Tag: love

broken things

On By CantelonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

we,
we like the broken things
we like the bird
with the broken wings
so much pain
it no longer sings
we like the broken things
because they remind us
of our broken selves
and if we can fix them
maybe we can fix ourselves

we,
we like the broken things
the beaten down dog
hiding from all that we bring
but we’ll keep trying
because failure,
failure will tear us apart
never mind that this dog
has teeth
learned to bite
when their love dried up

but,
but we weren’t always this way
used to be closer to everyone else
afraid of the strange in the light of day
afraid of guys like red-haired Mikey K
when i was riding with the police
and they saw him lying on the tracks
foaming at the mouth
and in another world
“you been giving blowjobs again”
they laughed him,
they teased him,
and i just sat there mute
pretended i never knew him
and by the next year he was dead
killed with a shotgun
while he was trying to rob a home
but he, he still lives in my head,
he was a broken thing
maybe someone we could have helped
probably not…it’s easier to think like that

Now,
we like the broken things
we like to try and stop their pain,
the blackness and the weight life brings
because maybe,
maybe it means we can stop our own
maybe through them ours can be shown
but it’s never that easy
because the broken things have sharp edges
and whether the want to or not
they will slice into our lives
like teribbly keen, misahandled knives

me,
i love the broken things
because someone has to love them
not for what they can give
but maybe for what they need,
for what they need to live
and if i can love the broken things
it’s possible i can love me too
i can love me through and through
but i just gotta remember
the broken things
they can also break you
this is the opposite,
the opposite of what we want them to do
we don’t want them to drag us
into the dark and the deep blue
we want to lift and be lifted
into the brighter light of day
into the brighter light of what’s true
let these be the things,
these be the things we pursue.

An Open Book?

On By CantelonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I used to call myself an open book. I meant it in a prideful kind of way. My columns, for instance, have been complimented for the level of vulnerability they show.

My focus was on making the public me and private me as overlapping as possible. Why? I know how terribly fallible I am. I never wanted people to be shocked or surprised when I would inevitably break or fail to live up to their or my expectations. If they knew the real me (as much as anyone could) then, when I screwed up, they would think – well yeah, this does not surprise me.

Perhaps even more of a reason – the energy expended in maintaining two personas – Public Peter and Private Peter, seemed beyond me. So I opted simply to be Peter.

Over time I think I have come to see I am less of an open book and more of a fire hydrant that has been hit by a truck and is now spewing its contents in an unrelenting fashion all over everyone who gets even remotely close.

Case in point. This entry.

I’m not sure why. I’m sure a therapist would say it is likely rooted in a childhood where I never felt heard or seen. A childhood where I existed as a ghost…witness to the world around me but incapable of effecting change on it.

This might be why I react to circumstances that feel outside of my control in an almost violent and thoughtless fashion. Such circumstances send me reeling into the abyss as I seek to wrest control and, in so doing, create a level of stability and sense of safety for myself. However it can also manifest like a passenger in a car suddenly leaning over and attempting to wrest control of the steering wheel from the driver and potentially sending us all careening into a tree.

I think this is why I tend to react very well in chaotic emergency situations. I go into take command mode until the emergency has passed or at least stabilized.

Being the kind of person I am means people connect with me easier than I connect with them. People find it easier to connect with people they believe they know. Writers and celebrities run into this all of the time. Unfortunately I have spent my life focused on sustaining typically one good friendship at a time because I don’t think I have the capacity for more.

Why am I writing this? I honestly don’t know. It feels necessary.

November 25, 2025 – Trapped

On By CantelonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

A lot of my time lately has been taken up in consideration of things like gender-based violence and today marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.

Part of my job is reviewing applications from people seeking rent guarantors (a service we provide). The VAST majority of applicants are women facing violence. The VAST majority of these women are Indigenous. The stories are each unique and all are heartbreaking. This year I have read almost 120 applications…a fragment of the real number of women facing violence at home.

This combined with an opportunity to share during the Genesis House radiothon on lived experience related to violence and shelter use has me stewing in a very pensive place.

As a child I was raised by a single mother on welfare. We moved from home to home depending on a need to escape or when the rent went up. I witnessed physical and emotional violence against my mother from birth until I was about 13.

