in my last blog, i was experimenting with more flowery writing, letting myself make eveything sound as pretty as i felt like. this one is a little more casual, and will likely read more like a polished journal entry. whatever your preference may be, i hope you enjoy !

spring has always felt like the moment you step outside to cry, which i did a handful of times this year (so chic, btw). i can’t say i didn’t love the drama of that, slipping away because i couldn’t bear to be seen in whatever such state. have you ever done that before? it’s the most theatrical when you’re at work, maybe going outside the front door or crouching in the corner of the walk-in fridge. i’ve cried silent, hot tears, furiously wiping them away before they could fall down my face, and i’ve sobbed a few feet from the front door, sobbing as big as i could for thirty-five seconds in the moments in between pouring wine and bussing tables with the valet guy in earshot, and everything in between. each time, i’ve returned so obviously having cried, having tried to collect myself, and usually having failed, which is even more chic. face puffy, nose pink, lips a little swollen. a sniffle, a sigh, an avoidance of eye contact. when i’m ready, i peer at people with giant shiny eyes through wet eyelashes. god forbid someone asks me what was wrong; then i’m crying even harder than i was before.

its only ever happened to me a few times; i’m usually good, maybe even great, at collecting myself before going into a place where i don’t want to be crying. i became more comfortable crying in front of other people a little after i graduated high school; to be so shy and dramatic about it now wouldn’t be very practical, considering the fact that i’m always fucking crying.

i still turn my face away, and hide behind my hands, but i’ve made some real strides. it’s also hilarious that the early twenties is when most young adults truly start to come to terms with mortality. i’ve been fixated on death, and the metaphysical, and transcendence of the human body since i was like, eleven, which is why i find it so funny that now at twenty-three, i find myself genuinely horrified at how insanely fickle and ridiculously tragic some of this shit actually is. for some reason, i thought i was almost past this, in a sense. not above it, and not that i find the concept of mortality (and struggling with it) beneath me; i just thought i’d have to worry about grief from here on out because i thought i understood the nature of change, that nothing lasts forever. it’s that type of hubris you can only have in your early twenties, thinking that there’s anything in the world that you’re done learning. i guess i didn’t know that there are still new bottoms to hit, old pains that look like new pains, old wounds reopened by the rusty blade of new light and new experience.

the last year between my 22nd and 23rd birthdays i developed a proclivity towards migraines, which i hadn’t experienced since high school in this frequency or intensity. i’m hit with these searing, weeks-long recurring episodes where i’m often immobilized and bedridden (magnesium supplements, ice packs, and sudafed work wonders in case you were wondering!). it’s hard for me to admit to myself, but these migraines have begun to haunt me. the thought of them fills me with a dread i can hardly express. i have become so afraid to even think of them, to even recall what they feel like, that i don’t even like to acknowledge how much they hurt, lest i accidentally summon an episode and spend weeks in the dark with an ice pack around my head like my mind is a Ouija board. the migraines, which are likely a combination of genetic factors, changes in barometric pressure, and the physiological effects of stress and grief, are often so excruciating they feel like divine punishment. they are humbling in a way few things have ever been. it’s an ache i’d actually compare to those early weeks of true heartbreak: sometimes it’s so sharp that you think you’re being ripped apart; sometimes its that dull, hollow ache that makes you shiver and hold yourself as you wait for the chill to subside. sometimes your senses become unbearably heightened, and sometimes hauntingly grey. sight is horrific. what you can see pisses you off anyway, or maybe makes you sad. you can scarcely open your eyes. everything is too fucking loud. every smell makes you nauseous and pissed off. it sometimes feels almost exactly like desperately holding in huge, hot tears, the feeling of your head being about to explode.

