#introspective asks

2. What are you feelings on the future right now? For the world and for you?

I'm hopeful for both! With varying degrees of sadness interwoven in both cases lol. I feel like (speaking re: the world) we're at the end of a lot of illusions, if that makes sense? Like, we've TRIED a lot of things and they either haven't worked or their mask has been stripped away in a brutal way that reveals the truth about their nature. And that always contains a little bit of inherent hope within it because it means we can CHANGE what we're doing/reject some of the things and demand better. Like, idk. The hard-won wisdom that only comes from bitter experience is what is needed for change and we're really IN IT now. And so change, good change, can feel very near. The night is darkest right before the dawn type of thing. (Right? Right??? Sweats nervously.)

That said, the human condition is kind of just always that so I am not saying anything new.

Personally, I am feeling some sadness! At the passage of time and the sense that many doors have closed. But also underneath that I am excited to get older and also become more and more a person focused on what really matters and less consumed with what doesn't (much of the inside of my brain.)

6. What are you excited about?

I'm excited to see the ocean in about a month!! I'm excited to teach Pride and Prejudice again. :))))))))))))))))))))))) I'm excited for spring! Whenever it arrives! I'm excited to write again.

What’s a recurring good theme lately?

What are you grateful for?

This might sound funny but I’m so grateful for my apartment!! Moving out was so so hard and there were so many times when I just thought I would never feel at home here but it’s so nice to have my own space, to have my own room, to be able to clean it, decorate it, live in it the way that I want.

What’s been on your mind?

3. A Tip For Life Right Now 

The biggest thing that has helped me lately (and so might help other people) is to turn away from thoughts that are unhelpful simply and definitively. Of course this is never a one-and-done process, you have to keep doing it because the thoughts come back. But I am so used to never putting things down, I'm so ready to fight, to explore, to analyze, to wrestle, to really just get to know a thought and plumb its depths and there are times and situations (more than I ever used to think) where that is NOT the most helpful thing to do! And where it can make a situation actively worse.

And it's so hard and takes such trust but that's the thing that's really just helping me the most right now. To just mentally look away from a situation BEFORE I feel like it's resolved, before I feel like I "can", before I experience closure or release or satisfaction! Because a lot of the time what I really need can't be given me by my own wrestling with a thought or a problem. Some things time has to untangle, there are things too big for me, there are lessons to be learned beyond analysis.

It's all tied to the bigger idea of looking away from myself more. Which, again, so so so so so hard. But it's what I know I need to do right now more than ever. Look at something ELSE, someone else, (at God more and always and more specifically) and just forget about me as often as I can.

4. A song that means a lot to you?

Ghost in this house by Alison Krauss (or at least her cover of it) is a song I am obsessed with. I talk about it all the time but it's so good! It just makes grief sound like a soft place to land. Which I think sometimes it can be. There's a lot of it that isn't, that is so restless and painful and bristling and brutal but there can be a simplicity and a purity to sadness too. And this song lets me feel that and live in it in a way that's so helpful.

3. What's something that's making you sad but in a bittersweet not wholly unpleasant way?

The fact that my relationship with tumblr has changed. I still use it and I still want to use it! But the way that I use it has changed permanently and definitively. And it's a struggle because letting things go is so hard for me, even when I know I should and need to. It's always this bitter, dramatic internal fight so sometimes I get really angry that it has changed and I try to act like it hasn't and I try to use it like I used to use it. I try to interact in the way I used to and it doesn't work. Because I've grown beyond my younger self and the way that I used it and it's like trying on an old sweater that you used to love but it doesn't fit right and you really really miss it but it doesn't fit so trying to wear it is pointless.

In many ways what I loved and needed about tumblr has transferred to real life and I'm so glad about that. But I sometimes still feel a profound sense of loss and loneliness, and mostly a childish restlessness where I don't know what to do or how to approach this. And I just feel ---- I feel foolish so much of the time? I feel a lot of grief. It reminds me, on a larger scale, of my breakup with the reylo fandom. I still love reylo more than ever and I still love many mutuals and friends I found because of reylo but I don't interact in the same way (in part because nobody does because that space doesn't exist anymore) and I went through this period of realizing that my voice wasn't needed or wanted the way that I thought it was and that really, I'd just been riding a kind of wave, not actually making meaningful connections or changing lives. And I feel that now. I love (so deeply!) the people that I found here. But I can't be a Voice anymore or a "brand" --because it doesn't feel authentic and because I'm not in the space I was when I was first riding the wave.

