Romeo

Tags

death, Dog, Family, Golden Doodle, grief, heart, Heartbreak, heartbreak studies, I love you, Life, loss, Love, Romeo, Romeo Files

I had been so afraid to write this post, because that means that I have to confront a reality that I wish had not fallen upon my family.

On January 13th – my twenty-third birthday – my beloved dog, Romeo passed away. He was ten years old.

I cannot talk about the nature of his death, mostly because my eyes are so sore from crying, but his death was unexpected and it took my entire family by surprise. And we are all absolutely heartbroken and devastated.

I don’t want to say that I am a particularly sheltered person, but this is the first time I am experiencing loss in its entirety. The grief has been coming in waves – just when I think that I am going to be okay, a wave of sadness and utter loss comes over me and I’m back to feeling like I’m drowning.

These last few days have been hitting me like a train wreck. Hearing the news about his death in the middle of the night. Seeing the empty space where his food and water bowls used to be. Dog treats and toys that won’t be used anymore. Desperately trying to listen for the pitter patter of steps that are just never going to come.

I have been sleeping with Romeo’s “baby”, The plush puppy he has guarded and doted on these last ten years. I pressed his baby to my face. It still smelt like Romeo. They reminded me that I had been left behind, that my better half was now gone. I laid down on my now too-big bed and I cried. I cried like a baby. Until then, I had held everything together but it just all came flooding out. I have never felt this empty or hollow ever in my entire life.

Despite the pain that is ripping my body in half, I refuse to associate Romeo with this pain and heartbreak. Instead, I want to remember how excited he would get when I would tell him that he was going for one of our walks, how his puppy eyes could melt even the coldest person and how he loved and was loved in return.

As dog owners, you take on this duty to teach your dog how to be, but really Romeo was the one teaching us. In ten years, Romeo taught my family and I valuable lessons in life, love and what it means to be a good person. And for that, I will always be thankful.

If you have a dog, cat or any other pet, please go and hug them. They are a valued member of the family.

I just had to share a few pictures of Romeo here. I’ll always love and miss him.

Romeo:  October 29, 2005 – January 13, 2016

2016 Promises

Tags

2016, bucket lists, Daydreaming, daydreams, Dreams, Inspiration, Life lessons, lifestyle, Lists, new year new me, New Years Eve, Promise, writing

In my last post, I talked a lot about the past. In this post, I’m only interested in talking about the future.

2016 is a new year, a chance to turn over a new leaf. As much as I enjoyed 2015, there are many things that I would have changed or done differently. Rather than stew about it, I am going to be more proactive about making these changes so that I can be a much happier human being.

1. I will finally get my ears pierced, because I’m missing out on some adorable accessories.
2. I will finally decide whether or not I am going to get a tattoo, because that is a very permanent change.
3. I will tell more people to F*ck off, especially the ones who deserve it.
4. I will continue to establish my career in the realm of fashion journalism and be more confident about seeing myself as a business woman.
5. I will start to look into doing a postgrad that will not only help me get more experience in my line of work, but will also help me on the road towards Columbia University.
6. I will let go of the people who left me on a dirt road, forgotten in the cobwebbed area of their minds.
7. I will commit myself to my creative writing and work on getting a literary agent.
8. I will practice kindness – towards others and more importantly, myself.
9. I will make a more conscious effort to travel and experience this crazy beautiful world in its entirety.
10. I will welcome opportunities – whether these opportunities come in the form of love, careers, friendships or travel. And I won’t think too hard about them.
11. I will take more chances.
12. I will feel less alone.
13. I will be braver.
14. I will love myself.
15. I will be happy.

Remembering 2015

Tags

2015, 2016, bittersweet, Books, Dreams, Lists, new year new me, New Years Eve, Original Writing, Promise, reflections, Year in Review

New Years Eve has always been a bittersweet time for me.

While it certainly brings the promise of a new year and new adventures to come, it is also a reminder that a chapter of my life will be closing. New Years Eve is a time where I must step into the future, as bravely as I’m able, while my heart longs for a time I’ll never see again.

I never want to be held back by the past, but I never want to forget about any part of my life, because then maybe I can better understand how I came to be and what my values are. For the last couple of months, I’ve been noting my most memorable experiences of 2015. I hope that you all take some time to reflect on your year, and realize that these short 12 months really can transform you.

