading up to the morning we departed from Penticton, what my initial thoughts and emotions would be when the first view of Calgary's majestic skyline, jutting beautifully out from the golden prairie backdrop would be. When the moment arrived, and the city bathed in amber hued late summer sunshine finally occurred, all I felt was excitement and happiness.
{An iPhone photo I took and Instagrammed of part of the city's wonderful skyline, as seen from the lofty vantage point of the Calgary Tower.}
The memories, the assorted feelings, the lingering, long past sense of what could have been, they were all there, but the girl who had packed them in her suitcase and heart alike a decade ago wasn't. She had moved on in countless ways. Grown up, become infinitely stronger, and created a life, that was, ultimately, perhaps - for all its challenges - far better than the one she could have experienced had she never left.
As we zipped around town, that same radiant sunshine warming our faces and souls alike for a week, I was reminded of, and reconnected with, tons of places I once knew, but instead of feeling purely nostalgic, I was eager to fill them with new, awesome memories, made right here and now, with my darling husband by my side. I had an additional decade of life lesson's under my belt and the knowledge that, at long last, I had returned to make amends with the sense that I had been torn away from a place I loved to no end.
It wasn't until that skyline, then the streets that call it home, filled my line of sight and stood solidly under my feet again that I realized just how much I needed to be there again - nor how incredibly cathartic the experience would be. Both during the days of our trip and in the weeks afterward, I have been happier and more at peace with the world than I can ever remember being as an adult, and that, my dears, trumps anything I could ever bring home in a shopping bag, or even on film, from my travels.
As I look ahead to the future, though certain thoughts and feelings pertaining to Calgary will always be with me, I have the knowledge that I made it back, that I said hello, instead of just a sorrowful goodbye, and that, if fate allows, I'll get to return with open arms and smiling eyes many more times throughout my life. A prospect which brings me an immeasurable amount of happiness.
