I was Fourteen

He was nineteen

I went to my high school prom when I was 14. My boyfriend was 19.

On paper, this admission will conjure up a smorgasbord of reactions, and mostly, whatever reaction you’re having, (let’s say you’re a human living with a balanced mindset) is probably correct.

Allow yourself to imagine the 14-year-old me. Here I am. I’ve already accomplished things I’m proud of: I’ve won the Grand Theatre’s Young Playwrights Competition, and I sashay into high school an accomplished pianist and performer, with more than a few sweet awards already behind me. I’d been at the top of my class throughout elementary school and even graduated as valedictorian, despite coating St. John Fisher School in shaving foam on my last day of Grade 8 and enduring the wrath of Mrs. Traill, who threatened to strip me of my distinction.

My parents are busy running their newspaper business, and John, my 19-year-old boyfriend, a friend of my brother’s, is, in my view, completely respectful. We are first, friends. He lets me navigate the relationship at my own pace. We sit around for hours watching episodes of Friday the 13th and listening to Queen. We’re only intimate to a certain point. He visits our house a lot and is part of the family.

Fast-forward to 2024.

I had never thought anything of this relationship with John. He and I had even exchanged a few messages over the years, referencing some of our old jokes and catching up with random small talk. But it was on a trip to Aruba in 2024, surrounded by nightlife and beaches and New Year’s Eve, when I started to become aware of just who someone is at age 19, that it hit me like a sledgehammer to the side of my head.

Photo by Vera Wijermars

I’ve come to understand it differently now. In 1990, in the middle of nowhere Ontario, no one was really looking at what this relationship meant for me.

We were intimate “to a certain point,” but I’ve learned that those distinctions don’t necessarily tell you much. Attachment doesn’t organize itself neatly around a line you did or didn’t cross. Actions and emotions intertwine. Bonding happens. Confusion happens.

He was kind to me. It felt normal to me. Both of those things can be true, and still not change what I see now when I zoom out: I was fourteen. He was nineteen. I should not have been left to navigate that on my own.

Today, I live through the lens, as much as I can, of forgiveness. Forgiveness for ignorance or neglect. Adults, especially those living with generational or cultural trauma, make their own attempt to survive the grind of daily life. I’ll never know what was really going on back then, and I’m certainly not going to hang it all out in a Substack: things I don’t understand.

But I learned through writing my book that instead of assuming what others’ experiences were, you can only look at your own and take appropriate accountability. Unfortunately, this can only be done in the adult years, with the gift of a developed brain, lived experience and the love of people around you who can reinforce what respect and care really is. Those things that happened to us in childhood, as we all know, end up running the show.

Thank you, childhood.

The fallout from being left to navigate a relationship like that at 14 has been significant. First, there is what I couldn’t possibly understand then. Then there is the reckoning that came in 2024, the sledgehammer realization of seeing it clearly for the first time. Even that went largely unattended, by the people around me and, in some ways, by me.

So now there is the aftermath: a pile of jagged glass I have to gather up. Gloves on or gloves off. I can choose who surrounds me as I do the hard work of softening into clarity. I can choose people who are gentle, supportive and willing to care. But the gathering is mine. At the risk of elbowing my way through deep emotions in a inelegant attempt to armchair psychoanalyze, I notice some of the wounding.

I live with the message that my worth is tied to my sexuality.

I live with a loss of some aspects of childhood that may have existed in my early teens.

I am untrusting of adults, at times.

I subconsciously believe that I am not worth deep care and love.

I have sometimes rationalized neglect in my own life.

I have, at times, unconsciously, made a home for emotional manipulation.

And sure, this seed of unease and pain, combined with my love for writing and music, probably whipped me into a pretty great songwriter. You’re welcome.

Therein lies another issue. The ticket I rode out of rural Ontario on (my musical gift) became a measure of my worth, in part because some of the other ways of valuing myself simply didn’t exist. The promise of a life in music became a blanket I would cling to well into my forties. The thought of someone taking that blanket away, even as it was becoming ratty and perhaps no longer necessary, was terrifying.

The sad part is that it’s kept me from truly enjoying the melodies and lyrics I create. I think with my new album, I might finally be starting to unravel some of that.

The “falling in love with my music” is coming from being surrounded by safe people in the studio, like Kara, who has been engineering, or Kevin, who played cello. It’s come through a handful of caring fans who hold me carefully, and through the blunt admission that it’s been fucking hard to make this new album. And that it’s okay to admit that.

I think, if anything, reflecting on this injustice, this abuse I didn’t understand as abuse at the time, has allowed the broken parts of my shell to finally start cracking and falling away, revealing a very young girl who, honestly, values something more than big stages, Juno Award nominations, or songs in HBO shows.

What I’ve come to appreciate most is someone asking, “How are you?” and really, truly meaning the question.

And if I’m completely honest, what I’m learning to celebrate are the moments (and they are new) when, at the end of a long day, I ask myself the same thing, and find that I’m perfectly okay with whatever answer comes back.