the birthday edit
happy new year!
22 May 2022 Where am I? far from self, distant, still searching, no longer swimming (just not drowning)
22 May 2023 I genuinely cannot imagine how people celebrate their birthdays without offing themselves. The thought of asking people for attention and to celebrate on my behalf feels so wrong and uncomfortable. And even past that, it feels worse when it seems like you’re not really someone people want to celebrate.
23 April 2024
Dear Talyssa,
Anytime you choose to reread this, you would’ve done it; gotten older. And in getting older you would realize how much bliss there is in age… it’s because you know yourself now… or, you know yourself unapologetically now. You’ve always known yourself, of course, but I suppose you feared to admit that because of the inevitable impossibility of knowing anything at all. Older now, it’s that same impossibility that excites you. With age, with time, you realize that there will always be more to know and the inexorable passage of time simply means an endless vault of things to learn about yourself (through yourself, through others, through the unforgiving hands of the cosmos). And there is a lot about that that used to terrify you… you don’t feel that way anymore though. Of course, you still get scared— there will always be fear— but you have found yourself on the other side of fear over and over again, capable of greater happiness and with a heart more expansive than ever. You will never stop fearing, but it seems like the older you get, the less paralyzing that feeling is.
As your present self, I’m always eager to know what you came to figure out; all the blind spots I can’t account for, all the puzzle pieces from the bird’s eye view… but I am the future-self of another present-me and I can level with you there; I imagine we both feel sad for her sometimes. Or we laugh at the same foolish episodes; her hasty decisions, the way she has a habit of biting her tongue when she shouldn’t. All the bad habits she learned too well (that we have fought hard to break down). And we can see the people around her; how much they always mean to her, the ones that give her space to mean something to them back… the ones that don’t (didn’t?), and how tough all of that is for her to understand. And we sit here, with our privilege of knowing, wishing we could make her feel less hurt. But I admit, I still feel the hurt sometimes, do you?
But of course, no matter what burdens she deflected to me, I am still proud of her— and I don’t doubt that you are too… because without her, this is no you, or me. And for a long time she took that too personally… held that responsibility like a gun to her own head. Thank god for me. I’m here because she let me go.
And given some more time (and more, and then more again), we (you, them) will keep seeing our self panned out in timeless planes offering condolences and congratulations and remedies for the heart. And we will inevitably have conversations just like this… because we will keep needing each other. How fortunate I am to know with certainty that I will always be there? It’s funny, because that’s not something I’ve always known… but I’m simply not in the business of betraying myself anymore. That’s lucky for me and for you.
By the time you’re reading this (for the first time, or the 100th time), know that you will always be the best one I know, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
3 May 2024
Dear Talyssa,
It’s May now, only a few weeks and you’ll be officially older— though you feel the passage of time every day. This time last year, you were trying really hard to want better. You sat around feeling lonely, lacking validation from someone who you thought loved you and so doubtful of whether or not you deserved to validate yourself.
In 2022, I saw these posts by Mimi Zhu and they gave words to a feeling I hadn’t figured out how to name, but offered a perspective that wasn’t attainable to me yet. Suddenly aware of that wound, I spent the next two birthdays searching for any semblance of celebration in myself and the people around me. I could never find it in the form I wanted it in. It always came as miscellaneous material goods, an obligatory dinner, a text message that fell into place right below the Happy Birthday! sent the year prior. And of course, I have some gratitude for the fact that there have always been people in my life who care just enough to go through the motions of celebration, but these birthdays kept ending with me crying myself to sleep feeling so incredibly lonely and imposturous. For one day of the year, I suddenly existed to people who were not witnessing me on any of the 364 others. And because I had not figured out my own self-worth, I had nothing to tether myself to. You are only celebrated today because that is what a birthday is for, yesterday you were unworthy and tomorrow you are unworthy again.
And the perspective was never there. The years were slow because I was always feeling stagnant and tired and unmotivated and uninspired. Without my past years’ journals, I can’t pinpoint what those days even looked like— they blend together into an opaque gray that completely eclipses any signs of meaningful change and growth. No wonder I couldn’t find a means for celebration; I could never see anything to be proud of.
