Dear Toronto,
I wanted to love you. It’s not your fault. When we met, I wasn’t in a place to give you my full attention. But I want you to know that I wanted to. Does that count for anything?
When my company asked me to do a three-month stint, coming home every so often, I jumped at the shot, even though I didn’t know much about you. Thank you for welcoming me with your characteristic graciousness and hospitality. Thank you for the best cheeseburger I’ve ever tasted. And poutine! I fucking love poutine! It’s carbs and cheese and gravy — food that fills up all the gaps inside you. Your streets were sparkling and laid out perfectly for a visitor to amble through them without getting too lost. I’m sorry that I spent most of my time there ambling about, lost. That wasn’t your fault. Thank you for your weird-as-hell public access TV, always on and always unpredictable. Thanks for helping me understand the line about Swiss Chalet in that Barenaked Ladies song. I have been, and will always be, a committed Tim Horton’s fan — a fact which Mohammed, who owns the franchise nearest to my apartment, also appreciates. Please send him some of the fancy maple syrup so that he can make the fancy maple lattes which I would gladly cross an ocean for. Thanks for inviting me to my first poetry slam, and letting me get lost in a crowd full of folks ready to blow the roof off that hotel basement. At that moment, all I really needed was to get lost in a crowd. Thanks for letting me meet my first baby stingray in your aquarium. He looked like a tiny, angry ravioli, and it was the first time I’d laughed in weeks. When the sound rasped out of my throat, I wasn’t sure what it was.
Casa Loma remains one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of beautiful places. Standing under the solarium’s stained-glass ceiling, I felt like I was in the Notre Dame — burning to the ground from the inside out. I don’t have many memories of our time together; one of the many things trauma robs you of is your memory of the specific, the linear, the day-to-day. It’s meant to protect you, but it can also make you feel unmoored, as if your brain is in a blender. This begins as a blessing, a way to smooth over the painful, oozing parts. It is a gift, not remembering — it’s allowed me to glide over that part of my life the way fingers slide over a scar. I no longer have the urge to pick at the scab to see what comes out.
The night after the assault, when it was clear that my birthday was ruined, my home wasn’t safe, and my family had chosen to give the benefit of the doubt to my sister’s boyfriend, instead of giving me the benefit of their trust, all I wanted to do was run away, as far and as fast as I could go. The speed limit on the 401 wasn’t fast enough, and I spent six hours pushing the cruise control, wired. And there you were, sparkling, distant, a city on a hill, distinctly not-home. I’m sorry that all I could manage to do was eat takeout under the covers in the Hampton Inn outside of town. I’m sorry that when the fugue was over and sleep finally came back, and I mustered the courage to leave my little cocoon, that I just shuffled around. I did things to say I did them, fully aware that I wasn’t actually processing any of what I saw or heard or tasted. I’m sorry for freaking out a church full of Filipino Catholics by quietly sobbing in the back pews. I’m sorry for running full-speed out of a 24-hour Korean sauna in the middle of the night because one of the therapists touched me the wrong way. I thought I could sweat out what happened. I should’ve known it could never be so simple.
One of the clearest memories I still have from that stint was a visit to Niagara Falls one weekend. It was early spring, the falls still frozen-over. If the cold wasn’t enough to stop me in my tracks, the sight of the Falls lit up at night was. They were so big, and so imposing, that it was impossible to think about anything else. That, too, was a gift. I stood there, corporate-logo beanie pulled as far over my ears as it would go, hands shoved deep into my pockets. The cold ripped straight through me, and I knew I couldn’t stand out there forever. I wondered if there was still life teeming underneath the shears of ice. I wondered if spring would come, if I too might thaw out and be reborn. If the white-gray frozen mass might someday break apart into color.
I’m sorry that for me, you were a place to escape to and not a place to experience. In your own right, on your own terms. I’m sorry that all my memories are jumbled around. I’m sorry that my entire experience of you is inextricably bound up in one of the worst periods of my life. You stand as an emblem of an epochal shift, a symbol of the assault that cleaved my life into two neat piles: Before and After. It was the only part of that spring that could be described as “neat”. Thank you for accepting me at my absolute messiest, sweeping up the frozen shards into a tidy pile and then inviting them inside to escape the cold.
Five years later, I know now that this is how grief goes, but it wasn’t at all clear to me then. Now, having thawed out, I’d like to give your city another try. A fair shake this time. I never made it to a Maple Leafs game. I never went to the top of the big needle. I’d like to eat another monstrosity at the Burger’s Priest, stand underneath Casa Loma’s stained glass solarium again. There’s so much more to you, and to me, than what we saw of each other last time. You know, if you’ll have me.
Sincerely,
Jamie
