365 v.34 (166-180)
Love is blindness. - Jack White
166/365
way out in the water / see it swimming
167/365
“How guilty could you be, sleeping by the sea?” Surrounded by mermaids and other nautical friends on this trip.
168/365
Walked down to the water for sunset and sunrise a lot. Hummed all the songs stuck in my head, Sambuca, Headband, walked up and down the shoreline. I took so many photos. I journaled. I wrote. Everything is a letter to myself; most of all this. I feel like I’ve spent a lot of my life a little adrift, so many riptides and storms, but a lot of dark and quiet, too. Getting time to myself to slow down and relearn how to be still again felt a little like my DNA took a nice cold shower. I spent autumn realizing I clench my jaw, so I tried releasing a lot of that tension. I had conversations out loud with myself, I made good food, I remembered all the things I love and like about who I am and who I am becoming. I kept my teletherapy appointment. I listened to the ocean. I missed home.
169/365
I thought to myself: “I’ll miss this body one day when I’m old, when it’s even harder to move, when the world keeps changing, when I’m fading.” My body has been through so much and at every turn it has held me here, even when I fought so desperately against it.
170/365
I have a pile of composition notebooks from high school that are full of poems, really drippy sonnets to the ideas of people and the fantasy of yearning. When I say “I lost myself in other people” it’s also about the fiction and the myths I made. I was so young but I was so dreamily threadbare with the idea of love, of a completion to myself. Being in love now and being loved makes me think about how small my world was, to have clung so tight to the hope someone could ever complete me. I’m making amends to her every day– and she was never incomplete to begin with.
171/365
“There are other worlds than these.”
172/365
Golden light.
173/365
House of sunlit reflection.
174/365
I love being alone; I’m not lonely. One of the comforts I fell back into while I was away was missing my home and my family. With the past two years of life in upheaval, I have never found a “new normal.” I’ve adapted, survived, and moved along with the current… I’ve even found many bright sparks along the way, which is saying a lot. But so much of this has felt like I’ve occupied another body. I know that in itself is a “normal” response, but. It feels a lot like a dream all the same. My nervous system has been so shot so often, I retreat into myself because it’s the only thing that seems to slow it down. This used to be a terrible place to be– with myself– but it’s become a saving grace now. I love being alone; I’m not lonely.
175/365
Sunrise walks to the beach, heavy with mood.
176/365
When I got to the beach at sunrise, I watched a man with a metal detector leave. I wondered if he found anything like someone’s lost keepsake, or if it was just loose change and scraps. Don’t scraps tell a story, too? After that, it was just me and the thick clouds of a misty morning. Sunrise has a different feeling than sunset, something I think I was only able to tap into because I didn’t have to be awake. It’s strange the way obligations can constrict some and free others. It’s strange the way some of us hide from honesty with ourselves. I’ve been reflecting a lot on an era in my life that I realize now I needed more time and separation to see. My feelings have changed drastically, so much so I had to ask if it was normal. I’ve changed, though. I’ll change again. I wonder what it will be like in another number of years. I’m not afraid to see.
177/365
Meet me at the plutonian shore.
178/365
“I should have told more people how he talked to me.”
179/365
Mike and I often walk around the house, point at Hiro, and just say “Look at him.”
180/365
Merry fuckin’ Christmas.