Walking by Your Ghosts

I was meeting family for dinner in downtown Toronto, and I found myself retreading familiar ground.

It was the same path I traveled to go to class just 2 years prior, when I was taking a course on Professional Communication at George Brown.

It was the same path I took to go to my part-time job as a deli cutter at the neighbourhood Metro store 10 years prior.

Today I am taking my final course online for my Professional Communication certificate, and I recently accepted my latest full-time job since being furloughed from my last in August of 2020.

I bring this up not to brag, but to acknowledge all that I've accomplished while living in Toronto over the last decade.

When I first arrived in this city, I couldn't have dreamed of being where I am today. I imagined my younger self walking the exact same path that I did this week, and putting myself in her mindset.

And the memories were lost long ago

But at least you have beautiful ghosts

Taylor Swift, Beautiful Ghosts

I remember how out-of-place this younger version of myself - this ghost - felt walking through the financial district of Toronto. I remember how I felt like I didn't belong or didn't deserve to enter a Starbucks. Like I didn't earn the lackadaisical privilege to order a pumpkin spice latte with my name egregiously misspelled on the cup.

I think back to myself, then still in school, wondering if I would be working in a grocery store the rest of my life.

I reflect on my physical and mental exhaustion in late 2019 as I scrambled after work to my class at George Brown. I thirsted for professional development to supplement a corporate job that I couldn't fathom as a lifelong career.

I reflect on the ghosts of businesses past. Like the coffee shop I slipped into before class - Bluestone Lane Café - that that shuttered in 2020. Just another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I feel immensely grateful to be in the position that I'm at today. I look back to my ghosts and try to put myself in her mindset, to see what type of being she was a decade ago.

She wanted to write, but hadn't yet found the means or the confidence with which to capitalize on her talents.

She wanted to matter in a big city that has swallowed up whole so many others before her.

I regret not keeping a journal during this time; the closest thing I had to documenting my thoughts were my Twitter page and my Tumblr account.

From those, I could glean that I had immense uncertainty about myself, about my capabilities and my identity.

But I soldiered on, despite my discomfort, and forced myself to grow.

And so…now I have a new job, and an identity as a writer that I continue cultivate each and every day.

I wish I could approach myself from 2012; the one wandering aimlessly through St. James Park, admiring the beauty and energy of her surroundings, but feeling oh-so-disconnected from the experience and from the intricate tapestry of city life.

I'd hug her and tell her to soldier on, to keep moving forward. That there'd be dark times along the way, and darker ones still with which the entire world would have to reckon.

But I'd also tell her that there would be hope. She'd be a far cry from the cardboard box she lamented would be her home if she didn't succeed in Toronto. And she'd be well on her path to achieving the one thing she wanted more than anything else but at the time didn't seem possible: to become a published author.

So I offer this advice: respect the ghosts of your past.

Acknowledge them by periodically acknowledging your accomplishments. It helps me to ground myself and to recognize that I'm not the same green girl who first set foot along King Street.

I'm older, yes, but I'm also wiser, and I take and cherish that wisdom to made me a better version of myself.

—

Sylvie is a dual American/Canadian citizen living in Toronto, Canada. She has written for numerous sites, including Screen Rant, The Spool and Midnight & Indigo. Sylvie is currently writing her first YA novel; follow her writing journey at https://sylviesoul.com and @sylvsoulwriter on Twitter.