And what was love if not an obligation?
well then, what a difference a year makes…
I’m here. Sitting alone on the floor of my studio apartment paging through my old journals and feeling a different sad. I am so much better now, I wish she knew that this was available to her. But she would probably cringe if I told her how her friends surprised her at the wine bar. She wouldn’t trust the fact that they were there because they wanted to be. She would believe they pity her. But that’s because she pities herself… and the person she thinks is in love with her doesn’t actually know her. And while she burns herself out trying to keep the performance up, these are the friends that stay. And they teach her that she can be known and loved for whatever exists there. And so a year later, that’s why I’m here. Sitting alone on the floor of my studio apartment paging through my old journals and feeling a different sad.
Slowly what will be approaches. What will be already is. The future is ahead and behind and to either side. The future is what always existed and always will exist… It suddenly occurred to me that you don’t need order to live. There is no pattern to follow and the pattern itself doesn’t even exist: I am born.
—Clarise Lispector, Agua Viva
…and there is no more impending doom…
4 May 2024 And aging feels so good. Aging, not getting old. I don’t get old anymore because as I age, I learn how to release all those things that were making me old. I age and I get younger. I feel innocence return to me. I yearn for life. We age, we die, but we do not get old.
Is that what aging is? Getting closer to infinity? That must be what I’m feeling.
And what is inspiring this motion? Nothing in particular. It doesn’t look like there’s an incentive in infinity. That’s what was scary before but now I see how there are so many somethings on the way to nothing. I will not reach my destination empty handed.
At some point in the past year, I figured out how to accept good things. I used to think that good things always had to be paired 1:1 with bad things and so too many good things meant an incoming series of doom (and it always came, because I was looking for it). It ended up being about acceptance (that I am deserving of good things without any transactional precedent), which does not prevent or eradicate bad things entirely… it’s just that the bad things aren’t allowed to persist anymore. I no longer choose to believe in the bad things more than I believe in the good.
But I’m not without mistakes… because things are a lot harder in practice; it’s rare that the difference between good and bad is made explicit. And what I’m starting to realize too is the way good things are bigger challenges. They require uncomfortable confrontation and honesty and trust in yourself. And you can play all the right cards and still walk away without the prize you thought you’d get… but something always materializes in hindsight. Again, it’s something about putting your pride aside and accepting the good (there is always at least one good).
And I’ll be honest, when I start talking like this I get a little self conscious because sometimes the words feel too definitive. I have bad days. I get anxious over things that might not be real. I obsess over situations that aren’t worth my energy. I forgive at my own expense. I cry when I’m hurt (and when I remember hurt). But this is where time comes back into view— time and aging. I’m new to this now, and in another year I will have more practice but be completely new to something else. It’ll just keep going like that— exciting right? Scary. But inevitable.
Inside her she felt the time lived piling up again. The feeling was floaty like the memory of a house in which one has lived. Not the house itself, but the position of the house inside her, in relation to her father pounding at the typewriter, in relation to the neighbor’s yard and the late afternoon sun. Vague, far-away, mute. An instant… it was over. And she had no way of knowing if after the time lived there would be a continuation or a renewal or nothing, like a barrier. No one was stopping her from doing exactly the opposite of any of the things she was going to do: no one, nothing… she didn’t have to follow her own beginning… Did it hurt or cheer her up? Nevertheless she felt that this strange freedom had been her curse, that had never connected her even with herself, this freedom is what illuminated her matter. And she knew that her life and moments of glory came from it and that the creation of each future instant came from it.
— Clarise Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
happy new year!
Here’s what I did:
believe in love
start to forgive myself
confront my own mortality
know a god (the god itself changes, depending on the day)
trust good intentions in others (and be unconditionally grateful for them)
cry & doubt & meltdown, then recover (and do it again)
remember laughter
acknowledge the limitations of knowing
experience happiness
hold and be held
And what are the things I want out of the next year? I don’t know! My PhD. But that’s all, I guess. I've had to stop asking my future self to feel things on my behalf. She will feel things, but I have to live it now. I have to give her the freedom to decide.
and i am so grateful for my friends. i am so grateful to be surrounded by people who see me.
I have spent so much time in isolation thinking that was the best way to go about things. Solitude is important, but there are limits. There are so many things I didn’t know I was allowed to have until I took the leap into open arms. That is why this year feels so new. I have people around me that actually know me… not a static image of me (Ref: the desire path). And I’ll admit that it makes things a little more challenging; I can’t tolerate some relationships as well as I used to. I am still patient, still forgiving (and sometimes too much, they say), but when I start to sense a dead end, I find myself shutting off. My friends make it look so easy; the way they know me at my core, the way they know me when I struggle to know myself. And that validation counts for something every single time. It reminds me that I am wanted and I should be, unconditionally.
