Jasyn

He was my first real heartbreak. Not the kind of breakup where you go out to lunch in middle school and your best friend tells you that Kyle is in fact not your boyfriend anymore and has been dating Stephanie since, like, second period this morning. Nooo. Like that real suck the air outta your lungs, watch the wine glass that is your heart fall to the ground and shatter into a million fucking pieces kind of heartbreak. The kind where, months - maybe years later, when you're minding your own business and going about your day, you find remnants of the break still tucked away in the corner of your kitchen. Pesky glass, I thought I cleaned you up ages ago. He was that type of heartbreak for me. When I started putting some thought into this trip, and the possibility of making the long lonely drive far up north to the town I spent my childhood in, to take care of some business that was very dear to my heart (and quite frankly, long overdue), I couldn't help but think of getting into contact with Jasyn. It's been a decade and a half. That heartache was so long ago. The first of so many more to come. Tor the past several years, when Jasyn has crossed my mind - say when a Neil Young song comes on the radio - there is nothing that I feel other than hope that he is doing well. Amazing, eh? What time can do? It's like the ultimate Polysporin for the heart. The first time I met Jasyn, he was playing a gig at a bar with his band. I remember watching him intently while he was on stage, mesmerized by the presence he had - the space that he held so confidently. I remember him watching me as well. After the set was done, I walked up to him and asked to buy him a shot, myself already confident with a stomach full of liquid courage. We chatted. He asked for my number, and said that he had to pack up and he would call me sometime.

Yeah... Okay, sure. About a week later, he did. I remember when he phoned me the first time. I asked him what he was up to. He said he was sitting in his room listening to some techno beats. We laughed months after we were dating about his opening line. Slickkk, bud. Jasyn was seven years my senior. He seemed to have lived a full lifetime more than me already. He had recently moved back from Vancouver. He was a graphics arts teacher at the high school. He was an unreal artist as well - famous around town for his aboriginal art murals plastered all over the sides of apartment buildings, in the mall, and various other places. He had also had a failed engagement. That became a huge issue in our relationship. (My issue, not his). I was still

too young. Too naïve. I hadn't yet lived enough of my life to realize that there are people you hold on to after things end, for whatever reason. That you can still find value in one another even if things don't work out the way you expected. But I didn't understand this in life just yet. I could only see it as a threat. Ego can be a real motherfucker. He was very spiritual. Very attuned to nature - to the importance of other living things. He told me a story once, about him going out on the lake fishing in a boat by himself. How after he caught a Pickerel and took it off the line and watched it gasp for air out of the water, he jumped into the water off the side of the boat - holding the fish above water with his head under, holding his breath until he couldn't anymore. Coming up gasping for air himself, and as he did so, dropping the fish back into its natural habitat. I had never come across anyone before who had the thought process that Jasyn did. I have so many memories from that time way back then. That feels like a hundred years ago. A completely different life really. Memories of staying up all night drinking around the fire, listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young…The Highway men… Leonard Cohen. Having the embers of the fire burning out in the grey-blue sky of the early morning so far up north. Fog over the water surrounded by the pines, jumping off the dock into the lake. What a way to start the morning, or I guess, end the night, depending on your view of it. I remember one year for Christmas, him giving me a pair of mucklucks that ended right below the knee. Grey rabbit fur on the top and bottom, bead work in the middle, and pompoms on the side. He got them from a lady who made them on a reserve nearby, exchanging some of his artwork for the mucklucks. I remember the feel of them the first time I wore them out onto the crunchy frozen December snow. I remember sitting around the kitchen table with him playing guitar and singing House of the Rising Sun at the top of his lungs. Man could he do that song justice. Jasyn is aboriginal. He taught me more than anyone about the atrocities that were done to the indigenous people of Canada. He was incredibly passionate about it, and I'll be forever grateful for those lessons. We ended horribly. Things were mishandled on his part, and very mishandled on my part. I was young. We both were. It's been a decade and a half since I last saw him. Since we last spoke. I'm not sure if I'll get to see him. I hope I do. I hope that when I reach out to him, he will agree to meet up with me. I'm sure it will be a shock to get a message after all these years from a ghost of the past. Can you imagine getting a message from someone you used to date? After sixteen years?! “Heyyyyyy, remember me? It'd be great to see ya. Also, side note, can I write some personal shit about you on my blog??” Fuck. This may very well not go in my favour. But this journey is a big one for me. About taking risks, fighting demons, and hopefully, if I'm

lucky, righting wrongs. If this turns out to just be an entry in my journal, that's ok too. I don't get to decide for someone how they react to a situation. That is not my choice to make. But Jasyn, thank you for those early memories in my life. The lessons you taught me, the things I was eventually able to take away from my first real heartbreak. I sincerely hope that you've gotten everything you've wanted in life. I hope you've made incredible memories. I hope you got the girl you get to call your morning light. I hope you’re still that guy that holds his head under water with the fish above it. Still so in tune with the spirit of other living things. I don't gamble. But if I did, I would take the bet that you are.

JW