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.
The day before I started radiation and chemotherapy, we sat on my aunt’s dining room table trying to figure out how to make the coming seven weeks as bearable as possible. It was a warm day towards the end of April and I mostly sat in silence, feeling like I couldn’t possibly contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. I think part of it was that … Continue reading I need you guys’ help.
Because I think apocalypses, more than anything, are personal. I survived my apocalypse. I’ve held my heart in my hand and watched the sun rise and for so many mornings, the universe’s utter indifference to my pain hurt so much, I thought it would kill me. Because why would the sun continue to rise when my world was ending? But beauty? That shit is relentless. And my heartbeat? It’s the most beautiful thing I know. Continue reading My little life.
So there’s that—harrowing grief that stretches and swallows me whole. I feel really small in the face of it and I’m running out of emotional real estate to house it. But there’s also progress. Sometimes I think of a pun and it makes me laugh so hard, my teeth hurt. Sometimes I catch myself talking to myself, and it feels like I’m high-fiving myself. Everyday I catch glimpses of myself and it reminds me that I’m here; that I am present; that I am getting back to myself. Continue reading Some things I know for sure:
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
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 oscillate between an arrogance about my survival and a debilitating awareness of my life’s precariousness. It’s increasingly more of the former now. A year ago, it was only the latter. At my most precarious, I ended up isolated in a hospital room, immunocompromised and on the verge of malnutrition. I’d barely eaten in three weeks and by this point, I couldn’t keep food down … Continue reading Rest in kindness Naphtaly.
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.
Once your death sits on the floor with you, it never quite leaves no matter how hard you scrub the floors. I am constantly out of breath. I will always be out of time. Continue reading But at what cost?
Clarie's Ramblings 