i make sure to tell my boss and coworkers about them to mitigate the effects they have on my memory and my work performance, and i want everyone to know i won’t be on top of my shit the way i’m supposed to be. it embarrasses me, but it has to be done. on the other hand, its hard to talk about them with anyone besides these required parties. it makes me feel like the protagonist of cleo 5 to 7, a film that follows a woman through a few hours in her day as she waits for a phone call from her doctor. she’s big, and beautiful, and most unfortunately for her, melodramatic, and is treated like a shallow hypochondriac – that sort of perception hurts my feelings, especially with how sick i’ve been before in this life, so i just don’t like to bring it up. it makes me feel pitiful and childish, which are the last two things on earth i’d like to be, especially with anxious loved ones who will feel the effects of any pain i’m in, whether they want to or not, even if they don’t quite understand what i’m going through.

migraines make me feel alone, often because they force me to be alone to soothe them. a person who has often turned to reading about shared experience when painful happenings isolate me, i’d actually been searching for media about migraines when i came across it, “in bed” by joan didion, a neat little thing all tucked away in the book i’d had for a few years at that point and never really gotten a chance to finish. it’s now one of my favorite essays, written about the phenomena of migraine and migraine denial. i stumbled on it in that amazing anthology of personal essays i bought and somehow find a way to mention in every other essay, the one selected and introduced by phillip lopate. i digress. i love other essayists for a trillion reasons, but mainly because they mean so much to me in making my darkest, strangest, greyest emotions and experiences feel like something worth investigating. she knew what it felt like – she’s even like me, with nothing (medically, glaringly) wrong with me, and “[she] simply had migraine headaches, and migraine headaches were, as everyone who did not have them knew, imaginary.” she knew the compounding pain of the ache and the denial, whether self-inflicted or by those around her. she knew the tears and the ice, the nausea, the deafening, blinding, searing nature of something that is literally in your head. she knew what it felt to fight it. but she also wrote about how she learned to become a friend to her migraines, rather than a foe:

“We have reached a certain understanding, my migraine and I. It never comes when I am in real trouble. Tell me that my house is burned down, my husband has left me, that there is gunfighting in the streets and panic in the banks, and I will not respond by getting a headache. It comes instead when I am fighting not an open but a guerrilla war with my own life, during weeks of small household confusions, lost laundry, unhappy help, canceled appointments, on days when the telephone rings too much and I get no work done and the wind is coming up. On days like that my friend comes uninvited. And once it comes, now that I am wise in its ways, I no longer fight it. I lie down and let it happen. At first every small apprehension is magnified, every anxiety a pounding terror. Then the pain comes, and I concentrate only on that. Right there is the usefulness of migraine, there in that imposed yoga, the concentration on the pain. For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. I open the windows and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well. I notice the particular nature of a flower in a glass on the stair landing. I count my blessings.”

this essay felt like a blessing to count in and of itself. it has found a place for itself in my mind, squarely beside another quote that keeps shuffling around in here, by octavia butler: “drowning people sometimes die fighting their rescuers.”

back to the conversation of the early-twenties hubris, it’s been a year of disillusionment. i’m beginning to see the true errors, missteps, and the arrogance of assuming an identity as a “healthy,” “secure person,” as if these are not traits that require maintenance and reevaluation, and not static expressions of self. it was so gratifying, thinking i’d “done the work” and could now reap the rewards for eternity. the false sense of pride of having reached a sort of “maturity” or “self awareness” was addicting. it felt so good to feel like i could make good, informed decisions for myself unclouded by antiqued fear and juvenile projection, or searing grudges or long-standing achings and yearnings, and take calculated risks that even in the event of failure, i’d come out unscathed. and although i am tougher and smarter and stronger than i’ve ever been, that in no way makes me invincible. i’m sure its obvious to you, but it has not been obvious to me. i thought i’d already walked myself back from this sort of behavior, this way of life. i thought i knew how to identity when i’m becoming calloused, and when to take a step back to let myself rest and recover. i’ve been touched by so much these past few years, my wrecked nervous system making me the fightiest person on the planet (got that from brie, my lovely friend who offered their perspective when i shared how productive my journaling has been this week), and i haven't been able to see it. i’ve developed a hair-trigger, eagerly waiting to pounce on anyone and everyone that gives me an inkling that they could do to me what’s been done to me before, what i’ve seen done to so many others.

