"I do feel comforted to discover I'm not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it."

- Zadie Smith

I hate summer.

I know that is a statement of absolutes and I don’t typically speak in absolutes, but I really do hate summer.

Truthfully, it’s not that I hate summer so much as I hate the feeling of summer. I joked recently that I have whatever the summer equivalent of seasonal affective disorder is. I find every bit of it overstimulating—the longer days, the brighter sunlight, the heat which offers no relief.

Summer is sold to us as freedom, but I feel stifled. I’m restless and exhausted most of the time. It’s a time meant to be more social—friends having parties, cities hosting events, so many trips being taken… It all makes me feel a strange pressure to participate. And then the guilt that comes when I don’t. Summer looks glittering and beautiful, but the heat and crowds push me over the edge.

There is plenty of chatter about winter being the season we must survive, but I find summer to be brutal. Everything suffers—my creativity, my rationale, my writing, my reading. Apathy tends to set in fast. Why does summer make me feel like I’m failing at being alive while everyone else seems to be having the time of their lives?

Several years ago I watched an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld. In the episode Jerry was talking with his guest about New York City and how it’s not for everyone. He said that his belief is every city has a frequency, and every person has a frequency. And all you have to do is find the city with the frequency that matches yours. This is true of almost everything, including the weather.

Summer is decidedly not my frequency.

This summer is unique, too, in that I have largely been on my own. At a time when you’re supposed to be seeing friends more, circumstances have worked out differently for me. I’m not complaining. I enjoy being on my own. I’m used to it, and I’m good at it. I appreciate the time and space it creates for my mind to wander.

But I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me lonesome at times. There have been few opportunities to distract myself from the dissonance of this particular season of my life, and I’ve had to sit with that discomfort—getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. Maybe that’s part of what transition requires. We prefer certainty, but when you take a step back, it’s true that we don’t need answers as much as we think we do. I still believe the unknown is more interesting than it is frightening.

In an attempt to counteract the apathy of summer and the loneliness of life—and, if I’m being honest, to reclaim a piece of myself that has been in hiding for several years—I set a creative challenge for myself. I wanted to take one film photo every day. The idea was to find a way to help me continue noticing things instead of sleepwalking through the long days. I didn’t manage to take a photo every day, but I got close and it did help me.

And now that it is August, I feel like I can start looking forward to something—

Autumn.

If summer is a time I feel lost, autumn is the time I find myself again. The change in the air immediately wakes me back up. Even in Southern California, where the fall months are known as Second Summer, I find my body relaxing into the season. Staying home, making soup, working on puzzles, and minding my own business.

What does it look like to rebuild your life in your 30s?

The older I get the more I find myself participating in aspects of life that I never imagined I would when I was younger. (Puzzles, for example.) Now, time and space—and the ability to exist in it without filling it with busyness—is the definition of luxury to me. Slow is the definition of success. I have so much time, and I fill it with only the most precious things to me. Yes, sometimes that means I am lonely, but more often it means that I am not obligated to live according to anyone else’s demands. A trade off I will happily accept.

This idea of having time and filling it resonates with the fall season for me. I think it’s because the version of life summer seems to demand is the opposite of how I want to fill my days. Maybe this is what getting older is supposed to feel like: not becoming someone new, but being more honest about what you know already makes you happy.

My priorities when I was younger were to live in certain cities no matter the cost. I filled my calendar with places to go. I organized my life according to what I thought would make me happy. But these days I’m less interested in filling every available space than I am in saving that space for what matters to me. There is something deeply satisfying about having nowhere to be and knowing exactly how to fill my time anyway.

Maybe what I’m finally building is a life that matches my frequency.

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"Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it.
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art."

Because I admire anyone who can craft a sentence that cuts me, I admire Charles Bukowski.

No one before and no one since has written with quite the same grit. I particularly admire his talent for titling his work. Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame; The People Look Like Flowers At Last; You Get So Alone At Times That it Just Makes Sense; What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire; Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit; Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way…

I admire him so much because I myself struggle with titling my own work. Sometimes I think I hate it. Having to come up with a title is the worst part about writing anything, including these letters.

I’ve read eleven of Bukowski’s collections. Every time I sit down with one of his collections, part of me is searching for inspiration for titles. On one particular search I opened a book of his letters titled Screams From the Balcony (yet again a perfect title). The very first letter was one he wrote to the editor of Hearse magazine in 1958 while working full-time in an L.A. post office.

It reads,

“Dear E.V. Griffith:
Here are some more. Thanks for returning the others. No title ideas yet. Post office pen no damn good. Trying to say—no title ideas yet. Fire, Fist and Bestial Wail? No. Thought about using title of one of my short stories—Confessions of a Coward and Man Hater. No. The Mourning, Morning Sunrise. No.
I don’t know, E.V.
I don’t know.
Anyhow, I’m thinking about it.”

It’s nice to know that he, too, had to think about it. (He ended up using Fire, Fist and Bestial Wail for his debut poetry collection in 1959, by the way.)

I’ve been wanting to write about Charles Bukowski for quite some time, primarily as an excuse to share some of his best lines. But there’s something else about Bukowski’s life that I’ve paid close attention to, and find myself referring to when I’m trying to make sense of something—how he lived on the fringe of life, writing, and publishing.

First, a little history.

Bukowski was first published in 1944 at 24 years old, when his short story was published in Story magazine, but he quickly became disillusioned with the publishing establishment and quit writing. He spent the next decade drinking his way across America, wandering from city to city, and working low paying jobs to survive.

After nearly dying from a bleeding ulcer caused by his alcohol consumption, he returned to writing, shifting his focus to poetry. He published his debut collection in 1959 at 39 years of age. Though he continued working the grueling post office job for another ten years, and turned out poem after poem in the evenings. He finally quit the post office in 1969 when John Martin, independent publisher and founder of Black Sparrow Press, recognized his talent and offered him $100 a month for life to quit his job and focus on writing full time. Bukowski took the gamble and published his first novel soon after, titled Post Office. He was 50 years old at the time.

I give you this backstory for two reasons. One, it’s a testament to talent, hard work, and “success” later in life. And two, to offer you perspective on how to read his poem “So You Want to Be a Writer?” which was written in his late 60’s or early 70’s.

You can read the full poem here.

There is much debate on the meaning and significance of this poem—as there is with most of Bukowski’s work, and in fact, Bukowski himself—and whether we should take its instruction as sage wisdom or if he had it all wrong. Bukowski is a polarizing figure, and I’m not here to argue his place in literary history. For me, I love his work precisely because it is so polarizing, and I always will. To each their own, I suppose. The question is not whether you agree with his wisdom or lifestyle, but whether you can learn something from it.

What I am here to point out, and what I think you cannot argue Bukowski got right, is one of the key themes of the poem—the rejection of shallow motives.

When I first read this poem, it offended me slightly.

“If it doesn’t come bursting out of you 
in spite of everything, 
don’t do it.” 

“If you have to sit for hours 
staring at your computer screen 
or hunched over your typewriter 
searching for words, 
don’t do it.” 

It stung because I felt at the time that it was not “bursting out of me.” I would sit and stare for hours, and still I would go home with an empty page. It tripped me up for a while, the beginning of this poem. But the more times I read it, the more I thought I understood. It is not that writing won’t be a struggle. It is that everything in you must write despite the struggle. (Remember, Bukowski quit writing for ten years, but he came back to it.)

One person’s analysis of this poem stated that Bukowski is not telling you how to be a writer, but is telling you how it is to be him. I think they were onto something. Bukowski wrote in a gritty confessional. He was raw, direct, and cynical, always channeling the underbelly of daily survival. He said what he said, and he meant it the first time. He was a rebel, and in many ways I aspire to his candor.

The next section of the poem is where I think the worthwhile advice is.

“If you’re doing it for money or fame, 
don’t do it. 
If you’re doing it because you want 
women in your bed, 
don’t do it.” 

“Don’t be like so many writers, 
don’t be like so many thousands of 
people who call themselves writers, 
don’t be dull and boring and 
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self- 
love.”

There it is - the rejection of shallow motives. His warning to not write for fame, or money, or to attract romance. To not copy others because trying to write like someone else is akin to living a lie. And to not call yourself a writer simply to feel important or to look cool. (Remember, he remained working at the post office for 10 years after he was first published.)

These things we can take to heart.

The point he is making, I think, is not that you shouldn’t write. It’s that you shouldn’t force it. As he wrote in the poem,

“If you have to wait for it to roar out of 
you, 
then wait patiently. 
If it never does roar out of you, 
do something else.”

I’ve seen this poem described as a kind of negative manifesto—Bukowski telling us what not to do. He’s saying if you aren’t consumed by the craft, you should go do something else.

I find value in this perspective.

There is a Stephen Fry quote that says, “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I’m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

This quote, coupled with Bukowski’s ideas, has me thinking quite a lot lately. I have always had a constant struggle—of writing or not writing, sharing or not sharing. I worry about my motivations. I worry if I have what it takes. I worry whether others will find it useful.

But I’m no longer interested in status or external success as a signifier of talent or usefulness. Notoriety, fame, even simple recognition mean nothing to me. The lack of these things also means nothing. What I mean is I’m not trying to be a writer anymore. I think I’m just being a person whose life is surrounded by writing.

A random and certainly not exhaustive collection of some of Bukowski’s best lines:

“If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.”

“Some lose all mind and become soul, insane. Some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. Some lose both and become accepted.”

“There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.”

“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

“Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.”

“Some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.”

“You can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. And the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be.”

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

“Nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. It’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.”

“And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”

“And I promised myself then that someday I’d remember it as it was.”

“Hard times are upon us all only I am not trying to raise a family to send through Harvard or buy hunting land, I am not aiming high. I am only trying to keep myself alive just a little longer.”

“And you walk across the room heavy with everything except my love.”

“This is the taste and the terror, and we are not taught why.”

“And who is to say the rose is greater than the thorn?”

“New Year’s Eve always terrifies me. Life knows nothing of years.”

“I could feel the legs the heart the lungs beginning to envision another chance.”

“Such singing’s going on in the streets—
the people look like flowers at last.”

“I decide that the only definition of Truth (which changes) is that it is that thing or act or belief which the crowd rejects.”

“I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here.”

“The ability to suffer and endure, that’s nobility, friend. The ability to suffer and endure for an idea, a feeling, a way, that’s art, my friend. The ability to suffer and endure when love fails, that’s hell, old friend.”

“The shades roar like lions and the walls rattle, dance around my head. Then her eyes look at me, love breaks my bones and I laugh.”

“The most memorable concern of mankind is the guts it takes to face the sunlight again.”

“Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.”

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_{photos are from Charles Bukowski’s 1995 book, Shakespeare Never Did This,
of a European trip in 1978. Photos by Michael Montfort.}

"Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart."

- Haruki Murakami

I originally planned to have this letter sent out toward the end of spring, but the World Cup kicked off and I couldn’t be bothered to write or edit in all of the excitement.

Now here we are, officially enjoying summer.

The shift into spring always brings about new ideas. As the world wakes up, I do too. I start to look at things differently, wondering what it’s time to let go of. I do the second most growing internally and intellectually during the spring (The first is fall. I'm a shoulder season kind of girl.), and this year has been no different.

But before I get to that… soccer!

I grew up playing soccer. The arrangement was that when we turned five, we chose the sport and our dad coached the team. My parents expected I would choose basketball, the favored sport in our household, but being the contrarian that I was (am?), when the time came I enthusiastically shouted, “soccer!” and forced my dad to learn an entirely new set of rules.

While my soccer career ended as I got older and my school didn’t offer the sport, my love for the game never diminished. I could pretend to discuss the unifying effect the sport has, but honestly I’m here for the game itself. It’s the most exciting event to watch. Every near miss, and the moment a goal is finally scored… it’s an unbeatable celebration. So that’s it. It’s very simple. I’ve been immersed in the World Cup, distracted and consumed by the games, and loving every iconic moment of it.

(In case you’re wondering, France is my team! 🇫🇷)

I’ve also been preoccupied with rebuilding my reading habit, and I’m so enthusiastic about it. If we’ve spoken at all over the past few years, you know how seriously I’m taking this particular challenge. Reading is pretty much all there is for me, and all there ever has been. When you don’t have friends, you have books. When you don’t have travel plans, you have books. When you don’t know what you think, you have books.

There is nothing more important than challenging your implicit beliefs, or continued education in adult life, or critical thinking. And books are always there. Always accessible. Always ready to befriend you.

