My house is warmed. Today, today, i feel all settled in. I can feel a shift deep inside me. I feel calm. I feel like i am at the starting line of something.

It's not a race. I don't feel a need to go anywhere, do anything. Just to start. To start again. It feels great.

I had a party on saturday night. I had such a lovely time. Sometime around midnight all my friends and co-workers had arrived and i sat for a moment and realized this is it. This is my life. There were only about 15 people there. And that was enough.

Before the party i was feeling anxious as i am want to do.

What if nobody comes? I don't have any friends.

But, there, in my kitchen around midnight i realized that these are my friends and they are more than enough. They are the people i care about. The ones who have stood by me through everything. The ones who don't judge. The ones who have seen me at my best and at my worst.

And i was happy to have them there. To share a little bit of a crazy night with.

I am still getting used to being alone in this house. Moving is hard on your soul. Your body has to adjust to new creaks and moans, different light, strange air.

I have moved six times in two years. I am tired of moving.

This house feels like home. It is home. I know that because we are all so happy to be here.

I got very sad yesterday thinking about a sixteen year old girl that committed suicide in victoria. I got an alert on twitter that she was reported missing and then, through facebook, found out later that day her body was discovered.

It really knocked me for a blunder.

Sixteen. Sixteen.

The first time i tried to kill myself by a lethal combination of prescription medicine from someone else's medicine cabinet i was only fifteen. I've never really talked to many people about that. I was so young. I wish in my adult mind that i had found help way back then. That some adult noticed what i did.

But, i was tricky then. I hid things well.

But, i was tricky then. I hid things well.

Obviously, i still hide things well.

I have noticed since december i have been unfollowed and unfriended by most of my local acquaintances.

I have noticed parents being more protective of their kids around my kids.

Oh god. I'm so sorry. I am an excellent mother and i would never do anything dumb with my kids around. Can't you see my struggle comes when they are not here? I understand.

I keep thinking of that little girl and her parents. Of her walking into that cold pacific ocean and swimming until she drowned. And reaching that point where you are too far in to go back. That terrorizing moment that you know you really did it.

I had that moment in december and there by the grace of god goes i.

My life is getting so much better.

I am feeling the impending arrival of happiness. I can hear it knocking on my door.

I love my house. I love it. I love being here. I want to just sit in it for a whole day. I want to be done with all the business of lawyers and insurance adjusters and the mess of moving.

I want to not feel such huge emotional attachments to events i have no control over or connection to.

Sixteen. Sixteen.

I am so happy. I am so happy to see my things, to sit at my little antique desk, to have dinner at my table, to sleep in my bed with my sheets and duvet.

This has been the best week. So hard and so rewarding. I moved all by myself. My daughter was there and a huge help, but she is twelve. I did it all by myself.

I had some help from good friends with hanging up mirrors and what-nots, but everything else i lugged and organized and directed, and now we are here. All unpacked. Fire burning in the woodstove, dinner at the table, children snoring softly.

I know i have waxed endlessly about my housefire, but i didn't realize how it had affected all of us until we were here. We were out of sorts and lost for six months. We were not home.

And now we are.

And it is so much better than i could have hoped.

I feel great. I feel like i can move on with my life. I feel deeply, truly happy.

We are moving in three two days. In two days we are moving into the home i bought last summer. The home that has caused me more stress than anything else in my life.

I know i have put so many other stresses into that home.

Everything would be okay if my house didn't burn down.

And that is not completely fair. My house didn't make my mouth all wonky. My house didn't make me file for divorce. My house didn't make me nearly lose my life and my mind.

But, everything would have been so much easier if my house didn't burn down. I can't really put words to the trauma me and the kids have felt these six months. Living out of suitcases. Waiting for what has seemed like years to be in our home.

I was waiting in line at the insurance office the other day and reading an ad about buying insurance and it said that 1 in 2750 homes burn down (in my region). And, at first blush i felt so bad for all those other 1 in 2750 people. Then my feeble mathematics brain thought in percentages and that's really not that many homes, especially considering how small my community is. And i thought; fuck, i really have some bad luck.

But this? This is a new beginning for me. I will move to my lovely, brand new! home and i will be happy there. I know it. Surrounded by families, in the heart of the community. I will find home.

I will find hope and happiness. And you have been there through it all. My crowd-sourced home. Thank-you everybody for looking at my pictures and offering advice. I truly feel like you, me and the internet built this house.

Now, do you have a truck and are you free wednesday and thursday?

I've said before that the hardest thing about being a single parent is not the parenting. It's the hours they are not here.