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Most Memorable Moments of 2015:

• Began the New Year off celebrating in Toronto with my best friends – how it’s always been and always will be
• Travelled to Ottawa for a journalism conference and totally bonded with Cabbie Richards from TSN
• Completed my reign as Features Editor at The Cord after being on the Editorial Board for three years and passed on as much knowledge as I could to my successor
• Started working on one two THREE novels and started sending some of my other stories out to publishers, because why should I keep waiting for one day?
• After years of anxiety and never feeling prepared, I finally took my G2 road test – and I passed. Now I feel so in control when I drive instead of having it be something I’m afraid of
• Made the conscious effort to love and respect my body and forgave myself for everything I put my body through these last couple of years
• Read books that made me fall in love with literature all over again:
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Shining by Stephen King
  • Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
  • Big Brother by Lionel Shriver
  • My Sergei by Ekaterina Gordeeva
  • Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
  • Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
  • The Colour Purple by Alice Walker
  • The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  • A Lion Called Christian by John Rendell and Ace Bourke
  • Jaws by Peter Benchley
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  • The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  • This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
  • Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  • Pericles by William Shakespeare
  • Siege 13 by Tamas Dobozy
  • The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks
  • The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Memoirs by Pierre Elliot Trudeau
  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  • The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  • Open Heart by Elie Wiesel
  • Room by Emma Donoghue
  • Common Ground by Justin Trudeau
  • The Beforelife by Franz Wright
  • The Revenant by Michael Punke
• I had breakfast with Romeo Dallaire and had some pretty intelligent conversations with him
• I went on a trip with my sisters to Cayo Coco, Cuba where I did the following things: rode horses on the beach, held baby crocodiles and falcons, swam with fish, experienced a new culture and learned to be fearless
• I graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University with an Honours in English, after four years of anxiety, essays, exams and countless cups of strong black coffee
• Leonardo DiCaprio regrammed my photo on Instagram, definitely solidifying our plans to get married
• After working hard and being incredibly persistent and patient, I landed my first internship on the Morning Show and am continuing to further my fashion journalism career
• After spending 10 years admiring Fashion Week from afar, I had my first job assignment with Fashion Week and nearly peed my polka dot printed pants when I realized that this event got my foot into the door of the career I wanted
• I had floor seats to see One Direction in concert, where Harry Styles and I were definitely couple’s matching and will likely get married (if Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t get to it first)
• Fell in love with the same guy a hundred times more this year when we were strangers in a dark room than I did the four years of ups and downs and finally decided that it was time I fell in love with myself instead of someone who wouldn’t stay or give me the love I wanted and deserved
• In just over a year’s time, I completed the 100 Days of Fashion Challenge and feel so much more confident in both myself and my future career path and endeavours
• Found out who my real friends and family are
• Realized that not everyone deserves to have my forgiveness and that sometimes taking the high road isn’t always the best solution
• Decided that I wouldn’t settle with “okay” or “good enough”
• I discovered that there is something oddly beautiful about being alone and not feeling insignificant
• I learned that things will change, including myself. And that is the best thing that could ever happen

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Happy New Year everyone – let’s make 2016 the year of aggressive self-love.

Challenge complete

Tags

100 days of fashion, black and white, clothes, fashion, fashion blogger, fashion challenge, Fashion inspiration, Fashion Intern, fashion writer, Look of the week, Modern Day Fashion, sartorialist

In a little over a year’s time, I have successfully completed the #100DaysofFashion challenge. It feels like the longest shortest time. I can remember the very first day I started this challenge, to everything in between and the final concluding outfit. A part of me is really sad that this challenge is over, mostly because I don’t know what I’m going to post about now!

Since you have all been keeping up with my posts, I should tell you why I decided to take part in this challenge. I started making my posts in September 2014, the beginning of my Senior year at Wilfrid Laurier University.

If truth be told, I was feeling less than happy when this challenge first began. I had been feeling anxious about going into my final year of my undergrad, mostly because I was dreading the real world and trying to figure my life out. I also had my own personal issues to deal with, and it was getting to a point where I felt like it was all too much.

So, I did the only thing I felt like I could do – distract myself. And since I was slowly starting to figure out that fashion journalism was the career path that I had wanted to take, I thought that it would be an incredible process to see how my style – and me as a person – would evolve in 100 days.

When I first started documenting my outfits, I really didn’t think that much would come out of this. I thought that it would just be a fun project to explore my love of fashion. While I certainly got to have that fun, there were surprises that I didn’t see coming.

Since doing this challenge, I have become much more confident and less afraid to stand out. For 22 years, I always felt compelled to following the rules because that would ensure not only that I would get what I want, but I would do it safely. Well, I discovered that rules were made to be broken. You can still get what you want, whether you play by the rules or not – you just have to own it.

What started out as a fun challenge, ended up being something that took me out of my comfort zone and dare to try something new. I believe that everyone should feel this at some point in their lives.

Thank you to everyone who had been keeping up with my posts, both on my blog, Twitter and Instagram. I appreciated the support.

Here’s hoping an even bigger and more stylish career will come in the near future!

Make sure to follow me on Twitter and Instagram!