What I’ve been reading lately:

For the first time in a long time, a novel has been calling my name. I finally settled on reading A Gentleman in Moscow, a book that has been on my tbr for ten years! In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat and sentenced to live out the rest of his life confined to a hotel. Written in the way only Amor Towles can write, the book explores what it means to be a man of purpose.

I’m also making my way through Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman in hopes it will help me evaluate my time and spend it in ways I find worthwhile.

It’s not a coincidence that my enthusiasm for reading is returning as I get more absorbed in Printed Works, an independent publishing project focused on literature and travel. I’m slowly finding a rhythm—writing articles and a newsletter, developing ideas for the project, and sending snail mail.

It has certainly had a hand in reinvigorating my love for books.

Here is where everything (hopefully) ties together.

This spring I’ve been thinking about what makes a good life. Most of us instinctively think of career success, and thus financial success, as the overarching definition of a “good life.” To a certain extent, money does buy happiness. And while it’s true that career and finances are two pieces of the puzzle, I remain adamant that out of all of the important elements of life, they are the least important—at least in terms of defining your purpose and who you are. Friends, family, education, passions… these are the things I care about.

But what really makes a good life?

There is a scene in You’ve Got Mail which I think about often, and have wanted to write about for years. After being forced to close her independent bookshop, Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) sits down to write an email to her anonymous friend, and she wonders:

I used to want to write about the first frame—the “valuable, but small” life. I find a small life compelling. I enjoy most of my life being unknown to those around me. But lately it’s the second frame I keep ruminating on.

For what it’s worth, I believe I have been brave in some areas of my life. When circumstances have asked me to face them head on, I have. But it’s also true that we can be quite brave in one area of our life, and surprisingly timid in another.

I have been timid in terms of my place in this world. I have been afraid to try things. I have been afraid to ask for things. I have been afraid to believe that what I have to offer holds value. I am afraid to want too much. I have struggled to find the through line that connects my interests and values with my skills and work.

I’ve spent countless hours thinking about it—how I would like to pursue my own work and build an independent income that supports the lifestyle I desire. My therapist and I have come up with practical statements that I repeat to myself on a regular basis. My favorite, “Everything is just gathering skills.” Meaning, there is no required outcome. Just try things and learn as you go. Another favorite, “All you need to be successful is a drop in the ocean.” (Did you know you only need to sell 5,000-ish books in a week to make it onto the NYT Bestsellers list?) I am easily overwhelmed by how much is already out there, and nervous to add more to it; nervous to ask for your limited and precious resources.

Even with these helpful mantras, nothing has ever pushed me past the thinking phase and into the doing phase, not really. But lately I feel the tides finally shifting. The pieces are beginning to fall into place, both personally and professionally.

All any of us really need is one person to believe in us. That’s all it takes. Then it’s our job to learn how to tune out the rest of the noise. Don’t get in your head about it. Just gather skills. Be diligent. Be a beginner. Try things, stay curious, learn, and grow. Prove yourself wrong by proving you can do it. The stakes might be high, but they also don’t exist.

The point is the everyday is going to save you. Participating in things that bring you joy, focusing on habits that enrich your mind, challenging limiting beliefs, believing the positive things said about you, investing in personal projects—all of this will save you. A good life is created when you are a willing and enthusiastic participant in what the everyday requires.

When asked his thoughts on replacing human contact with electronic, Kurt Vonnegut once said,

“I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something.”

The point is to get up and go do something, and have a hell of a good time while you’re doing it. So on that note,

Sign up for snail mail → the Postcard Club
Enjoy a monthly curation of essays and books → The Monthly

P.S. - a bonus story!

In the spirit of learning things, I have learned that my dog doesn’t have one tiny aggressive bone in his body. While on a walk on a Saturday afternoon, we suffered an unprovoked attack from a feral looking cat. The cat came out of nowhere, immediately on the offense, and lunged straight for Silas. I managed to pull him out of the way just in time, and the cat lunged again. This time it managed to get a few scratches and a possible bite on my leg before I managed to send it flying across the grass.

A few people have asked how Silas reacted, and were surprised that he was quite literally hiding behind me. We have had a few pep talks on our walks lately. He is afraid to pass by a few homes in our neighborhood because the dogs who live there bark at him incessantly. I always tell him, “The world is not built for the softhearted, but we are here anyway, and we can do this.” Personally I love that he’s a little softie. :)

But I digress. Since the attack was unprovoked and they couldn’t track down the cat for observation, I had to get the rabies vaccine. I thought I would share with you what I’ve learned in hopes it saves you some trouble if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

First, clean animal wounds immediately with Dawn dish soap first to remove any saliva off of your skin, and then hydrogen peroxide to sanitize inside the wound.

Second, the vaccine can be quite expensive.

There are five doses. The first dose (HRIG) is administered directly into the wound, and can be expensive as it can only be given at the emergency room, and thus comes with an emergency room bill. The remaining four doses are administered in your arm like any other vaccine—except there are four of them spread out over a two week period. They aren’t cheap either. I was quoted $600 per dose at one clinic, which wouldn’t accept insurance. One urgent care didn’t even look at my wound, just took my copay and offered a tetanus shot. Determined not to have a hospital bill upwards of $5k or more, as well as determined not to die, I spent a few days calling health centers and scheduling PCP visits and contacting infectious disease specialists. At the end of my rope, I called an urgent care attached to a hospital that was in-network. All I wanted was for someone to talk to me, and they agreed that having a doctor assess the wound first was ideal.

It turns out the initial wound was fairly superficial and they didn’t think the HRIG was necessary. So I got to skip that bill, thank god. The remaining doses only cost an additional $165 because they considered them nurse visits. So when all was said and done, I spent nearly $400 and about 25 hours of my life getting vaccinated, and that is considered a good deal!

The lesson? Find an urgent care attached to a hospital. They were by far the most helpful and knowledgeable. Also, carry this non-harmful spray at all times to help deter aggressive animals, even if you don’t have pets. And don’t be afraid to kick a cat if that’s what it takes.

Happy (and safe) walking!

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"If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things."

- Henry Miller

I suppose I’ll start with January.

We went on a two week road trip to the Midwest. The first stop - Oklahoma to visit my family. The second stop was the Twin Cities. We had it planned for months, but as it crept closer things got chaotic. First there was the winter storm that hit most of the U.S. in late January. My hometown got 12” of snow, and the Twin Cities dipped into -30 degree temperatures.

Second, there was the political storm in Minneapolis.

We decided to keep our plans.

We found ourselves there the week after Renee Good was killed—the week of the protests, the week Alex Pretti was killed. It was intense, and yet it was full of kindness. I found myself feeling grateful to experience the city during such a significant time—to see it for myself instead of relying on media coverage.

I wanted to write a letter about Minnesota. It was going to be an ode to the Midwest and its people, but I found it impossible to write. I am not a political writer, and I didn’t want to write a political letter, but it felt unnatural to write about my trip without also acknowledging what was happening.

I wanted to tell you how we visited in the coldest month of the year so we could attend St. Paul’s 140th Winter Carnival. It’s the oldest carnival in the U.S. In the 1800’s a journalist wrote that Minnesota was as “uninhabitable as Siberia”, and the people of St. Paul responded by founding the carnival in celebration of winter. There are parades, markets, ice fishing, hockey games on frozen lakes, ice castles, puzzle competitions, and ice carving contests.

I wanted to tell you how when retail workers and restaurant servers learned we were visiting from California, they thanked us for coming despite what was in the news. I wanted to tell you how they helped us navigate the skyway system, how they insisted on highlighting what makes their city so wonderful, how they passed along their phone numbers “in case you want to move here someday. I know someone who can find you a nice home.”

I wanted to tell you how the unbearable temperatures were actually bearable, how cozy downtown St. Paul is, and that I loved driving around the twin cities eating great food and exploring the neighborhoods.

I wanted to tell you about the literary culture and the art scene—how I found a signed Charles Bukowski while browsing Magers & Quinn; how we had the best breakfast tacos at a place called Caydence Records & Coffee.

I wanted to tell you that the highlight of the trip was having drinks and dinner at a Jazz Age restaurant, the Commodore. Originally opened in 1920 as a hotel, the Commodore housed a speakeasy in the basement during Prohibition. Following Prohibition, the Commodore became the renowned Art Deco restaurant & bar it is today, famously frequented by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. I wanted to tell you how much I love literary travel; how close it makes me feel to the work that has changed me.

I wanted to tell you that this quote kept coming to mind while I was there; a quote that feels like the summation of what most of us desire:

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.” 

- Robert Green Ingersoll

We made it back to California and time kept passing. I celebrated a birthday. I enjoyed simple days at home. And I kept finding myself unable to write. The way I look at things is shifting; has been shifting for some time. Maybe it’s age, perhaps it’s exhaustion… whatever it is, I am changing. And I am more curious than afraid.

The plain truth is that my simple days are so precious to me that I am reluctant to share them publicly. Despite the state of the world, I am happy. I find joy in the day-to-day. My life is uncomplicated. I enjoy my job. I’m in a healthy relationship. We have the best dog. I have time to focus on my own projects. It isn’t perfect, but I love it. And I’ve worked hard to get here.

Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha is about a man, Siddhartha, searching for enlightenment. He ends up crossing paths with the Buddha, and tells him, “I have never doubted for a moment that you are the Buddha, that you have attained the goal, the highest, which so many thousands of Brahmins are journeying to reach. You have found the deliverance from death. It came to you from your own seeking, on your own path, through thinking, through meditation, through knowledge, through illumination. It did not come through a teaching! And—this is my thought, O Sublime One—no one is granted deliverance through a teaching!

…That is why I am resuming my wandering—not to seek a different, better teaching, for I know that there is none; but to leave all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal alone or die.”

The lesson is that wisdom can’t be taught, only experienced. I didn’t realize how much of that lesson I took to heart when I first read the book. I stopped searching for teachings. I stopped listening to outside voices. I managed to make it through my wandering, and eventually I found that I don’t feel the need to share with the group.

I read something once that said, “Funny how everything that happens is cosmically mundane but individually profound.” Should I be writing? Should I be sharing? What good will it do? What harm? These letters… they’re good for me, but what are they for you?

And then I remember all of the writers I’ve read and how much they’ve changed my life and I think, maybe it is cosmically mundane, maybe it doesn’t matter at all, except it must or else we wouldn’t all be doing this. We wouldn’t be trying to convince everyone to read the books that have changed us. We wouldn’t have generation after generation attempting to put words to their experiences if there wasn’t something to it.

I once attended a book event for John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down. At the end of the event, John told the story of a phrase popularized in World War 1, a trench song sang by the soldiers. The words are simply, “We’re here because we’re here,” set to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.

This is what I’m trying to say—

We’re here because we’re here. It might be cosmically mundane, and it might not matter what I have to say, but I will say it anyway.

There is meaning even when the purpose is unclear.

We camped in Big Sur a few weeks ago, at a place called Fernwood Resort. Camping in Big Sur has been on my bucket list since the first time I drove the Pacific Coast Highway seven years ago, and it was exactly how I hoped it would be.

I’ve decided this is the most ideal way to camp, with a tavern, general store, and cafe on site. We fell asleep and woke to the sound of the Big Sur river just outside our cabin. We slept nestled in a Redwood grove, and it really makes you feel like you’re in your own little world.

I left feeling more relaxed than I have in months.

Every time I have visited Big Sur in the past—which involved driving the coast and admiring the views, but never staying more than a day—I’ve been struck with awe. The place is overwhelmingly beautiful. The first time I saw the Big Sur coastline is the first time I realized America really is beautiful. But visiting Big Sur this time felt different. Maybe it’s because I’ve changed, matured, or found a way to escape my own nonsense. When I was younger, I wanted to be as big as Big Sur. I wanted to match its beauty. I wanted to do more and be more so that I could be worthy of such a magnificent place.

I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps my aim was off. Big Sur is not about doing more or being more. You’re meant to be immersed in the landscape here. You’re meant to take your time. You’re meant to slow down and look around. You’re meant to live here, if only for a few days.

Big Sur is about accepting what is—that you are small, that nature is indifferent to you, that you cannot match its grandeur, that this is what makes it so beautiful.

