(Peach-flavoured ice tea with a little sugar and lots of ice cubes will make the perfect drink for this month!)
May began with happiness and hope.
It then transitioned into kindness.
May reminds you of the reasons to live.
May takes you back home.
Sometimes, even when home no longer exists, May spreads herself out; she stretches over your heads like the sky, and she shelters you, she transforms herself into home for you.
I moved out of the first place I ever moved into when I moved away from home; in a sense, I found God.
I saw sunsets and sunrises and I surfed through an indescribable amount of hurt and excruciating pain, and I had experienced so much love and so much kindness, all at the same time.
I have so much to think about, life itself stretches before me like an endless abyss of possibilities. That should make me excited more than it makes me nervous.
It is a balancing act most of the time. And it is a delicate balance.
I am happy, which turns to miserable because of the realization of the impending doom of the human condition. I despise being alone at times and yet, I hate people I am around at times. But then, there is so much serenity and peace in some of the most mundane places, at the very idea of being there, by yourself. This entry by Eve Lionheart describes a summer spent reading and making realizations about the nature of loneliness.
But I am left thinking, not about loneliness, but about an extension: our image of ourselves, or even, our reflection of our lineage upon ourselves; spinning in between what was, what is, what could be, and all that I could have only conjured up.
But that raises another question:
Truly, who are we?
Are we our loneliness; or our thoughts?
Are we all that we aspire to become?
I do not know the answer to this, it keeps switching from one to the other and then just as quickly, to something new entirely.
Sometimes, there are no life lessons. It is just us, left to our own devices. This should not have the power to relieve us or terrify us to this extent, but it does.
I do not wish upon me the places which treat me like an afterthought.
I think that sentiment can be twisted into a lot of things, but the thought remains: to have something worth doing is greater than the fear or the actual feeling of loneliness. When there is a list, there is something to be done. To have something that needs to be done implies you are on a path and hence, alone is not an afterthought but rather, a conscious choice.
To sit in your own company and decide to do something, on your own; does indeed matter.
There are moments where all the hurt and wrong you ever did or all that ever happened to you cannot help but rush through your head, you are still holding a grudge. You are still salting the wound, you do not let things lay, you do not let it heal.
To quote from ‘The Glass Essay’ by Anne Carson, sometimes, I cannot help but ask myself:
“Why hold onto all that?”
And then the voice in my head answers back,
“Where can I put it down?”
To read the full piece, click here.
I wonder if it is possible to start afresh in a city that has already seen you; in a place where people already know how to pronounce your name and to already have things they associate the utterance of your existence with.
Maybe not.
Not immediately, no.
But like the elegance with which the autumn leaves morph into spring, almost unnoticeable at first, and then, like a force of nature; so can we.
I tell myself it will be okay, and at times, even I am surprised at how often it is the truth. It will be okay, I tell myself. And if it is not, you will make it so.
So, it was August, and just as quickly, it is now September.
I started writing to you in May, and I changed things and I became an infinite number of people in this time.
I am trying to coax her out of her shell and convince her to live on the side of this world, facing it.
I am trying to tell her she will be okay if she decides to live the way she wants, love the people she does.
The way she wants.
And if it is not, she will survive still.
I saw some beautiful sights and had some moments of laughter that lasted for only minutes but I swear, I would remember them in all of my next lifetimes. I dressed up all pretty and I felt all pretty and it wasn’t necessarily at the same time, but what matters is that it was there. I adopted a plant and I reclaimed myself. It has been an eventful few months, with happy moments and some sad ones too. And I can only hope it will be an eventful life too; keeping me on my toes, but still eternally hopeful.
No recommendations for this month because I am trying to catch up to my own life before I delve into fictional worlds! :)
Here is a link to all my Social Media Handles: Link
Signing off,
Anika :)
:)