I think a lot about the gap between things, the distance. I don’t spend nearly as much time considering if those spaces are bridgeable. But I do obsess a bit about the holes. How someone seems taller, funnier, smarter, calmer. How I can be pretty dumb. I wish I could tell you I’m not vicious or jealous or insecure, that I don’t feel like a baby wailing, or these distances don’t feel like multitudes and oceans away that will only exhaust me. I think I’m addicted to picturing myself as a dot in people’s lives. It doesn’t bring any comfort, but it sounds right, like it makes sense. I leave others many times in hopes it gets better, or that I find myself along the way. I wonder until when can I keep doing that and still have someone to return to. I think about how love isn’t enough to save a lot of things.
Today I’d like to show you Voiceover, by Rita Dove.
Impossible to keep a landscape in your head. Try it: all you’ll get is pieces—the sun emerging from behind the mountain ridge, smoke coming off the ice on a thawing lake. It’s as if our heads can’t contain anything that vast: it just leaks out. You can be inside a house and still feel the rooms you’re not in—kitchen below and attic above, bedroom down the hall— but you can’t hold onto the sensation of being both inside the walls and outside looking at them at the same time. Where do we go with that? Where does that lead us? There are spaces for living and spaces for forgetting. Sometimes they’re the same. We walk back and forth without a twitch, popping a beer, gabbing on the phone, with only the occasional stubbed toe. The keyhole sees nothing. Has it always been blind? It’s like a dream where a voice whispers, Open your mouth and you do, but it’s not your mouth anymore because now you’re all throat, a tunnel skewered by air. So you rewind; and this time when you open wide, you’re standing outside your skin, looking down at the damage, leaning in close ... about to dive back into your body and then you wake up. Someone once said: There are no answers, just interesting questions. (Which way down? asked the dove, dropping the olive branch.) If you think about it, everything’s inside something else; everything’s an envelope inside a package in a case— and pain knows a way into every crevice
Something strange happened with this poem: I think it was waiting for me. Either for me to find it, or the poem wanted to get me in the moment I needed it most. I mean it. I mean a lot of things, but this one I mean in particular. One of the phrases I wanted to finish this letter with, There are no answers, stared right back at me. It felt like looking at a mirror.
This morning, before I sat on my chair to write this letter, I went on a walk after a long, long time. I always enjoy it, I wonder why we don’t do what we love as often, what’s exactly stopping us. I pass by a factory of bee related items, specifically beehives. How dear is it, that they make homes, a space for living. It always smells like wood and varnish around there, it’s so sweet. I wonder what my home smells like to those that only see it as a house. I used to always be wary of letting my friends sit beside me after a long day, because I sweat often. I’d worry they’d smell it and like me a bit less.
There’s this stray cat that lives in my block that never fails to greet me if he notices me, just as he did today. He meows, and I take it as an invitation to pet and play with him, except he doesn’t like it, or doesn’t want it, my caresses and exaggerated affection — yet he still crossed the street only to sit by my side. To be there. Is it possible to want love without having to eat the whole cake, to be satisfied with only a bite or two?
My mom never says ‘You look awful.’, but she does give me a glance from head to toe and asks, ‘Are you going out like that?’. I think of how many things we say in our lives aren’t direct, straight to the point declarations, but that have their own truth regardless. How many have I missed? Has it always been blind?
I think you’ll find them. If you look for signs and symbols everywhere, you’re meant to find them. If you look hard enough, anything can become a metaphor, poetry, music. We breath beauty and meaning into things. To dreams and a leaky faucet. To a wind that is the right kind of cold or unhelpful, harmful thoughts that cross your mind. To a letter that makes little sense and has almost no cohesion.
Part of adulthood to me was coming at terms with the immense weight and length of everything, and how I can’t carry it as much as I may try to. I can’t carry as much as I think I do. Of countries, oceans, galaxies, people. And understanding, not just knowing, that we’ll only ever get pieces. That those pieces raise more questions than answers. That even those answers may never be sufficient, if you don’t believe them enough, if you don’t believe them at all. Sometimes there are no answers at all. From these pieces, we make up the rest along the way. We hold our assumptions, our conclusions and our beliefs. We bargain with the world and make our own guesses. Like right now, it’s 11:11, and someone might say it’s the perfect time to make a wish. Who made that up? Why can’t I make a wish at be 2:34? From now on, I’ll make one at 2:34.
