un-honeyed

The urge of wanting and or needing to cry every day is not foreign to me. Melancholia swims inside me. The last few years I’ve managed to tide it in my own few ways. Boxing the hell out of my body. Partaking in probably too many drunken wine stupors. Filling my apartment with aromas of chocolate chips and butter, intertwined as one. Going on long walks where my mind overtakes my body. Experiencing out-of-body moments where I am no longer me: I am this tree; I am that hawk; I am the ocean waves. I am drowning. 

If I told you the last few months were the hardest months I’ve experienced in my young adult life, would you judge me? I have lived through difficulty, yes, but I was less cognizant of it. When you’re young and oblivious, racist insults hurled at you feel less demeaning when you simply don’t understand it. “Your English is so good; you have no accent.” How do you respond to a naive statement harbored with complicated memories? I am 30 now. But I will never forget the feeling of entering third grade, where I stepped my toes into my ESL class and immediately burst into tears. I never want to be not understood. Listen to me. 

after I moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco, I stopped running. those long runs I used to do from Williamsburg to the West Side Highway and to Midtown; the concrete that I craved every weekend morning—somehow the hills and slopes of San Francisco no longer seemed as appealing to me. it was a gradual detachment to running. maybe I felt like I no longer needed it and the void I was trying to fill with running was replaced with the curiosity and recalibration of exploring and living in a new city. 

so I’ve surprised myself with how much I’ve ran these past 3 weeks, after almost 5-years of devoiding myself of it. the will to run outside has never been so palpable. the urgency to get outside and inhale fresh air and to witness a world in front of me that hasn’t yet collapsed but very well be on the brink of transforming into something entirely different, in front of my eyes, out of my control. 

last week after an especially difficult day paralyzed with anxiety, I forced myself to go outside. I knew I wasn’t into it and felt it all over. The negative self-talk in my head and the pure fatigue and aches that I felt in my knees, my thighs, my neck. my body creaked; every step was excruciating. I ran from 18th street to 7th street and looped back to Townsend, hoping the partial sunshine would offer some sort of solace. It was there I spotted an asian man who looked to be in his late seventies, wearing a USPS uniform. His spine was in a curved C-shape and his head drooped severely close to the ground, not within his control. I ran past him and smiled, hoping to project some last semblance of positivity I had willed in myself. And as we made eye contact and our eyes quickly averted, I cried, my tears syncing itself to my stride.