pensive

It's been exactly a year ago today. This year, I’ve taken myself to Japan. This year, I’ve learned to sit alone at the sake bar and be my own best first date. This year, I’ve planted red and white carnations over the dirt in the garden you left behind. This year, I put up picture frames of people you’ve never met. For so long I forgot to love myself because I was trying to love you. But now, I bathe in sunlight. Now, my eyes drip in golden honey and a soft kind of strength. Now, I count the stars like freckles that seem to sigh a little more brightly across the desert sky. I can see Orion–sometimes Cassiopeia if I look closely enough. Now, I paint again. Shades of amber and cerulean. My fingers are stained from the sweet blood of roadside-stand cherries. I remember what it’s like to not know you. Remember what it’s like to know me. Talking to the clouds like oracles. Running past sandcastles. Holding goodness in my hands where the ghost of yours used to be. Dancing in the pale blue light in a new home I’ve built. I’ve circled so many moons since you. And in the end, I catch a glimpse of my own reflection and find small parts of joy and love that have found its home, forever on my skin. Here in this space, I find peace. Here, my soul can breathe.

How do you begin to mourn the loss of someone who is still alive

I’m free. I’ve made it. I’m living life in light at the end of the tunnel. It’s new. It’s different. It’s uncertain. I’ve lost something in the process, I’ve lost myself. My entire twenties were spent working toward this goal and now I’m here. For years I’ve put off so much of things I’ve liked, of who I was, to pursue my career goals that I don’t know who I am on the other side. Now I’m finding myself again. Now I’m picking up where 21 year old me left off. I’m reading again. I’m writing again. I’m finding art again. I’m discovering music again. I’m learning about myself again. I’m finding joy in the little things again. I’ve rediscovered old dreams. I’ve made it here and I won’t ever look back.

I had a dream about you today and it made me both happy and sad.

I read something once that said some people can have a happy personality but a sad soul. When I'm alone at night, feelings of tender melancholy overwhelm me a lot. Last night I laid in bed at 1 am and I cried until I fell asleep for no particular reason at all. But the thing is, most of my friends and people would never know it if they had just met me or talked to me. It's not that I'm purposely hiding anything. I find that in everyday conversation, too little do we actually check in on each other's souls. I think a little bit of that has to do with becoming an adult, somehow we are all caught up being our own centers of our universe that hardly we have time to spend orbiting around those of others for too long. In the daytime, when my mind and body is busy, when there are a million and one other things to do and worry about, I really don't think about how I feel much. I get too distracted by the business of life and I wouldn't really have much to say about it anyway if people asked. To be honest, I don't know where the feelings come from, I never knew. If I really think down deep inside, I think it could be an eternal feeling of loneliness and also tiredness from the constant pressures and demands of the world. Maybe a little of everything.

Some songs are so beyond beautiful, without even any words at all. How is it that the vibrato, the melody of certain sounds that reverberate in and out like the waves of an ocean make you feel so strongly about certain things, strike your inner being and make everything just seem so still, melancholy, and like you want to cry all at once for absolutely everything and also no reason at all? Music is such a gift.

They say you can know someone in two months far more than you may know someone else in two years. I felt as if I knew you, even when our story was written in the form of an epilogue before it started. I don't know if anyone else ever feels this unsettling feeling like you are meant to know someone more, dive deeper, form a true and human connection but then for whatever reason life happens and everything abruptly stops and time fast forwards and moves backward at the same time to bring you back to a new but old reality where this other person no longer existed. And every day that passes you feel like you are missing not a specific person or a specific event or even something from the past, but like you are missing the potential of something that could be. How many of those little what ifs do you think a person is meant to collect throughout their lifetime? If there should come a time when we meet again, we shall call it fate. If there should come a time when we pass each other, unknowingly on the street or in another life, already having forgotten all of these small, intricate details of our inner beings that we once briefly shared, then we shall also call that fate and simply how the world works. Currently, I am working on leaning into the guidance of the universe, letting go of control, and just being. I am a leaf in the wind.

