- We're just gonna ignore the fact
that summer's coming to an end.
We're gonna act like summer's just beginning.
Hot backs girl summer of 2021.
Who's excited to get started?
Middle of August.
No, middle of September.
Oh, my God.
That's the vibe I'm going for.
I need a little sun in my life.
I need a little vitamin D.
And yes, there are dick jokes I could make right now.
It's really not the vibe.
We're not gonna go there
currently.
Hi, everybody.
(coughs)
I
need a haircut.
Jesus Christ.
Whenever something in my life shifts
or I'm living in a new place,
or we don't know what's really going on,
I like to sit down, give you all a life update,
let you know where I'm at.
Oh, because this has all been a journey.
Drink.
You have been along for this ride.
You will remain along for this ride, I hope.
Please stay, don't go anywhere, I need you.
God, you're all I have left.
Where am I going with this?
I understand that there are a lot of questions.
Where am I?
Why am I back in Canada?
What am I doing alone again?
And so I thought I would do a little update,
a little Q and A and answer some of those questions.
I apologize off the top
if my energy is a little low or if I'm not seeming as like,
I don't know, thrilled or excited as I usually do.
I just know what I'm gonna talk about in this video.
I know a couple of the questions that I'm going to answer
and it's
(questions popping)
hard.
But before we jump into all of that,
let me introduce myself to any of you
who don't know my face.
Hello, my name is Alayna Joy.
I make videos mostly about the LGBTQ community
here on this channel.
So if you're not already make sure you hit
that subscribe button,
follow me on Instagram
because that's where the magic happens.
It's also where I get all of my questions
for videos like these.
And now, after a word from our sponsor,
let's jump into the video.
I guess I have to hold this up to my mouth.
I'm gonna use it as microphone.
Should be holding it up to my mouth.
Thank you for that little intro, past Alayna.
Before we get into talking about my deepest and darkest,
I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of this video,
Skillshare.
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I'm a big fan.
For this video, I thought that it would be
especially relevant to talk about a class
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It's called "The Ultimate Self-care Playbook",
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Yes, that Jonathan Van Ness.
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Drink.
Okay, let's go over onto my Instagram
and see what we've got in terms of questions.
Ah, yes. (laughs)
Just as I suspected.
So I haven't actually looked at any of these questions
ahead of time,
but I know what you all wanna know,
because the questions have been there for what,
a year and a half?
I can't fake that I'm like excited
to talk about this because I'm not, it's painful.
Ah, okay. (laughs)
Okay, let me answer a few like light ones
before we get into it.
Okay.
(clears throat)
Do you get homesick when you travel for longer periods
of time and how do you deal with it?
Yeah, I absolutely get homesick.
But I just remind myself in those moments
that home will always be there.
And so why not fully enjoy and experience the new place
that I'm in while I'm there?
Because I can always come back here.
I can always go back to Manitoba.
But I can't always be in the UK or in Europe
or wherever else.
No matter where I am, I'm always gonna have something
that I miss about somewhere else.
So instead of constantly thinking about the things
that I missing about another place,
I'm trying to enjoy the things that I miss about this place
while I'm in it.
I'm in a long distance relationship,
so what are some tips to handle it?
The best tip that I can give
about handling long distance relationships
is having a shared end goal so that you have something
to look forward to during that time that you're apart.
Knowing when you're going to be able to see each other next
and also knowing what the shared vision
for the future is for the two of you is really important.
Do you still talk with Dallas?
Yes.
Yes, I do.
He is still as lovely as ever.
And he is still as important of a part of my life as ever.
Also when he started a podcast.
He started like a D and D podcast with his friends.
I'll link it in the description if any of you
wanna check it out.
Do you see yourself living in BC longterm?
Not moving back to Manitoba closer to the fam?
I do see myself living in BC longterm.
I love it here.
I've never found another place that I've gone to
and just been like, this is home.
Like I feel it in me, you know.
Like being here, I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be.
It's incredibly difficult to be away from my family,
but because I'm lucky enough to have a job
that I can do from anywhere,
I still do get to spend a lot of time with them.
So I feel like I will live here long-term
even if I am like splitting time.
Oh, interesting.
Do you think you could have lived your fullest gay life
if you stayed in Manitoba?
