The Choke of a Ghost

Most people end relationships and go through a period of heartbreak. I never did that. I was shocked when I left my last relationship and essentially just moved on with my life, happier than I’d been for months. I felt like I got away without a scratch. Well, it turns out I did get away without a scratch. Scratches heal, even if they leave a scar. They close up and your body manages to make everything better by itself. Instead I got a poisonous seed planted within my soul that feeds off familiar triggers. The growth causes thick vines to curl around me, holding me back from love unless I’m strong enough to break free.

First I was choked from a shot at love. It scared me so much I couldn’t breathe or speak walking towards someone new. It’s hard to remain composed and smiling when your voice is lost in a ghost’s chokehold. Luckily he was stronger than the past, and his easy touch uncurled the vines, as though he was the light of day and the vine was a creature of the dark.

After a perfect day the plant’s poison settled into my brain. He can’t be that perfect, you can’t trust him. The poison caused me to hear voices, telling me not to trust and not to fall. There was no logic, after a perfect day there could be no logic to this. But a seed had been planted and as it fed off my emotion it took over my brain causing me to question evidence that didn’t exist. Summer love fed the plant, but true love killed it. Over time sincerity, love, respect and honesty proved to be the stronger force and slowly my poisonous plant weakened and shrivelled and became all but lost in me. New life sprouted where old, thorny stands had been, forming a beautiful, flowery soul. But a seed still remains. Certain familiar experiences serve as an emotional trigger, distancing me from my love. I can’t look at him during those times, without anxiety and distress. This is my heartbreak. It’s not a wound that heals, its a plant that grows. One that needs to be killed, and occasionally re-roots itself within me, holding me back, choking me. The choke of a ghost.

It was a different kind of heartbreak, one that comes up when you’re trying to trust and love again. One that comes from realizing you never loved them, but they made you feel incapable of loving or deserving love. But we are stronger, and won’t be held back.

– Chloé

10 Pieces of Advice

1. For a long time people have talked about your “other half”. Some people reject this idea, which I respect. But for those who embrace it, please remember that halves are equal. You are still an entire half, you are equal to your partner and you can’t make yourself miserable in order to make them happy because you “need” that half.

2. If you hate what you’re learning in school, do something else. I heard a friend of mine saying she hated her work and her school and her classes. Nobody really likes getting up for 9am classes or writing research papers. But if you dread everything you do, it isn’t what you want to do for the rest of your life. You should be excited about what you’re doing, it should interest you (even if the grunt work of it doesn’t).

3. Spend time with yourself. Take yourself out for coffee, or read a book (or both). Take yourself shopping. Have a nice bath. Get your nails done/do your own. Go for a walk, explore. Experiment with makeup. Go for a run. There are so many things you can do alone, you are great company for yourself.

4. Wear good bras. The bra you got for $20 with cheap lace and enough padding to push your boobs into your face may seem sexy, but if you have to itch and pull and adjust – it won’t be worth it. (On a side note, there is nothing wrong with lace or padding. Just make sure it’s comfortable)

5. Use condoms. I don’t care if you’ve taken you pill religiously at 2pm for 3 months straight. You may have taken medicine that makes it less effective and not known or forgotten. Or maybe your period is just late this month – either way, it adds extra reassurance. Don’t add unnecessary stress.

6. Don’t worry about the size, worry about the fit. You won’t check the tag again once it’s in your drawer. Bring more than one size into the change room and don’t check the labels when you try them on if you need to.

7. Being 5 minutes late for coffee is better than showing up and not being able to focus. This applies to work, friends, school. (On a side note, my boss doesn’t bat a lash if I’m 5 minutes late, coffee cup in hand…. If yours does, be careful)

8. The one who is worth it will wait for you. They’ll wait to kiss you, wait to date you, wait for sex. Someone who is worth your time will also let you take your time.

9. Let someone read your papers. A friend, a family member, a tutor. What is clear to you may not be clear to other readers and sometimes catching your own typos is hard. Also take up any offer from a teacher, professor or TA for review of a paper submitted early. Your mark will thank you – and you won’t be doing everything at 3am the night before it’s due.

