Prior to moving to Cape Breton Island, I had only been here once, for three weeks in 1994. I fell in love with the island, and Michelle’s extended family adopted me as family, a few years before her and I were married. Even then, Cape Breton felt like home, though it would take another 31 years to make it a reality.
We tried so hard to do everything right when we lived in the United States. We kept our debts manageable, paid our taxes (late though they were), we went to school, voted, got involved with our son’s school functions – we left it all out there, and the system continued to find ways to churn out absurd obstacles to put in our path. We were in a war of attrition, and we were losing.
In the end, we did what we had to do, we stopped fighting. We sold our house and anything else we could, donated what we couldn’t, and gambled on a hard reset. Michelle sponsored Dominic and me, and we made the move to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. We pulled the plug on the road to nowhere our lives had become.
Although the direction the United States was headed made the decision easier, the decision wasn’t easy. For all of the cracks and flaws, the United States was home. Our family and close friends were there. Routines were well established, even if they were unpleasant at times.
There are so many reasons we left, good and bad.
My truth, the only one that matters, is that I wasn’t the best version of me. I wasn’t even a bad idea of me. I tried to put on brave face, tried to take things in stride, but in the back of my mind I could hear the ominous whispers of angst and madness, past demons chattering away, keeping me awake at night, reminding me how worthless I was, how so many people were right about me, how I would never amount to much.
The morass of me; father and filmmaker, artist and husband, family member and friend, all throw away words I’ve used to define or describe me fell so short of who I was as a person, my mind couldn’t rationalize any of them. For years I tried. I tried to explain who I was, who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, that I got lost somewhere in that forest if what ifs, and it almost cost me everything, so I had to opt out.
My reality is that my life is my own. The approval of others is not needed. My job isn’t to explain myself to anyone else. The only person that needs to understand is me. Those simple truths, so obvious to other people as they are growing up, were lost in translation for me and others like me, implied perhaps, but never overt.
Two weeks ago marked my return to filmmaking.
I’m off all of my prescriptions except for my inhaler.
In the eight months we’ve been here I’ve met several of my neighbors, so many more than the zero I met at my previous address.
One year ago this would have seemed like a bad joke to me, but here I am, 3300 kilometers, 3 adults, and four pets later, getting back to my passion.
The window to my small, too cluttered office is open, allowing the smell of the Atlantic Ocean remind me how lucky I am to be here. Every six hours the sound of the Newfoundland ferries make me smile because I get to hear them. Grateful isn’t a big enough word to describe how I feel. Every day I wake up in an old house that was built in 1910. From my front porch you can see the harbor, the Atlantic Ocean glittering in the sunlight on bright days, reflecting gray/blue shadows on rainy days. All of these make me smile, remind me that I’m alive in a place I want to be. No apologies. No concessions. No expectations.
I am alive, it is worth everything, and it is enough. All I would ask is to accept where I am at on my journey, and feel joy for me that I am at peace within myself at long last.
Regards,
John
Uncommon Karma 