Yes.
Anywhere that it's safe-ish,
as safe as it can be to be a person in the world,
you can build your queerest, most authentic life.
But living in a big international city like Vancouver
does have the benefit of a ton of queer people.
So here I am able to build
a bigger queer life,
a more complex queer life.
There's just more queer people,
so there's more opportunity for relationship
and community and friendship.
There's like queer bouldering groups,
there's queer anything, you know.
There is a much bigger specifically queer space out here,
which I enjoy and take advantage of and appreciate.
But does that mean I wouldn't have been able to live
like my fullest life in Manitoba?
No, we're everywhere.
You might just have to work a little harder
to find that community in whatever area it is
that you live in.
New to the channel,
can you intro yourself, basic information?
What would I say about myself
to give like a basic introduction?
I am
a gay woman
who grew up in small town Manitoba.
I moved across Canada to the Western side
with a long-term male partner.
We were together on and off for almost a decade.
We got engaged.
COVID hit, in that I realized that I was gay.
(laughs)
And so that relationship ended,
that period of my life ended.
And that was like a year and a half ago.
I then had a whirlwind year of like trying to figure out
what that meant for me and what happened next.
I had a wonderful relationship that ended
and now here we are, again. (laughs)
How much longer can I dance around
what you're actually here to hear about?
How did you cope living alone for those months
and how are you doing now that you aren't?
So I am still living alone or I guess I should say
I am living alone again.
I love living alone.
I love it.
I don't feel like I have to cope with living alone
because I love it.
I love having my own space and being able to fill my time
in the ways that fulfill me.
What I'm really trying to work on,
being less rigid in my scheduling of my time.
Especially now that it is just me on my own,
there's nobody else that I have to plan around.
So I'm really trying to like go through my days,
obviously getting the things done that I need to get done,
entering each day and deciding
how I'm going to spend my spare time as it comes.
Like when my work day comes to an end,
instead of having everything scheduled out
a week in advance, trying to just like sit down
and ask myself, Hey, what do I feel like doing?
What do I actually feel like doing right now?
And sometimes that's going climbing.
Sometimes it's going for a hike.
Sometimes I want to go hang out with my friends.
Sometimes I don't want to do anything.
And I want to sit on the couch and watch TV or read a book.
Living alone is excellent.
And if you're struggling with that,
I think the way that you can work toward making it excellent
is reminding yourself that your time is truly your own.
What do you want to do?
What do you feel like doing?
Go do that!
'Cause you can.
Did you feel guilty at all
after you and your fiance split up?
I'm asking for my own guilt.
Yes.
Yes, absolutely I did.
You feel guilty anytime that you hurt somebody
that you care about.
And ending a significant relationship like that
is going to cause hurt inevitably.
First of all, like reminding yourself that you need to live
your own fullest life and you need to make the choices
that are going to make you happy.
You can't live your life for somebody else
because you don't want to hurt their feelings.
Like you can't stay in a relationship, in any relationship
for the other person.
You have to be there for yourself too.
And then in my specific situation, like, I'm gay.
Not only do I now get to go and live my most authentic life,
my ex gets to be with partners that aren't gay.
(laughs)
So that's a win for both of us, you know?
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
Let's just do it.
I mean, there's a thousand questions here.
Let's enter this conversation like this.
How's your heart?
My heart hurts.
This is so strange.
It's so strange to be addressing this this way,
but
here we are.
I don't want to get too much into everything.
The long and short of it is, the sitch, if you will,
yes,
we were together,
no, we're not anymore.
And there was no bad blood,
no one did anything wrong to the other person.
Sometimes you want something to work
and it just doesn't.
And like all that being said,
please don't go message her and stuff.
I don't want her to be like bombarded with messages
and comments about all of this.
I guess I just want you all to know what happened
so that we can move forward.
Because it's hard, it's really (beep) hard
to go through a breakup and just see all these comments
and all these questions and DMS all over social media
about you and that person when you're not together anymore.
And it's
painful.
So now you know.
How are you truly?
I am okay.
I am loving the life that I've built in Canada
and in Vancouver.
I love my community and I love the things that I get to do
to fill my time like bouldering and climbing and hiking
and camping and all of that stuff.
