i have to be honest with u friends….. this week has been an adjustment for me. being back in the city & entering my senior year of college is definitely throwing me for a bit of a loop!
i just came back from two long weeks in boston with my partner, chris. in boston, my time was spent writing for hours at a time & doing meaningless homework for an easy online class. i hung out with chris & we did mundane things together, like cooking dinner & getting ready for bed & deciding what to wear on pointless outings to the nearest coffee shop… but the every day things are not so mundane when i do them with chris. i enjoy what our lives look like when they are intertwined with each other. i enjoy taking care of each other & being taken care of.
it was a peephole into what my life could be. what it will be, in a few trivial months. & oh, how lovely that idea is to me. i am ready for that life & the joy of living in tandem with another person.
during my two-week stay, i have observed that chris’ apartment is quietly teeming with life: there is the dishwasher, always running, & devan’s cat, always meowing for attention. the downhill slope of the building makes the wood creak & groan on the descent to the bathroom. chris’ room is small & cramped & lovely — yet to be fully decorated, partially begun, as all of our beloved first apartments are. there is a rolled yellow rug propped up in the corner, as well as many beautiful thrifted picture frames, unhung, leaned against the walls. a jumble of our combined shoes & slippers are strewn across the floor & his blue chair is piled high with clothes we’ve yet to wash. the bed is too small to share but the pillows are soft & i know we will look back on that little room in a few years & smile. it was a sweet place to spend half of my january.
my apartment in harlem feels big & lonely, in comparison. when i returned earlier this week, it felt a little less like home than i remembered. it just felt like too much space for one person to inhabit. even my numerous scatters of miscellaneous floor junk looked small in this foreign, spacious room. i missed the cramped, intimate setting of chris’ boston apartment.
i was dismayed when the all-too-familiar of loneliness set in. much of my introduction to living in new york was and has been riddled with loneliness & the overwhelming responsibility of tending to myself. as ocean vuong sweetly reminds us, “loneliness is still time spent with the world.” i have been trying very hard to remember this as i readjust to the city. i have been trying very hard to care for myself the way i would a partner or friend.
it helps & it doesn’t. sometimes, i look up & see a big, empty room & only me to fill it. i think that i could not possibly take up this much space. i convince myself that i could never live a life full or rich enough to touch every surface in this room. other times, i look up & see the morning light crawling across my big, white walls. i see my trinkets & photos & dirty dishes & receipts. i see my life being lived, dirtying my floors & tossing around my bedsheets. it is warm & i forget what season it is. it could be summer or spring or fall. it could be anything. i could be anything. & in the lonely moments, i try to remember that feeling, of bigness & openness & a life that is entirely mine to live. i try to feel that way as often as possible.
in other news, i was nervous for this week’s newsletter! i wasn’t sure how this practice would fit into my life, with the added responsibilities of a spring semester in session. i fear the failure of this project & the decline of my recent creative streak. i am no stranger to the decline — creativity always ebbs & flows! but i have often succumbed to the tide, allowing myself to fall in & out of inspiration. this is perfectly healthy, though i have always known that i would benefit greatly as a writer if i nurtured a strength & persistence within myself. instead of fleeing each time i am not in the mood to write, i have been using this weekly newsletter to teach myself consistency & adaptation to whatever creative state i am in. i have learned a lot in the past month of doing this! this has proven to be one of the greatest creative commitments i have ever made & i appreciate u for reading along :D
this week, i miss chris. i wrote this love poem with him in mind, after the song “flounder” by quinnie. i was very inspired by the verbiage of it! i am channeling all things fossils & artifacts, a beautiful, prehistoric existence:
we need not flounder after quinnie i imagine we are lovers, whether or not we exist. that is, above such an indescribable thing as existence. i love you, regardless of heartbeat or however we measure a being that persists. i love you in the simplest of forms. encased in rock or flat at the bottom of the ocean. i love you, suspended in amber or up in space or embedded in earth’s floor. i love you, with no care for definition. there need not be any trace of us. very likely, there will be none. i am happy to love you prehistorically. that is, before any written record of us. before receipts or journal entries or letters, verbose declarations of our partnership. my love for you, devolved, is still love for you. you & i transcend actuality. so, we need not worry, my love. we need not flounder to determine our existence. i will love you across many lifetimes, as seashells or frogs or dirt. nothing, my love, could render us inexistent.
dance around ur living room for me this week!!!!!!! touch every surface & study the dust on ur fingertips!!!!! revel in the morning light & think of me<3 see u next week :D