Author: Meghan Victoria (Page 2 of 2)

Find Your People. Love Them Hard.

October 12, 2020 / Meghan Victoria

I USED TO THINK WRITING WAS A SOLO ENDEAVOR.

You sit down in your basement or bedroom or whatever hovel you’ve dedicated to grinding out your current project and you get on with it. And when you’re done, you celebrate with people who love you but who can never really understand the act of inking your soul onto a page.

When I moved to Calgary nine years ago, I joined a writing class. I had been writing my whole life, had a minor in creative writing from the University of Dalhousie, but had never really committed myself to a writing community. In a city where I knew very few people (and honestly cried on the daily because I missed home), it was a way to get out of the house, to meet others who were doing something I loved. I never dreamed that this writing community would turn into an integral pillar of my life. But that’s exactly what it has become.

The members of my writing circle – the people to whom I’ve showed the depths of my soul, and taken a look deep into theirs in return – are the people who I trust beyond measure to be honest, to pick me up and dust me off, to hold my feet to the fire and push me to be better – not only in writing, but in life. They are cheerleaders and grief counselors and editors and mentors. They are the reason that I hold my head high regardless the number of rejections crowding my inbox or number of chapters left to meet a deadline.

If you are a writer or creative of any sort, find your people.

Find those who understand the lows, the rejections, the long nights and crippling doubt.

The people who know exactly when to build you up and when you need a hard kick in the pants. Because you know as well as I do that if you’ve chosen this creative path, there are a lot of downs. A lot of moments where it all feels pointless, where you’re not sure that you are or ever can make a difference, where it’s hard and lonely and tedious. Where sometimes the only motivation to finish is someone screaming in your ear that you are great, that your contribution is needed, and that no matter what you believe about yourself, they will always be in your corner.

Find your people. Love them hard. And make sure they know exactly how much they mean to you.

A Limited Number of Twilights

August 31, 2020 / Meghan Victoria

On Monday, a dear friend died. He was young, and vibrant, and full of kindness and love and light. He had been sick for a while, but as prepared as you think you can be, you’re never actually prepared to never see someone again. Never prepared for your time with them to be cut short.

Time. A concept that’s been weighing on my mind lately. I’ve forever been obsessed with fantastical creatures – vampires and werewolves and warlocks – a collection of beings who do not age, or die, or sleep. And perhaps now, in light of my friend’s passing, I understand myself a little better. Our twilights are limited in number. Perhaps the true fantasy is having all the time in the world – an eternity to make my mark.

My friend’s death has made me acutely aware of how quickly time slips through our fingers. How abruptly it can be stolen, snipped and tied by giant Fate wielded scissors. And I worry. What if I don’t have enough time to do all the wondrous and incredible things I was made to do in this life? What if I want lazy Thursday nights with my husband where we drink too much wine and watch dumb TV AND want to finish writing that novel AND read all those books AND teach yoga AND have a fulfilling career in business AND friends and travel and magic and astrology and dancing and Netflix and tarot and horses and parties and boats and fitness and meditation and cake and – there’s so much life to be lived. So much to be experienced. And we only have so much time.

We lost Chadwick Boseman on Friday. Another snip of those scissors. A friend sent me something he once said:

“You have to cherish things in a different way when you know the clock is ticking, you are under pressure.”

The clock is ticking for each and every one of us. The only true constant, the single indisputable fact of the universe: we will all die. And perhaps that is the point. Perhaps, if we had all the time in the world, if our clocks were not ticking, we wouldn’t be so frantic to fill every minute to bursting with as much joy and friendship and love as we can. Maybe, without that reminder, we would forget the point. We would cease to make any kind of mark at all.

We must cherish things in a different way when we know the clock is ticking. We are all under pressure.

The time is now.

Dear Men

July 6, 2020 / Meghan Victoria

Covid has me cleaning out closets and getting rid of old baggage. A cathartic reorganization of past memories that no longer serve me. Ass kicking my way down memory lane, cherry picking what to hold on to and what to let go.

I highly recommend.

To the only man to ever break my heart: I’m sorry I took scissors to your red soccer championship jacket.

It was a nice jacket.

I should have kept it.

P.S. The rest of your athletic garments are in the hands of the less fortunate. I hope the hot stench of your deceit keeps them toasty at night.

