Currently: Thursday, 21st September 2023, 5:08pm, fringe has grown out and hair is still damp from the shower, sitting in a café, doors opening and closing, baristas chatting behind the counter.
It’s been a while. My last letter left my dashboard almost three months ago. I’m writing this directly in the posting software of this platform for the first time in a long time and I find that I’m feeling a bit more sane. It’s like coming home from a stressful trip that never took the corners it was supposed to.
Life has been a whirlwind which you can always assume when you haven’t heard from me in a while. The problem with sending out letters is that at some point, there will be nothing from me, and then it’s a bit awkward when I come back.
I don’t just write when I’m feeling at my worst and when there’s nothing left for me to do; I write when I’m in a space where I find space for it at all. That hasn’t been the case lately, drifting between anxiety and sheer panic. I’ve cried more and struggled more internally than I have in a long time, and that’s not to say that I am any better now as I sit and write this. Most of all? I’m confused.
I’m writing pretty much to stay sane, find an anchor. I’m drowning in a lot of responsibilities and changes that I haven’t expected, and as life sometimes goes, everything is hitting me at the same time, from all sides. I can’t see forward, or behind me, or anything at all, because everything is towering over me. Sitting cross-legged, clutching onto what I call desperate wishful thinking, while others call it hope, or a positive attitude. It doesn’t feel like what they’re saying.
I’ve been writing so much. It’s a good thing, but it is also keeping me from doing other things that I should be doing. This might be the only thing that I can really control right now. My words, my creative curve. Everything else keeps thundering. Life is so funny like that. I’m writing two books. I've no idea when they will be published.
I tend to devote my all or nothing in things, which I think is a strength, but has bitten me in the butt plenty of times. I love being passionate about my things, because it means they’re entirely mine. No one else is doing them like I am. No one else knows them like I do.
I’ve always been pretty dramatic, more so in my earlier blogging days. I’m into lists lately, and I might write about them. I am different every day, at different times. Drafts are useless because of the way I’m moving. I run from things and return to them. Writing can be a beast and a vessel. Now I intend for it to be the truth.
I could catch you up on where I’ve been, what’s been happening exactly, but you probably don’t care, and quite frankly, neither do I at this point. A lot of the things that are happening in my life right now are things to be waited on, so I guess that’s where this anxious state comes from: Waiting, waiting, waiting. It drives me insane, and it never stops. It’s terrifying, even though I know it’s part of life, and essentially it is life. Doesn’t make it any less terrifying! And I will keep being dramatic about it. It would be boring otherwise. Maybe it’s a writer thing.
All things aside, everything has changed, but also nothing - at the end of the day, I am still just a girl at the café writing poetry about strangers I have watched or heard about, making up mind movies, making up their stories and struggles.
Anyway, I’ve decided I’m not so terrible. That I can come back. That I drink my coffee even when it’s cold and doesn’t taste of coffee anymore at all, just oat milk. That I will run away impulsively. That I will lose sight of what I need to get back to in my Notes app. That I will cancel therapy sessions when I cannot get out of bed. That I will see you around. That I cannot always keep my promises.