10. Be kind to yourself.

– Chloé

The Skin Guide

So after struggling for the last year or so with a sudden outbreak of bad acne, I’ve decided to share my tips for how to get it under control. It also doubles as a general skin care guide for all skin types. Disclaimer: this worked for me, it may not work for everyone.

1. Avoid too much salicylic acid. That stuff in every acne product. Stop. Although it dries out the acne and helps exfoliate your skin – it also ruins your skin. Acne does not cover 100% of your face, so you should not be treating 100% of your face with anything. Spot treatments and coverups are fine (although they never really did much for me). But make sure the rest of your face can breathe, you don’t need it in your cleanser, lotion, foundation and face mask.

2. Wash routinely with basic cleansers, but not too much. I use a gentle cleanser in the morning and at night. Don’t wash your face more than twice a day. It gets rid of essential oils and makes your skin worse.

3. Moisturize. I know it seems counter productive, especially if you have oily skin. But it helps a lot to keep your skin moisturized. Use light, oil free products to control oily skin. Look for something with SPF during the day.

4. Be aware of what you put on your face. Check products for oil, parabens, colours, fragrance, sulphates, phthalates and anything that seems to irritate your skin. For foundation, check our Bare Minerals. It’s a little pricier than drug store stuff, but it is very natural (one of their foundations only has 5 ingredients). I use it for primer, foundation, blush and bronzer.

5. Primers! They can help keep foundation from clogging pores and causing breakouts. You may need to find one that doesn’t irritate your skin though (my first one was the Bare Minerals one and it hasn’t been an issue). Bonus: you can find ones with green or yellow pigment to offset redness

6. Be mindful of what touches your face! If you use makeup brushes, clean them weekly at least. Wash/change your pillow case weekly. Dry your face on paper towels, or make sure your towel is clean. That means washing it – you guessed it – once a week. At least. Wash your hands before applying foundation if you use your fingers. Try not to touch your face.

7. Don’t be afraid to talk to a doctor. There are various prescriptions, including topical creams, birth control or antibiotics (they start with the creams though). With benefit plans these are often cheaper than the drug store products you try endlessly. All of the things mentioned above are helpful but my skin never truly cleared up without the antibiotics. That being said, even taking them I need to be aware of the above factors.

8. Lastly, JUST LEAVE IT BE. Don’t let your skin stop you from going out or feeling good about yourself. Its just skin. Picking and squeezing doesn’t help and at the end of the day you can follow this entire guide and still not have perfect skin. But it doesn’t define you and you are beautiful inside and out. My boyfriend met me when my skin was at its worst and he still found me attractive. Others, male or female, should not define how we think of ourselves, but I know a lot of people are insecure because they focus on how others perceive them so I decided to add that.

Good luck, and feel free to share your tips!

“Just Friends”

I nearly buried the beginnings of my relationship in the graveyard of forgotten memories. Nearly. But today they came back.

I didn’t know how incredibly lucky was at the time. Having spent all of high school going in and out of unhealthy relationships, I don’t think I quite knew how to handle the strength of emotion that came from a  good one – so I did what I did best. I left. … Or I tried.

I ended things a little over a month in, and proceeded to download and use Tinder. One week and two repulsive dates later I requested to spend my birthday with the boy I had just rejected. Because we were still friends. Now, I’m not saying “friends” can’t be normal and work out, but most people don’t want solo time with someone they just broke things off with on their 18th birthday. Needless to say, somewhere between thinking about him on my repulsive dates and my birthday “non date”, we ended up back as a thing.

Or so I thought, until it still wasn’t working about a week or two later. If that isn’t bad enough, I broke it off (unknowingly) about 10 minutes before he left for a funeral.

I waited around for 3 hours for him get back so I could make sure he was okay.

I mean,  I’m not saying I was blind or anything. BUT  REALLY, how blind can a girl be? How do you tell someone it won’t work, just to turn around and wait for them in an unfamiliar area for several hours. Until I was pretty sure that this funeral wasn’t ending any time soon and I really needed to be home (long story short, events went over time and phones died and we didn’t meet again that day).

There was never a point where we didn’t text daily. And between the loss of a close family friend, my mixed signals and some other unfortunate drama, he wasn’t in the happiest place. Guess who left in the middle of the night to go up to his area and check on him? If you guessed me, you’re right. If you didn’t, I don’t think you see where this story is going. I was there past when the subway runs, and taxi’d home in the middle of the night (RIP to about $30).

