city life through a writer’s lens: pt. 1

Perhaps in reading enough about strong women, she can find the strength to become one.

It’s easy, coming from a small town, to romanticize the concept of living in a concrete jungle. I came out of my mother’s womb already dreaming of filling my lungs with the smoky soot that is New York City air.

Without getting too much into feminist‑rant territory—I’m trying!—women are conditioned from birth to stay small: physically, mentally, even energetically. Don’t take up space, don’t be too loud or proud, don’t give men on the street a reason to follow you home. Part of the mental hurdle I had to overcome while recovering from an eating disorder was dismantling the belief that my biggest accomplishment in life should always be my mastery of the art of staying small. More on that here.

I stayed in my hometown for my undergrad degree, as well as for my first two post‑grad big‑girl jobs, which left me recently 26 and just moving out for the first time. I cried more in the first week away from home than I have in years—thanks, antidepressants!—and I am only now learning how to wake up without a weighted sense of fear and distrust in my chest, at my perceived inability to actually handle this next chapter of my life. How is it that people ten years younger than me have already moved countries completely by themselves? The last three people I’ve met have moved across the globe with zero family support, to a country where they could barely put together a sentence in the language. Have I not been pushing myself hard enough in life? Where is their fear?

The sheer diversity of people that exist within the city is not far off from the diversity of nature and the natural world itself. It is only in a metropolitan city like Toronto—or in my dreamy vacations to New York—that I can exit my building’s door and become lost amidst a crowd of bodies rich with lives, stories, fears, dreams, and regrets. A brief walk through my neighbourhood and I encounter a couple laughing and sharing a meal on a restaurant patio, before passing a man shaking on the street with no shoes and a sign begging for help, before walking by a baby in the park who is, herself, learning to walk for the first time. The city holds within it millions of broken hearts, millions of doe‑eyed dreamers, millions of people close to giving up, and millions of people just beginning.

It can be overwhelming as a highly sensitive person—according to my therapist, that is in fact a real term—to be constantly surrounded by so much energy. However, one of the reasons I, as an introvert, have always loved the city, is that it is simultaneously oddly comforting and simply humane.

I learned through conversations at a recent book club meeting that part of the comfort readers get from consuming the stories and thoughts of others is that we come to learn that so much of our seemingly isolated experiences are actually just part of being a living, breathing human on this earth. Literature reminds us that we are not the first person to be going through the phase of life we are in, the struggle we are treading through, and we won’t be anywhere close to the last. Living in a city does the same.

Despite the magnitude of people, a constant proximity to bodies is not the same as existing within a community, and even us introverts need a kind smile and a set of eyes to fuel our days every once in a while. Thankfully, being in Toronto, I’ve never been closer to more artsy, free‑bird archetypes since my undergrad, and so I’m working on finding my own.

The other day I wandered into my local TPL branch—being steps away from the biggest public library system in the world is a literature major’s dream—and wandered for a shameless hour before being caught by a book, A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again. I normally won’t pick up a book without doing extensive research beforehand—the one thing I can do with my degree is be a book snob, let me have this—but it’s funny the way the universe plants things in front of your face at precisely the right moment.

What touched me most about the book was not the eventual fame or accolades of the female writers from humble beginnings, but rather their ability to endure their unique yet common and inevitable human experiences and use them for art, for inspiration, for strength to keep trying anew.

I’ve encountered a few different people over the past few weeks who have recited to me their own personal stories of brave triumphs and tribulations. When I ask how they had the courage to be so bold and proceed without fear, they all said some assortment of, “Of course I was afraid. I just did it afraid.”

This move is teaching me that fear exists, but life doesn’t stop when it does. I haven’t encountered anxiety like I have moving out since my early recovery from anorexia, but I guess I have also continued to live despite its presence, just like I did then. I guess I am learning that as a caring and sensitive person, the fear can be there, but the bravery can be too. I don’t get to pick one or the other, and I don’t get to choose which one is louder.

You don’t need to move cities to begin again, to divorce your husband, or to quit your job. Fear doesn’t only exist before the dramatically grandiose uprooting of a life. In the long book of your personal existence, every new page grants you the opportunity to start fresh, to turn a different corner, to use each page passed to propel you with the strength you need to write the next one.

A kind face I met at a book club this past weekend told me he could tell in my eyes that I was “made for the city.” While part of me knows that was just a subtly smooth pick‑up line, the other part of me knows that even if he’s wrong, I can’t say I never tried it.

To being brave enough to try,

Juls 🌞