It never goes according to plan

We drove up the snowy, winding road towards the cozy A-frame cabin. The sky was clear and the mid afternoon sun was bright, dancing in sparkles across the white forest floor. Although it was so cold outside you could feel your nose hairs freeze with each breath, somehow when you looked outside through the car window everything felt warm and snug.

We’d been driving for hours, and while I was so excited to arrive and settle into our mountain home for the holiday season, I was in the stage between being awake and being asleep. It always feels too difficult to do anything in this state, plus you don’t want it to end. In saying that, you also want it to end at the exact same time. I think that’s what’s so enticing about it, you’re right in the middle of it all.

The car crackled to a stop at the end of the driveway, and the time had come to shake off this heavenly state of ‘nothing f*cking matters’. It’d been 5 years since my fiancé and I had been back in Canada. We met in Canada nearly 8 years ago in a time where l’d never felt more lost or free. The best plans are the ones you never planned for, and our relationship was so unexpected.

I’d been organising to move to a different city a few weeks after we met, but before we both knew it we were living together like there’d never been anything before us. We were both so lost, unsure and uncertain about our future, but we were equally romantics. We both dreamed of the magic of our biggest dreams coming to life, and surely they did.

I remember thinking to myself ‘I can’t wait for this stressful and uncertain time of our lives to come to an end’. But now, as I reminisce with a smile on my lips, I see that the uncertainty is the very thing that creates the magic in our lives. We were addicted to the thrill of not knowing what was to come, and since we had no idea how our lives would unfold there was nothing ahead of us other than limitless possibility.

I always wanted to stay in a snowy cabin in the woods. Even after 4 years living in a country with arguably some of the best settings for this vision to come to life, we never got around to it until now. Admittedly, I used to envision my lover and I running through the woods barefoot with our closest friends surrounding us, laughing at how cold it was and how stupid we were to be doing this. We would begin to scream as our feet got so cold it felt like we would loose our toes, before running as quickly as possible back to the warmth and safety of our cabin in the woods.

That vision never came to life, and the friends that were with me in this moment were the best group of people I’d ever met. We were all a bunch of immigrants, misfits and runaways with no family in the country, so we made a family of each other. We lived so close to each other, and always had the best gatherings, filled with so much love and so much weirdness.

I used to always let people know I was a weirdo and they would assure me that it wasn’t true like it was a bad thing. But when I’d said it I’d meant it as a compliment to myself and a tribute to all the other weirdos across the globe who never felt like they fit into any group. So they, like me, went off venturing for the place where they truly felt at home. Well these friends were my home. All of us were so different, yet we all had so much love to give.

Today we all live in different countries once more, and these memories fade away as my man opens the door and grabs my hand to lead me to the cabin entrance. I let go off all the recollections and come back to this moment. My first time in a cabin in the woods may not be how I imagined it, but why can’t it be even better?