2024, chapter eight
relearning how to live
i’ve missed you. i haven’t been able to write for the past couple of weeks.
it’s been like missing a limb. i once told nick that going more than a few weeks without playing one of my instruments makes my skin crawl: this was worse. i would sit down, in front of my laptop, in front of my journal, and stare blankly. i felt like i needed to crawl out of my skin. like the words were swirling around my head, but none of them stopped long enough for me to grab them and put them down.
august was like this: the lines of my reality dissolving into nothing.
i felt like i was observing my life outside of myself. waking up, making breakfast, going on walks for bread, heading to the library. i locked myself in: i didn’t meet my friends, i didn’t talk about how i was feeling. i felt like there was a hole inside me, and everything was leaking out of it.
august felt like a knife twisting in my side, hurting and hurting and bringing me to my knees. august was crying till my head ached, staring at my bedroom ceiling wanting to disappear, feeling like my body wasn’t mine.
to feel unmoored is scary, to not know what you’re doing or where you’re going, to have your life stop looking like a well-planned trip and more like a meandering road trip with a toddler in charge.
except there’s this little thing i’ve discovered: meandering road trips are fun. dizzying, ecstatic, roller-coaster levels of mind-blowing fun. and that’s what i’m focusing on. my future is simply today and then the next today. today i will write and dance and sing and look at my garden and greet the songbirds and bask in the sunlight. after all, the road is long, and i have all the time my one vibrant life will give me. i am alive today. i’m planting seeds, and i’m happy doing it, regardless of whether or not flowers will bloom.
"the most beautiful part of your body is where it's headed"
-Ocean Vuong
interlude: on dreams
i came across this quote recently as i was reading, and it has bounced around in my head for the last couple of days: “Dreams are easy. You can come up with as many as you want and get rid of them as easily as a holey sweater or clothes you’ve outgrown. They can change over time. You can have multiple dreams at once, but you only have one life.”
i’m learning to think like that. dreams aren’t set in stone, and neither am i. i don’t have to cling to dreams that don’t resonate with me anymore, i’m allowed to want more and more.
media favorites:
love next door (2024), road trip stories, a psalm for the wild built by becky chambers, twilight (stray kids), deeply still in love (role model), inside out 2 (2024), twinkling watermelon (2023), aftersun (2022), dominATE tour in seoul
“Here’s a thing about life. It may not give you everything you want, but it does hide a small present for you from time to time. I hope you can endure the cruel hardships life throws your way. So you can receive the present life has tucked away.”
-Twinkling Watermelon (2023)
august contained joy. i wasn’t seeing it at the time, but it did.
i saw my baby cousins more this month than any other this year. we played badminton and ran around in the rain and played with my doll’s house and talked about harry potter and watched trailers for upcoming movies. they insisted on sitting next to me at the dinner table: a captain flanked by her faithful lieutenants. the younger one, my sweet summer child, sobbed when he was told to hang up on our call and go to sleep. his older brother told me about how he’s tired of feeling like he always has to be at the top of the class, how sometimes he just wants to not have to work so hard at school. i told him i was never first or second, and that it’s okay. the world doesn’t stop spinning because you don’t live up to expectations. sometimes you have to disappoint someone to be happy.
i played with their cats, went on the world’s best shopping spree when looking for birthday presents, and fell asleep on ammis shoulder on the way home with cover me playing in my earbuds.
i hung out with my friend who coerced me to go on a 360 ride at a carnival. it wasn’t as scary as i thought it would be. nothing ever is. i laughed at her when her printer didn’t corporate and drank too much gin and tonic and laughed too loud and felt everything go fuzzy. i’m learning that i like putting ribbons in my hair and learning how to point out countries on a map. i’m learning to love what i love.
my favourite band went on tour, and i put every video i could find on the tv and watched to my heart’s content. i went back to the library and found books i had been hunting for, i fell in love with road trips and magical universes and people who exist only in my mind.
i met old friends, who came bearing earrings in the shape of kittens. i called my best friend, so many times, and listened to her with warmth in my chest.
love will find you, again and again and again. for as long as you let it.
i’ve come to a realization—a silly one, you might say—that i’ve stopped caring about what other people think of me. i don’t care how they see me, whether they think i’m wasting my life, because my life is my own. only i get to experience the joy of living it. i care more about how it feels to me than anything else.
sometimes it feels like your whole world is falling apart, but the sun will still shine tomorrow. it’s not the end of the world. it’s only change. and it will be good. i promise.
all the love in my heart,
cherry
cherry my darling i hope you love to live with every breath you take and the wild, meandering road grants you as many rainbows as you could ever wish for<3