I’ve always been prone to idealization. Historically, it has been difficult for me to be content with the present when the past is so romanticized and the future is so idealized in my mind. I do this with work, with life, with places. I’ve worked very hard the past few years to change this. For one, it became very apparent to me that there is nothing romantic about the past. I have no interest in going back there. That mindset was actually pretty easy to adjust. The more difficult of the two was idealizing the future; idealizing the ideas I have in my head of what life should be.

I’m an idealist at heart.

This is what I would do every time I visited Big Sur. I would drive the winding road, lost in thought, idealizing my potential. I would envision how much more I could be doing. I would commit to improving myself, except I took a very American approach to the meaning of the phrase. There is so much we believe about ourselves and much of it is external. We must hit the right milestones at the right age. We must never quit. We must know what we want and not deviate. We must want more money, more status, more power.

I’m a different person than the one who first visited this magnificent place. I really have changed. The way I relate to the world is different, and the way I write is different. I find myself feeling less existential and a little more personal. Instead of attempting to take in all of Big Sur’s grandeur, I gave the details my attention. I watched the river outside our cabin. I let my mind wander in the Redwoods. I went to the beach 10 minutes down the road. I lived simple days.

The first time I visited Big Sur, I wanted to be more than I was. The second and third times I visited Big Sur, I felt the insurmountable weight of not living up to those expectations. This time, Big Sur whispered something so quiet I’m still trying to take it in—still feeling like I only nearly heard its secret.

I think I almost know something I’ve been learning my whole life.

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"You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself."

- Albert Camus

What a strange year this has been. Have you felt it too? What a grounding, hopeful, chaotic, unsettling year.

January started out in a panic. Something felt out of sorts, but I couldn’t place what was bothering me. By the end of January I thought I might move—a decision that tends to come easily to me when my surroundings don’t match my feelings. Then I took a deep breath and reminded myself that no decision made in a rush turns out to be a good one.

So I stayed. 
(A great decision, as it turned out.)

The middle of the year certainly had its downs, and I will probably never speak about them.

But overall, I’m pleased with what this year has meant in my life.

Obviously I’ve been quiet. I haven’t written much or shared many updates. I wanted to live this year without the pressure or obligation or expectation I feel—from myself and culture—to make it into something consumable.

So, what did I do this year?

I collected books. I read a few. I practiced calling friends and family more often. I created a home. I faced a few fears. I planted strawberries and watched plants grow. I ate so many good meals. I added a piano and a puppy to my house. I went camping. I kept fresh flowers on the coffee table. I worked on a personal project. I started dating someone who is kind and thoughtful and fun. Sometimes we spend Friday nights at home working on a puzzle.

I lived my life for me.

When it comes to creative pursuits, it is commonly said that you must “use it or lose it.” I don’t know how many times I’ve been told to not stop writing. And I understand the sentiment, truly, but I’ve never quite agreed. I find there is value in stepping away; in not writing; in living life without trying to fit it into a narrative that makes sense.

In Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino says it like this:

“When I feel confused about something, I write about it until I turn into the person who shows up on paper: a person who is plausibly trustworthy, intuitive, and clear.

It’s exactly this habit—or compulsion—that makes me suspect that I am fooling myself. If I were, in fact, the calm person who shows up on paper, why would I always need to hammer out a narrative that gets me there?”

In the end, I had begun to feel performative, only I didn’t know who I was performing for. I wanted to find out if I could be the me I am in my writing without needing to write my way there.

You will, of course, be a little rusty when you come back. It will be a pain to get back into the flow. But not writing this year, not documenting, not thinking so much about my thoughts and experiences… it was helpful in determining which direction I’m going. I could actually see a future again. A plan began to form without me even trying. Getting rid of all of the noise helped me remember what I sound like.

Though having no obligation does eventually turn into an excuse to not engage in life’s experiences. An important piece of this puzzle is to recognize the timing. You have to be willing to get back on the horse when life shows you it’s time.

In a way, this year has been a bridge year. Dragging my feet through the mud of my own making. Mending and melding who I’ve always been with who I am now.

I don’t know what anything means. I don’t know what purpose any of this has. I don’t know how any of this changes anything for the better. But I do know what makes me feel like me. And it’s possible everything means everything. All you have to do is commit to what the moment is asking of you.

One thing I learned this year is that home is not necessarily a specific place. Home is a moveable feast. My only goal this year was to wake up and have a good day. These good days will stay with me forever—no matter where I am.

Finally something a little light to carry.

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It’s been a while. I tried to write something once or twice this year, but every time I sat down in front of my computer I froze. My mind would go blank. And eventually I got nervous to write anything at all because I knew it wouldn’t be great writing. My mind is blank trying to write this, to be honest, but I can feel myself grasping at something in the distance. Something I know is the thing I’ve been wanting to write to you all year.

It has been a fairly quiet year. Save for a trip to New York in May, I haven’t travelled much. And other than a visit from my sister in June, the calendar has been mostly empty. And I haven’t minded. I’m getting better at accepting what life is bringing my way—stillness or movement or anything in-between.

The trip to New York was fun. I visited with my sister-in-law, Jess. We photographed a wedding in a little village upstate, then spent a few days running around the city. She had never been to New York before, and I love any opportunity to be a tour guide.

The schedule finally worked out that I could eat at White Horse Tavern. It’s the second-oldest bar in NYC, and has been frequented over the years by artists and writers, such as James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, and Dylan Thomas. I’ve wanted to have a drink there for years, in their honor, and I knew Jess would appreciate its history as much as I do.

There is something otherworldly about sharing the spaces of your literary heroes. Buildings soak up the history that happens there, it lives on in the walls, and I will always be honored that I get to feel the weight of it.

And it is otherworldly—the weight of the human heart.

The last letter I shared here regarded roots and my inability to establish them. In January I thought this year would be another iteration of that. I thought I might be uprooting everything once again, but the opposite has happened. I titled the letter “An Inquiry Into How to Live,” and that’s what I’ve been busy doing.

I’m establishing a home, literally and emotionally—something I think I’ve wanted but has always been ever-so-slightly out of reach. It is good for me, and it is scary. Sometimes you think being alone and having only yourself to rely on is the scary thing, but the opposite is also true. Trusting others, trusting life, trusting that the goodness is good… sometimes this is far more challenging.

But I love a good challenge.

I went camping in September, my first time camping in California. I stayed on Lake Mary in Mammoth Lakes. We woke up surrounded by trees, cooked meals on an open fire, made friends with the animals, hiked beautiful trails, and forgot we own a phone for four days. It was breathtaking and it was exactly what I needed.

Sometimes you need your world to be empty so you can think clearly—about what you want, about who you are, about where you want to go. That’s what this year has been. A quiet summer and an empty calendar have given me time to re-establish a reading habit I lost a few years ago and greatly miss. It has given me time to deeply appreciate simple days. And it has given me time to work on an idea I’ve had but have been hesitant to launch.

I don’t know why I’ve been hesitant, except that I tend to get overwhelmed by so many voices already existing in the world and my desire to minimize the noise instead of adding to it. Which is really just a silly excuse; a justification for me to stay small and out of the way, and therefore safe.

Here’s the thing:

You do not have to be loud or quiet in order to be you. You can just… be you.

This is ultimately what I have been practicing. Not living by any particular ideals or standards, whether they be a person’s or society’s, but by my own. And I’m learning to know which voices to trust in my life (and how to trust myself enough to know), and allowing those voices to influence me.

We are here to be with other people, and we owe each other a lot. I’m not interested in living my life in isolation and stubborn independence, and I don’t want to live as if my life belongs to someone else. Hopefully I’m not speaking too soon when I say, I think I’ve found the balance.

So I’m going to share the project I’m working on, even though it will inevitably shift and change over time, and even though it feels vulnerable to share because I don’t know exactly what it will become.

It’s called Printed Works. It will be an online publication with elements of the real. Part book curation, part literary travel log, and part snail mail in the form of postcards. Printed Works will run in tandem with this Substack, and I can’t wait to put energy towards both. I have plans for essays, literary conversations, postcards, and more fun things that I’ll introduce when they’re ready. You can follow along online, and on instagram for now. If you want to receive snail mail from me, you can read more about that here.

Both of these projects, Can I Tell You A Secret? and Printed Works, feel like me. And I’m excited to be me at exactly the volume that I am. Sorry I disappeared, but I’ve calibrated a bit and I’m glad to be back with a life update. I’ll talk to you soon.

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Ever since I read this I’ve tried to refrain from using metaphor in writing. I try to write as simple as possible; to distill a thought into a few words so all that’s left is the truth. I want to live honestly. And I crave pragmatism as a counter balance to the elusive nature of Romanticism. I’ve always been partial to the happy medium, never falling into one extreme or the other. The extremes of the scale seem inaccurate. The truth reveals itself somewhere in the center. I want to look at things as they really are, regardless of what I might see, and I want to do that here.

But I confess I’m finding it impossible to write this piece without the use of metaphor. In her book Rootless, Christy Wampole writes, “In [Blumenberg’s] methodology for the study of absolute metaphors, he argues that, in many cases, metaphors are not simply rhetorical flourishes, replaceable by non-metaphorical language, but that they allow thoughts to be expressed that are impossible to express in nonfigurative terms. These are absolute metaphors… The root is clearly an absolute metaphor…”

So I hope you’ll forgive me this - using root as metaphor.

I’ve been obsessed with roots for years. That’s the only word I know to describe it. It’s always on my mind. It confuses me that some people find roots in the place they were born, never having to leave. Some wander to discover where their roots are, but have a deep understanding that they exist. And others, like me, struggle to name what roots are; they struggle to believe such a thing exists for them.

Though I’ve been sincere in my search for a place to call home—a resting place for my mind where everything makes sense and I can belong—I think I’ve been misguided in my belief that I’ll find some kind of permanence. I’ve been searching my whole life for something that remains out of reach.

It’s raining here—like you can hear it hitting the roof type of rain—and I feel at home, finally. Something has shifted and I don’t know what to do with these feelings, but the rain has always known how to help me hold them. When I decided to move to California, there were questions from those who know me best. I’ve always said I wanted to spend my life chasing autumn, and here I was determined to live in the endless summer.

I keep thinking about something I read in The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton. “Our love of home is in turn an acknowledgment of the degree to which our identity is not self-determined. We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.”

This is the best explanation I have for why I needed to come here. I needed my environment to be warm. I needed the endless summer to keep alive an essential side of me that was struggling to stick around. And buried beneath this was a hope that California held the answers I craved. I hoped the sun might save me. In a way it did, but the truth of life is cyclical, seasonal.

As am I.

I’m rootless, a stranger wherever I go. I always have been. To have a home, a reliable foundation… it’s something that has mostly alluded me, but not for lack of trying. And not because I lack support in my life, but because I lack something else. Or maybe I possess something else, I’m not sure, but I admit the Romantic in me is in love with this idea.

I’ve never managed to establish roots to any significant degree of success. Whether I live somewhere for a year or ten, it never seems to stick. I feel apologetic about this. I feel like it must mean there is something wrong with me.

For better or worse, I cannot tame my wandering spirit. I find myself restless and jittery, thinking that being alone somewhere foreign is far better than being alone somewhere familiar. I start making plans to disappear. I fantasize about telling no one where I am, not speaking to anyone for as long as I need. Going off on my own, like always. Going where there are no obligations, no expectations. I feel the urge to go away almost constantly.

Sometimes I wonder if I go far away because then the distance I feel would have reason. If I can’t be close to you (or close to the me who exists in this place), I’d rather not be nearby. To see the gap, to be so close I can touch it but still not be able to bridge it, hurts me. To ease the feeling I go somewhere else. Sometimes I only need a few weeks. Sometimes the leave is permanent.

I find myself longing to go somewhere new to discover a self which only exists there. And I find myself longing to go back to a place to find the person I once was, even as I’m aware she no longer exists. Still, I feel a little closer to her bright-eyed innocence when I return.

I feel roots, I think.

I’m scattered all over, and it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track. My body holds onto the places I once belonged. My heart understands there are more selves to be found. My roots are a vague memory. My roots are everywhere.

In his travel memoir, The Temporary European, Cameron Hewitt writes, “Travel is rife with epiphanies. And some of them are inconvenient, even uncomfortable. As I observe the deepness of connection that many Europeans feel to their heritage, I’m struck by the contrast to my own life, and my own country.