But I'm also sad.
I'm like really sad, you know?
What are your plans for the future?
Oh, I don't know, man. (laughs)
I don't know.
Have you ever edited something out of a video
because it was too hot to handle?
Yes.
Yes, I have.
At what point did you/do you stop feeling like a baby gay?
I don't feel like a baby gay
any more.
Maybe it's because I've now like lived through
a full cycle of gay relationship.
I don't know.
I don't feel like a baby gay anymore in the way
that like I don't feel as like terrified and nervous
at all of these like new experiences,
because now I've had a lot of those experiences.
I do still feel like a baby gay in the sense that
all of these feelings.
All these feelings are very new and different
than feelings I've experienced in the past.
Like way more intense.
So in that way, I do still feel like a baby gay.
I guess for me it would come down to
having had the experiences.
So I think you stop feeling like a baby gay
once you've experienced
the things you hadn't experienced before,
like in the queer world.
Are you still thinking about grad school?
Yes, I am, definitely.
Because
I would love to do research in the queer community
on like the late bloomer lesbian
or the coming out later in life experience.
I would love to study that.
I would just need to know that I had
the next three years or so to commit to that.
A master's program is definitely in my future.
I just don't know how far in the future that is for me.
What's something you're looking forward to?
I am looking forward to going back to Manitoba.
Honestly, it feels like deja vu.
Like I feel like I am back in April 2020,
fresh from a breakup, no idea what's going to happen next.
So I go home to see my family.
I feel the same.
I'm sitting here in my apartment,
like not knowing what comes next,
about to go and spend a chunk of time with my family
and wondering like,
did this past year and a half even happen?
Like, what's going on?
Was that something like pipe dream?
No, obviously not.
Obviously not.
How's your ex doing?
Do you guys keep in touch?
Which one?
Oh, whoa.
I have a video coming up, I think it's the next video.
I think it'll be next week's video with Ashley Gavin
where we're going to talk about like queer breakups.
So hopefully she'll be able to give me some
wise old lesbian advice.
When to know you're ready to date again
after a long-term relationship breakup.
Nada, anything helpful to offer you.
Again, hopefully next week's video.
How's the flossing going?
(retches)
I hurt my elbow climbing like a month ago
and I finally went to the doctor.
And it's not broken, no fractures, no bone chips.
We did X-rays so that's great.
But I injured a couple of my nerves apparently.
Ooh, that gives me the heebie-jeebies.
And so I'm in physio and my physio
gave me this stretch exercise mobility thing.
It's literally just doing this as far as my range of motion
comfortably allows and it's called nerve flossing.
(loudly retches)
Oh, I can't even think about it when I do it.
The idea of that grosses me out so much.
The nerve flossing is going well.
I think I have another physio appointment
in a couple of days, so we'll see if I've improved anything.
Ooh, do you have any tattoos?
Yes.
I have one tattoo here.
I'm getting another tattoo very soon here.
And then I have, oh, God, this video probably
isn't even up anymore.
Maybe I'll have to tell that story someday again.
I had a tattoo on my finger here that I had to have removed.
But that's a story for another day.
We'll end on this one.
Are you happy?
Yes.
Overall, I am happy.
Even going through experiences that hurt,
it still feels right.
Like this all still feels right.
Do I have kind of a low lying sadness feeling?
Yes.
But am I also happy and content and feel a sense of peace
in my life?
Yes.
Yes, I am like going through it.
I'm not gonna try and deny that.
As I have always said, I also know that I'm gonna be okay.
And I know that I'm still every day
choosing the life that's going to make me feel
the most fulfilled,
choosing the life that is most authentic to me.
And so, yeah.
Yeah, that makes me happy.
I think that's it.
I think I'm gonna end this here.
Thank you so much for watching.
Another huge thank you to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video.
Make sure you click that link in my description
to get your full month free trial
of Skillshare premium membership.
It is worth the click.
And as always a huge thank you to my VIP patrons,
my vitally important producers.
You make my world go round.
I love you all very much and I will see you in the next one.
Bye. (blows a kiss)
Oh, most recent comfort food.
So I discovered these like barbecue baked corn nuts,
or like corn bits.
Once second.
Barbecue flavored toasted corn.
And I can't get enough.