#80 || ~~ FONDLY, BUT FROM A DISTANCE ~~~

LA FIN D'AVRIL [for etta and ever ever]
We often forget the significance of someone or something's presence until the presence of their absence. After sunset, after the golden hour when the air is chilly and the stars are hiding behind the clouds - that's when I miss her the most. Sometimes during the day when it's quiet and the trees are still, I can still see her; her head is cocked to the side and her eyes are sparkling and for a moment I can't remember if I'm in a daydream or reality because it doesn't seem fair real that she isn't on this earth anymore. But still, after sunset, after the golden hour when the air gets chilly and the stars are hiding behind the clouds, I feel like it was all my fault. When my mind has nowhere else to wander, I miss her more than I thought I could miss anything, ever.

My first thought was to celebrate life, to love harder than I ever have and to treasure everything, because everything is temporary. But I can't help but appraise things in loss over gain, I keep forgetting the meaning in everything and simultaneously everything seems so serious and important and overwhelming ... yet, not at all. What's on the surface right now, is only the surface. There is a whole entity and existence underneath it all, under the layers and layers of emotions and opinions and heartache, it seems, there is only heartache. I'm so sorry, my little moonkitten, I miss you so much. 

LE DÉBUT DE JUILLET [for tori, forever ago]

It feels like the start of the end before the beginning, if you know what I mean. The variations in my every day, like the waves, my emotions ebb and flow and wax and wane with the moon so inevitably that it is almost ~predictably~ inconsistent. I revolve through lunar-like phases of surrender, of tolerance and rebellion, of displeasure and love and ecstasy and sheer terror. Several mornings ago I woke up and it felt like the world was ending, there was a tiny little inkling of pre-apocalyptic unease deep within my bones and I couldn't seem to determine if it began in a dream or upon waking. Then for a moment, just after sunrise, I felt so loved and almost ashamed of any prior instance where I thought the world deplored me and my existence. But by lunchtime the oscillation ended and I felt the okay-kind-of-normal, but only for a minute, and in the early afternoon when everything went quiet, I began to feel lonely and that feeling only escalated as the sun went to sleep and the stars hid behind the clouds.

Maybe it's just July. Do you always remember your Mondays? I remember mine - it's my favourite day of the week. Last lundi I was bleary eyed and barely dreaming, The Night We Met in the middle of the night, 4.a.m. coffee and uncontrollable emotions [isn't that my every day??] with the only girl in the world who ever argues with my anger. Do you remember last winter, or the winter before that? Maybe I have romanticised winter every year since 2011 but in reality I think this time of the year is the saddest  because the silver lining blurs into the grey of the sky and you're lucky to see a sunset. 

The ache of loving too much, the illogical shame that accompanies feeling everything beyond sincerely and likewise the chagrin in feigning flippancy because you've convinced yourself that caring is demeaning and loving is plebeian and it's always easier to pretend that you're out of touch with everybody and everything. Is that just me? I wonder what happens if you keep everything inside ... - do you implode? Explode? Does it excude from your fingertips? Does all of the choked-back love filter through your voice or is it emitted from your eyes whilst you watch the world pretend like they know what they're doing? I wonder if they can tell, I wonder if it's obvious or completely camouflaged that I care so, so, so too much. I wonder if they know they're always on my mind, I wonder if they know they broke my heart and that they hurt me or that they pulled me back from the edge or that they made my day. I wonder what would happen if I said all of this aloud. Let's keep it our little secret.


[i still dk.]

Love,
A x

# 79 || - - - “Somewhere between emotional and emotionless.” - - -

And before I even realised it, my imagination had run away without the rest of me, leaving my legs and logic and my reason and rationale behind.  I've always been this way, through both nature and nurture, my tendency to overthink and over-anatomise can be out of control sometimes. I fall in love with people after one solitary exchange, without knowing a single fact about them, in the same way that I resent people after one observation out of the corner of my eye, forgetting that we all, as individuals, are a hundred million different personalities at any moment of any day.    

Maybe always but especially now, the bar I have set for my own cloud nine is astronomically high, perhaps as high as heaven itself. It is a blessing to be so sure of one's personal preferences but simultaneously it is a curse to feel a twinge of dissatisfaction lurking in the shadows of every experience, like the devil itself it leaves me always wanting more, wanting to feel more, wanting more love, more light, more ... something. Nothingisasperfectasyoucanimagineit, nothingisasperfectasyoucanimagineit, nothingisasperfectasyoucanimagineit.

My remedy for this infernal discontent, is that instead of comparing and cursing my own [and the] inadequacies [of everything around me], is that perhaps we can celebrate the unparalleled qualities that make each individual different and exceptional beyond comprehension. Maybe we shouldn't limit ourselves to one single celebration, but encouraging the distinctions between us all. My singular resolution for 2019 was to rein in the shame that trembles in the hollow of my head, the mortification of being different, the conviction that I am feeling things deeper than I should be, but still short of the wisdom or courage [or both, even], to become the best possible version of myself. 

( "some of you haven’t spent countless hours thinking up a whole universe in your head to escape to and it shows" )

idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.
idk.

"This morning with her, having coffee."
- Johnny Cash, when asked for his description of paradise.

