Days I feel like I got a raw deal for my brain.
I’m having a hard day. I realise it’s kind of dramatic to say that forty two minutes after I woke up but I am. So maybe the more accurate thing to say is the hardness of the last few days have spilled into today, congealing while I slept. There’s a part of me that is hesitant to say that because maybe if I declare today … Continue reading I’m having a hard day.
Mariame Kaba says that hope is a discipline. That it isn’t necessarily about feeling optimistic but it’s about the commitment to do whatever you can on any given day in service of a better future. So hope is like love in that way: we often think of it as a feeling but it’s more of a choice, a commitment you make every single day. Continue reading Taking stock 2022.
I had a world stopping moment yesterday. It didn’t hit me at the time because I thought of it as a bump at worst but it’s fifteen hours later and I’m feeling stranded—like I’ve arrived to the part of myself that’s always known there’s no way out. You know how they say that if you put a frog in hot water it will jump out … Continue reading Maybe this too, is a thing of beauty.
But I also know that I’m trying. That in the last few years, when I’ve felt angry, I haven’t rushed to bury it. That I’ve sat with it. That I’ve let it teach me, that I’ve let it make me furious enough to choose myself. And maybe I’ll always be the kind of person that quietly rages at big unflinching things—at gods who don’t see me and men who aren’t scared of me. But maybe the point the point is to stop raging at myself. Continue reading A meditation on anger.
In holding my breath I have learnt that I can hold my ground. I used to think of myself as a panicked, flailing kind of person. I’ve learnt that I’m a lot calmer than I realise. I think of myself, holding my breath, staring at the ceiling, trying to see how far I can count until my chest burns, or my vision blurs. I just lie there, not gasping, perfectly at peace. Partly because of this, I know that if need be, whatever else life throws at me, more often than not, all I’ll ever have to do is hold my breath, and lie perfectly still until it passes. Continue reading Taking stock, 2020
Sometime last year, my cousin was driving me to a doctor’s appointment. While we searched for music for the road, I mentioned that I’d never listened to a single John Mayer song and he sought to change that. We listened to an entire album that I couldn’t tell you anything else about other than it has a song about slow dancing in a burning room. … Continue reading Burn it down.
And then there are cracks. Moments that should ordinarily be a quick tear when I encounter something that moves me but my body malfunctions and my grief flows out in barely contained guttural screams. It’s contained quickly. But it’s still a swollen river: it can only deviate from its course; fuck some shit up. Continue reading Little sorrows
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about community. In little blocks. Lately, it’s been a building block of community— friendship and trust. The cyclical nature of friendship and trust. How trust is implicit in building a friendship and later in maintaining it. It’s almost like, the earning of trust is beside the point, giving it is where it’s at. I don’t know, there’s an earnestness … Continue reading Isn’t that how love works sometimes?
I’ve always thought I’d die young. For most of my childhood, it was an unexamined thought sitting in my subconscious, quietly accepted, yet to be complicated with the arrogance and hysteria of young adulthood. I had no concept of “gone too soon”; unaware of my potential, untainted by ambition; not jaded by hope and dreams. I read Bridge to Terabithia and thought, “that makes sense.” … Continue reading Heartbreak is the only way these things make sense.
My mother says she was in labour for seven days before giving birth to me. I don’t know. Guys, is this plausible? Anyway, I was the first of my mother’s three c-sections. The year I turned seven, my sister and I had a joint birthday party. Her birthday is two days after mine. All the children except three at the party were her friends. My … Continue reading Birthday Blues.
Clarie's Ramblings 