Many of the Europeans I meet seem to understand and accept who they are on a primal level. Meanwhile, many Americans struggle with finding a sense of meaning. Existential crisis is our national pastime. Some eschew family traditions as corny or pointless, then scramble to find other things to fill that void. We turn to meditation, or materialism, or religion, or political movements left and right, or travel. Many of us still haven’t found what we’re looking for. I wonder sometimes how much this owes to our itinerant nature.”

I’ve wondered this too. From a very young age I clung to the idea that I was going to get out. I looked around and saw so many people content with what was right in front of them. This was never enough for me. I was curious. I was insatiable. Something else existed out there, and I had to find it. Have I been lost from the very beginning?

“It is fair to say that a large part of what is usually called the West is suffering from an overwhelming sense of rootlessness. But what is it? Simply a synonym for alienation or disconnectedness? A metaphorical way to say that people can no longer count on institutions they believed in and cannot depend on security, community structures, or even language? In any place that has been touched by large-scale displacements of people owing to war, colonization, famine, disease, or political ostracism; or where people have lost contact with ancestral memory; or where there is a general sense of isolation resulting from either new social habits or technology’s alienating effects; or where people feel estranged from the environment because of the human’s self-extraction from it, people describe themselves as uprooted… Is our species, the exception to so many rules, destined to live its fate of exception all alone, uprooted from nature, history, and existential serenity?” 
- Christy Wampole, Rootless

Cameron finishes his thought by saying, “Middle America doesn’t just grow America’s corn and potatoes; it grows Americans, who are pulled out at the root to be sorted, distributed, and transplanted across our land.”

Much of who we come to be is through our geography.

I archived my entire Substack recently.

I have this tendency to want to erase every trace of me—in both positive and negative connotations. When I’ve moved through something and I feel like I’m someone new, everything that came before feels false. And when a wound has been ripped open and I feel exposed, the thought of my self being accessible is unbearable. I want to go away, I want to disappear. Sometimes I need to cut out all of the noise to remember what I sound like, and sometimes this looks like being less visible.

Distance is the only way I know how to sort through things. I like to wrap my head around an experience then let people in on it after the fact—to protect myself, but I also like to believe I do it to protect others. I want to shelter you from my feelings. Because when the dam breaks from the pressure, all of that water will flood my heart and crack my ribs. The knife tends to cut deep, too deep, and I try very hard not to bleed all over others. I shore up my walls and make the proper repairs. I stay away until I’m certain it won’t break open again; until I’m certain I can talk about it without showing how much it hurt.

“If you are a private poet, then your vocabulary is limited by your obsessions. It doesn’t bother me that the word “stone” appears more than thirty times in my third book, or that “wind” and “gray” appear over and over in my poems to the disdain of some reviewers. If I didn’t use them that often I’d be lying about my feelings, and I consider that unforgivable. In fact, most poets write the same poem over and over. Wallace Stevens was honest enough not to try to hide it. Frost’s statement that he tried to make every poem as different as possible from the last one is a way of saying that he knew it couldn’t be.” 
- Richard Hugo

I think there are some things we deal with our entire lives, no matter how much effort we exert in our attempt to get over them. This feeling of strangeness, this impulse to extract myself, is mine.

Even in my writing I’m rootless.

I cut ties with my previous work and start fresh, and this calms me even if eventually I regret the absolute and total extirpation of my past work. I’m no longer tethered to the weight of before. I’m floating and I’m free.

I can’t help it, I love a clean slate.

I wonder if this is my fate—to wander with no place to return to. I’m not convinced anymore I need to find a permanent home, literally or figuratively, but I don’t believe anyone wants to be completely unmoored. Sometimes when it’s 3am and I feel like I’m floating, I reach out in the dark and place my palm flat against the wall to feel something solid; as a reminder that I’m solid too. I still desire an anchor of some kind.

It seems a bit ironic that I feel most found when I’m lost. Strange lands feel like home. But I want to venture off with the knowledge there is somewhere or something—or perhaps what I’m apprehensive to confess, someone—for me to return to. Feeling rootless is familiar, but there is a piece of me that, when lying in that delicate dark, craves security, which I think means acceptance. I want someday, in my own way, to belong.

“This metaphor’s broad applicability to such a variety of circumstances reveals a meaningful pattern in the human psyche: Continuity is preferable to discontinuity. The root is an integrating metaphor, one that allows for connections to be made between past, present, and future, between remote geographic spaces, between neighbors, between the human and its ecosystem. To be rootless is to lack context. What becomes clear in the incessant reliance on the metaphor of rootedness is that the desire for temporal, spatial, epistemological, and ontological continuity is an elementary human need… Figurative language is the outlet for a deep-seated apprehension about permanent estrangement from the context whence we came.” 
- Christy Wampole

Tillandsia are a plant commonly known as air plants. They’re called air plants because they obtain their nutrients and water from the air, not requiring soil for nourishment. They do not have a functional root system, and any root system they do have has grown to act as an anchor only, to help attach themselves to the surfaces they commonly grow on, such as rocks or moss. Their leaves are their primary means of nutrient absorption, not their roots.

Here is where the plantlike metaphor brings me continuity:

I’m an air plant.

Air plants die if you plant them in soil, and the same seems to be true of me. Force me to stay in one place for too long and watch me wither.

The moment this occurred to me is the moment something clicked into place. Suddenly I felt less apologetic for being me. I felt less wrong for being unsuccessful in finding a place to “put down roots”. I’m letting it go—the fear of judgment for this being my natural disposition. I’ve spent so much energy worrying whether or not I’m living right according to some undefinable source, and thinking of myself as an air plant is giving me a little courage. A piece of me that has been screaming, begging for understanding, can finally relax.

In this case, the metaphorical offered the truth. I’m in constant flux, and I need my environment to reflect back to me who I am, and I am not wrong to live this way.

Somewhere in this meandering question of a letter is something simple and uncomplicated: Do I trust myself in this? Do I trust myself enough to not need roots? Do I trust myself to know where I need to go, and when? Can I live in a meaningful way without being certain of the meaning?

Life requires a blind trust. No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that life will hurt, and it will be unbearable, and there will be struggle, and there are many moments when it feels like I’m on my own. So, I’m on my own. I’ll stand up, dust myself off, and face it again. And again. And again.

I am not naive.

There is nothing blind in my trust.

“Don’t wait for it,” I said. “Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then the love will come to you, then it comes to you.” 
- Anaïs Nin 

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(Update: as of May 2026, I republished a few of my archived pieces. I’ve figured out how to be happy being me—past, present, and future—on display.)

In my own life, I’m partial to a clear story. I prefer what I’m going through to have a comprehensible beginning, middle, and end. A through line that anchors the before to the after. Bookends to make sense of the narrative. I work tirelessly to organize it until it is nice and neat. And sure, maybe life isn’t so linear and I’m delusional in thinking I can make it so, but this isn’t life. This is the story I’m telling you about a chapter in my life, and so returning to the Pacific Northwest in November felt like an ideal bookend to me.

Five years ago I was living in the Pacific Northwest. What happened there was the final unraveling of my world. I pulled at the thread of my life and everything came undone. Although it wasn’t immediate. It took another year and a half and a move back to my home state for me to finally decide to start over. I salvaged what I could, I moved to my hometown, and I endured the backlash I received for the decision I made—something that still pops into my life from time to time.

It was the right decision, and I’m proud to have made it.

I find it difficult to be open about what’s happened. In part because I felt ashamed for a long time, and in part because it’s my life and I’m protective of it. I watch as others share so openly about their experiences, and sometimes I envy them, but mostly I’m comfortable staying quiet. Though I do think saying something out loud helps you let it go. Maybe even helps you reclaim something that was taken from you.

Can I Tell You a Secret? came from this need to tell someone the truth, and my inability to look those I loved in the eye. I thought writing it down might mean I wouldn’t have to say it out loud. I thought this space would be a loophole—a way to get it off of my chest without having to face the possibility of losing everyone and everything I loved. I simply couldn’t handle the thought of watching my friends’ love for me disappear right in front of me.

In fact, the opposite happened.

I don’t know how much of my honesty actually found its way into these letters, but I can tangibly measure how much of it seeped into my conversations. This publication taught me how to be open in my real life, and in that way it has served me better than I could have hoped.

There is an idea that Hermann Hesse wrote in his book, Siddhartha—the premise of this idea being that you cannot teach wisdom. “Sometimes, for an hour or for a day, I have felt knowledge in me the way we feel life in our hearts. There were a number of thoughts, but it would be hard for me to communicate them to you. Listen, my Govinda, this is one of my thoughts that I have found: Wisdom cannot be communicated. Wisdom that a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.”

“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. We can find it, we can live it, we can be carried by it, we can work wonders with it, but we cannot utter it or teach it.”

I’m certain writing this here, now, disqualifies me—makes me sound foolish—since I am attempting to communicate a small piece of wisdom I’ve found, but it’s also everything I’m trying to say to you.

The best way to be of service to this world lies not in thinking you must teach others your wisdom, but in simply living without hope or agenda.

I’ve become more private than I used to be, if that’s possible. I feel uneasy with my desire to document my thoughts, even more uneasy with my desire to share them in some public form—photo, video, writing.

Part of this unease comes from how documented my previous life actually is and what that means for me now, and part of it is because I can’t pinpoint my motivation for sharing. I am torn between expressing myself and what that expression means or looks like to you. I’m caught between morals, or what I tell myself is morality but might actually be superiority—a rigid idea of how my values should be perceived by the outside world.

When my daily life was documented and shared on YouTube, strangers would comment and gush about how wonderful my life was, how in love I seemed, how they wanted what I had, and I hated it. It wasn’t the whole truth. I don’t even know if it was half of the truth. I watch those old videos and all I see is a girl playing a part. Jia Tolentino says it best in Trick Mirror, “Reality TV conditions were bleeding into everything; everyone was documenting their lives to be viewed.”

I don’t want to be a character, and I don’t want to be viewed as a character. There is an element of the unreal to all of this. It remains true that words (and cameras) cannot capture life as it really is, as it is really happening. Like I said in the beginning of this letter—this isn’t life, it’s just a story.

Living remains our purest and most authentic expression. It is what I’m most devoted to. I would give up writing if it meant I would be a better human.

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, regarding Lot’s wife, “but she did look back. And I love her for that. Because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.” And, “People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore. I’ve finished my war book. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”

I looked back. I had to. But I’ve finished my war book, and it is a failure. For as much or as little as I’ve spoken about my experiences, I don’t think I will talk about them anymore. I don’t need to. Which leaves me wondering what this Substack will become. Maybe it will change very little, and that’s fine.

I had a moment recently where I realized it was all over; a little epiphany where I saw that the past no longer has the power to dig its claws into me. I don’t feel defined by what happened to me. I found a way to let go of the shame. I managed to stitch up my wounds without bleeding all over everyone else—something I’m quite proud of.

I don’t have any more secrets, except the ones worth keeping.

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“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”

- Jack Kerouac

The definition of America is an open road. There are so many of them, and they are so long. People fly here from all over the world to go on the Great American Road Trip. Road trips are almost a requisite to being American. They’re a rite of passage. They’re embedded in our DNA. Certainly they’re embedded in mine.

Driving was my family’s preferred method of travel, same as most families in middle America. It isn’t uncommon to hear me say, “It’s only an eight (or ten or twelve) hour drive.” I’ve road tripped all over this country—sleeping in the bed of my grandpa’s truck under the stars and being eaten alive by mosquitoes, also a rite of passage. I’ve been on a 28-day cross country road trip. I’ve been stranded all over. Once I got stuck in Steamboat Springs for a week due to a blizzard closing down the highways. I’ve eaten more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches than I can count.

I love the road.

The road allows you to move slow, and I prefer it this way. I like taking my time. I like looking at things. I make a playlist and find solace in the liminal space. The outside world keeps moving without me, time stretches out, and as I get further away, I feel like myself. I’m reminded how much time we have. I’m reminded how lucky we are to be here.

I’m watching the sun go down in Monterey, California, sitting on the patio of a surf motel enjoying the last light of the day. The sky is painted a gradient of pink and blue pastels. It’s beautiful, and it makes me want to tell you something.

I’m on a little coastal road trip through Big Sur. Maybe it’s extreme to say, but I think I thought America was ugly until I saw this coastline. The first time I came here something in me shifted forever, and for better. And I can’t stop coming back.

Every time I visit, I bring Henry Miller’s Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch with me. In it he writes, “Surely everyone realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) Yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.”

