Ghosts of the Past

Did you know that two days after I created this blog, I got an email from my first ex after ten years. It surprised me that he would do something like that since we've been broken up since 2008. It brought up memories, some good, some not so good. It also made me remember an email I wrote using the Future Me site where you can write yourself an email today and the site will hold onto it and deliver it at a future date. Most people pick a milestone birthday and I remember I did one that would be delivered on my 30th birthday in 2013. I sent it, oddly enough, in 2008 a mere few months before my ex and I broke up. I vaguely remember what I put in it, I think I wrote something like what had happened to me on the day I wrote it, my nephew was only a few months old and he had a cold or something, mom was on the phone with my sister about it. It was also talking about how that by 30 I had hoped I would have been married to my ex and we would have our own place. I hoped that we would have had many travels and adventures together because at the time I wanted to travel. I didn't actually get to do it until a year later in 2009 for the first time. I took my mom and I to Hawaii for her 55th birthday, I asked her in February that year about it I said "How would you like to go to Hawaii for your birthday this year?" She of course was literally floored that I would even ask that and took all of one day to think it over and say yes. That was the first time I had left the country, like ever. I mean sure there was that trip to the Thousand Island's American side when I was a kid, I don't really count that because honestly, I barely remember it I had to be like 5 or something. I paid for the flight and the hotel over the next eight months and mom paid for a few tours and things we did there, dad gave me $1000 in Traveler's Checks and cash to go there. I came back with $63, because Hawaii's expensive. I would have taken my dad too but I couldn't afford three tickets and at the time his work situation was up in the air, they were in the midst of talks about being bought out by an American company. We also had a sick cat at the time who needed his medicine administered orally, dad had to stay to do that. Mom and I were there for nine days and we called back here to Canada once a day, Hawaii is six hours behind us here in Ontario so we had to back up our times for the calls so it wouldn't occur at like 3 in the morning here. I did get some nice things to write about after that trip though as well as some amazing photos. Photography is my other passion, I love taking nature and landscape pictures because it's story telling through images. I don't have a fancy expensive camera (I'd love to though) with three different lenses and light filters so I take all my pictures with an ordinary digital camera. I got a better camera after 2009 so my Hawaii photos do look a bit blurred and odd to me now that I look back at them nearly ten years later, I still have that camera too.

I made some 8x10 prints of my best butterfly pictures and gave two of them to my sister for Christmas one year, others I've posted on my DeviantArt page which is where my best and least blurred pictures are uploaded, I watermarked them too just because I'm proud of them. I know I can sell them off that site, there is that option but I haven't done it. I have very few pictures that are not of butterflies, landscapes, or flowers and no pictures of people. I have thought about taking my camera out one of these days and just wandering around to see if I find interesting things to photograph, it's been two years since I've taken any new pictures of butterflies. I would go to the Butterfly Sanctuary in Niagara Falls to get them, I love going there but I haven't gone recently which makes me sad. One day I hope that the urge to get out there with my camera really pushes me to do it, it's all part of me trying not to let the fact that I have MS keep me from doing the things I loved before the diagnosis, it's still a work in progress but I am getting there. Making this blog is one of those steps in getting back to what I love.