The past year in prompts.

1.

one: it takes a fucking heart to know someone

two: what does it mean to hold space for people you love?

three: what does it mean to hold space for people you resent?

four: loving me also means loving myself in my pain (a note to self, really)

five: and embracing ambiguous loss

six: red is the color of my grief

seven: how do I maximize the use of language in my daily?

eight: to keep meeting ourselves in circles

nine: life begins with emptying out

ten: keep warm through the fire of your center

eleven: you will weave it all together

twelve: ‘‘Change is the new, improved word for god’’ - Wendy Videlock

2.

“twenty-seven years of glimmer and puzzle pieces”

A phrase that flowed from heart to paper, alchemy. Reflecting on all that was, these glimmers and puzzle pieces - my life has always been one grand carousel of intimacy. I grieve and embrace tenderly many fragments of my being, parts that had to climb out of rabbit holes; to survive first before truly, courageously breathing with life’s grace and gratitude.

When days are far and gone, we find ourselves in present moments where laughter fills up a room with ghosts of broken picture frames and empty seats.

3.

I write so I can trace back one day what lessons, trinkets, and images I have collected so far in this grand journey toward ‘home’. To commemorate each, to paint pictures through the alchemy of letters into words. To write lullabies of the places and the faces that pieced together this picture of a lifetime.

Sometimes I dread the possibility of forgetting. There is fondness in memories and there is fondness in the hope of reliving each one over and over, once more. And so, as artists of words, we paint with the strokes of every letter. What effort and what currency does one trade to craft memory onto paper? What magic does one perform to experience memory once more?

Nostalgia is sweet, flowing like honey to each of our tender. Memories - these flesh and bones can never, ever grasp but instead, feel. And when I close my eyes after every witnessing of words and phrases, a picture of the mind plays.

It goes on.

In-between Paradoxes.

1.

Why does loving another person, thing, or situation almost (always) feel like crumbling? Crumbling good. Crumbling bad. Is it always supposed to feel this way?

Rumi once said that it is in the breaking that light can shine in. On that note, how much amount of ‘crumbling’ must one go through to finally seek and bask in it? How much, how often? All these questions are lamentations from a weary soul. And that’s okay.

The here and now is all we’ll ever know, and crumbling itself is the work, the practice. We crumble towards growth, we crumble towards a step outside our comforts as necessary.

And yes, it sucks. The sooner one could get to accepting that the feeling of crumbling is uncomfortable (whether it be for a future that’s either good or bad), then the sooner it is to sit with yourself with honesty and sprinkle compassion towards all these shattered pieces of us that are in need of loving attention.

I have been immersing myself recently in Moses Sumney’s music and ‘Blackalachia’, and in an interview, he shared wisdom on solitude and lament:

“When it gets hard is when it gets good. You can’t distract yourself from your own mind, and the deep vast places that a mind can go. It’s when you learn the most about yourself and about the world. It’s when you’re best positioned to create work and to create the work that’s most interesting.”

Crumbling, questioning, mending, loving. On repeat.

2.

What is it in all of us, that creeping feeling of almost often wanting to be chosen? What difference it is if others simply do not?

Choosing one’s self should be enough, shouldn’t it? Yet, why is it that in tender moments it is often the hardest to be alone (though not necessarily lonely) with oneself?

I wrote in my journal a few of these musings; we are an ecosystem. We are breathing, living organisms that thrive better in and with a community. Even trees hug each other; a forest is not a forest without all of its organisms, big or small.

It is the same with us, no matter how much we put independence and self-love on a pedestal. One can easily live on their own but to thrive? That one’s different for we will always need another soul or two.

To love ourselves, first and foremost, is essential to our wellbeing. But it is with the sound of another’s laughter, the back and forth of joyful banter with a friend or a stranger, and the light from another’s presence that we can truly nurture, truly thrive.

On dark days, allow yourself that. To let the warmth in; the right, and healthy kind. Where do you go?

3.

My body’s call for rest has successfully manifested itself; my menstrual cycle for the month, a literal purging all over and inside my body. I called in sick at work and was confined to my bed, fully awake at most, for I could not sleep well despite my lack of energy.

I rarely feel any pain when it’s my time to bleed. Most months, it’s an easy shedding, an easy release of what’s not needed anymore. This time was different, and the pain that my body had to go through made it difficult to internalize the blessing in all the literal meanings and metaphors of my womanhood’s monthly ritual. Yet, after a day or two, it became clearer.

To shed is to strip one’s self off from the confines of comfort. To allow feeling, and to let the discomfort soothe places of wounding. For this period, I heard the calling of a deeper retreat. To remember, to be still, and to reconnect.

This time is not a time for the world. It is a time to look in the mirror, instead of looking out the window. A touch of warmth (from a literal hot pack, or a dear one’s care package) to ground you. Simply allowing.

Written on a sticky note on my wall, a reminder: “Remember to treat yourself kindly when your emotions are beating up your brain.”

The one who sees me most.

For years I hid under heaps of accolades and projections. The many masks of my deep conditioning and fears built walls so thick that even I have struggled so much to climb out of them. On this other side, all that was worth revealing was hidden: my vulnerabilities and intricacies. All that made me human, all remained shut until you.

You. A warm touch. A resounding hello. A deep breath. An extension outwards, towards. You are sun, and I am a Morning Glory unfurling by the touch of dawn’s light. I turn towards you.

You unearthed so much of me and my history. You saw me as both a child and a woman. Co-existing. Both ‘me’ and ‘we’.

Through the photographs, the postcards, and the poetry I posted on my walls. Through the dried leaves stuck between forgotten pages. You witnessed what I could not speak out loud. Puzzle pieces and puzzles pieced. Who I was, who I am now, and who I am yet to be: ever crumbling, ever-growing, ever yearning, still.

In this space of ‘we’, there is love. A quiet one. A knowing one. You of all could understand these secrets that still haunt me at night. You persisted. You held on and witnessed ‘me’ and ‘we’ through it all. “It was not easy but I was loved each place”, a reminder from one poem. Indeed, I was only trying to be happy. ‘We’ are all just trying to be happy.

Of course, you knew. It wasn’t easy for you too.