esse quam videri

✴ ⋆. ࿐࿔ ⠀⠀henlo, i'm stargirl. lover of books, cinema, art, trees, and all pretty things. the world is quiet here.

i've been waking up at 4 or 5 am these days. usually, i would read while waiting for my breakfast timer to ring but today i decided to push myself and go out of the house because i really really need it.

i saw the most beautiful lotus flowers and the kindest dog. had a short conversation with the magtataho about why they no longer allow plastic straws and spoons at the sports complex (aka why we can't have nice things). plus, i don't walk this long on the treadmill. i always get tired at 3 km. maybe when i have a walking pad i could be productive and watch movies while walking? we'll see.

i knew i'd miss you. but the surprising thing is, you never leave me. i never forget a thing. every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. it doesn't happen twice. and i never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn't seem broken at all. i know young people look at me and think my youth seems so far away, but it's all around me, and you're all around me. tiger lily, do you think magic exists if it can be explained? i can explain why i loved you, i can explain the theory of evolution that tells me why mermaids live in neverland and nowhere else. but it still feels magic.

the lost boys all stood at our wedding. does it seem odd to you that they could have stood at a wedding that wasn't yours and mine? it does to me. and i'm sorry for it, and for a lot, and i also wouldn't change it.

it is so quiet here. even with all the trains and the streets and the people. it's nothing like the jungle. the boys have grown. everything has grown. do you think you will ever grow? i hope not. i like to think that even if i change and fade away, some other people won't.

i like to think that one day after i die, at least one small particle of me - of all the particles that will spread everywhere - will float all the way to neverland, and be part of a flower or something like that, like that poet said, the one that your tiktok loved. i like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and i are always young in the woods, and that i'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes i know of or understand. i wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy. even for you and tiktok. and for you and me.

always, your peter

p.s. please give my love to tink. she was always such a funny little bug.”

this time, i noticed a lot of small details i either missed before or forgot. it felt familiar but also new. i already knew the ending would break me but i didn't think it would break me in the exact same way it did when i was 21. i actually forgot that tiger lily ends up with pine sap. and i loved that she did. in the end, he was the right person for her. i think he always was. peter pan in this version is all the different kinds of love i had when i was younger, the ones i thought (and wished) would last forever but looking at it now, in retrospect, it was better that i didn't end up there.

i was always drawn to peter pan stories as a child but i never considered them favorites because i don't really connect with the whole “never growing up” thing. that's why i love love love tiger lily. peter pan grew up in this version and he became educated and he had a family. despite everything, he never let himself forget about tiger lily and even at his old age, still recognizes that their love was rare. also, i liked how wendy was portrayed in this version. she and tiger lily were the same, but in different fonts, showing how peter needed both of them, just in different ways.

oh and all of these were told from tinkerbell's point of view which was the best detail in the book!

i remember when what used to be my normal was friday nights in bars and me coming home the next morning running into my mom sweeping our front yard. but the more i got to know myself the more i realized it wasn't really what i wanted to do on my rest days. it's just that drinking made socializing easier. it did help me forget things for a while but it would all just come crashing down on me one random tuesday morning. usually at work.

i've built healthier ways to cope now, and i understand myself more. i don't need alcohol to deal with what i feel. but at the time it really felt like i was on the edge of being considered an “alcoholic” because of how much i depended on it.

i've been telling my friends lately that i want to go drinking and/or partying to shake things up a little because for the past few years all we've been drinking together is coffee (nothing bad about that). and we'd always just do the same things. plus i never really experienced this phase with my friends now. i guess if we do go out, i know i'd truly enjoy it and won't be something i'd have to recover from.