"i felt so alone",
she asked "why" i would chose this,
for i had....

i didn't have an answer...
i'd been keeping to myself
as far back
as my earliest memories,
internal monologues...
conversations only imagined...

i did not
talk aloud
about
my hurts,
my wants,
my fears,
my heart...

those closest
to me
never really
knew me...

self-imposed limits
with family,
friendships that stopped
at imagined boundaries...

too many thoughts left
unuttered,
too many tears
shed
in solitude only,
too many words
left
unsaid...

just a way
of being
in this
world...
so many years,
normal,
my way...

now,
i know
other possibilities,
others ways...

it's hard
to live differently,
to challenge
myself,

i am creating
a new
way of being,
talking,
sharing,
allowing others
to know me....

and she
will continue
to ask me why,
when i
slip back into
solitude,
and i thank her
for that...

a trip to the city and my first canucks game....it was great...(despite the intense consumerism...)

i have a memory of my wiry, wrinkled grandmother sitting in her rocking chair six feet from the small old tv, intent on Canada vs Russia 1972....and other flashes of my mother at whl games, swearing up a storm when the team she favoured gave up a goal....it's in the genes i guess...

p.s. the canucks won....!