ending
there’s a specific kind of boredom i’m accepting, this minute. one, which seems to suggest that i’m done with something. i won’t say i’ve outgrown it, but i’ve milked it. or juiced it to its bittersweet ending. would have loved to continue to stay in it. this period of rest and growth and rebirth.
but now what i’m realizing is ok, i have the welcome to come back to it. it’s always here for me now. now that i know it exists, i can always come back to it. somewhere, for the life of me, i had been resisting freedom, slow, letting go. it was like carry everything, take everything, let go when i’m dead. leave nothing. you never know when you might need it. what you might need it. how you might need it.
i spent years and hours and days thinking about scenarios where that specific thing i needed to allow to release could be of benefit. let me give you an example. like if i needed to let go of a piece of clothing because it wasn’t serving me. i would sit there and think well when i feel overstimulated, and i need something comfy and worn, i can slip into this. which is somewhere not incorrect. but at the same time, i’m realizing it would feel as if i had to commit to a life of being overstimulated just so i can create value to the narrative that i might someday need this.
you know what i mean. i don’t know what i’m doing, or where i’m doing it, for what purpose i’m doing it. but i like listening to the inner “if you want to call it demon, you can” voice. i know i’ve failed my inner voice many a time. or been misguided by it. mistrust it. misjudge it.
i just think that was all part of it. getting to know the self. parts of self. fragments of self. even the most hated parts of self. connecting it with historical and anecdotal and other kinds of accounts of what it meant to be in such a state and hypothesizing that oh yeah, this thing i’m feeling, it must be related to how others in the past or present or future might express it as this other thing.
like here i’m thinking about how sometimes i’ve thought of desire for movement as if i’m possessed. because movies may show certain kinds of movements as indicative of being possessed. god i can immediately see a visual of people discussing this and using it to label me some type of way. weird, eccentric, crazy, untrustworthy. etc.
idk. i think it’s ok. even if i don’t know exactly how my words, my past, my future, my choices will come back to bite me. and haunt me. i at least know i can welcome it. i know to accept it. (separately, do you see how less choppy i’ve gotten in my writing? i’m just noticing the flowiness and meanderings feeling less staccato and i’m delighting in it)
i’ve always worried about making the baddest choices, the wrong choices, and how i will regret. i’ve always worried about excellence and perfectness and performativeness and maybe evaded, as a result, stillness. and yet, i somehow managed to find it. stillness, silence, presence. focus. i think.
the lack of attention, focus, concentration still plague me, to no end, i could say. the fear of abandonment still plays on me. to no end, i could say. and yet, the memory, the opening, the feeling — something other than this. also existing.
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somewhere yes, the feeling of blessed. but at the same time, the recognition of how someone else may not be feeling that blessed. so the balance between showcasing my reality and what can exist, safely, truly, non performatively. while, at the same time, aware of realities that exist, that are feeling unsafely, greedily, resently, not happily.
i miss feeling those things. which sounds “dirty”. in some way. it was a thing. it brought me some things. gave me some things. even as i now am writing and my neck and jaw and wrist seem to be tightening.
which probably means my grief is awakening. it’s just — idk. i wanted all of it. i wanted to experience life. i wanted to know what’s everything. i wanted to be everything. taste everything.
one time, a cousin said to me that the purpose of undergrad is to taste widely and that of grad school to chew deeply. and that stayed so deeply with me. i felt so pressured yet privileged in the bestest of ways. excited. motivated. hearing this. like wow, this is what life will be. that’s amazing. i’m so for it. and learning how to handle the different things.
but now, i realize where maybe education failed me, life did its thing. even as the imperfect systems we create that become imperfect institutions going on to become imperfect dynasties that fail you, me, and so many — life did its thing. and that doesn’t cease to amaze me.
life may be less drama filled. but i may be able to experience wonder and amazement through the experiences others share with me. what a privilege and pleasure that will be. how someone may have found healing through a sister’s professor’s unpublished thesis. someone may have seen something at just the right moment.
i remember, before depression, reading a book on depression. the person said that for them, the moment out of it had to do with seeing a grape under the fridge and it suddenly hitting them, the absurd futility or randomness of everything. or tragic comedy. something. and they seemed to snap out of their depression.
i waited a bunch for that to happen to me. and you know maybe somewhere it did. if i wanted it, it did. but perhaps more of my journey has felt as if it’s me making unlikely companions with being depressed. the happy, vocal, smiling person making best friends with depression. loving being angry. loving being unhappy. loving being sappy. loving being sad. loving grief. loving pain and damage even. loving everything.
boy the sadness i have felt contemplating such things before has threatened to shake the ground underneath me. and yet, today, strange as it feels, it’s also a welcome feeling. i feel safety. stability. i don’t feel the ground shaking from the weight of the emotion. i don’t feel the emotion unsteadied by the foundation underneath it.
i feel effusive. verbose. continuing. in terms of feeling. this feeling. but how i notice it relates to the feeling i had one morning of being the eternal, never ending i. but all of a sudden the feeling of gratefulness. that it ends. that in a world where things never end. we get to feel a simulation of what it’s like to end. idk.
i’m touching a nerve. the core of something. grief. it’s making me want to flee. to run. abscond. hide. enjoy instead of feel. rush instead of heal. and i might. to honor the person i was, i might. one last time. ten more last times. because somewhere, once there’s a better way, you can’t go back to that other way. and even if the whole world is better since, there’s grief still.