To the man whose heart I left crushed in the kitchen of the house he bought to grow our family: I was twenty-one. Too young for a family. Too young for a house.

I would like my parent’s brand new, king-sized mattress back. It was the offering of a guilty conscious, and we both know that guilt faded with the leather motorcycle suit you returned to the store rather than my closet.

P.S. I still miss that old Victorian.

To the man who left me crying on his couch in the middle of the night to go party with his friends: You owe me money. A dollar for every tear pried from my body through your judgement, your cruelty, your insecurities. The exact total $3,564.

P.S. You need therapy.

To the man who sat next to me in first year English: Please stop haunting my memories. I apologize for flirting you into making me a Valentine’s Day present and then never speaking to you again. I no longer want to see the hope in your eyes as you hand me that gift bag, or imagine the amount of time it took to create and decorate thirty-seven miniature origami cranes. I want to forget the deeply personal words of the poem you wrote for my callous, selfish heart.

Enough is enough.

P.S. I kept the cranes.

To the man who ordered me to fold his laundry: I should have strewn your underwear across the front lawn of Fountain Hall. Pushed them through the garburator. Rewashed them in the toilet.

I should not have folded the laundry. You should not have apologized, all those years later.

P.S. It’s hard to despise a man who knows how to make an apology.

To the man who will hold my heart: tiptoe carefully ‘round those rips and tears. Keep your scissors locked and your mattress soft. Addict me with kindness.

I’m skittish about laundry. Love poems will forever make me cringe. Don’t ask about the origami cranes under my bed, and I won’t pry the skeletons from your closet.

Remind me not to be selfish and callous.

Remind yourself not to say things you don’t mean.

Apologize early and often. Don’t let me pick fights.

Tell me I’m pretty.

Say “I love you” first.

Don’t leave stale dish water in the sink.

Tell me I’m pretty again.

P.S. Tulips are my favourite.

Bad Poetry and Weird Kids

May 11, 2020 / Meghan Victoria

I was a weird kid.

Nothing reminds me of this more than stumbling across scraps of old writing. I’m the girl who detailed an entire map and convinced her best friend there was treasure buried in the backyard – guarded by trolls and a dragon’s beating heart. The girl whose diaries were filled with letters to her favourite characters rather than secrets and boys (that came later). The girl who turned down play dates and parties so she could finish that next chapter instead.

It’s amazing how much old writing there is to stumble upon. Pages and pages of loose leaf, notebook after notebook, computer files and journals and secret notes.

I kept it all.

Yesterday was one of those stumbling days. Looking for an unused notebook, I dusted off the plastic tote that serves as my writing crypt and was immediately drawn off course. Sitting on top, the giant pink notebook courtesy of my university creative writing course – there’s half a novel jammed into those pages. Nestled below, an envelope housing magazine cut outs, google print offs, and the first novella I ever wrote (spoiler, there are a lot of unicorns. And sparkly dresses). Fan fiction letters between myself and Fred Weasley, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin. A floppy disk, SUPER IMPORTANT scrawled across its front tag (that story’s lost forever).

Finally, a small, unassuming address book with sunflowers on its cover. An address book, because no one’s going to snoop through an address book. We weren’t allowed diaries that locked in my house, so this was as secure as it got.

This was where my poetry lived.

You want to relive fourteen-year-old heartbreak? Read that fourteen-year-old’s valiant attempts at poetry.

You do want to read it, don’t you? Of course you do. It’s GOLD.

Your voice haunts me in the deep recesses of the night,

My fears become real in this absence of light,

Shadows devour me as I plunge far from grace,

Lost deep in sorrow, awaiting my fate.

And maybe a little angst-filled …

Light shrinks from me, grim countenance of youth,

Mind denies all, shielded from truth,

You’re my dark angel, black wings block the sun,

Hell awaits judgement, knowing I am the one.

Grim countenance of youth?

Scars of sins passed lay heavy on my soul,

Your heart torn open, never to be whole,

Your body betrayed with the touch of my lips,

A temptation yielded, devil’s first kiss.

Aaaaand that’s where we’re going to end it.

There are another two pages. It gets dark. Real dark. And a little racy, if we’re being honest.

I was a weird kid. And weird kids grow up to be weird adults, and weird adults write equally bad poetry.

And you know what?

The world could use a little more bad poetry, and a lot more weird kids.