Love, A x

# 78 || " BEING IS ALWAYS BECOMING "

Because apparently dreaming about writing is all I need to remind myself how much I love and miss letters turning into words turning into sentences turning into stories that don't make sense but are everything all at once. This year has been a ride, every day is one, but this year more than ever. Despite all of the change and the endless unfamiliar, I feel a new kind of stagnant. Maybe this is typical, when one makes the transition into superlate twenties but every so often I am reminded of the everpresent feeling of being a child trapped into a grown-up figure and fate. I don't think waiting to wake up and feel like the threads of my life have been pulled together overnight, and that there are no more secrets or sorrow left to slip past the stitches, is a bad thing necessarily. Perhaps all I can really do is remind myself that I wouldn't want to be any other version of myself, not even the intention that I visualise every night before I go to sleep. Not today, anyway. If I live my life, forever in a transition, forever with the resolution that I can and will be better every day, maybe that's a way of life.

How would you describe yourself in three words? How do you want others to describe you? How do you want to describe yourself? It's never quite fully registered to me that the answer is within me and my own potential. It's not a curse that I feel perpetually incomplete and somewhat inadequate but indeed regardless of mind over matter, I am complete. I am complete with the promise of amelioration. We all are, don't let yourself believe anything less than the everchanging prospects of each and every moment. 

 

Love, A x

# 77 || GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY

[ For Casey x ]

The beautiful and damning thing about this life is how your heart can be pulled in every direction all at once and in a moment, it ends and you’re left less of an ache you thought would never pass but disappeared in an instant without a trace. As human beans we become the most real when we are feeling feelings that seem too immense for our heads and our hearts. It is the grey days absent from emotion that leave me more of a ghost than the noir nights that keep me awake deep into a new day. Tristesse reveals the silver outline of the rain as it pours down the glass of the lens of my eyes and that ever-real sensation of drowning in the depths of the ocean makes that inhale of bon-air that much more spectacular because that’s when you know you’re a success, you made it, you won.

For all the hours, weeks and years I’ve spent trapped inside the world within my imagination. For all the occasions I’ve convinced myself that I’m unique in my loneliness and inadequacies and self-doubt, I hope I can repay the world for ever single second spent living in false belief that I am insignificant. How fine is the line between ego and empowerment? All of this fleeting enlightenment would be wasted if I didn’t write a reminder to reflect on one day when we need it most: that everything you wish for is already within you, that the sheer existence of your desires was created from the cells that make you tangible, that if you let yourself regret any one of your actions or reactions then perhaps you wouldn’t be everything you are right now. Then perhaps we never would have met, and I, for one, treasure the honour of every encounter I have had in my life [ and I love you to the moon and back ].

Calendar days may not cure your heartache, but there is comfort in remembering that in the delicate balance of this life, sadness will compliment the joy and solitude will be levelled out by the time you spend with the world. Love is a miracle and maybe I am an incurable romantic but you deserve magic. You deserve to feel something so real you can see it. I couldn’t live with myself if I let myself settle for anything less than a miracle. For every disappointment, for every time panic grips your body by the heart, for every time you wake not knowing where or who or what you are – it will be outweighed by something so wonderful beyond your imagination. Hang in there, it’s worth it, I pinky swear.

Love,

A x

# 76 || 'THIS SKY. WHERE WE LIVE. IS NO PLACE TO LOSE YOUR WINGS. SO LOVE, LOVE. LOVE.'

Here we are again, caught once more in the in-between. For weeks it feels like I’ve been half-asleep yet simultaneously wide-awake and despite everything: solitude, sleepiness and all that stems from that silly combination, I’m feeling more everything, everything than ever. And that’s a wonderful thing. The mind can manifest all sorts of unimaginable things, both fantastical and frightening. In mere minutes I can regress into the darkest corners of my mind and find myself in a state of pure bliss and inspiration just seconds later. For a little while I wondered if it was just for me, whether this emotive rollercoaster is my own crushing reality. Maybe I’ll forever need constant reassurance and encouraging words, maybe I’ll forever doubt whether or not I am the one human bean in the world who is undeserving of love and a happy ending, maybe I’ll forever trip over, pick myself up and dust myself off forever and ever and ever. 

Endurance is everything. With the echo of her voice I persist and persevere, although it still feels like a part of me is missing. Not a huge part, but if it were at all possible to be more than a whole, then the extra little puzzle piece just isn’t there anymore. Like a sun without a sunray or a rose without a leaf - I don’t know, maybe it’s not about adding and expanding and more/more/more/always more, but learning to be less and have less and fine-tune everything that makes me me without altering who I am completely. If I want to have and make and experience magical moments until the day I die, if I want to live in a romantic world where it is okay to feel so deeply one can barely breathe, if I want to have dessert for dinner and wear dirty sneakers every day and not brush my hair e v e r, then so be it. 

Forever in a state of longing and in chorus, trying to remember and forget everything - I think after Paris every city might be a little underwhelming. After last night’s dream filled with lovers, love and that feeling of loving and being loved, even if it was just a dream. 

Here we are again, c’est l’été///it’s the summertime, and this has always been the most ‘triggering’ nostalgic time of year for me. Perhaps it’s the smoky mornings or the suffocatingly warm nights, perhaps it’s the (treizième) anniversary of falling down the rabbit hole and that embryonic heartache over love and life and the absence of light. And that is my sole endeavour in life: to find the light and share it with the world who are trapped in darkness and/or who need it the most. I hope we find each other, because there is infinite light for you. 

Love,

Afifa x