What changed? Safe, affordable, stable housing. After years of waiting we were finally approved for a nice four bedroom duplex in provincial housing. I think knowing mum had a place she could call her own without worrying about being kicked out or rent issues meant she could “fortify” it. She could defend it. She didn’t need to rely on others as much. This meant finally breaking away from abusive relationships.

People ask women all of the time – why don’t you just leave?

It’s not that easy. Even in the face of abuse.

Where do they go? How do they support themselves? There is also enormous stigma and shame attached to being a single-mother. So they do what they can. They live feeling trapped in a circumstance they do not feel they can break out of in a world that judges them and offers little to no supports to not simply escape but to restart and learn to thrive.

I think about my mum alot these days. I miss her terribly when I think about what she went through and I am grateful for the sacrifice she made so that myself and my siblings could not just survive but thrive.

I vowed a long time ago I would not be the kind of man my mum was subjected to. I would be honest, and loving; I would seek to better myself as often as possible and I would try to create an environment where the ones I value could thrive and feel loved. I hope I have done this.

Nobody should spend their lives feeling trapped by circumstance. It causes you to wither up and die.

I am grateful I have the chance to do the work I do. It feels like it is making a small difference in a way that could’ve helped my mum. I am grateful to be in a loving relationship, something my mum struggled to find for herself. Life can be beautiful but sometimes it takes work, and it almost always takes community.

Learning to Hate

On By CantelonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Living in the midst of this hangover of watching the United States (and other countries) implode in a dizzying display of anger, violence, murder, suspician, xenophobia and more, I wonder at how this will affect my own country – Canada.

What I see south of the border is nothing short of civil war as society becomes increasingly divided, and not simply divided by a crack but a grand canyon-sized chasm that cannot be leapt.

How does one get to where things stand today? How do neighbours, family, friends, co-workers and more come to such a place of confrontation and ultimately hate?

The path to hate is quite simple actually, the real question is why hate in the first place?

We hate because we find it difficult to hurt the ones we are close to. We hate because we struggle to hurt the ones we love.

Hate is employed as a tool numbing and ultimately killing (because hate is an act of murder) the feelings that prevent us from lashing out and attacking the people we disagree with. We become so angry that dialogue and debate are not working, so angry at people for not coming to “our side” on the basis of our sound arguments that we wish to employ harsher measures – arrest, violence, censorship, etc.

But, we find that we struggle to attack the ones we love and act in ways that will no doubt hurt them and so, in the end, rather than digging deeper into relationship and reconcilation, we walk the path of hatred.

While hate is a choice, one does not simply hate a person overnight. You start by finding things about them that simply annoy you…things that get under your skin. Their liberal or conservative nature, their beliefs, the things they eat, the people the listen to or read. You dwell on these things and rationalize your growing dislike for them. You push them away, you stop talking to them.

Overtime this path leads you to dehumanize them. They are not a person, they are the ideas and things you do not like. Once this happens the step into full blown hatred is easy. You see them as a threat, as the other, as a thing to be eliminated at all costs.

The hard thing about hatred is it’s also the response of the hated. Hatred reinforces and creates hatred. If I hate you, you will likely come to hate me. You will start employing the same tactics in reverse.

Hatred makes us do horrible things. Hatred makes us feel horrible things. When we do and feel horrible things there is a very real danger that we, in the end, will become horrible things. Hatred never ends well for anyone, especially for the one who hates. Hatred transforms us into monsters.

The only antidotes for hatred are love and relationship. This is why hatred fights so strongly against them…love and relationship inocculate a person against hate. It is difficult to hate a person we are in relationship with, a person a see and talk to…it is impossible to hate a person we are in love with.

The question, of course, in our divided times, is who will leap across the divide first and seek to repair and restore broken relationship?

Joy

On By CantelonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

This morning I awoke early from a dream with an awareness (as can often happen).

The awareness started simply as a realization that a certain sense of peace had descended upon me – something I have struggled to feel for a VERY long time. Now anyone who knows me (including myself) would be cautious and suggest one “just wait” before assuming this state is anything lasting. History suggests these would be wise words.

Still it felt worth exploring.

Without going into too many convoluted metaphors I came to realize that what had taken root in me seemingly overnight but more likely as a seed germinating for many, many years was the following:

Happiness, true abiding happiness which some might call joy, is not found in other people (places or things). Ultimately its source is found within the self.