The sacrifice, even if it is of your chains. We hang on to things because we can’t understand what will fit there if not that thing. We are scared to be empty. But we forget emptiness can be good. You can’t build something new, or fill your life with beautiful things, if it is not first a blank canvas; if you are not first open to the possibility. The self-doubt is nearly debilitating, but only nearly. The truth is you are being offered a chance to prove yourself. You’re being offered a chance to be better.

Emptiness is an opportunity for creation.

After a picnic lunch I put my feet in the river and remember. I remember I once believed good and kind things about myself. I remember that if outside voices can convince us we are unlovable, then it must also be true that outside voices can help us remember how lovable we are. I remember I trust in timing. I remember it is a waste to hold my future hostage by my fear. I remember nature gives me courage.

There are other things I remember too.

It is not a sin to have a wandering spirit, or to let it guide you. There is no mold to fit. Resist peer pressure and find your nerve. Get rid of the noise to remember what you sound like. You can do whatever you want. The gift of time is perspective. Don’t be afraid to have no idea. It is good to give in to enthusiasm. All of it is worth the risk. The earth is in love with you.

Nothing is that serious!

In Big Sur I think I see the truth reflected back to me. I’m not certain if I’m capable of matching its beauty, but it makes me want to try. I want to be deserving of this place, and in turn, this world.

On the drive home my mind drifts. I think about my life and find that I’m grateful for my emptiness, and all of this time. I’m grateful for these chances to be better. When I’m still I can hear the earth whispering and I decide to trust her. I think she is a far more reliable source than the others.

"Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn't choose them, I don't fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don't keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stand forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect."

- Mary Oliver, Upstream

for listening —

put your feet in a river & remember

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“I go places, I come back. I tell you how the places made me feel.”
- Anthony Bourdain 

Growing up I never had a dream job, only dream places. I was certain of one thing, which is that I belonged somewhere else. The places we inhabit make us who we are, and I always knew who I wanted to be. I wanted to be the girl who got out. I had a clear picture of myself; a secret belief of who I really was if only I had the chance to prove it.

I met someone recently who is surprised I chose to live where I currently live. “You scream city to me,” they said, and they’re not wrong. It’s true that living in a beach town was never something I considered before. It was always going to be everywhere. By the time I was twelve, it was only going to be New York.

When I was a girl, I would lay in bed staring at the ceiling for hours imagining the cities, the bustling people, the places I couldn’t reach—the places I belonged. I ached to be there. (Often this pastime would be soundtracked by Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid because even as a child I couldn’t resist a melodramatic mood.)

Things change and sometimes the places that end up saving you look like places you tried to avoid, but lately I’ve needed a place to be. To mind my own business. To look at the world going by and to think. Friends and family keep insisting I don’t need a plan (and they’re probably right), but I have ideas. Faint images on the edges of my mind.

I’ve needed a place to sit and consider where to go from here.

I don’t know what it is about New York and California. When I’m in one it makes me long for the other. I became serious about moving to California when I lived in New York, the brutal winter making me crave the promises of the West Coast. Now I’m in California dreaming of the first city I ever loved.

In the first week living here I have a conversation with a friend about visiting New York for our ten year friendiversary, though I’m not too serious about it. Having just moved it seemed an unlikely prospect, but the idea lodges itself in my mind anyway and I carry it around with me for months.

In June I feel compelled to revisit M Train by Patti Smith—a book set primarily in her favorite Greenwich Village cafe. I have always felt a kinship with Patti Smith. Her roaming spirit, her reverence for artists and their places, her androgynous demeanor, the attention she pays. We see pieces of ourselves in others, and I see a lot of myself in her.

In M Train Patti keeps coming back to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. The Wind-Up Bird had become a haven for her, something to cling to. Then in a rush to catch her flight, she leaves it behind. It was “a heavily marked-up paperback stained with coffee and olive oil, my traveling companion and the mascot of my resurging energy.”

Exactly how I would describe M Train when I think about it. My copy has survived five moves and traveled with me on a few cross country road trips. It becomes more tattered every time I flip through its pages. Lines underlined in black ink from my first reading, a light gray highlighter from subsequent readings. Marks of the words that have changed me over the years. Marks of the passage of time.

And the mascot of my resurging energy.

I pined for New York. It seeped into my writings, into my reading, into the movies I chose to watch. And one day, just like that, things fell into place and I knew I had to go. Isn’t it funny, serendipity? Or fate? Or whatever you want to call it when the universe seems to unfold in your favor?

Invisible strings tie us to our dreams.

I’ve been thinking about how I relate to the world, and how the world relates to me. I wrote a line a long time ago, “How am I supposed to know who I am if I don’t experience everything at least once?” Maybe it’s because I continue to gain experiences, maybe it’s because I’ve learned my identity isn’t crucial to my experience, and vice versa, or maybe it’s because there are some experiences I find myself always wanting to return to, but I feel less panicked by this question. There are many places I haven’t seen, but there are a few I dream of constantly, and this tells me something about who I am.

In a lot of ways it’s true that you are never going to be the person you were before, and in some ways you always are. I think that’s why the thought of New York refused to leave me alone. It’s always been a place I turn to when I’m trying to figure out what to do. So my friend and I booked the trip, and I decided to tack on some solo days to spend in the city alone.

The sheer volume of people in New York always kicks my mind into gear, shifting and expanding things so that they fit into place. You are alone, or you are not, and no one minds either way. Here you can be as eccentric or as unassuming as you’d like. You can be both, if it suits you. It’s the perfect place to hide in plain sight, my favorite hobby. I grew up believing I belonged here, but after living here for a few years I found myself longing for elsewhere. Except the moment I left all I wanted was to return. So I’ve come to believe it’s possible I belong nowhere. Put another way, it’s possible I belong everywhere.

I was walking the Brooklyn Bridge when it struck me. Possibly it was due to the crowd herding itself toward Brooklyn—so many people capturing their own individual moments, wishing there weren’t so many people in the background of their photo. What does it mean to belong? How much can we ever really be known by another? And how much can we really know? We are always alone. When I mention this to my friend, she says, “At least you’re saying ‘we.’ It seems to be an existential conversation more than one of your own loneliness.” Maybe she’s right.

I feel bad for feeling this way because I know there are people who love me, and I worry I’m doing their love a disservice. Still, I can’t shake the feeling of estrangement. Knowing I’m loved does little in bridging the gap.

We are all alone together.
We are altogether alone.

There is plenty to be said on the isolating nature of this city, but somehow when I’m here I feel less lonely. When I go for dinner, I am not the only one enjoying a meal alone. When I walk the streets I am surrounded by solitaries. When I go back to my hotel room I am grateful for the peace and quiet. I watch strangers give other strangers their umbrella when it rains. We stumble on an Olympics watch party at Rockefeller Center. I witness six strangers come to the aide of an elderly woman who tripped on the sidewalk. I am asked to model a sign for a girl who is promoting an event encouraging people to meet in grocery stores. I am gifted a lucky penny. A man asks me for a dollar. I say, “here’s five.” He grins, “and here’s five thank you’s.” An interaction I’m still thinking about.

We go to a Broadway show, and the next day we run into the lead actor at a cafe in the Upper West Side. I go to the Guggenheim to see the Jenny Holzer exhibit. She reminds me how much I love words. I stop in my favorite bookstores. I have dinner at the Chelsea Hotel. We eat bagels in the park. I catch up with friends over tea. I have my favorite dessert five different evenings because I’m afraid I’ll forget how it feels to taste perfection. We get caught in rainstorms. Store owners let us take shelter under their awnings. We are given free tickets to the ballet. We are offered help. I visit my old apartment and notice how much has changed, and how much remains the same.

Kindness and generosity abound.
Also indifference and unnecessary hardship.

Loneliness and aloneness.

I do not wish to romanticize this (or any) city. For one thing a pigeon pooped on my shirt in the East Village. (Hand sanitizer and ice works in a pinch, by the way.) And another, it was very warm. One morning I finally gave in and purchased an umbrella (I’m against umbrellas, but I was on my way to meet someone and I wanted to look semi-presentable.), and it broke less than a block from the bodega where I purchased it. Faces on the subway were tired and worn down. The strangers who helped the elderly woman? They proceeded to get in a screaming match with the EMT just trying to do his job, a true New York interaction. There were moments that my aloneness was piercing, though I wasn’t lonely. The truth that there was no one I could call struck me. It signaled my brain to watch for danger. I was less willing to engage with people. A friend kept tabs on my location. I’m aware how being a woman, and especially a woman alone, influences my behavior. The need to ensure safety can often win out over my desire to be open. In the end, I would rather be looked over than looked at.

Aloneness begets loneliness, maybe.

What I mean is, I don’t wish to pretend that life isn’t hard—for any of us—and the hardship weighs heavy sometimes. But I like to make a practice of uncovering kindness wherever I go. It helps me not drown in it all. While we’re running around New York talking about god knows what, a comment is made, “I love how romantic you are.” All I know is there seems to be little left for us so we might as well live by the hand of love.

Jenny Holzer sums it up well. Light Line is an installation of her most iconic lines set in an LED panel scrolling up the six-floor rotunda of the Guggenheim. Lines such as: It’s better to be naive than jaded. It is better to be alone than to be with inferiors. It’s just an accident your parents are your parents. It’s not good to hold onto many absolutes. Don’t talk down to me. Don’t try to make me feel nice. By your response to danger it is easy to tell how you have lived and what has been done to you. Turn soft and lovely any time you have a chance. Savor kindness because cruelty is always possible later. In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy. Low expectations are good protection. There is no respite from horror. The future is stupid. It is in your self interest to find a way to be very tender.

Everything is intertwined. Poetry exists despite, and within, and because of, the horror.

On my final morning in New York it’s so chilly I’m tempted to believe it’s autumn. I smile, happy to experience New York in two seasons. I wander the rain soaked streets of the West Village to my favorite spot in all of New York City—Washington Square Park. To me this park represents everything I longed for when I was a child; an amalgamation of all I imagined a city was. I was here earlier in the week when it was 93 degrees and crowded. People were cooling off in the fountain. There were buskers every direction you turned. Now it’s 70 degrees or so. The park is nearly empty.

There is a bench here dedicated to someone else, though I feel as if it’s my own. Probably because I discovered it just a few weeks before I moved away. Secured to the back of the bench is a plaque that reads, “from here, we will go everywhere.” I came across it when I was leaving the park one evening, drowning in the melancholy of moving on from one dream in order to find another. How lovely, and how fitting, I thought.

Today the bench is littered with trash. Not unexpected as it’s situated in a far corner of the park, off on its own. I take a few photos and put the camera away so I can enjoy my last New York bagel.

I didn’t know what to expect coming back here. I didn’t know if history would be lingering. I was nervous how I might feel, but I just feel like me.

New York is a through line. It’s a home whether I live here or not. The Bowery is my neighborhood. Rivington is my street. New York made me brave in ways I was previously scared to be brave. It continues to do so. A piece of me exists here that is rarely, if ever, accessible elsewhere. And I love who I am when she surfaces.

I don’t know what that means. I don’t know where I belong. Sometimes I’m not sure I’ll ever know who I am. How many pieces of me exist? How impossible are they to know? When I’m in the cities I belong in the trees. When I’m in the trees I belong by the ocean. And on it goes.

Back then I thought “from here, we will go everywhere” meant the physical places that were waiting for me. I took it to mean travel. But sitting in the same spot as the person I am now, five years later, the meaning is much more personal. I have traveled places, sure, but the meaningful places I’ve been are invisible.

I came here thinking I was looking for inspiration and energy, and maybe I found some, but mostly I was reminded of what has always been true of me, and that no one can alter the core of who I am. I don’t know if I will ever belong anywhere, but I don’t know that I need to. It’s a privilege to leave my heart in many places. It’s a privilege not to belong to one place, one person, one life. Wishing to belong only serves to emphasize the feeling that I don’t.

I do know one thing though.
wherever i go, it will be from here.

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In my old life I went to coffee shops every day. I loved being out and alone in a crowded city. It’s a specific kind of freedom—being anonymous while surrounded by so many people. I would snag a table in the corner, or near a window, and I would people watch for hours while I wrote.

It’s been years since I’ve participated in most things from my past life. Habits that became rituals which I loved have fallen away. Now journaling is sporadic, reading is as well. I don’t remember the last time I watched a movie that wasn’t lighthearted so that I don’t have to pay attention. Having a conversation where I don’t feel exposed, or feel worried that I soon will be, is rare these days. My thoughts remain fragmented. I struggle sometimes to find the words. I feel dull and unintelligent. The fog lingers.

