What do I want?
It feels like I’m being ungrateful when I look at my life and ask myself that. Want. It’s a luxury. I used to ask myself, “What do I need?”
I need groceries. I need gas. I need $20 to get a bus pass. I need to pay this bill. That bill. Any bill.
And sometimes, my inner dialogue still sounds like that. But every now and then, I dream bigger than paycheque to paycheque, and I ask myself – what do I want?
I want to travel.
I want to go visit my god-sister in New Zealand for ten days. I want to breath that air, walk those beaches, eat those foods, and flirt with a Māori. I want to hear the language and talk decolonization and language enrichment. I want to photograph new friends in their traditional lands; I want to laugh loudly, letting my accent loose as I share the stories of our family.
I want to go to the Artic Ocean. I want to touch the cold, cold waters, let them freeze my toes a little, numb my fingertips. I want to reach down, and touch the stories of the land. Let the permafrost reach back and let me know that I am one of many, one of the ancestors, and I want to sit in the silence of isolation.
I want to go back to the West Coast. I want to visit my kin, island hopping with food in my belly and joy in my heart, camera in hand. I want to sleep in strange beds, wrapped in soft blankets, giggling as the stories break past dawn.
I want to write this novel in my head.
I need the time, the time to sit down by myself for hours on end, and write. I want to travel to the places I’ve only dreamed about in this novel, and infuse myself with the knowledge that I am writing because my heart demands so, and to trust that process.
I want to sit down in front of my journals, smiling as I doodle the faces of my characters, the smile of the loved ones. I want to wake up in tears again, remembering his face and his story, only to remember that it was just a dream, then get up, and write that dream.
I want to teach, creatively.
I want to finish my PhD and stand in font of a classroom of students whose faces look like mine – Indigenous, proud, alert, and happy. I want to stand in front of my baby cousins who have seen the late nights and long absences from our homelands, but now understand the why. I want to infuse their brains with words written by other Indigenous authors who they can relate to, and who they can aspire to be. I want to share knowledge that resonates with our shared truths.
I want to travel from classroom to classroom, sharing laughter and stories in between bites of bannock and tea. I want to take back the storytelling aspects of our cultures and apply them to classroom lectures, throwing out syllabuses and instead, letting the season dictate the teachings, letting the students interest guide us in a collective experience.
It’s good to see this, to write it down and let it soak in. Let it stand as witness.
This is what I want.