Sometimes, the opposite is hard too. Last night parker woke up screaming and crying and when i even hovered my hand over his belly he would shriek out in pain. Tristan came running upstairs and comforted parker while i frantically searched on google for symptoms of appendicitis. She seemed so grown up in that moment. Softly soothing her baby brother.

My oldest daughter amazes me.

Parker was fine in the end, just a little gas. We all crawled into my bed together, parker in the middle, and settled in for sleep.

I think what amazes me is how all of my kids have become more independent, but at the same time we are more of a cohesive unit than we have ever been. It truly feels like we are a little team.

I filed for divorce yesterday.

It wasn't a very good day. Sitting in a lawyers office, hashing out all the details of a life in two hours. The small details. All the negative things. No mention of all the joys. All the tiny moments that made up a marriage.

It seems like a lifetime ago that i was such a young woman walking through my parents backyard, between my mother and father, towards my soon-to-be husband. All giggles and grins and beauty.

The dress i was married in is hanging in my closet. It is still a beautiful dress. I hope one day one of my daughters will wear it somewhere.

I filed for divorce yesterday.

I have been feeling so lost since i walked out of that office. The final steps. I wish all of this could have turned out differently. I wish i could feel certain that this is the right thing to do.

Instead, i feel great loss. I feel immense sadness. I feel like nobody understands. I feel so much anger in the universe directed at me.

Did i do my best? No. I tried. I always tried.

I was interviewed last week and called myself a flawed human being. When i hung up the phone i cried. I know that we are all flawed, perfection is irrelevant. But, i failed. I failed at marriage. It is a horrible feeling.

My lawyer told me that this would be very hard. That i would feel all the anxiety and angst that i felt when we first separated. That i would feel bad.

I do. I feel very bad.

I feel like i live in this constant state of neither here nor there. I am hoping that when i move into my home i will feel my feet sink in and have a place to push off from.

My house! It is almost done. There are floors and paint and a kitchen and just about everything. We are moving in in a couple of weeks. Excited doesn't even begin.

I am doing well. Pushing myself. Creating a life. Making plans. Going on an adventure.

When we were driving away from my parents house parker shouted from the backseat "a bear! a flying bear!"

I pulled over and looked at parkers finger pointing to the sky and sure enough dangling from a helicopter was a bear. It was not the strangest sight i have ever seen, but it came close.

So this is the new year. I don't have any weighty goals, no resolutions. I know what i won't do. I won't smoke. I won't let this unquiet mind break me.

I will do every single thing i can to be calm and at peace. I will seek out the positive in every person and every single moment.

The night before my doctor's appointment last week i had the strangest dream. It was long and simple. I walked up to a man i had a crush on and i lay down and put my head in his lap, he placed his hand on my cheek and softly chuckled. We sat like that all night. My dream lasted all night. Just like that, simple, at peace, cherished.

I want to be cherished this year. I want to fall madly in love. I want to be wrapped in arms and legs and giggle furiously.

It feels like an impossible dream. That kind of love doesn't happen anymore. That is a love of youth and innocence and freedom.

I once watched a woman smash a raccoon's skull with a boulder to put it out of it's misery. I was a young girl and the image has never left my heart.

I want to teach my children the value of life. The beauty in the mundane. I want to take them to the beach and marvel at every grain of sand as it runs through our fingers. I want to take them to visit my 96 year old grandmother and show them how every line is beautiful, each wrinkle telling the story of a life lived - the glory of old age.

I want to wake up every morning to the rushing sounds of footsteps and childish excitement bursting forth in my new house.

My mum likes to tell the story of moving across canada, before i was born, and my brothers guinea pig (smuggled on) escaping from it's shoe box on that orange canadian airlines 747 and running between the feet of passengers creating a "wave" of jumping and screaming. I like this story.

My life has been so shifty lately. I imagine sitting still this year. Happily settling in for the long haul.

it rains in vancouver. it rains in vancouver ALL the time. i remember this from when i was young. i sleep a little better with that rain pounding above my head.

Let me think, let me get this all straight for you.

I went to my appointment on thursday afternoon in a building that my father and i both agreed seemed very post-apocalyptic, floor to ceiling glass for 8 stories. Leather sofas repeating floor after floor.

I was a bucket of nerves, had been for at least a week. All butterflies and irritable.

I filled out some forms at the "Mouth and Mucosa" clinic. Trying desperately to ignore those words, instead having them repeat in my mind over and over.

mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa.

The exam room was unremarkable, just like any other dentist office. I waited as medical students darted past the doorway, making deliberate sideways glances at me.

The doctor came in and we went over my referral, yada yada, boring. He has me put those coat hanger things on the sides of my mouth and pull it open like a turkey ready to be stuffed. They examined me using words like "very interesting." They took pictures with normal light, blue light and with my mouth died blue. Then they asked me to participate in a study, i said yes, which meant more scraping and taking of tissue and cells.

