Lately it feels like I’m on a rocket hurdling directly into the earth at a million miles per hour, like I’m at the top of a rollercoaster and I know I’m about to smash into the ground, and there’s nothing I can do about it but await my doom. I think this means that I like my life.
I spent high school thinking about getting into college. And I spent all of college thinking about getting into law school. Until my senior year, that is. Now I so deeply wish I could go back- break out of my shell earlier and not during my junior year, not be so fucking miserable about everything all the time, start going to the counseling center earlier. Somehow start talking to my dearest friends earlier. My therapist says not to dwell on the last one because if I met them earlier, there’s no guarantee that I would’ve even had the mental capacity to allow those relationships to flourish in the way that I can now. She’s right, but I still wish I could shrink a few people down into little figurines I could stick in my pocket. I would take them with me to Oregon and grow them back into full size so we could go out and drink way too much and eat good food and have sleepovers and watch TV and go on walks and sit in the library and I could talk about me and they would listen and I would feel insecure about how much I talk until they start talking too. We could visit all the national parks and mountains and volcanoes that I’ve wanted to see since I was little. Does anyone else remember when Percy Jackson blew up Mount St. Helens in the Battle of the Labyrinth?
I’m so happy with where I’m at that it feels like I could die (metaphorically). It’s taking everything in me to not self-sabotage and try my best to make everything go away. It’s not that I don’t think I deserve good things. Frankly sometimes I feel like I deserve the world. The truth is everything is about go away again and I don’t want it to. There’s a pit deep in my stomach that wants everything to stop. I don’t want my friends to go away. I don’t want my life to go away. I want to live in this space for as long as I can. The more I think like this, the more it feels like I’m manifesting everyone drifting apart even harder. Like somehow all of my anxious energy is making it so that it feels like I’m losing grip even faster, so that when moving day comes in August, it’s like nothing will have actually changed, because everything was already gone. Imagine me laying cliffside holding on to all my loved ones by the tips of their fingers and then all of a sudden I’m like fuck it, and I jump, and everyone’s like girl what was that?
As a girl in my early twenties, I really do love getting older. I never thought I would. I feel like it’s expected of people in my demographic to be like: ughhh I’m just a girl I don’t want responsibilities I want to be 17 again. And it’s like- no the fuck I don’t. As I’ve stated, I do frequently wish I could slow life down and not be so caught up in my thoughts all the time. Despite all my grievances, growing just feels so damn good. I love that even though I am still extremely insecure, I believe that my friends love me. I know that logically nobody is plotting against me. When people don’t text me back, I don’t get as many urges to ghost them and disappear into the woods. I have friends who are frankly unknowingly fixing me and turning me into a better version of myself and I’m just letting it happen. I’m getting back into reading like I did when I was kid and trying to pick up real hobbies. I’m also getting back into the things I liked as a kid. The things (youtubers and music) that were my escape from the misery of my house and school are no longer escapes but just things that I can really enjoy in full.
One of my friends killed herself when we were 19, and it really shook me. I still think about her all the time, though admittedly less so in the past year. Whenever her birthday passes, and my birthday passes, I think about how twisted it is that as I hit different milestones, like 20 or 21 or even 30 and so on, she will always be 19. I, one of the last people to get my driver’s license due to my May birthday, quickly out aged the girl who was basically the first to get hers. I’m glad I’m still alive so that I can experience things getting better.
I wanted to write all of this out because of Portugal. It is one of my favorite songs of all time, and Talking is Hard is genuinely a good 80s infused pop album. I had a dark vision today on my walk that there is an alternative universe where Jack Antonoff produced the song and got his hands all over those synths. But it kind of rocked. Wanted to vom at how much it feels like I verbatim relate to the song now. In a good way. Surface level, this song could just be what it’s like to go to one of the biggest universities in the United States and somehow in the midst of everything, you’ve still managed to find your people (with much trial and error). Everyone you know knows each without fail and even though it provokes feelings of claustrophobia, you kind of love it. You don’t love the people you love in an especially unique way compared to everyone else because you look at the people you love and you think, “how could someone not love them in the way that I do”. And despite all these feelings, you know it's time to leave. It’s time to know people who know other people. It’s time for the world to get bigger. To get deeper, the song feels like the epitome of real love.
There's this line in the film, Past Lives:
The first time I watched this movie, it made me think of my parents. Yes, I have an Asian mom and a white dad. They’re different, I promise (though I’m sure you believe me). The second time I watched it, I was filled with a deep sense of dread as I could only see myself in the shoes of the central character, Nora. Beyond her being an Asian-Canadian writer who struggles with her diasporic identity and feeling out of place with her partners- she is someone who leaves. But to her husband, she is someone who stays. This feels melodramatic and blown out of proportion because I am moving across the country, not switching continents and crossing oceans. But it’s real. I wonder about all the people I’ve met and if to them I’m someone who leaves or someone who stays. Right now, in the state of things, it can’t help but seem like I’m someone who leaves. Period. And… I want to be someone who leaves if I’m being honest.
The deep pit in my stomach is hoping that I’m also someone who stays.