I’m still confused by some things. The cognitive dissonance trips me up. But underneath I can tell I’m in there somewhere. I can feel me coming back.

There are certain things I’m desperate to have return to me, and there are some I think might be lost forever. When something was your whole personality, and you suffer something tragic, and that thing leaves you, what do you do then?

I feel solid, which is something I haven’t been able to say in a long time. I feel like I’m me again. But there’s this new piece of me that is profoundly sad no matter what. I’m happier than ever, and I’m painfully aware of this tender spot that hurts to look at. I witness a moment so beautiful it makes me cry, or I get excited about the future, or I’m crying because I’m laughing so hard, and out of nowhere the sadness that now rests in my chest blinds me. I can’t ignore it. I also can’t explain it.

I am me again, and I am completely different, and I don’t know how to be in the world now.

So when I found myself at a coffee shop alone, it felt foreign. I felt self-conscious. I got out my journal to give my hands something to do, and it quickly turned into a list making session. When I feel like I’m floating, I go in search of something to anchor me back to the earth. This often means something practical, like a plan.

Before I knew it I turned the page and scribbled this, my mind working faster than my hands:

I stared at it for a while. What did it mean? What did I want? How should I be involved with my life? Am I not already, since I have no other option but to live this particular one?

While I was sitting there having this little epiphany, I was listening to Easy Tiger by Flyte on repeat. When I first left my relationship, a friend made a playlist for me which included this song. He messaged me the playlist and one simple word, “ouch.” A perfect text, a kind gesture.

"But go easy tiger
This is only gonna get worse
Easy tiger
You're a survivor
But this is really going to hurt"

I thought leaving would be the worst of it, but actually it ended up getting worse from there. Something I didn’t anticipate. It has cut me in ways words are incapable of expressing. But nearly two years later, I’m still here.

It’s been slow—learning how to live again and rewiring my brain. You read all of these narratives, all of these stories of people recovering from their own divorce and finding themselves and going on adventures and building this big beautiful life, and you think that will be you. And I guess it is, little by little, but I haven’t found anyone who has properly articulated how painful it is even when it’s the most wonderful gift you’ve given to yourself.

It’s amazing how freeing and how lonely it is to live with the truth.

Be involved with your life!!

Something about seeing that sentence in my handwriting woke me up to the realization that I wanted to change how I’m looking at things. I’m moving on, I’ve been moving on, and I can be slightly heartbroken and proud that I did the right thing, which doesn’t always mean the easy or exciting or happy thing. Sometimes you must make the move and trust the relief will come.

The relief has finally come.

I’m paying attention again. I’m being involved by being present.

I’m living less in the past, and less in the future too. Whomever I’m with, I am giving them my full attention. Wherever I am deserves to be noticed. I’m no longer desperate for a plan. For once I’m not wishing I could go somewhere where I’m not.

I’m running around the California coast thinking of little except how grateful I am to be alive. I’m getting out of my head. I’m climbing on rocks and riding bikes and eating again and going to museums and getting tattoos at a stranger’s house and looking people in the eye and going to concerts and exploring and putting in effort and challenging my distorted thoughts and laughing a lot and appreciating the comfort of a hotel bed.

I’m concerning myself with small pleasures and easing off the pressure. I’m a little freaked out by how natural this move has been, but I’m trying not to overthink it. I’m embracing the fact that maybe for the first time ever, I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m noticing exactly how much there is to notice.

On a drive along the coast, I witnessed a rainbow stretching across the sky from the hills to the ocean. And I laughed because it was so wonderful. And the friend I was with said, “Are we living in lucky charms?!” And we pulled over to appreciate it fully. And I told my friend that one day I want to know how it feels to step into a prism. And we mused that if sunbeams are so healing, how much more restorative are rainbows? And the sadness was there but it didn’t overshadow the joy.

And all of this really does feel like me.

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We are all, each of us, a moment crashing.
Colliding with each other in ways we are never prepared for.
Sometimes a crash is beautiful.
Sometimes a crash destroys.
We almost never know which crash we are in until the end.

Did you ever think we’d end up here?

You and me. In this moment, wherever you may be.

Have you ever looked around and realized you have no idea how you got there? It’s like when you drive home after a long day and your brain has no recollection of the journey. Your memory skips from the place you left to your driveway, everything between is empty. That’s how life seems to be playing out.

It continually catches me off guard.

I’m doing my best to live when suddenly I’m slapped in the face and all of the work I did starts to unravel right before my eyes. A week or two or six passes. The dust starts to settle. I look around, take in the aftermath, and set to work picking up the pieces. One by one I turn them in my hands, examine them, and try to arrange them in a way that seems to make sense.

I am halfway across the country watching someone I love lose someone they love. A kind and caring and funny man who means the world to my family.

I’m trying to be there for my friend from 1,300 miles away which feels impossible, and I’m trying to allow myself to feel my own feelings while not letting them get in the way. At the same time I’m experiencing a lot of change which has the tendency to make me feel exposed. I feel helpless and I wish I could do something, and I feel a loneliness more piercing than I can explain.

I was thinking about all of this as I was watching the sunset on a Monday and searching for an answer that made me feel better than the truth, so I wrote a letter about moments. I wanted to tell you that a moment is better than forever; that we are immensely lucky to have them. I wanted to believe that.

I published the letter on Tuesday morning and unpublished it a few hours later. Everything turned fragile. I received news I really didn’t want to hear. Waves of anxiety were washing over me. An emotional wound was sliced open. I didn’t believe a word I had written.

What’s the point of a moment when we could have forever?

That might be the truest thing I wrote in that letter—the question that started it all, not the answer I came up with.

Why would the universe give you moments just to take them away? What is the point of something if the inevitability is its end? Moments aren’t more beautiful because we can’t keep them.

Sometimes I hate hope.

Recently someone told me that my only vulnerability is hope. I laughed at the line, but I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. It’s true that I tend to be cautious, and it’s true that I am somehow never cautious enough.

Lately I’ve been trying to trust that good things can happen. I don’t want to be a person who is always waiting to be proven right by misfortune. But it seems that every time I allow myself a bit of hope the universe rips it away, and here I am being proven right. Like life tricked me and I’m embarrassed I didn’t see it coming.

I feel it written all over me. Ruin.

I wake up heavy with it and all I can think about is how much longer I have to live with this before it starts to feel lighter. I live my life wondering how many strangers can see it when they look in my eyes. Am I doing a good job at hiding it from my friends?

I want to tell you exactly what is happening in my world without pretense. No tiptoeing around, no hints, but I can’t seem to do it. Maybe it’s something I understand is best kept secret. It’s a complicated thing—knowing that silence is sometimes the way to defend yourself. Still, I find myself wishing I could say it. I keep wondering if not saying it makes me dishonest. How much of my choice to be quiet is fear?

I’m a reserved person. It takes time for me to warm up to you. Ask my friends. I require a little patience. I don’t think this is always ideal. I tend to believe I’m difficult to love once you see my feelings, so I keep them close.

Most of the time I want to delete everything I’ve ever written. A few times in my life I have. I peel back a layer, reveal something, and immediately wish I could cover it back up. I am always hesitating. I hate the thought that I can do nothing about how you perceive me. Once you know whatever it is I decide to confess to you, you will be able to form an opinion about me that I will be unable to erase.

I’m thinking about safety.

How to feel safe in my body, in my mind, in my home, in this world.

There is so much in this life capable of derailing us. I would like to know how to prevent it from doing so. Not that I want to be impenetrable. I like being soft even if it makes me vulnerable, but I don’t think this means we shouldn’t also be safe. Do you think this is possible?

I’m not writing this because I have a solution. I only have questions. How do you feel safe? What do you do when you don’t? What about the times when you don’t feel safe, but know that you are?

My dreams are full of horrors I spend my waking hours assuring myself aren’t real, though I never manage to fully convince myself of this. How do I stop waiting for the other shoe to drop? How do I stop living in this dreadful anticipation? How do I finally feel safe?

Where can I go?

Here’s a thing.

I am searching for a way to prove my past wrong. I am finding my way back to believing the best of people.

This is my practice—to seek the good.

Hope is messy. It requires that we get back up, and I know I will. But can I confess to you that I’d like life to be gentle with me? I’d like for someone to hug me, and when I try to let go I want them to simply hold me a little tighter, and I want to understand this means they love me.

I want to write about the peace I feel in this moment. I want to write about how every time I go to the beach to journal or read or write, I only end up watching the birds. I want to write about how an hour or two goes by before I realize this and smile at how empty my mind was, how quiet.

So I write this in the notes app on my phone in an attempt to remember, and I walk home to sit at my desk and diligently search for the right words.

Lately I’ve been sleeping 12 hours every night. Dreamless sleep. Apparently this is what happens when your body feels safe enough to relax.

Here are the right words:

We need a certain amount of safety in order to feel free.

It’s simple, really.

I want to believe in something again.

Life or the universe or love or art or me. I honestly don’t care at this point. Just something.

I celebrated a birthday recently, and I spent it with some of the warmest people this earth has ever known. For a moment at dinner the world fell away. And I was happy. And I noticed how beautiful love is, and support. And I felt the relief that comes from feeling protected.

Maybe this is something I can believe in.

You think you’ve felt the depths of loneliness, but there will always be another layer. To live with an open heart means your heart will forever break. Learning how to live within the duality of grief isn’t a choice we get to make. And maybe a moment can be beautiful but forever is still my preference.

I showed my nephew a photo of the sun setting over the Pacific once. His eyes grew wide and the most beautiful smile lit up his face. “The sun goes into the ocean?! So maybe if we just go swimming we’ll find the sun?”

This is hope.

To stand back up. Every time. Dust yourself off. Sift through the wreckage. Piece your life back together.

Go swimming in the depths for the sun.

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Now my mom is the one in the passenger seat, moving me.

Proof that life is cyclical.

In the weeks leading up to the move I kept feeling like California was a returning of some kind, but I haven’t been able to articulate how or why. Maybe this is it—a returning to my roots; a retracing of how I began in order to be who I am.

I wrote the above on the morning of December 26 as I packed what could fit of my material possessions into a 4-door hatchback and left Oklahoma, heading West. Since that morning I’ve written almost nothing. My mind has been a total blank. So has my heart. I’d like to hope it’s simply because there is so much going on externally that I can’t process it all.

I’ve been in California for a little over a week and it doesn’t feel real. It’s 3am and I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about change. How change is good. And how change is devastating even when it’s good. And how all of this is true whether you invite the change or not.

These must be the fragile moments.
And they sometimes hurt to touch.

Someone asked me how my move has been. I feel disappointed thinking back on my answer. I told them it has all been pretty smooth so far. Not a lie, but a bit of a non-answer. For two reasons, I think.

The first being I have had little time to actually consider how my move has been. I have not had a chance to sit and think, so when asked, I honestly didn’t know yet.

The second being I still have trouble allowing others to see me when I’m too close to my feelings to name them. I don’t know why I didn’t feel like I could say that I didn’t know. Why do I do that? Why do I provide a pleasantry in place of honesty? I wish in that moment I had been better. So I’m going to put it here because this is where secrets are kept.

How has my move been?

The drive out had no hiccups, moving into a new place was seamless, going back to work after a two week break has been a breeze. The day I drove into my new town was exciting and calming, which I think is a good way to measure if something is right.

But there is something else here that I find difficult to name. Grief, maybe. The physical distance that now exists between me and everything else has provided some much needed relief. I finally feel like I’m able to take a deep breath and mean it. And somehow this relief is making me sad. It makes no sense to me, which is why I gave such a surface level answer.

I have never regretted anything before. I’ve never looked back and wished I did things differently. I have always held the value that learning is growing, and you learn best by doing, so nothing is irredeemable. But now I can’t help but regret this very big thing. I have spent so much time trying to find the silver lining in it, the growth, the lesson. I know it’s there, but mostly I just feel like I could have done without the experience. I am still trying to integrate my past and my present, which will turn into my future. I am still trying to figure out who this has made me.

California is a returning, that’s true. I am retracing something here, even if I’m not quite sure yet what that is. I don’t know what I’m doing here, or what I’m looking for, and there is only a suspicion of who I am now. I never expected to be here alone. Though I’m grateful not to be where I was and I’m grateful to be where I am, as I am, it’s true that my present sometimes looks nothing like I thought it would and this realization can trip me up.