Then it was done. mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa.

It was done and the doctor sat down to talk to me. I am going to explain this as best i can. It is a little confusing and i have two doctors in my family helping me wrap my head around medical technology.

I don't have cancer. Good news. What i do have is some high-risk cell abnormality in my mouth that can be termed "dysplasia." How i understand it is thinking of a line. If "A" is a healthy mouth and "C" is cancer i am sitting at "B." I will never be an "A" again because to remove the abnormal cells surgically would result in a serious speech impairment or with lasers a high risk of aggravating underlying cells into becoming cancerous. So, the concern is that i have high risk cell abnormality and i am on a line that leads to cancer and that i am extremely young to have dysplasia in my mouth. The doctors have no concrete idea of what the rate of crossover to cancer is for this condition, hence the "Study" that i am participating in.

What does all of this mean? Well, it means that for the rest of my life i will hop on the ferry every three months and go through that same photo, photo, photo, scrape, scrape routine. I will be followed very closely and just wait and see.

Somewhat frustrating and somewhat a relief.

Thanks for all your thoughts, well wishes and prayers. I am heading home tomorrow and will begin my new years.

I owe you all an apology. I am sorry.

I also owe you a thank-you. Thank-you from the bottom of my heart.

On saturday night i sent out a message on Twitter asking for help. It came out of the blue and was probably unexpected and scary. It was scary for me. I owe you an explanation.

As you all know i have had my problems with depression and anxiety. I was diagnosed as bi-polar in 2006. I was even hospitalized. I have been mostly better since then. I have had my struggles. I have had both joy and sadness in my life in all their intensities.

This has been a very difficult year for me. The end of a marriage, coping with being single and a single mom, buying a house and having it burn down and then having a diagnosis of cancer in my mouth.

All the stress has been rushing at me.

In the past month or two i have been slowly losing my grasp on reality. My heart has been slowly tightening and i have been pushing people out of my life. It is what i do. I push away and pull into myself. The push me/pull me of depression. Walking through my days in a haze, masterfully putting on my exterior mask of "just fine."

And i guess it wasn't okay. I wasn't okay. I was coping by occupying my time with kids and work. Avoiding being alone. I never wanted to be alone. Alone is when the heart crushing sadness took over.

On saturday night i was meant to work. I had the kids at their dads house. I had made no plans.

I had made no plans.

Then i got called off work. I knew, i felt it deep in my soul that this was not going to be a good night. This is when, if i was a reasonable person, this is when i should have called for help.

Instead i locked myself inside my house and a deep mania took hold of me. To the outside world all was fine. I watched a movie. I spoke on the phone with my ex-husband (shane). I downloaded some music. Then i spoke with shane again, sometime around midnight. We had a fight. I was hurt. I felt intensely guilty. Ashamed of who i was. Who i had become. How it had all slipped away and here i was alone, slightly drunk and desperately sad in my room on a saturday night.

I went in the bathroom and took a handful of sleeping pills. I didn't even think about it.

I didn't even think about it.

Then i looked in the mirror and asked myself "is this what you really want?"

"no."

That was when i turned around and took the rest of them. They went down in a chalky, messy choke. The power and speed in which those drugs overtook me was intense. I went back to my room and grabbed my phone and it was out of batteries. That is when i turned to Twitter. And i'm not sorry i did.

As i fell into unconsciousness i truly thought i was going to die. In a split second a flurry of thoughts went through my head.

you are a fucking idiot
look what you have done
people will be mad
my kids
my kids
my kids
it doesn't hurt right now
you're an idiot

This is when the internet saved my life. It sounds dramatic. It sounds silly even. I know that many people have judged me over the past few days. I have heard and read what you have said. Part of me agrees. But, truth be told, i reached out to my friends. The people who have stood by me through thick and thin. Have been there to listen to me cry through words and keystrokes.

The following 48 hours are a blur of sleep and love. Shane came and got me and swept me into his home, our old home, our family home. He held me while i slept it all away in the quiet sleep of a heart repairing, a mind preparing to come back and fight. It was the most intensely i have felt cared for and loved in a long, long time.

And then i opened my computer. And there it was. Hundreds, hundreds, of letters and messages from people worried about me. Instead of guilty i felt cherish. I cherish each and every one of you that sent me thoughts. I cannot even begin to respond to all of you and i am still not ready to talk on the phone.

But, please know, i heard it all and i am so thankful.

Thank you.

jess

Our brand new tent that packaged us on our camping trip to Tofino. It was our first trip there as a family and it was amazing.