Shannon Mullen

I guess love distorts our perception of reality, and it__ even harder to recognize the truth when it__ buried underneath layers of what we imagine relationships should be like.

Sometimes our heroes let us down.

The intensity of my grief hits the mountains across Eclipse Sound, and then echoes throughout Arctic. There__ nobody around. I can barely see the town below the hill, nestled within the valley of barren tundra, across from the tiny airport, my only access to the south. I__ alone amidst this desolate landscape and there__ nowhere to hide. No trees or buildings or distractions. It__ just me in the depths of my suffering and all my faults and mistakes of the past are exposed underneath the spotlight of the midnight sun.

Just as I__ about to continue walking along the shoreline, the left third of the iceberg breaks off suddenly and crashes violently, like a high-rise apartment building imploding in the heart of the city. Tears roll down my face uncontrollably as I watch the two distinct halves of the iceberg drift further and further apart from each other. It__ devastating to watch something that seems so strong and unbreakable crumble in an instant. Even more devastating is the feeling that there__ nothing I can do about it.

Despite all of the social advances in women__ rights and the push for gender equality in the workplace, it seems like modern men still want a woman that they can take care of at home.

We__e lost in each other, in the heart of Toronto, slow dancing to nothing but the beat of my heart and the sound of her breath on my neck. I know the subway trains are trembling beneath my feet and that we__e amidst the constant buzz of city life, yet I hear nothing but my heart beating and feel nothing but her breath on my neck.

Sometimes you have to fight for the past and sometimes you have to let go.

A bus drives past and I__ nauseated by a whiff of exhaust. Then rotting fish. The rancid stench of sewage. Is it garbage day? I__ trapped in the pungent fog, in the dreary suburban-style shops, the rat race of city life. The city, even on the west coast, has the power to beat us down, to suck us of passion, to crush our dreams.

In a way, we__e all addicts by nature.

It__ hopeless, trying to recruit a stranger to help me find someone who__ a stranger to him. But then again, we are all strangers to ourselves, caught up in the monotony of daily life, stuck in our routines, never really stopping to think about what will happen to us if we fall off track.

Suddenly, I__ lighter, only half of who I was.

My mind feels like a race car on the track, getting faster and faster every time I pause to think or blink or try to focus on anything. Nothing can keep up to it, not the other cars, not my body, not anyone else in the bar. It__ a rush, pure exhilaration, and I__ having the time of my life. But instead of driving, I__ in the passenger seat, along for the ride, watching myself race around the track from my barstool.

The west coast is a mecca for wild hearts, wild minds, wild spirits and I__ a WMD____e got so much energy I__ about to explode.

The forest is blanketed by the greenest ferns and moss and bonsai-like trees, a wild majesty that beckons hobbits and pixies and elves and dreamers.

The idea to go West just fell into my lap from the sky. Go west, young man. That__ how the best ideas happen. Just out of nowhere. When you__e not even thinking. Like they__e been created for you and you just have to reach out and grab them before someone else does.

Even the tiniest of flowers can have the toughest roots.

Sometimes you just gotta accept that hope is gone.

With thousands of years of history frozen in time, it's no wonder that many southerners like me romanticize the north as a place where we can freeze our former selves, thaw, and then bloom anew. Here it__ just you, the land, and your thoughts, and you can't leave until you've wrestled with yourself and emerged a survivor. But then again, the light is much more intense up here and everything looks different because of it. The sun hasn__ set in a couple of months, and you can see things much more clearly when it is light all of the time.