hello, little loves.
apologies for leaving your inboxes empty; i have been oh-so busy recently. no time at all to stop and smell the flowers. i hope to change that soon. the weather is making a turn for the better, finally. here’s a beautiful blossom tree i saw a few weeks ago - the flowers have died now. covering the ground with white petals slowly turning brown as the earth reclaims them.
this letter might be long, so i’m bringing mugs with your favourite drink in them. the weather is perfect for a quiet talk, so i am taking your hands and holding them - how has life been treating you? done anything interesting? discovered a new favourite song? i hope you have felt loved recently.
i was studying chemistry the other day and wondering about the invisible connections between all of us. how we can pass by someone in the street without noticing them and meet them for the first time the next day and have a conversation that makes you remember them for the rest of your life.
thinking about how love is stored in so much. the magic we find in the mundane, because of what it all means. in the cozy mornings and comfortable evenings that lovers spend together, the contentment that saturates their home. maybe that’s the cookies. (they’re freshly baked, would you like some?) the first leaves in spring. the last ones to fall. intricate fractals of frost creeping onto car windows in winter.
i’ve started trying to record myself a little more. never really felt comfortable with pictures - the blurry, filled with laughter and love aesthetic never feels achievable for my life spent slowly making sense of the rest of the world. but recordings of my own voice, of the rain, of the lunch hall as someone plays the piano and twenty conversations travel around the room. simultaneous and separate. those, i feel the love in. they’re for future me too, so i can listen to them and remember how human i was.
recording messages for my friends so they have a little piece of me to keep in their lives. sending them the sunrises and the stormy skies. sending them my joys and my failings. i would like to be raw and open and honest. i would like to be truthful, and grateful. my life is not perfect, but it is getting better. i am building a life that i want to live in more and more each day, and that makes me feel like sunshine.
i am becoming more and more comfortable with the body that i live in, and becoming more confident to express my love in ways i have always wanted to. (kissing my friend’s hand. interlocking fingers as a goodbye. hugging her without worry of what people will think.)
dancing around my room and forcing away the feeling that makes me want to watch my every move. i am not being watched, or judged. i am just me. the sun is shining outside (and sunset is 9pm again!) and the song on my playlist makes my heart want to explode with joy. there is a cat meowing outside and some birds are singing on the roof, and a few giant magenta poppies are growing out of the ground next to my neighbour’s house. they’re half as tall as me! how beautiful. how full of life they are, reaching up to the sun from their home in the concrete. how far can i go, if i try as hard as they do?
a phrase from an old friend rings in my mind, and i suppose he wasn’t revolutionary for telling me to shoot for the stars, but oh how circumstance can make the ordinary so magical. i think i should try. for med school, for my future home. for the life i want to build from the ground up, i think i should try.
i’ve been missing the sunrises recently, not really had the energy to get up and look out the window. i miss when i used to do that. there’s something about them that just feels so intimate, so personal about it all. maybe it’s the needing to wake up early to catch one, the silence wrapping round everything like a blanket. watching the sun wake up and knowing that all around you, people are doing the same. connections connections. it all comes back to connection, doesn’t it? [art]
been thinking a lot about grief, honestly. i showed a friend this poem of mine about it - it is still under construction (well, all my poems are. but this one particularly.)
1. did you know: a group of starlings is called a murmuration, 2. & grief doesn't care. how entitled. how stupid to think so. 3. (murmurations look beautiful.) 4. and grief does not- love (you). 5. do the starlings know i love them? 6. you love (-d. them) 7. (the starlings) know that grief lies latent. waiting. & after the first Day / Week / Month you lose track- (of them) 8. oh but grief is a Child. outside your window with bricks in hand (should i say hello?) (how you wish you could love them) but your window is smashed- 9. starlings stay in flocks for safety & grief is easier handled with company. 10. … you remember it is - has always been, will always be - a child. 11. do birds feel grief? when a member stops singing, does the song feel emptier? 12. grief is a child and grief is crying. and you are bleeding. and the glass in your palm- well, you want to push it in further. of course. but the child is crying. and it's cold outside. 13. and oh darling, don’t the birds look lovely?
pushing down the feeling of shame at showing such a raw part of myself. i am… becoming much more comfortable with my grief. it still aches some days, more than anything i ever could have imagined. but i am growing around it, like trees that grow around signposts that people tie to them. changed, but healing. growing.
my friend asked who i grieved and a hundred names flashed through my mind. so i said none. i didn’t feel comfortable saying it aloud, so i’ll tell you.
i grieve… a life lost too early. a child abandoned by a system that should’ve seen them. i grieve the lost chances; the broken promises. the children left hungry and cold and broken. i grieve the people in my past whose names i will never know, but deserved so much more than their life gave them.
just as love is in everything, so is grief, i have noticed. they are interlinked in a way that is inexplicable. in the music that i hear, in the sunshine that i see and the rain i hide from. in the wind on my face and the squirrels running up trees. when i take out my phone to get a picture (which i have been trying to do less because of my “stop and live in the moment” self-policy), i wonder who the picture is for. a friend? myself? and sometimes, if grief is close around the corner, i think of the people who won’t see it.
the piece of writing by iain thomas comes to mind. “i hope that in the future they invent a small golden light that follows you everywhere and when something is about to end, it shines brightly so you know it’s about to end.” the ache that sits in my heart whenever i read that feels like an uncontrollable forest fire. burning and burning and burning.
how would life be different, if it were real?
would it shine at my last conversation with an ex-friend before we had the fight that ruined our relationship? would it shine as i said goodbye to the almost-love i never had? would it shine if i spoke to a friend online for the last time? all these situations run through my mind and make me want to weep till all the world knows i am hurting. loss and grief are such powerful emotions. it is special to me, in a way, that we all experience the same hole in our hearts. it all hurts the same. we have been grieving since time began, and we will grieve till the sun blows up and everything is decimated in a burst of flame.
that is also to say, we will love till then too.
i am feeling a little deflated. i probably need more sleep. don’t we all? there’s just always so much to do. i have been meaning to write this letter for a few weeks (months? my deepest apologies), and i’ve been putting it off. sorry about that.
it feels like i always have more work to do. should probably get that done.
i really do want to get to med school. there’s a fear that comes with it - ignoring the struggle of getting in, i am scared that i won’t be enough once i get there. i won’t be kind enough, empathetic enough. i won’t be enough of a detective, or sharp enough to see what other people miss. i am optimistic, and hopeful. and i’m going to try my best. but being a doctor is hard work! and i’m unsure sometimes, if i’m cut out for it.
oh well. much to think about. till next time, loves. i hope life is treating you kindly.