So how has my move been?

Exciting, terrifying, full of peace but also overwhelm. I am happy to be here. I am sometimes sad, and I am sometimes scared, and I am telling myself this is okay. And I am trying to understand how all of this can exist in one body.

I hope this is a better answer.

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I thought it might be fun to share a few with you, in no particular order. I thought it might be an accurate representation of this year.

Enjoy.

(and in case I don’t get another chance to tell you—Happy holidays. I hope you find some warmth in the final days of the year.)

November is here.

The leaves are falling, the temperatures are dropping, and I am drowning in nostalgia. Everything drips with romance. A melancholy settles over me. I come alive, and a piece of me dies.

The mask I wear throughout the year begins to slip and I can no longer hide the longing I feel. For what I’m never certain, but the longing is there all the same.

I live on a landlocked island.

I get these little glimpses.

Images in my mind of who I could be, of who I want to be, of who I think I really am. Sometimes I think these glimpses are messages trying to tell me something important. Sometimes I wish I could decipher their clues.

Who am I?
Who am I to you?

The emotional significance of mundane things.

What will last of us is the quiet, diligent work we put in day after day. What will last is what is earned in the silence.

do you think we could ever be
someone other than who we are?
do you think the moon listens
when we’re wishing on the stars?

I had taken to calling it the apartment. The heaviest the I’ve ever spoken. Only when I had to mention it I would say it quickly so I could get it over with. The apartment. Our apartment. Now, your apartment.

Today I visited for the first time in months to pick up the rest of my stuff. Stepping inside the apartment felt like a fever dream. It still looked like ours. All of the furniture we purchased together, nothing was out of place.

My past perfectly preserved in your present.

The desire to pull away the moment you reveal yourself enough to be judged.

I feel pressure to write something.
Because that’s what good writers do on the internet,
they write consistent content.
Also because it’s just what writers do.

But I don’t feel like talking about it.

Is it okay to have nothing to say?
Is it okay to have everything to say and still not say it?

In life there are so many variables.
In death you learn there is only one, which is life.

Find me in your dreams,
and I’ll find you in mine.

Do you believe that too?

Do you believe dreams
are the through line?

Hope after heartache, is there anything more endearing?

A friend once told me they listen to re:stacks by Bon Iver every time their flight takes off, so now I listen to Bon Iver every time my flight takes off.

I try to time it so that the moment the wheels leave the earth the words echo in my headphones, “Your love will be safe with me.” It’s my secret love letter to the people I am leaving, the people I will always find my way back to.

We might be worlds apart, but the space between is never empty.

-

I still think about my childhood best friend every time something major happens in my life. I still think about her when nothing is happening at all.

-

Once I caught a friend looking at me. Instead of turning their face away, they smiled. No embarrassment in being caught.

And isn’t this love?

Love, in all its simplicity, lingers.

Sometimes the realization that you are safe comes long after you’ve escaped the danger.

Words, feelings, fears
always swimming in my brain.
This is sort of how it feels:
like static,
or pouring down rain.

We hug goodbye and leave so much unsaid.
In my dreams that night I tell you everything.

I still think it’s a miracle we get to live among the clouds.

I have things to say, and I sometimes believe the last thing this earth needs is someone with things to say.

you say you understand me
so why are we talking
in circles?

we used to dance circles
around each other.
i used to find it beautiful
dancing circles with you.

but now i see
your feet
were constantly
stepping on me

in our fight for the upper hand.

every decision i’ve ever made
i made so you wouldn’t
hate me.

so how did we end up here?

i don’t recognize any
of my surroundings,
not even you.

and now we’re just
going in circles.

I’m willing to be misunderstood if it means I can keep my secrets.

Maybe if I write it down I won’t have to say it out loud.

woke up missing Union Square.
woke up missing the Barnes & Noble cafe there.
woke up missing something else too, but I can’t name it.

Drop me in the haze of the ocean,
I want to live in your epiphany.

I loved you because you felt like the rain
washing away the stain
of my humanity.

For all of my faults,
I have faith in the future. 

We are alive together,
and that’s not nothing.

I think it might be everything.

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"Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss." — Rebecca Solnit

I’m sitting in the Chicago O’Hare airport thinking about loss. The last time I was in Chicago—the first time I was in Chicago—was ten years ago. I was married then. My grandma was still alive. My puppy hadn’t yet died in my arms.

The timing of my passing through Chicago again seems peculiar. Two days ago was the one year anniversary of my puppy’s death, and Chicago was the first vacation I took just a few months after I got him. I’ve lived without my grandma for a decade which seems unfathomable. And my divorce has been final for a little over a year. If we were still married, our anniversary would be just a few weeks away.

I’m thinking about how weird it is that some dates that used to be full of meaning lose their significance, while other dates you previously thought nothing about suddenly weigh so much. I can’t help it, I remember her death date more than I do her birthdate. And how silly it sounds to mourn the death of November 7th.

I’m thinking about how much history a place is capable of holding.

Optimus came into my life at Christmas in 2012—a month after I started going to therapy because I wasn’t doing well. (& here my hesitancy kicks in. How honest should I be about how unwell I was? If I share the full weight of it will you look at me differently? Will I be dumping too much on you if I do?) Let’s just say there was debilitating anxiety. I found it increasingly difficult to get out of bed every day. It was the first time I voiced there might be trouble in my relationship, which only resulted in me retreating further into my shell.

For years it was me and Opti against the world. He saved me in a lot of ways. Every day before I went to work I would spend a few minutes assuring him that it was okay. Every day I made a promise to him that I’d come back.

We were made for each other. Two peas in a pod. Soulmates. He was moody, spiteful, and so full of life. He was a cat in a dog’s body. He wasn’t especially affectionate unless he really loved you. When I moved to New York I had to leave him with my mom. He had terrible anxiety and I knew the city noise wouldn’t do well for him which probably should have been my first clue it wouldn’t do well for me either.

I was lucky enough to spend the last year and a half of Opti’s life with him. Back in my hometown, recovering from the aftermath of everything, it was once again me and Opti against the world. Every day I told him it was okay, and every day I promised I’d come back.

He got sick one morning out of the blue. October 7, 2022. I stayed up with him all night, massaging his back because you could see how uncomfortable he was. The vet came. She gave him four shots. It turns out he had pancreatitis. Within 8 hours, at 6:30a on October 8th, the day before his tenth birthday, his pancreas ruptured and I held him, his head resting against my chest, as he struggled to breathe. His eyes locked on mine, and all I could do was repeat what I said to him every day, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

I miss him. I miss assuring him that we would be okay. I miss waking up every morning to him curled up on my pillow beside me. I miss knowing I was his favorite person. But I would go through all of it again if it meant I got to hold him as he had to leave. I would go through anything if it meant I would find my way back to him.

July, 2013. I’m six months into therapy, making decisions in service of moving forward. I find the trip to Chicago difficult to explain. There were a lot of moving parts to it. I was stagnant in my job. I was lonely in my relationship. I was lost in every sense. But I was trying.

Chicago reminds me of my grandma. Not because she was from here, or ever even visited this city, but she had a major stroke while I was running around these streets. She suffered from strokes for a long time, until she no longer suffered.

I was told she wouldn’t recover from this one, so we drove from Chicago straight to my hometown to see her. And then I went to work the following Monday. I received the phone call at work. I remember so vividly how absurd it felt to be crying alone in a closet. I remember wiping my tears and trying to walk out as if nothing had happened. I remember how I crumbled anyway when I asked my boss if I could go home.

I was having trouble understanding how only a week ago I had wanted so badly to move forward. I was angry at myself for wishing away time like that. I wanted to go back. I wanted to have never gone to Chicago. I wanted to have gone to visit my grandma instead; to have that cup of tea with her that she was always asking me to have. I was too young to understand that time takes things away from you.

I miss her a lot lately, and remembering is all I have left.

But memory is its own kind of death. I find it increasingly difficult to remember how she sounded, but it’s impossible for me to forget how I felt when she hugged me. It’s that feeling I miss the most.

The happiness is tinged with blue.
My world, now without you.

I have lived a decade without her. Sometimes I worry whether she would be proud of who I’ve become, but I know there’s no need to worry. If there is one thing in my childhood I can be certain of, it’s my grandma’s love.

Life keeps moving and sometimes it feels like all we do is accumulate loss. I want to be able to tell her I figured out how to keep going, even though moving forward inevitably means leaving behind.

Joan Didion has a very famous line in her book, The White Album, “We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce.” A brutal line, a heartbreaking scene. Joan, her husband, and their daughter on a trip to Hawaii, a fragile attempt at keeping a family together.

All of these years later, I can see how Chicago was an attempt at my own Hawaii. I was trying to determine what exactly was wrong with me that I couldn’t find a way to be happy. (Though the further away I get, the more clear this becomes.) I wanted then what I want now—novelty and freedom, and safety. The problem, I believed, lived within me.

There are places we go because we are looking for who we used to be, and there are places we go that remind us exactly who we were and it makes us desperate to forget.

Chicago is a memory I would be happy to forget.

His ghost followed me for a long time after I moved out. Sitting in this airport it becomes apparent that it still does sometimes. I’m most interested in finding a way to look back without being angry or confused by what I see, and I want to look forward without the anxiety I feel in my attempt at leaving my past behind.

So much of my past involves a person I no longer speak to. I did the math. At the time of our divorce I had spent literally half of my life with him—sixteen of my thirty two years. How is a person supposed to reconcile that? He exists in so many places I exist. To pretend it never happened would be to pretend I never happened.

No, forgetting isn’t an option.

This, I think, is the beginning of looking the truth in the eye more directly. It has been suggested that it might be time for me to acknowledge that this relationship affected me more than I want to admit, in ways I don’t want to admit. It’s probably true. There are wounds I still can’t bear to touch.

I am in Chicago and nothing is like it used to be. Not that I’m here, really. Just in the in-between that makes you think about everything. Time is suspended here, and I am suspended. Everyone around me is moving along, blurring as they rush by, and I am standing still.

History clings to its home, and my history in Chicago is brief but complex. I don’t want to look at my past through the lens of pain, even as I’m aware that I only visited Chicago because I was in pain. I am rich in loss, and it is proof. Loss is proof of life.

This is what I was thinking about at the airport in Chicago.

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“What matters is to be natural and calm 
In happiness and in unhappiness, 
To feel as if feeling were seeing, 
To think as if thinking were walking, 
And to remember, when death comes, that each day dies, 
And the sunset is beautiful, and so is the night that 
remains . . . 
That’s how it is and how I want it to be . . .”
— Fernando Pessoa 

Tonight I went to Gloss Mountain State Park with my sister-in-law to watch the sunset and to let go of what I’ve been carrying lately.

I feel like a different person these days. A sadness lingers even as I become happier. In life things happen to us, and they change us in profound ways, and we can’t anticipate it. All we can do is hold onto the hope that we’ll see the other side some day, that we will be proud of the person we are being and becoming.

We will once again feel the warmth of the sun on our skin. The sight of the stars will set us free.

I resist sharing certain things publicly because it feels too personal, but I want to say that I am slowly opening myself back up to life, to possibility, to chance and the unknown. And even though I’m a different person than I used to be, I feel a little like me again.

Little by little, I’m coming back to life.

Some things that are helping me:

Watch: Living, starring Bill Nighy

Read: Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

Focus: asking a simple question, “What if it works out?”

Small Pleasures: Matcha and little adventures

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Growing up I felt about Boston how I felt about New York. Something in me knew I belonged to it.

This time last year I got it in my head that I needed to go. Why did I feel the need to go now? I don’t really know except to say it was somewhere new and novel. I had a desire to look forward. I also wanted to be able to look back at something without having to remember everything.

So I made plans to visit Boston with my mom. We chose October for obvious reasons, and it did not disappoint. The autumn leaves, Harvard, whale watching… it was one of the best weeks I’ve had since 2019.

Anything that could go right did, and anything that could go wrong didn’t.

Except for the person who vomited off of the top deck of the whale watching boat onto the passengers below. Fortunately I ducked around the corner, but others weren’t so lucky. We were, however, very lucky to see several whales. Two of which were a mom, named Cosmos, and her baby, who was less than a year old and already weighed 2,000 pounds.

But what I most want to tell you about is Harvard.