I’d imagine by this point he was pretty confused, and I still thought I was totally sane and this was all normal. To make things weirder, I at one point said “I can’t walk down the street and not hold your hand. It feels weird.”

I also got him to come give me tummy rubs one night. He biked about 45 mins from his house, arriving after 11pm. I think it’s about time just friends becomes “just friends”.

By this point we were just about off to university and that was the last we saw of each other till we got there. On the first day, I saw him briefly during the day. I was with friends, he was with friends. And I sorta figured that is how life was going to be. I was a bit delusional.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I kind of reject emotions. And so I refused to let myself feel anything about university, minus crying when I saw my dog in the morning and realized I had to leave him finally. That chokes me up to write even now. When night time came, I shut my door for all of 2 minutes before realizing I was swamped with emotions. This was the rest of my life. I wasn’t living at home anymore, I had to build new friendships in this place without the slightest idea of who people were and how we would mesh. There was 1 person I wanted to see. After 20 confused and panicked minutes of navigating campus, I was in his room. He was the only one I wanted to see. As a friend. It sorta seems normal still, I guess. Sort of. He was familiar.

But I did it the next night too. And that night he went to kiss my nose, and I didn’t catch on and we ended up actually kissing. This was probably the most confusing point in the entire thing, and for the next few days we became the secretly kissing “friends”.Until I had to be all stupid and dramatic and say no, it won’t work, it doesn’t work, it has to stop.

But before that, we had two sleepovers in a row. I caught on to the idea that things weren’t okay and refused to leave his side. Not even at night. It was the morning after the second night that I finally decided things wouldn’t work.  He told me he couldn’t just be friends, which led to me bursting out in tears that went on for well over an hour until he promised he’d stay in my life. This day is also our anniversary. At some point that night I realized nothing ever changed. Whatever we said we were or weren’t, we always acted like a couple. I was long past being in love before I could even recognize it. And so the happily ever after began.

Now, I can see that a lot of people might think I was being selfish, or leading him on. Perhaps I was, although not intentionally. It was a very confusing time. One thing I know, is if someone still thinks you’re worth it after all that – hold. on. to. them. The other sort of point in this is to not judge people’s relationships. I used to think it was ridiculous to break up and get back together with someone, and if any friend of mine in this situation had asked for advice, I would have said to end it and cut all communication. But sometimes it doesn’t work out as smoothly as you’d like. And that’s okay.

Putting Positivity First

I remember in grade 7, I would rather spend an entire recess chasing people who were clearly running away from me, than just sit somewhere on my own doing my own thing. God I wish I’d discovered writing back then.

In high school I had people I considered “friends” who knew nothing about me. “Friends” who had no idea I was depressed, had no idea I went home every day and cried, who didn’t know my sexuality. I don’t even know if I can say most of these people knew me, I hid so much.

I’ve spent the last 7 years surrounded by people who are bad for me, or who don’t really care, or were toxic for me. People I didn’t feel safe opening up to, people I didn’t even feel I had a secure friendship with.

I’m finally around people who are good for me.

But lately I’ve been getting slaughtered for rejecting negative people. If someone tries to belittle me the first time we meet – I will not willingly see them again. If someone has a repulsive, ignorant personality and finds it okay to say people who self harm are babies and should just shut up and go to bed like everyone else, I won’t see them again. Actually I’ll kick you out of my room… If you make fun of someone with tarots in front of me, or tell someone they shouldn’t have waited to have sex with a girl because she didn’t want to, I won’t want to be around them.

Maybe I judge quickly, but I would rather eliminate negative people from my life than spend more time being miserable pretending to like the people I’m around. It isn’t easy to stand up for yourself, to say no. It isn’t easy to put yourself first. So maybe I’m selfish for doing what is best for me. And maybe I should give more second chances. But this is how I choose to live now, and I’m content with it. I deserve to be happy, this is what is making me happy.

Please, do not feel pressure to tolerate negative people who bring you down. It is harder (in my opinion) to say no, than to just deal with people. You deserve happiness. You don’t deserve friends who make harsh jokes at your expense on a daily basis. You don’t deserve negativity. You deserve real friends and good company. Don’t let people make you feel guilty for putting your happiness first.