ex, why, zed.

Jason Steadman. That was the name of my first boyfriend. He was nineteen years old, and I met him one night at a seedy rooming house that sheltered ex-street kids and various welfare fraudists and substance abusers past and present. I was going through a time in my life where my home life was so painfully functional, I simply had to tamper with it to conform to my non-conformist, existentially heartaching friends. Jason was into Deep Purple and drugs, had long hair and wore tie-dye(eeek!). But I didn't care. I was fifteen years old, and I had a boyfriend. I was one of those girls in high school who had somewhere to be on weeknights, someone to give me illicit hickeys that I would make little attempt to hide(the elbow-jab hint of sexual activity-scandalous!), someone to buy me wine coolers...My first love affair lasted a lengthy three months, and when I broke up with him, I was so wracked with the guilt of inflicting his tears that I gave him forty dollars for beer.

After Jason, I had several short term, ill-fated relationships. There was Bryan, who had no intention of ever taking me out in public, or loving me. There was John, who I lived with for one month, and who broke up with me by moving away, and taking all my belongings with him, never to be seen again. How I cried over these unworthy fellows! Each time, I vowed the next time would be different, but I kept dating a different hue of the same colour. I was drawn in by their damaged childhoods, their dark moods, their fixer-upper potential. I wanted only to be their saving grace. In teenage years and adult retrospection, love can be quite selfish. It can be fickle, volatile, and awfully temporary. Our first forays into love are often quite a far and frequent cry from the fairy tales we grew up hoping for.

Then I met someone in high school, and over the next six years, we would shift from a true love, into a vivid hatred, and then into a quietly acid complacency. This relationship imprinted me, changed me, scarred me. As with most of us who live and date in Toronto, I can't seem to throw a stone far enough without hitting someone who knows my ex. Occasionally, I see him. He walks past me like a shadow of something once sacred, and I'm thrown by how someone who could once mean so much can now be a stranger with a familiar face. The process of reclaiming once mutual property, like songs, or restaurants, neighbourhoods and friends, is endless. There is always some reminder, some backwash of memory to be triggered and endured.

So what good can we glean from our exes and the affairs that sour like milk? What purpose do they serve if their memories mainly cause twinges and pangs and upset? Who we chose to love speaks volumes about who we are; Are we still looking for someone to fix? Are we afraid to be alone? Are we shivering with anticipation at the prospect of seeing them? Or is it really about how they see us? Maybe exes are simply barometers of where we are, emotionally or otherwise, in life. And if we're lucky, we grow up in between the spaces of lovers. Our standards and hopes rise monumentally. Our capacity for forgiveness expands, and we become more accepting and open to imperfections. We are less afraid of being academic about the formulas of people and emotion that yield us the greatest happiness. We stop fixating on the aesthetics of desire, and become braver with our vulnerability.

Lots of us rise triumphantly out of the ashes of a troubled love. We redefine who we are, which is easier when you aren't in a relationship. Me, I started my own business, and learned how to be my own girl. I take myself to the movies I want to see, and sleep in my own bed among the cracker crumbs and piles of pajamas behind the pillows. I get to cross contaminate the peanut butter and jam jars with the same knife, something that used to drive my last boyfriend crazy!, and I get to inhabit a space free of compromise( a treat which may be kind of hard to give up one day when I'm dating again) And I've had a chance to commit to memory some of the lessons I've gleaned from loving the men I've loved best;
Never date cheap people-anyone who freely and miserably monitors every last penny is usually stingy with their affections as well.
Don't go to bed mad, just go home. There is no greater loneliness than sleeping next to your partner with an ocean of anger and bedsheets between you.
Date someone who will be your best friend.
Always trust your gut. Sometimes, it's not just nerves, or last night's chicken curry rolling over, it's that instinct that is urging you to be saved, from headaches, heartaches, and sometimes even from yourself.

If I'm to use my exes as a barometer, I think I'm finally heading in the right direction...