365 v.34 (151-165)
Round and round we go.
151/365
Have you ever loved an abstract time in your life, like a lover of its own kind? ”I’m coming up only to hold you under.” The Funeral by Band of Horses was a song on my favorite playlist back then and I wonder now, looking back, talking about it some more in private, why I ever thought I could be apathetic about it. To this day when I hear that song, a small bundle of nerves come together in my belly to tangle and untangle in repetition. Like the nervous excitement before a drop on a rollercoaster, tears peeling from the corners of your eyes. And then it’s over.
152/365
Golden Hour.
153/365
Thanksgiving.
154/365
Ya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
155/365
Making things merry and bright with my love.
156/365
Ten years of ridiculous holiday cards with the cutest model I’ve ever known.
157/365
Hot chocolate. Extra marshmallows.
158/365
You never had to think of it if you didn’t want to. I had chronic bronchitis to the point I wasn’t allowed to develop film in the lab in college. I spent so much time wandering the halls in those giant cylinders, feeling lost, feeling restless. I had to eat, so I had to work.
159/365
Goth Amys and hotel bathroom photoshoots. Forever calling these my shoujo portraits thanks to my friend Lisa.
160/365
Little sleepy bundle.
161/365
More koroks, I say. I bought this sweet ornament for Mike and I this year; the sentiment is so very much the story of us. I found you and you found me.
162/365
I know, I know. The tree topper again. The weird feeling I gave myself, almost insecure to photograph it in different lighting, like it isn’t a part of this narrative in my 34th year. Hear me out, Amy, why don’t you? I’ve spent a lot of time this year staring at this tree topper, mulling over this holiday in the timeline of my life. When I was younger, there was a point where my parents’ divorce made Christmas a real challenge to give a shit about. I have foggy memories of the date itself outside of the awkward navigating I had to do in other families’ homes. “He told me you don’t celebrate Christmas” I heard once and proceeded to stumble through some semblance of oh, oh no we do, but my parents are splitting up. Want more eggnog? Want me to crack open my intimate family wounds that I barely understand as a teenager while you avoid your own family in the kitchen with me? I still have a weird time with the holidays, but it’s evened out more each year. The shadow is much smaller now; the glowing is much brighter. I stare at this tree topper a lot and I think “I do celebrate. I choose to.”
163/365
I love how dreamy and romantic the lights outside look with snow at night. I love the winter tradition of lights at all– illuminating the deep cold dark. Thinking of my own deep cold dark, pooling like ink in my veins. Exploring my own companionship with grief, inviting it into the light.
164/365
I spent a lot of my younger years with people who didn’t make me feel safe. Even worse, with people who made me feel unsafe. I lost myself in other people, in how I could be of value or service to them, and it took a very long time to meet myself and learn my own needs. Boundaries were a myth and codependency at least meant I wasn’t alone– but I was alone all the time. I sometimes see my younger self like an empty chair, skin and bones, carved and rigid, unable and afraid to sit and stay a while with her. Just her. Just me.
165/365
In contrast to my younger fears, it’s a gift to be alone and I was given this very opportunity this month. A week away, a brilliant quiet, a chrysalis of my own. I’ve been writing again, almost every day, and with it comes an eruption of memories. Wistful and strange as I borrow in the comfort of solitude. I've got quite a few inner poltergeists to light candles for as they come and go. “I still think of you, but not you, and not you.”