Humans are interesting. I went on a walk along the beach the other day and stopped over the cliffs to look at the sunset and I felt a subtle, unspoken connection with everyone around me. We were all present to watch the same sun together. Some people in the company of others, some people alone. Each stopping what they were doing to stand and appreciate the oranges, blues, and golden tones in the sky. To feel the slow warmth on our skin and blink ember in our eyes, quietly but alongside each other. It made me wonder what each of them were thinking in that moment. I wondered if they thought of someone. I wondered if they were happy with the decisions they’ve made this far. I wonder if they regret letting go of a person who could have made them the happiest because they chose to play things safe. I wondered if they were longing for something more. As the skies transitioned from a fiery hue to cool shades of magenta and violet, people slowly left the space, one by one. Leaving a memory of that moment we shared behind and simply carried on.

Tonight was a gentle, soft kind of night. We didn’t talk often, but tonight you showed me a small glimpse of your heart and the existential thoughts of your mind and I felt at peace. I felt seen, and I heard the words you conveyed. You told that me you stopped on your drive down south along the sea and looked into the ocean. And you told me that you simply felt. The kind of feeling where you had a purpose, but the world had bigger purposes that neither you or I knew of. And how sometimes the world can make you feel so small but in a way that makes you want to let go of things weighing heavy on your heart and enjoy the moment. I never saw this side of you before. It made me smile and it reminded me of who I used to be and what I’ve lost in the midst of it all. I am thankful that you opened up and more importantly, spoke into my soul tonight.

I woke up this week and for the first time in a while I noticed the tiredness in my eyes. Somber, darkened. The tops of my eyelids were a subtle red that could pass as eyeshadow. Where the whites of my eyes used to be was now a pale off white. My irises looked brown-grey in the light and muted. I honestly didn’t recognize the person looking back at me. I texted my boyfriend I might be coming down with something, I didn’t feel like myself. I haven’t felt like myself in a long time. I’m just exhausted. And I’m having a hard time finding purpose. I mean I have a logical purpose, like this is what I should be doing for a better future. But my heart purpose feels empty. I miss things I used to do and the person I used to be and I know I say that a lot but maybe that’s because I feel that way a lot. And I feel chronically behind on everything – on school, on money, on sleep, on my health and fitness, on life as a 27 year old should be having and experiencing. And I feel like no matter how hard I try, I don’t see a light at the end. I’m drowning and as soon as I catch my breath for air, another wave of stress, anxiety, and honest dread with school life washes over me. Some days I wonder if this will all be worth it.

I wonder how you are. I hope that wherever you are, you’re doing alright and you’re doing what makes you happy. And if you’re still the same boy who loves Bukowski and lying on your back in your old trampoline in your yard looking up at the stars and seeing how they twinkle and how they laugh as if they’re sharing a secret only they know. If you still sailing the seas, dreaming of bigger places. Bigger than the town we came from. You always saw behind the horizon, and I loved that. I hope that you found what you were looking for out there.

I haven’t stopped thinking about you.

I’ve been alone the last few nights and the house has been quiet. I’ve had time to reflect on a lot of things and I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’m also sorry that I let someone convince me that you shouldn’t be important, but at the time you were. And over time, you stopped being. But I’m happy that you’re happier now. I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy. As for myself, sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not. The inner dialogue inside of me waxes and wanes with the ebb and flow of the moonlit waves and lately I have felt lost. I feel like I am still searching for my purpose. I am searching for the feelings inside when I used to be so sure of myself and so bold, full of life. I miss old memories. I reminisce in past because I am uncertain about the future. I feel like I have been going through the same motions over this past year and I don’t know if that has made me happier or more sad. I feel alone. I feel like everyone else is moving along without me. I feel like I don’t even know myself anymore and I’ve become a ghost of a person. I’m hoping to find whatever it is I am searching for again.

Nights like this make me want to hold you for just a while longer.