it's been a while...
i'm 28 now and today was a 'sitting in the noticing of loving my life' moment. i still think about you (followers + following who walked my teen years into twenty with me) from time to time. why did i leave? what remains?
i have a collection of instagram posts saved the way i used to save images and text on here, even that is a few years old now as i began prioritizing the offline. these days i have a vision board i made two birthday's back in my living room. i'm enjoying watching my dreams unfold. like writing 'blessings and thank yous' and then finding a book of irish blessings. a screenshot of a fireworks scene on a k-drama, and a pinch me moment watching fireworks in manas square in bishkek, kyrgzystan on their 50th independence day. little swans gliding on the back of a momma swan, and walking in D.C. to find a cat bird store with their swan ornament, a momma carrying her babies, nestled behind the ornament tree. a woman doing silks, me not even noticing until a year later it's the pose i happened to perform well first.
am i waiting for love to enter? am i waiting for riches? is my life a checklist of experiences i've hoped to have based on images i've curated? i am living through my questions these days – where do i want to live, how will i earn my keep, what type of person do i want to be.
thought about 'clear eyes, full heart, can't lose' from friday night lights, things from my youth that mean more to me now as i'm older. thought about college, one night when i'd come back from vacation as a an au pair, feeling myself be young and beautiful, my friends and i walked up st. laurent to a party when we ran into two boys they knew, half-crushed on, and one pulled me aside and whispered in my ear "you're glowing." i think i'm glowing these days too.
it wasn't easy, this happiness i have now felt fragile for too long. but i think back to who i was back then, a deer on shaky feet learning to walk, a girl getting her bearings, and i am filled with a love so deep i don't know how i never saw it. if i could go back and tell her it will be alright–how desperately i wanted to know. in my early twenties i had the loneliest years i've ever endured. i have a wide web now, but it's not the community of my dreams. what i got was even better: sense of self. not the abstract 'i know what i like' because i am blogging, because i am passionate, because i have ambitions. that more sacred, more liminal, more embodied, feeling of cradling. that 'i will brush my teeth even though i'm dead tired, exercise even though it's hard and learn to love it, pursue the things that feel heartfelt to me even if weird, fully commit to myself even if it's uncertain what that looks like because all of this is what love is.'
this afternoon i had coffee in a stranger's living room with other strangers. i love that i can do that. i love that things like this exist. i love that i have the confidence to do them. someone asked me "what is home to you?" and i answered "home is internal." it's the feeling i had hitchhiking in kyrgyzstan, knowing it will be okay. it's the feeling i have in my city, knowing i can be okay elsewhere. it's the feeling of familiarity i have when i visit friends in norway, or at my favourite cafe in london, or walking into a painting exhibition in the mongolian embassy. i am thinking about writing again. thinking of a newsletter. maybe a micro-blog. thinking of finishing the novel that i've been working on for the past four, five years. i have a feeling of things wanting to pour from me, faster than they've ever poured. i'm thinking of audio. youtube or a podcast. last year i realized i love my own voice. i want to write and i want to voice it out loud. i want to heal my throat of its hesitancy. i want to make it to up myself, compensate my many years of 'being quiet' the way that feels healthy for me to do.
i am thinking of training to do therapy, or opening a business, a physical kind where people can come, can feel held. i want to devote my work to care, to connection, as much as i devote myself to learning and exploration. i want to take in but i also want to release back.
when i next log in, i wonder what else will have changed.