“How to pretend it doesn’t hurt” by Ashe Vernon

Tags

Ashe Vernon, B, Heartbreak, heartbreak studies, I love you, Love, love is stupid, Men, poet, Poetry, Quotes, romance, spilled ink, tumblr, writing

“When he says
he doesn’t love you anymore,
roll your shoulders back
and look him in the eye
even when it feels like your ribs
are breaking inward, like spider legs.
when he digs up old aches
that he swore he forgave you for,
smile
and ask him why he didn’t leave you sooner.
ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper
running all the way up your throat to your mouth.
when he blames you
for mistakes that wear his face,
do not scream.
do not cry.
tell him that there are boys
who would be proud to say they’d loved you.
tell him that in two years
you won’t even remember his name
and don’t let him see the way you can taste your own lie.
when he leaves
ignore the howling in your blood
and do not get up after him.
not even to lock the door.
do not, do not
do not.
smell his shirts when you box them up
to give them back.
not one.
swear off dating when you realize
you’re chasing ghosts that wear his smile.
it’s okay to cry over him.
it’s even okay to forgive him.
but do not go back to him.
if he did not know how to love you the first time,
he won’t know how to do it the next.”

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Sometimes, words have more power over you than people do.

Pray for Paris

Tags

France, Love, Paris, Pray for Paris, support, united

“This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”

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My heart goes out to everyone in Paris tonight 

 

Tags

autumn, B, Heartbreak, heartbreak studies, October

An open letter to my best friends

Tags

10 years, anniversary, Best friends, Core Four, friends, Friendship, frienniversary, open letter

Iconic Sex and The City protagonist Carrie Bradshaw once said, “It’s hard to find people who will love you no matter what. I was lucky enough to find three.” She might be just a fictional character, but I am a real person and I know that I am lucky to have found my own three soul mates.

It has been ten years today since us four girls – lovingly named The Core Four – found each other and filled a space in each other’s lives and hearts that we didn’t know needed to be filled.

I can say with all seriousness that we have been through everything together. We survived elementary school, high school and university and we always stayed by each other’s sides no matter what. We have faced bad days, good days, terrible boyfriends and bosses, friends outside our comfortable group and days when sometimes we wished that we could be each other’s biological families.

We have helped each other overcome loss, breakups, pushing each other to believe in love again, cheering each other on with job promotions and final exams and being there for each other when things were “normal”, not just when things were bad or good.

I can say with all my heart that the friendship/sisterhood that I have with these three ladies are the most meaningful and profound relationships I’ve had. There are so many people who aren’t as lucky to have find their best friends as children and be able to keep that relationship strong into adulthood. I can honestly say that my life wouldn’t be as enriched as it is without my best friends.

So here is to ten years of friendship – I love you all very dearly.

#CoreFourApproved

“Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro

Tags

am writing, Andrew Garfield, Author, Authors, Books, Carey Mulligan, dystopian novel, Friendship, Heartbreak, heartbreak studies, Inspiration, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kiera Knightley, Literature, Love, Never Let Me Go, novel, Novelist, photo gallery, Photography, Quotes, reading, Science fiction, star-crossed lovers

If you read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and didn’t cry, you don’t have a soul.

I have read this book four times. And each time, I sob. I’m not talking a few tears. I’m talking about big walloping sobs where your body shakes and your chest hurts from the crying. Yeah, this book is that kind of intense.

Published in 2005, this dystopian science fiction about three friends who grow up together in England in the late 20th Century. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy attend an exclusive boarding school called Hailsham that has an unusual emphasis on encouraging physical fitness and artistic expression. It is gradually revealed to the reader that the students of Hailsham are actually clones being raised to donate their organs. After completing their schooling, the three friends are sent to live in communal housing with other clones before entering the final stage of their lives when they will become “carers” for other clones who are beginning the process of donating their organs, and then finally begin to donate their own organs until they “complete.”

While this novel has been recognized as being a love story, I believe that there is so much more to it than just that, which is probably what makes this book so heartbreaking. I think that the emphasis on relationships – whether romantic or platonic – correlates with the notion that these relationships are bound by the unfair holds of time. I think realizing how fragile time really is in relationships is enough to make us hold on to the people we love just a little tighter.

I have seen the movie starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Kiera Knightley, which came out in 2010.

While I really don’t think that books should be adapted into film, I will say that the movie did stay loyal to most of the book. And it certainly still had that cry factor that made this book so memorable in my mind.

And if that score isn’t enough to break your heart, nothing will be.

Even though this book has completely ripped my heart to pieces, I’m am kindly forcing you all to read it. I want to break your hearts, just like this book had done mine. Sorry.

We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time.

“You can stroke people with words” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tags

Author, B, black and white, couples, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Heartbreak, I love you, Love, Men, Photography, Poetry, Quote of the Week, Quotes, quotes of the week, romance, writer, writing