it’s embarrassing for me to admit when people have power over me i didn’t willingly concede. it feels humiliating for anything about my life to be out of my control. it feels like a personal and moral failure when i can’t protect myself by having the discernment of like, god. i count on myself to see every harm coming. i’ve overcorrected, i’ve realized, in my wishes to take personal responsibility for my life, being sure to hold myself accountable, and instead found a creative way to blame myself for every bad or hurtful thing that ever happened to me. i had done such a good job of building myself up, gaining confidence in my decision making and my own judgement, finally learning to trust in my own capabilities. this isn’t wrong by any means – but i often forget, as many are wont to do, that what is built up must usually come down, no matter how strong, how architecturally sound. it is the fate of the oak tree in the storm as the reed blows coolly and bends back upright after the great wind has passed.

i haven’t been admitting how scary a lot of this shit really is: triangulation, love bombing, the cycle of verbal or emotional or physical abuse, pathological lying, cowardice, being used and discarded, hatred, doing things for people they didn’t fucking ask for, weaponization of community, infidelity, and all the way up to interpersonal violence – some having happened to me, some having happened to those i most loved – i’m not sure why i couldn’t see how much the culmination of everything was touching me. i could talk about how things were fucked up all i wanted, commit myself to the narrative of “this would make other people a supervillain, but not me,” understand that hurt given is usually just hurt received and transmuted, and that still didn’t mean i was actually processing any of it, how frightened i was when these storms came, how much i’d do anything to never endure another one again.

i think its ok to be scared. it’s not okay to not admit how scared i am though, because i think thats when i lash out the most – when i feel cornered, paralyzed with fear or worry. funnily enough, i think i had the most helpful image of myself when i described myself as “skittish.” i stopped identifying with this because it felt like a limiting belief, and maybe it is. but maybe it’s also just true – i’m easy to scare away because some of this shit has scared the hell out of me, and sometimes i get paralyzed when i struggle to make a decision, or when i feel like i can’t express myself freely, and i feel like fleeing will keep me safer from harm.

i’m not exactly sure where to go from here. admitting to myself my own feeling has lightened my heart, though. the second i wrote it out in my journal, i felt like the weight on my chest has disappeared. it was palpable, how differently i could breathe, just telling myself that i was more hurt than i could have ever anticipated, more afraid of the world around me than i’d ever been. it was a fear so constricting i was beginning to lose myself. it’s ironic, how much i write about embracing softness and fallibility, without being able to put that into practice in my own inner world when i’m at my most vulnerable. i’m lucky to have been reminded that there are always things you cannot see, things that hide from your eyes no matter how much you turn them over in your mind.

it’s okay for things to touch you, to color you differently. it’s okay to not be the same. but i think not being able to acknowledge this new color is what actually changes you for the worse, because change is inevitable, but change for the better could never be a bad thing. i might miss how i used to see the world, sure. but in exchange for the flamboyance of naivete, i’ve been granted the quiet, unassuming beauty of diplomacy, with an ability to see the bigger picture that i’ve never had before. i can dress my wounds now, instead of just recording them in a little book in my mind to flip through when i want to remember who i should be angry with.previous years taught me grit and gave me depth, but this past year taught me grace. i’m learning, even if i fight the lessons as they come. the process of letting go of the reins a little bit in my 23rd year of life will probably hurt. it’ll actually probably suck, really. it is identical to the migraine: avoiding acknowledgment of the hurt now doesn’t make the hurt stop – it just puts the hurt off for later, leaving even more shit to deal with in its wake. you have to let it through you to let it pass. you can’t fight it. you have to let go.

i am cautious, but more hopeful than i’ve been in a long time. i peek my head around the corner and marvel at all there is to learn and see and feel. i have some tidying up to do. thanks for coming along while i sweep up some of this debris. i wait for the migraine to come so we can be together and learn about each other a little bit more. i walk and feel gorgeous breezes and drink sweet drinks. everything falls apart and the pieces become more than the sum of their parts. everything finds a place, no matter how big or how small. micro and macro, the picture becomes clear.

and, like joan didion, i count my blessings.

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