For some people this is not a revelation but an understanding they have had since birth passed along by parents and grandparents. To that I say – wonderful. But for me and perhaps others this truth has been evasive.

As you dig into this simple idea you begin to become aware that there are consequences connected to it. For instance if you do not believe this, as I have struggled to, where then does joy come from?

I cannot speak for others. In my experience however joy has been in other people. I have always lived and operated under the instinctive idea that my happiness depended on others. That its source was external. This means that I came to believe that the opposite was also true. That the source of any unhappiness was also other people. My anger, depression or rage came from outside, not within.

This can also play out as joy comes from money, joy comes from accomplishment, joy comes from owning lots of things.

With these ideas came the falsely liberating idea that in order to find happiness (or remove anger/sadness) other people were the source and cause. I say this is falsely liberating because initially you do not feel responsible for your own miserable state – it is other’s fault.

But, over time, you do begin to wonder why the weight continues to grow despite the fact that you do not believe you are carrying it. If you are like me you simply believe even harder that others are responsible and the cycle continues. To quote Dr. Crusher in a certain episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation – “if there’s nothing wrong with me, there must be something wrong with the universe.”

Believing that joy comes from outside of me is a little like believing that cocaine is better than dopamine. Sure you can manufacture dopamine yourself but have you tried crack?

Eventually seeking joy externally becomes addictive. You stop seeking and nurturing the inner source and need new and more exciting external hits every time. But unlike dopamine the crack is slowly killing you and driving the people you love away. You blame the people. This does not help.

Another analogy would be the sun and the moon. The source of all life on earth comes from the sun. It manufactures it from within and emanates it. This is attractive. The moon on the other hand, while beautiful, provides nothing of its own. It reflects the sun. It is fine to admire the moon, to write poems about it. But if you decide to grow your garden by its light you will be sorely disappointed. Nothing lives by the light of the moon. Its light is borrowed.

Happy people are like the sun. They glow from within. They are attractive. Life springs up in their wake. If one is not careful one can rely too heavily on other people’s happiness instead of your own. To reflect another’s joy is fine and beautiful but, like the moon, it will not nurture and it does not come from within…it is borrowed. Of course the trick is determining if those other people are truly happy or if they too are merely getting their joy from externals. All happiness is attractive…but joy nurtured from within is lasting while externals fade fast and if you are not careful you could find yourself enmeshed in a relationship based on need rather than nurture.

Of course one of the obvious problems of relying on others for my happiness is that it places an unfair, and at times enormous burden on them. Make me happy! Stop making me sad! etc.

Don’t misunderstand. A person who stands in front of me punching me in the face is responsible for my pain. I can either stand there and hope they stop or remove myself from the circumstance. I cannot manifest joy from within as a shield to stop my nose from being broken. If I continue to stand there eventually I am as much the reason for my pain as the person hitting me.

Externals matter.

So – joy comes from within. So what?

Good question.

Well one thing this realization can do is redirect efforts away from others and onto myself. It does not mean everlasting happiness by any stretch. Like an explorer searching for a rare species of blue monkey that only lives in Madagascar – if they decide to search in South America they will never find it. They will become increasingly angry at their guides, the landscape and themselves for their stupidity.

Knowing it is in Madagascar does not guarantee finding it, however the odds go from zero to an achievable number and this is infinitely better.

The kind of equipment we have when we search matters too. If you come out of childhood healthy and well-adjusted with wonderful role models who demonstrated true joy than you are far more likely to discover it for yourself. But, if like myself and so many others, childhood was a little like walking through a minefield of trauma going from one explosion to another and whose role models either gave up on happiness or saw its source in others…well, you have your work cut out for you.

I’m happy for this new realization but I am cautious. It does not mean I will not be sad. It does not mean I will not be angry. It does not mean I cannot be hurt. These paths are incredibly well worn in my life and far easier to walk down than the new one I have just discovered.

What it does mean is that maybe…just maybe, I have a rough compass heading to head toward. Certainly I do not have the GPS coordinates but maybe that will come. Hopefully it also means I can stop burdening others and making them responsible for my happiness, my sadness, my anger etc.

Maybe we can journey together, helping one another as needed. When times get tough it might mean recognizing it’s the path that has become difficult and not the people I journey with.

Time will tell.

The far more frightening thing this all means on top of everything discussed is that just as I am the source of my own abiding happiness I am NOT the source of anyone else’s. This is almost harder for me to accept.