These past 4 days have been a torture. The letter I had before this one was… grim, to say the least. I broke down crying multiple times throughout it, but the only way to get the crying done with was through. I didn’t finish it, I abandoned it, pushed to the side and borrowed a couple of idea for this one. There sit my sad thoughts, resolutions I’m not very proud of, with no silver lining or slightly positive conclusion, which if you’ve been around for a while you’d know I try to leave you with.
Adulthood also corners that, our power over things. Funnily enough, it’s terrifying, that as I grow older I realise I’m more powerless than I thought. That if I pick up a paper and a pen, draw a line in the middle, and go over what I can or can’t control, what I can hold in my palm is minuscule, it isn’t what I want.. Wanting never mattered that much, or did it? So adulthood is about letting go of a lot. A lot. But not yourself. Unless you take yourself too seriously then you definitely need to let go a little. Be a tad silly, it’s good for your health.
Back to the topic, this strangely became a letter about adulthood. I didn’t meant this. Adulthood is this house where you can feel the many divisions you’re not in. The distance between gigantic things. Somehow you have to convince yourself you can walk to them, that the door is open, that this house does belong to you, that it won’t burn at your touch. Instability is a constant in life, how can I ever be secure when the only promise is change?
How can I sit still knowing I can’t make anyone love me? How can I drink tea when it feels as if I’m in love with my own misery? How can I accept any kind of love when the door of the kitchen is locked? There are times I feel like a dog. Easily excited, lots of fur, spends a lot of their time waiting. A dog does very little to be adored and gets to be loved regardless though. Even when he poops the carpet or pees in your bed. I’ve never heard, that I’m loved even though I chewed on the carpet. That must be a sign.
I heard somewhere that if you hold an emotion for 90 seconds, you feel it. That’s all it takes. No grand scheme, no journaling or walk in the nature. 90 seconds. I also heard the other day that ‘sometimes we are responsible for something not because we’re to blame, but because we’re the only ones who can change it’. I never thought it could be possible to be responsible for something without being to blame, without fault, without having to face guilt. Adulthood has a lot of that, responsibility and guilt and remorse and regret. It’s terrifying. I think I’m so used to my sadness I see it as a makeshift home I can always return to. But maybe with 90 seconds, I can tear down a wall or two.
A final piece of adulthood, as important as so many others, I’d say it’s vulnerability, which looks a lot like courage. The will to write a letter that sounds senseless. To not run away at any emotion or feeling. To look at the weight of the whole wide world that you don’t have to carry and stop thinking it will kill you. I’m struggling to find any other examples I could mention. I’m still learning how to be vulnerable, how to dislike myself less. But so far, it takes letting your truth leak. I guess, one way or another, sooner or later you get to realise you can’t keep it all up. There will never not be a risk.
Thank you for reading delicate this week. I know I shouldn’t, I know I don’t need to, but something tells me you could be sick of hearing how I’m a sad person. I’ll replace the ‘I’m sorry’ burning my tongue with a open-armed ‘Thank you.’.
DELICACIES OF THE WEEK
I took that quote on responsibility from this TedTalk. It was inspiring in a way, to hear from a psychologist that our emotions aren’t everything. Using big words like ‘everything’, ‘nothing’, ‘everyone’, ‘nobody’ probably doesn’t help. Her idea an her studies prove that what our brains do are mostly guesses. When you’re so deep within your own mess, it’s nice to have something external, with proof, to believe in for a change.
Unfortunately, as this was a hard week, I don’t have much more to share with you. Today I saw a pony. At least there’s that.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: (you) on my arm by leith ross, principal menu by alcmère and anything but me by muna
delicate’s spotify playlist! & delicate’s tumblr | reach me here!
shared this with a couple of my friends and we resonated with and enjoyed a lot of it - thank you!
your writing is amazing as usual, i’m always looking forward to reading it. i hope life treats you with a little more tenderness and that things will feel better soon :) thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!