Thanksgiving

This past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada. I don't really celebrate Thanksgiving on account of it being a holiday that glorifies colonialism and the slaughtering of turkeys (I would have completely forgotten about Thanksgiving had it not been for Facebook) but this year, in spite of myself, I had a mini Thanksgiving celebration.

As previously mentioned, I have recently started seeing someone, who will henceforth be referred to as Lady Cop (on account of her being a lady cop and a really bad Lil Wayne song, though I'm not sure there is such a thing as a good Lil Wayne song...) and on Monday I cooked dinner for her and my flatmate. I am a vegetarian of over 6 years; Lady Cop is not. I made us a lovely vegetable and tofu stir fry, and she informed me that prior to coming over to dinner, she had eaten some meat. You know, just in case. It's a good thing neither of us takes ourselves all that seriously!

This was just intended to be a cheap date night, it wasn't meant to have any connection to Thanksgiving at all. There certainly wasn't any pumpkin pie, which, in Australia is an entirely different - and better - thing than in North America. But as I was in the kitchen serving up dinner and Lady Cop was interrogating my flatmate, who was becoming increasingly flustered and distressed (which made me chuckle because I totally fell for Lady Cop when she interrogated me), Thanksgiving just happened. And not the Thanksgiving that I'm used to, which generally filled me with anxiety and dread, but the Hallmark Thanksgiving - the kind that can never be achieved by trying to manufacture it.

This new relationship with Lady Cop, it's different from my previous relationships. Or rather, I'm different than in my previous relationships. In my life in general (not just relationships) I used to spend a lot of time dreaming about the future, because the future is a fantasy and can hold all the potential you want it to when the present isn't so great. I don't find myself day dreaming about the future much at all these days. I used to be so preoccupied with how much better things would be in the future that I really turned a blind eye to the reality of the present. That changed when my last relationship ended and my ideas about how the future would be once again came crashing down and I was forced to deal with the present. Enough had shifted in me that when this happened, I actually wanted to deal with the present; I didn't want to just escape into another fantasy about what my future could be.

I don't actually think about the future very much at all these days. Generally when I do think about it, it's in terms of, "Oh fuck, what am I going to do when I finish my PhD?" I like where my life is at the moment, and I am really enjoying just seeing where the path that I'm on leads me. A big part of why I'm so content with sticking to the present is that my present is very much characterised by change. I am in transition, and that is my favourite place to be.

Going back to my relationship with Lady Cop, what's been different is that it's really developing quite naturally and organically. It's just happening on it's own accord and we're both going along with it and seeing where it leads. Neither of us knows where that will be. It doesn't matter, really. What matters is that right now we are happy and right now things are good. We'll deal with the future and whatever it holds as it comes to us. 

This Thanksgiving, I know what I'm thankful for. I'm thankful to be in a place in my life where I can have a beautiful Thanksgiving with people I care about, without the turkey and the pumpkin pie. I am thankful for Lady Cop and all her ridiculousness (but especially her ridiculous accent). And I am especially thankful for those 3 people who got picked to be transferred out to the country instead of Lady Cop, so that our relationship can continue on it's journey, naturally and organically, whatever that may be.