It started in 2009. The day I was packing up my car and running away from the Okanagan because I thought it was better than sticking around. I thought I was doing the right thing. And on that hot August afternoon, on the sidewalk outside my apartment building, just steps from the trunk of my car, was an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of printer paper plastered to the concrete, with big bold black lettering asking,

And the answer, as clear and brutal as a ton of bricks, was no. I wasn’t following my heart or my dreams, I wasn’t being authentic or true to myself. I was doing what others wanted of me, being a ‘good girl’. And like being slapped by the razor-sharp backhand of God or the Great Cosmos of the Universe, I felt the sting of that piece of paper for years. I still do. Because I never stopped being good for everyone else but myself. I never stopped trying to please the world around me. And I never stopped sacrificing myself in order to do it. 

Don’t get me wrong: sometimes we have to do the responsible thing. Sometimes, there is no one else to care for the people we love, and sometimes what others need of us outweighs the desires we have for ourselves. But sometimes, also, we are cowards. We cling to doing the “right thing” because it’s safe, we tread cautiously so as to not make waves, and we hope that it will mean something one, five, fifteen years down the line, and when we get there, we realize it doesn’t. There’s no reward, just greater burden, a bigger ask, and a loss of self that is so deeply and unnervingly painful to describe. 

I don’t know where that piece of paper came from. I looked for a broken trash bag strewn somewhere along the road, for duplicate copies stuck to windows or signposts – there was nothing. The street was clean. Just three words of the universe judging me from the pavement. Reminding me. And warning me. 

It’s taken nearly fifteen years since that question knocked the wind out of me – but especially this year – to finally understand. Or, finally be willing to heed the answer: Life is finite, none of us know if we’ll be here tomorrow, and “no” isn’t how anyone should answer the question. 

To be clear: happiness doesn’t come from anyone else. A partner can’t make you happy. They can bring joy. Comfort. Companionship. But happiness, at its core, is personal. It’s peace. It’s your soul finding its purpose, and in doing so, feeling content. And if you’ve ever been a sacrificial lamb to the whims, desires or needs of others, you’ll know just how it feels to walk around the world without it. To feel more like a tool than the wielder. 

This last year has been the icing on a macabre and grossly ironic decade. The closure of the family business, emergent surgeries, the deaths of the most important women in my life, the loss of a life I thought I’d have until the end of my days, and the inheritance of a parent with whom my relationship has always been… strained; whose words just before last Christmas suggested he’d rather die than be in my care, two months before his house caught fire. This house. Now my house. A house that requires more repairs than I can afford a mortgage for, since losing so many hours to the care and maintenance of others. Irony. 

I make no proclamations for 2026. No promises. No resolutions. But I do find myself faced with a choice to make, and the choice is: what do I want? It’s time to dismantle the layers of armor, the responsibilities, the obligations, the things I do because I feel I have to, because they’re what everyone else wants, not because I want them. Happiness comes from within. From making a choice. And from stepping back from the wrong ones. 

This isn’t really just a story about a house – it’s a story about how, in looking at this house charred and in ruins, and remembering a childhood of running through its rooms and halls, I found a kinship in the weathered, battered and wholly neglected bones of it. It’s a story of peeling away the layers, cleansing and repairing the wounds, and finding home. My home.

For the first time, in a very long time, this story is mine.