The things that really matter to me are smaller and more specific and that is better. But the part of me that loved the Bigness of my biggest tumblr days is still so jealous and petty and childish and I'm just -----trying to ride this one out and accept it humbly until this period of mourning passes. *I know I will move on to other things but the transition hasn't quite been made in my own soul and it's taking a while and the in-between is both hard and bittersweet. So yeah.

3. What’s something that’s making you sad but in a bittersweet not wholly unpleasant way?

High school friend's weddings! 3 of my former classmates are getting married this summer and it just feels like such a marked turning point in the passage of time. I am not dating or engaged or married and generally speaking I am quite fine with that, none of these weddings are killing me because I wish so badly that it was me, but there still is still a bittersweetness to it all that keeps tugging on my heart.

Change is hard, witnessing such a clearly marked out new stage of life for people I used to know really well (and one very close friend) is A Lot, the weddings are bringing a lot of people to town I used to know and there will be reminders of how much things have changed and all the different places we're all in and inevitably moments where my life will feel small and silly and empty by comparison. And there are times where it hurts. I feel like I need to have one really good cry about it before this summer is over.

But, and this gets to the not wholly unpleasant part, I would like to cry about it. And there is poetry in change and new colors blending with old, there's beauty in remembering the past and celebrating the future, I do feel happiness at other people's happiness. And in general I don't feel like I'm living unless I'm experiencing a lot of emotions at once and I like the experience of that. (Though I do try to come by the emotional experiences honestly and not revel in them more than I should.)

5. What are you grateful for?

I'm grateful that I will be a bridesmaid for one of the weddings mentioned above! One of my longtime closest friends is getting married this summer and I feel genuinely grateful she asked me to be a part of her wedding because she has a lot of sisters and friends to choose from and she 100% didn't have to ask me but I'm so glad she did. We've been friends for forever because we went to school together but she's one of the few people in my life who became a better friend after high school ended. She was one of the first friendships I had that absolutely was not just out of convenience or proximity but choice. We live in the same community but aren't part of the same social circle and so there's been a lot of effort in making sure we saw each other regularly enough to maintain the friendship and we DID and she's just such a special part of my heart and I'm so glad to be a small part of her wedding day. (I also had prepared for myself for her not asking me and didn't want to be entitled about it but honestly it would have been really hard for me if she hadn't and I'm just glad I don't have to deal with that.) (Also my dress for it was finished last week and turned out super pretty and that makes my shallow heart happy lol.)

1. What have you been thinking about lately underneath all your other thoughts? What’s a consistent internal hum?

2. What are you feelings on the future right now? For the world and for you?

3. What’s something that’s making you sad but in a bittersweet not wholly unpleasant way?

4. What are you struggling with? Specifically, what are you afraid of?

5. What are you grateful for?

1. What have you been thinking about lately underneath all your other thoughts? What’s a consistent internal hum?

I keep thinking about how we are all the same deep down, and especially about how we suffer the same. And especially especially about how we hold so much fear and darkness in our hearts and how we let it drive our actions in the exact same way. And I think a lot about the chaos that causes, the chaos and hurt, but also the potential for healing that very fact provides.

And I just think so much all the time about the moments where the surface coverings that hide these similarities are stripped away or just flutter a little in a metaphorical breeze and you can catch a glimpse of the inside of someone’s soul and recognize your own shared humanity in it. And I just think about how badly I want to be a part of reaching into and seeing people’s inner lives and helping to heal that in some way. In teaching, in writing, in who I am as a person—I want to help people manage the darkness and fear within them by affirming them and loving them and reminding them that they aren’t alone in this and then I want to help people see or at least appreciate the reality of other people’s internal lives so that it’s easier for all of us to be compassionate with each other no matter what.

It’s the one thing I know I am … called to do? Made to do. Or maybe just really really want to do more than anything with my life. And so I think about it every single day. And I want to get better at understanding and managing my own internal chaos but also get better at reminding myself of other people’s internal lives (because it is so easy to forget!) so that I can always be helpful to them, not hurtful. (Hope this makes sense and doesn’t sound pretentious!)

3. What’s making you sad but in a bittersweet but not wholly unpleasant way?

The summer ending! And I know it’s not done yet. But I have two weeks until I go back to school. And that makes me sad. But also happy because I do love teaching and how much it fills my life. So a true bittersweet experience right now.