creature comforts.

out of all the ugly feelings i've come to accept are unavoidable, nostalgia isn't one of them. i'm 7000 kilometers away but i miss the dark red wall that used to be behind my head. pale bookshelves that have since been sold to a friend. dark wood vinyl peeling up in some places after 18 years. it's approaching close to two years since i last saw it but i miss a red and gray low couch. i miss the muffled sound of desert thunder in the afternoon and i miss a gray cat. pink and green bedsheets and a springy mattress. 

i miss my home, in every sense of the word. people, places, things i can never go back to. places that haven't felt my absence but i would give up years off my life to go back one more time. 

a friend from university told me she wants to explore a lot of things around the city and i said sure, anytime, we have a year and a half left to see them all. and i hadn't realized exactly what i said right then but she told me that was so sad to hear and it delved into a conversation about the future. what happens after i move again. after the carpet got taken from underneath my feet earlier this year, i suddenly realized i don't know anymore what i want or if anything i could ever want is achievable at all. but i'm still steadily marching into the future. i'm worried there's an end to the chain the past has tied around my ankles and i won't be able to move any more further once i reach a certain point. i pull at the chain now and i can feel there's some give to it but i can't tell for how much more. i don't have boltcutters.

i'm not necessarily worried about growing older but i am scared that the weight of only remembering the things i treasure and not having the real thing anymore will root me down to where i am. i might have to move sooner than i thought i would and i won't return to the first apartment i've ever lived in after moving away from my parents. it's not a necessarily breathtaking place but it's the first. of course, there are always new things to treasure. maybe one day the stripey cup from ikea that i've been using for over a decade now will break and i will mourn it but i'll get a new cup i like just as much. but i'll keep a piece with me always, wishing i had the entire thing once again. i had a certain desk for years and years back home and i bought it again last year for my new place; spent 7 hours assembling it alone and told no one how i had closed my eyes every once in a while pretending i'm in 4th grade again assembling it for the first time, so deeply excited to have a real desk. i imagine i'll be 25 and then 30 buying the same model, as long as it isn't discontinued. 

my point is, i keep the glass shards and i reassemble the same things even when i have the opportunity for something new. and i've been told to learn how to let go terribly harshly once and then kindly once, and it hurt just as much both times. but it was warranted advice. i don't know if i know how to move on properly. perhaps if the desk is badly made. perhaps if the cup has sharp edges that cut into my lips. but i'd take that too, maybe. sand down the sharp edges myself and buy better bolts. anything if it meant i could hold on a little longer. even to things that don't want me anymore. 

update is an ugly word pt.5

as it turns out, after the six-odd years of having this blog, that little prick of embarrassment never actually goes away when you open a blank page knowing you're about to write about yourself, to yourself, for yourself. i think i'm in a wildly different place than i have ever imagined myself being in, but i'm still who i was at 14. at least, in this sense.

regardless, i'm 20 now and today was my third day of the second year of uni. the work has already piled up and i've been making my steady, slow way through the pile of articles i need to read and papers i need to write all day. i remembered this blog existed while drafting an application to a magazine, and then proceeded to spend an hour reading it while i should have been tweaking my CV instead. to think i'm talking about my CV on here when a while ago, i would talk about monthly school tests. i don't miss it that much, but i do miss feeling like i was at home somewhere. knowing where everything is in the pantry, knowing i could feel my way through it in the dark. 

i've been doing well though. for a while, i really wasn't. i really, really wasn't and i was almost convinced i had done something absolutely horrendous in my past life (or maybe even this one) and the universe was taking from me what it's owed over two very long, very hard years, but a thing or two happened. and then maybe a third one, and i'm trying harder now. not to say i wasn't before - i don't think i will ever again tap into the sheer amount of fortitude i was displaying getting out of bed everyday all these months- but i wasn't seeing any results for it. in fact, things got actively worse the harder i tried (and i've recently been awoken to how bitter i really am about it by the people i've talked to. and navigating that bitterness is another story completely). but i am seeing the results now. i hope. i spent a lot of time sad, and then a lot of time unimaginably angry, and now i've mellowed out into someone who wakes up at 6am and makes spinach and mushroom omelettes before class. i don't spend half an hour trying to hold back an intense cry- most times, giving into it- each morning while doing my makeup. the removal of that impulse has added quite a lot of time to my routine actually. enough to comfortably make spinach and mushroom omelettes and still catch the tram on time to reach class 20 minutes early. 

i posted a couple years ago about waiting for the other foot to drop and imagining the sheer relief i would feel once it did in spite of however bad the consequences may be, and i believe it finally did drop this year. things got as bad as i could humanly handle without cracking permanently and now i'm scrabbling my way back up, grateful i have enough resources in me to still believe in an 'up'. the relief was a little hard to find, i imagine i'm still trying to find it wholly but it's there and i find fragments of it on cold days. i go out for brunch with a friend and spend my evening swimming sometimes. not every day is like that though, probably the very precious minority of them. but they're there. and i don't have the constant threat of a foot waiting to crush me into the ground looming over my head anymore. nothing is blocking the clouds. i can enjoy a cup of matcha without having to stuff down an ache every conscious second. 

i'm closer to figuring out what i may actually want out of life. or to be more accurate, i'm closer to figuring out what i don't want. i have always had this very specific idea for myself, this ideal i would hold myself to while planning anything that honestly had nothing to do with money or any material possession. and i thought it was achievable. for a long while, i wholeheartedly believed someday, i'm going to bring this ideal to life. it's gonna happen. how could it not? i've given everything to it. it has to happen. but i've realized it might not, and now i'm not even sure i'd really like it to happen. maybe it's the cynicism talking, and i will soon go back to wanting what i have wanted my entire life instead of some vague, unspecified goal but things feel extremely different now. in a way it never has before. not sure if i like it or not. 

but i still am the person i was when i was 14, for better or for worse. except im in a different continent with different hair and a different name. i draw a little bit better and i know how to cook now. my friends like the brownies i make. i like my friends. i like spinach and mushroom omelettes. i hated the last two years but i like that i can acknowledge that everything that happened needed to happen without wanting to break every bone in my body. i like that i let myself feel angry now. feel bitter. feel resentful. admit that certain things are absolutely the wrong thing to do and to be done unto you. i like that i do not wake up with a racing heart every morning and check my phone (and then try to hold back tears for half an hour). 

maybe not quite the same person anymore then