If I try to be someone else’s source I am simply becoming their dealer enabling the addiction and eventually I will not have what they need.

Again this is not a license to be a complete asshole. It is far easier for me and others to discover and nurture inner joy when the people around us are content and not hateful.

Having a sense of how to cultivate abiding joy also means our reservoirs are deeper and more capable of supporting ourselves and others through difficult times. It may be the difference between sharing a glass of water and a well.

I want to be like the sun to other people. I want to bring life…but I have to be the sun for myself first.

A Symphony of Anger & Sadness

On By CantelonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

For generations before I was born my family was filled with the voices. While in my mother’s womb those voices no doubt surrounded and permeated like some sort of twisted lullaby.

Throughout my childhood and teen years I was engulfed in them – these voices of anger and sadness. They came from every direction, loud and soft, screaming like a hurricane or gently whispering like a breeze. They were the water I swam in. How could they not have affected me? How could I not have developed certain coping mechanisms both healthy and unhealthy to deal with them?

This was my world for as far back as I can remember. A world of wailing and screaming; a world of punching fists, hammers to heads, black eyes, bruised faces and blood. I learned to crawl into myself. I learned how to become cold. I learned how to build a switch within my mind and use it to turn off my emotions when the world became too overwhelming.

What a terrible symphony of anger and sadness complete with arias, overtures, whole movements and more. There were heroes and villains. There were heroes who became villains and heroes who were never heroes at all…just wolves in sheep’s clothing, lurking.

It was like living in a gentle acid bath that slowly etched itself into your skin. Over time the etching became scarring and the scarring became an involuntary shield off of which things like trust and hope would bounce like bullets off of Superman.

That’s the thing about growing up in that kind of environment, it changes you in ways you don’t realize until much later when you are trying to figure out things like broken relationships and poor friendships. You begin to realize that you stopped trusting people as a defense mechanism because the people you were taught to trust hurt you over and over again.

I especially learned not to trust men…to see them all as monsters or monsters-in-waiting (as if I was not a man myself). I never feared men…I hated them and came to view them all with suspicion. The male capacity to hurt, to steal innocence and the things you loved, to stomp and crush, to devour people whole to satiate a never ending appetite was a caricature I built in my mind. Part of my defenses. If you don’t trust them you cannot get close to them. If you don’t get close to them they cannot hurt you.

Men were the enemies who would hurt my mum. I remember once when a guy confronted me and called my mum a slut. He was much larger than me. I grew cold and I smashed him in the face with my fists. I remember standing there and watching the blood gush from a surely broken nose. Then I calmly left. I walked away analyzing the moment as if I were 1,000 meters up looking down on it. The switch had flipped. I felt nothing. I’ve never told anyone that story before.

I fought a lot when I was younger. I threw a lot of fists to heads and faces (breaking my left hand once in the process). It never helped.

This is what those voices can do. They change a person. They scar a person.

I am thankful that in the midst of all this dissonance there was the still small voice of my mum’s love. It was like the small note of a flute in an orchestral movement. In Debussy’s Prélude à  l’aprés-midi d’un Faune the flute opens and leads the way…all the other instruments follow and are bound to its power. It is gentle and soft but it is prfoundly strong – this is love.

In the often chaotic world of anger and sadness mum’s love would meander in and soften the hard edges around me leading me to safer places. Since then my children have been this kind of love for me. Since then Megan has been this kind of love for me…softly cutting through the scars and anger and the sadness with a clarity only love can provide and act on. Sometimes I feel as though I can still hear mum’s love far away, echoing off the walls of my mind.

I continue to work to rise above and beyond the voices of anger and sadness that still echo in my head. It can be hard. I still struggle with trust. I struggle with fears of abandonment. I avoid conflict like the plague and can be overly morose.

To this day, if I am not careful, people can use these same voices to manipulate me. Anger causes me to run or to lash out in hurtful ways. Sadness causes me to fold up or draws me in to a place where I am malleable and without will.

I am substantially better than I once was. I have grown. I am not who I once was but the echoes of those voices still come to me in the night or when I am alone too long with myself. They are like ghosts that seek to come back after repeated exorcisms.

No matter. Despite those voices I have built a life. I will continue to work against them until they are all but silenced. This is my trajectory, even if I stumble (or am pushed) off the occasional cliff.