The Relationship

Have you ever gotten out of a bad relationship?

The sort of dynamic where you know the other person is wrong for you, where they’re small and petty and pointlessly mean, constantly, where they’re not a good person and you can no longer bring yourself to even pretend that they are, but you’ve stayed with them anyway, out of fear that you can’t do any better, fear that, after so many years, this is all you deserve?

Have you ever been pushed to the point where even your own worst, most morally cowardly self can no longer make excuses for a person, and you see them, perhaps because of something they’ve said, perhaps something they’ve done, for who they truly are, and you can take no more of their abuse, their lies, of the petty, snarky contempt they show you with their every utterance, and you, finally, push them away once and for all?

Have you ever found yourself, away from a person for the first time in longer than you care to remember, so emotionally exhausted from the dynamic you’ve escaped, so utterly drained, that you can’t bring yourself to think about your future, to find something more healthy for yourself, a true partnership in which you might grow and thrive, because after everything you’ve been put through you no longer trust your own judgment in the matter, and anyway you just need something simple, something comfortable, something unchallenging.

…have you ever gotten out of something profoundly unhealthy, and you just want to be with someone sweet, and a little bit shallow, who you know will never ask much from you, while you figure your shit out?

That, in a nutshell, was what Election 2015 was like for Canada, so far as I can tell...