of pyjamas and things

I slipped into my pyjamas last night and curled into bed with my favourite pillow and a good book.

then the edges of my consciousness were awakened to a different time by the scent that wafted up from this old pair of PJ's.

they smelt of a different life and many many moons ago. the smelt of my apartment in Toronto, the bed I hardly slept in, the couch i spent far too many nights on, the kitchen and dining room I was proud of. they smelt of my first real taste of being a grown up.

a lot changed for me that year. i had a complete life earthquake. it was a year of many many firsts. in one flight, my whole world had turned on its head. i left my first grown up relationship (i came back to it and left it again many times that year which probably didn't help any), started my first job and started living alone in my own apartment in one fell swoop. i also decided to do it in a new city on a new continent.

*grin* I never was one for doing anything by halves.

it was the year i discovered a love for hiking and learnt to knit and sail. the year i fell in love with good photography. it was the year dance was rekindled in the form of Lindy hop. the year i realised who my friends really were. the year of devouring books by the harbour in the midst of a hot T.O. summer's day with a delicious ice- cream cone.

it was a growing year that i loved and abhorred in equal measure and i would never want to relive it that exact same way again.

it's perhaps the only year i harbour any regrets from. i was so caught up in trying to survive that i forgot to live. so intent on keeping afloat that i forgot i could swim. i spent too much time in bed, afraid of the world and not enough time living in it.

and though perhaps i could blame someone else for that, at the end of the day to use a ridiculously cliched phrase, no one is the captain of my own destiny but me. but you get through the darkness in your own time, in your own way.

No.

I wouldn't relive it the exact same way.

I would relive it and do it very very differently.

In the hopes of taking away more than I did the first time around.

Image courtesy of getthebubbles on Flickr.