In another world I think I could have attended Harvard. Maybe that sounds a bit pretentious, but I’ve always loved traditional education. Attending classes and reading on the lawn with the autumn leaves falling all around me was the epitome of an ideal. Still is, apparently.

The morning I visited Cambridge, I grabbed breakfast from Tatte, a French-Israeli bakery which I had every single morning I was in Boston, and ate on the Yard as I soaked in the sun. I visited the Harvard Book Store and bought just the right amount of books. I purchased a Harvard sweatshirt, an item I’ve always wanted to own. Basically I spent the day indulging my fantasy.

To end the day I wandered through a neighborhood near Harvard in search of an ordinary house.

I love David Foster Wallace as most people from my generation do. I have only read some of Infinite Jest, but I have read quite a few of his essays, though I’m not sure if this qualifies anything. Still, there is something I can’t articulate about my admiration for him. But the moment I decided to go to Boston I knew I would go in search of that inarticulate something.

There is a house where David lived for a time, where he began his work on Infinite Jest. It sits at the end of a street that has a reputation for being extremely quiet. In fact when my mom and I were walking the street a man came out of his house and greeted us in a hushed tone, and when we said our goodbyes he gave us a polite reminder to be quiet.

By all accounts the house is pretty ordinary. There are power lines running in front of it, trees and greenery blocking most of the view. It seems as if it’s been divided into multiple units now. Like I said, ordinary. Yet I stood there staring at it for a long time.

There’s something mystical about the places where people you admire lived and worked. History clings to its home. No matter how dilapidated a place becomes or how much it morphs over time, it forever belongs to the people who inhabited it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Neck, his inspiration for West Egg, and the home where he wrote the first three chapters of The Great Gatsby. Jack Kerouac’s Long Island home and local bar. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe’s Lower East Side, NY. There are, of course, countless examples.

Joan Didion, a writer who managed to embody the entire state of California, once wrote: “Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them… A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image…”

As I stood there staring at the house where David lived, there was no doubt that he had managed to turn an ordinary house into something extraordinary. History happened there. He immortalized Boston in a way no one else has done or will ever be able to do again. Boston belongs forever to David Foster Wallace.

And I can’t help but wonder, what place will belong to me?

After awhile, I sat down on the corner of the sidewalk of that eerily quiet street and wrote a few lines on a post card that I’m still thinking about today: I don’t pretend to be anywhere near the same level of intellect or talent as David Foster Wallace, but I like to imagine we are all making our ordinary places extraordinary too.

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“Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?”
—Haruki Murakami

Waves of self-consciousness wash over me and I go searching for relief. I write these letters and don’t publish them, certain they will be found lacking. I pivot, thinking I’ll write about self-consciousness itself, but I don’t publish that either. Instead I rewrite it four, five, six times. I notice I am intellectualizing my feelings again.

I am so much better at writing after the fact, I think. A little distance calms me. I prefer to be a bit removed from my feelings before I share them. It allows me to tell you about it without showing you how much it hurt. I find it difficult to be vulnerable with my sensitivity. I am not good at letting people see me.

I’m beginning to inch my way past it so my brain is doing its thing—sifting through the feelings, putting them where they belong, connecting patterns and creating meanings—while I sit here and watch it all happen.

I’ve written and rewritten this letter so many times I’ve lost count. Even this published version, which I’m not convinced is as clear as it could be, has been edited so much it is unrecognizable to its original. I wrote other letters as well, but in my impatience and disquiet they were deleted. Now I wonder what could have been gleaned from them had I had enough sense to save them.

It blindsides me, this embarrassment. I wake up one morning and everything is wrong. Seemingly out of nowhere, I can feel people unwittingly begin to grate on my nerves. The endless requests sound like metal screeching against metal in my mind. The innocent how are you’s and glances in my direction put me on edge. I feel sensitive, a little fragile, unsure of myself or what I’m doing. I don’t know if it’s the post-holiday crash that caused it, or the gray days of the beginning of the year, or that January is a month that takes years, but I couldn’t stop it happening.

What I wish I could say is that the problem is everyone else. It would make this so much easier. But the real problem is being witnessed by everyone else.

Most of the time I would like to disappear so everyone I know could forget me. I want to go to a place where no one recognizes me and I can wander aimlessly, where anonymity is possible and I am free from the gaze of knowing. I convince myself this will make me happy. I convince myself it will mean I’m free.

In these bouts of self-consciousness I am painfully aware that I am a person whom my friends and family experience as something wholly individual. I suddenly remember that I affect people just by existing, which is somehow always humiliating. I become terrified to look people in the eye, scared of what I might find there.

What I really want to know is how I can disappear from myself. What I think I need more than anything is to be obscure, which I’ve convinced myself is the same thing as being untethered.

But it isn’t.

No matter how far I run from the people I love, I cannot escape me.

It seems I tend to feel manic about my writing when I begin to feel self-conscious, or else the self-consciousness fuels the mania? This frenetic energy floods my chest, and suddenly I have an urge to tear it all down. If I could just start from the ground floor again, I think to myself, I know I could build it better this time. I know I could build me better.

I’ve never known how to simply let it happen. I don’t know how to ride the wave. I seem to make it worse by trying to make it pass.

But this time I am going against my tendency. I am choosing not to tear it all down. I resolve that I must refuse to disappear, no matter how relieving I believe it would be. I’m trying to let myself be seen. I am not good at it, but I am trying.

“I’m going to promote myself exactly as I am, with all my weak points and strong ones. My weak points are that I’m self-conscious and often insecure, and my strong point is that I don’t feel any shame about it.”
—Patti Smith

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I’m usually excited for the end of a year. It starts in November. I hole up at home as the weather turns, look back on the year I’ve had, and plan the year I hope for. I like looking at things, observing my life as if it isn’t mine, taking an intellectual and objective view of this character who is me but who is not me. It’s a balance I try to strike—looking back on the year with melancholy, and looking forward with an idealism that seems almost irresponsible. 

And I must confess, some of that is still taking place. Less on paper and more in my head, but it is still there.

I like looking at things.

It is tempting, however, to skip the process altogether this year. It has been an overwhelming year for all of us and I am tired. Or perhaps I’ve already done so much processing that I have nothing left to give. Either way, it would be easy to look at this year and fall into some kind of despair. Instead I am looking for silver linings because it is true they can save your life.

It’s an art not succumbing to despair but not denying it either. We are all forced to carry something that, if we allowed, could swallow us whole. I am interested in what persuades us to carry on against the odds. I am interested, I suppose, in resilience.

At the beginning of the year I was angry with resilience. I was irritated people were using it to describe me. I was tired of being resilient. I wanted someone to hug me and tell me how unfair all of it was. To me, resilience was just a word that allowed people to bypass feeling uncomfortable in the presence of my heartache. It did not make me feel better.

“You’ve always been resilient. You’ll figure it out.”

“But I shouldn’t have to!” That’s what I wanted to scream. The gap between what is and what should be. My idealism always gets me in trouble.

The truth is that I would have done anything to avoid the need to be resilient, but I am a human, alive on this earth, so the need for resilience is unavoidable. Suffering is here, so we must learn to navigate it or be buried beneath it.

In her book Intimations, Zadie Smith writes that suffering is not relative, it is absolute. She says, “But when the bad day in your week finally arrives—and it comes to all—by which I mean, that particular moment when your sufferings, as puny as they may be in the wider scheme of things, direct themselves absolutely and only to you, as if precisely designed to destroy you and only you, at that point it might be worth allowing yourself the admission of the reality of suffering, if not for yourself, exactly, then in preparation for that next painful bout of videoconferencing, so that you don’t roll your eyes or laugh or puke while listening to what some other person seems to think is pain.”

Aside from pressing on in the face of adversity, resilience is admitting that the pain is present. It’s about getting comfortable with your own pain so that, when the time comes, you can be with someone in theirs.

So I admit that pain is present, and it is true that my year held more than pain. It held joy and love, adventure and excitement, books and music that broke my heart. Everything exists, all tangled up together. Love and agony, happiness and heartache… you can’t have one without the other. I always have to remind myself of that.

Life and its circumstances will eventually force your hand, and who we choose to be in that moment is all that matters. So as we close out another year, I’m looking at the individual moments of mine. The moments that were fun, that brought relief, that required resilience, that were full of suffering, that forced me to prove myself. And actually, I’m quite proud of who I was this year. I guess everyone was right, I did figure it out. A silver lining.

Happy New Year.

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I wanted to return the moment I left. I’m still that girl, always looking behind before I give myself a chance to look forward. I tend to romanticize my past. Life is always slipping through my fingers.

In the beginning I wanted to return to New York to see if it would still be the city I had known. I wondered if my favorite shops would still be there, or if they’d be replaced with the new. I wanted to know if the city would feel foreign to me all over again.

As time kept progressing and New York kept getting further away, I found myself wanting to return to the place I last felt like myself. I wanted to go home, which had less to do with a physical location and more to do with an emotional state, I think. We often return to a place looking for a person. When we’ve suffered something tragic it is our past which seems full of promise, not our future. If we can go back and pinpoint the exact moment it all went wrong, maybe it won’t. We become obsessed with trying to prevent what has already happened.

God, so much had happened. There was a cross country move that hadn’t worked out as I hoped, the pandemic, moving back to my home state, and the disintegration of my relationship. Everywhere I looked something was falling apart. I was desperate for something to hold onto. And I was looking for explanations. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. I just wanted to go back to a time when something made sense.

Eventually I gave up the idea of finding who I was when I lived there. I understood she no longer existed. What I now wanted more than anything was to rediscover the girl who had wanted to move there in the first place.

When I was thirteen I was young and my dreams were young, and they were big and endless. And I guess there comes a time when you cross over from being young and fearless. I can’t decide if it’s due to age or simply what you’ve had to endure. I can accept that dreams morph as you age, but I never want to be someone who stops dreaming altogether. Then I found myself in a place unable to dream. I was hurt and haunted. I didn’t know how to move on.

to move on,

to get over,

do we ever?

For eight months I filled page after page in my journals with ideas of dreaming. I worried that I had inadvertently killed a vital piece of myself. I worried that this piece of myself I had always believed was me was in fact, not me. I spent months fighting against my own mind, which was trying to convince me that the only reason I’d ever had anything good in my life was because of the person I had been with, not because of the person I am. I thought maybe I had just ruined any chance I ever had at some kind of happiness. I focused on learning how to dream again, how to work toward some sort of future. Detaching yourself from another individual is traumatic, and I had been attached to him since I was a teenager. My brain didn’t know what was me and what was him, though it feels like my heart knew.

What I’m speaking of is loneliness.

They say being lonely in a crowded room is the worst kind of loneliness, and that may be true, but I’m well versed in the feeling. I’ve practiced being lonely in front of people my entire life. Being lonely alone though, that’s something new. I know very well how to swallow my loneliness and smile at the person across from me. I don’t know at all how to sit alone in an empty room. I keep asking myself the same question, “if no one is here to witness me, am I still real?”

I still don’t have an answer to that.

Getting married at such a young age gave me a reason to ignore myself, even if I wasn’t completely aware that’s what I was doing. I thought if I could just love someone really well then that might justify my existence. I might not be good at much, but I could be good at that. I hate admitting it, but a piece of me was happy to be a martyr for love. Sacrificing myself on the altar of others only ever created more separation though. It creates a chasm between you and everyone else; a barrier that refuses to be dismantled.

I can’t tell if any of this will make sense to you. The end of my marriage isn’t something I can arrange into a neat narrative. Everything is so intertwined and I can’t find the thread that will untangle it all. I tug at one and it only creates more knots, but I find it impossible to speak of my present experience without referencing how I got here.

What I’m attempting to say is that I’m writing this after having spent the day running around my old neighborhood. I understand now it was me who made all of those adventures happen. It was the thirteen-year-old girl with her lofty dreams and high expectations. She’s still calling the shots. I moved to New York because of her. I moved to Portland because of her. I went back home because of her. I am building a new life because of her.

I’m mining my past for the bits of me I feel might be of value, and trying to let go of the rest. The past three years have been about finally accepting that maybe I am flawed but still good. Maybe people do love me. Maybe I really can be openly honest without being totally abandoned.

And as it turns out, New York was both familiar and foreign. My favorite restaurants have disappeared, but Washington Square Park was as lively as ever. As it turns out, I am a bit like the city I love—both familiar and foreign—still me, even as I become someone new every morning.

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