The crisp bite of autumn causes commuters to throw on a topcoat and head out into the chilly city. I find that fall has a very distinct smell; I’m not quite sure if it is the fact that everything is dying, but the season seems to fill me with life.  

The click of my heel hits the pavement as I walk home from work on this dreary morning. Passing the botanical garden, hundreds of flowers are crowded by the lenses of over a dozen iPhones. In the days of social media and IOS technology, it seems as if we are all photographers.

“We all are photographers” I say as I join the masses and point my iPhone 6 directly into a blossoming rose. The bitterness of technological advancement blinds us from the beauty as seen with the naked eye…but it does make for a killer Instagram photo.

I have found myself recently enthralled with the topic of being fearless. What constitutes personal fear, and how do we overcome it? I look to the words of someone else. Henry Miller describes the feeling through saying,

“There are people who cannot resist the desire to get into a cage with wild beasts and be mangled. They go in even without a revolver or whip. Fear makes them fearless….” (Tropic of cancer, p 9)

I used to be so enthralled with fear that I would wrestle with the feeling on the daily. With knots welling up in my stomach, I found that I was stuck in a continuous flux of anxiety. When do we get to the point where we are so turned on by fear that we begin to act in a manner that is self-suited… A manner geared towards the act of self-perseverance. When do we stop dealing with the knights of the round table and become our own knight in shining armour?

Stepping into my townhouse, I kick off my loafers and look into my empty coffee cup. I debate pouring another, for I seemed to find catharsis in cardiac arrest. Five cups of coffee and counting I sit down and begin to write. The ticking of the clock and the distant barking of a neighbourhood dog peeked my nerves. Moving my laptop to the bedroom, I sit in front of my floor length mirror. Staring at myself as I write, I watch the wrinkles on my brow postulate. First and foremost, I’m in my twenties, a wrinkled brow is something experienced by those twice my age. I begin googling local Botox treatments.

I sit up and look at the flowers placed on my fireplace. Wilted, deprived, and broken, The sun cascades through the room beating upon the dried stems.
You were a sunflower in the wilted sun, deprived of water you died of thirst leaving me with the lifeless corpse, reminding me of what had died. It is quite strange how a flower could remind someone of beauty or simplicity, but to another it can remind you of a failure. It is situations like this where I begin to feel homesick for a place that was never my home to begin with.

I like to say that this game of trial and error is necessary, for it’s all part of life; a continuous flux of love, loss and finding happiness somewhere in between. I am moving on to new bridges and leaving the burnt remnants of the past to burn out. Letting the flames of the past guide me through the darkness into the future.

Have I lost my will? My desire to search for love? Possibly. In all honesty, I am quite content with where I am. Americano and I did not set out to meet one another… It just happened by surprise. As we met by surprise, so did our bitter end.

We all (by we all I am referring to women and homosexuals) are waiting for a knight in shining armour. Someone to be by our side ready to act in our defence. Brooding, muscular and mildly mysterious, we have envisioned this perfect adonis specimen who will save us from our troubles and take us on horseback to our happiness. Why? As children, where did we come up with the delusional idea that we need a knight in shining armour to be happy? Has anyone ever thought about how the story would have ended if Cinderella never was found by the prince?

Apparently, one needs to be fearless to fall in love. To give oneself to a lover is the epitome of fear! You are shedding your rough skin and armour, for you are finally letting someone into your world. It takes a large amount of time to heal from pain that was caused, for it takes an even longer time to mend a broken heart. Why wait for a boy to be your saviour and to fix what another had broken? Why pain for the love of someone else when you can find that love in oneself. Find the pieces and the tools to repair your heart, for no one can fix it but you.

Tired of the four walls of my bedroom, I put on a warm overcoat and step out into the city. I spent my evening in a french boulangerie. Parisian influence and an atmosphere that breeds creativity, I find thrill in the unexpected.
To sit with a glass of fresh merlot, I feel as if I have mastered the art of the french whine. Complaining over boys who will never love you, and planning for a future that will never happen, I mistake the feeling of fear for comfort and substitute it all for fearlessness. I am not quite sure if I am on the cusp of a breakthrough or on the borderline of a breakdown. Either way, I lean back into my seat and take another sip of my wine.