I put braces for the first time ever last week. For the next two years, there will be wires and pieces and new habits dictating the trajectory of my teeth. Hopefully, for the better.
If you’re a regular to this newsletter, it’s not a surprise that I’d try to take some life lesson, a bigger meaning, out of all this. Change typically comes with that, realisations, wake-up calls, new notions, motifs, inspiration. I was told about all this beforehand, but the ways these wires and brackets have been changing my life still caught me off-guard, even with plenty of advises. I can’t help to get grim. The first and biggest thing I’ve realised in only a couple of days is just how greedy I am, wishing for what I shouldn’t, can’t have, longing for what hurts me — and yes, not just with food. Secondly, it’s teaching me more about patience, and trying to find a semblance of peace with being uncomfortable (an issue ongoing for years).
I can’t bite harder bread or toast (the foods I love dearly), can’t really chew on most meat. What was in my life until this point a source of pleasure is now rendered to the purest, simplest quality it served from the beginning: fulfilment. Turns out, I haven’t been eating until I felt satisfied, energized, but I have been eating until I felt full, and there’s a difference. Hunger has been a weird animal with a life separate from mine, cravings come and go, functioning a lot like my emotions sometimes do: brief yet intense and too fast for me to grasp, to inspect. The pain, the thought of having to wash my teeth thoroughly after each meal, has rendered my appetite to a faint echo most days. At the same time, sitting next to family during meals can be excruciating, hearing the loud noises from mouth to mouth, eating what I can’t have, munching and cracking and gnawing and grinding. It’s true what they all say, you only know how lucky you are once you took for granted is gone.
Although I’ve never been one to obsess over weight either, starting this “journey” has made me more aware of what I’ve been putting into my body, has made me question the things I like and why I’ve liked them for so long. Maybe I’m spreading the stress of this new responsibility to all corners of my life — and how could I not? We can’t live without food, nutrients and proteins, without sustainment there’s no energy to love a life you get to live.
Love. I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately too. Loving and wanting. How we want the things we think we love, or love the things we think we want. Is ‘think’ a problem here? Do we get to love something harder the more we want it? Or does it work in reverse? Looking back, I’ve become so many of the things I didn’t wanted to. I have been, turned to someone selfish, cruel, unreasonable and mean to some. I’ve been petty and annoying, difficult and incomplete. A lot of the things I feared the most, that I never wanted, have happened, some even multiple times, and many, many things I’ve wanted for so long have yet to ever come true. And still I’m here and love exists, lasts. I keep wishing.
It’s funny too, we convince ourselves we can't live without this thing, or this person, this existence, this defining identity, until it's been a month, two months, and here we are. If we ever had it or not it’s irrelevant, what once felt as part of our souls can become unfamiliar again. I guess I didn’t have to always have whatever I wanted. Maybe remnants of all these stay with us, but they’re not as restraining as we tell ourselves they are. They don’t have to define us.
I have this belief that we don't know each other half as much as we think we do. Our pasts… we could recite from front to back, we have the stories we tell ourselves, the one we overcame and let go, the people we love today still, and we know where we stand now, but that's about it. We love what surrounds us, or we try to, or we get to learn how to. We might want to love other things, the one’s seemingly out of reach, the mysterious, the ones that take effort, which might just be all of them, if you think hard enough. I’d say it’s when the loving isn’t seamingless, it might create a dissonance. Not all loves look the same.
This idea from Marsha Linehan has been ringing in the back of my mind since December: “You have to radically accept that you want what you don't have and it’s not a catastrophe.” That’s what braces have been to me so far, a permanent reminder, a leash on my self-indulgence. Even if it’s temporary, for now, for this moment in time, for a short space of the future, there’s a limit I can’t cross, a wall I can’t break, and I got to believe it won’t destroy the world as I know it. Certainly will change it. It’s a notion that spreads over everything, how I read, how I write, how I love. The anxiety of wanting, especially when you can’t even tell what you want… how can you learn to love from a distance? With measure? Perhaps love is exactly the surrender of control, the belief, faith that you won’t be overdoing it by being you. I don’t think we’re able to really love if we can’t accept what won’t change, what isn’t and will never be “ours”.
Leading a life of only strong discipline, restrain and balance, I don’t think that’s the way to go either, but it is important to understand why they both matter, and to practice them sporadically enough. Discipline happens when I wake up to go work at 5 am, even, especially in those days where the world feels like an enemy. Restrain when I stop myself from being up too late into the night. Balance when I make sure to have some alone time every now and then, because I’ll waste myself away otherwise, being constantly online or in movement. All these terms mix and swim in my head. Love. Wanting. Loving and wanting things, people, experiences, objects, concepts, emotions you can’t have. Understanding that the things you can’t have aren’t as definitive to your happiness and wellbeing as you may believe they are. It is so tempting to then just… wish that things always stay the same, to capture a moment of happiness, where grace seems to shine upon us, and live in it forever…
But change, isn’t change the way? In another video, I hear “We don't change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change”. Sometimes when we go through changes in our lives, they happen with a delay, in slow motion. I’ll often find myself in the edge between decisions, in the middle of choices, pondering what would be best, the pros and cons, how and what I can or cannot do once what's done is done. I’m learning to see where my words and actions are coming from, if I can take on the consequences of letting them exist outside my head. It’s as if I want to be extremely careful with every aspect, as if my own life is surrounded by braces, brackets and wires I must avoid breaking or loosing or twisting. A handmade curse. I wish to be mindful, but not this way, this extremist, torturous way. Sitting right in the border of chastising. If I can’t have what I want every time, then I’ll make sure the rest of life sits at the palm of my hands. It’ll only hurt me if I let it, it’ll change only if I allow it.
Isn’t it ridiculous? It feels like a loop, a broken record, like I’m walking in circles. It’s naïve and futile to hold on to an idea of permanence, but trying to control change is just as fruitless. I think I’ve been looking at change as a point of no return, as a sentence of premature death. I never thought about the possibility of change happening and love persisting, even with plenty of examples all around. I do these sort of mental mathematics to make some sense, some meaning so much that I forget what may be most important part of it all, of this life: to enjoy things as they are, as they come to us. To let them transform, morph, liberate us. To let them create who we are, as much as we, too, take what we love and give it life. To not think of the before and the afterward so badly, to see the now, look in its eyes and smile.
Loving openly, not as in a manner to say it needs to be loud and proud, but… a picture of two arms spread-out (this sounds slightly religious doesn’t it…. my bad). Gently. Trying what is new without thinking of what it will become, stressing what it can be, or fixating on expectations so much you forget to enjoy the moment. Change will come when it has too. Same as pain. And similarly to many things we love in our lives. All in due time. I want to say yes, to loving and accepting that both what, who we love will change, and so will we. I want to believe not in impermanence alone, but in how everything can exist in different ways, just like a cube of water changes nature but persists in other forms, in the rivers and the air.
When a person is gone, they may never be truly gone. When a feeling fades, an object breaks, time ends, the wanting stops, they can stay with us in other ways — in the changes they left behind in us. The lessons too. I think this is the part where I’m losing plot of what the message in this letter really was about, this happens I get too carried away with words.
Love. Change. The space where they may coexist can create acceptance. I’d say, if we trust that it might, believe that it can… I’m too used to feeling powerless, I want to try and see if power lays in that place where I let things be, change me, in this present, this now, this moment with neither a beginning or an end.
Thank you for reading Delicate this week. Eat something crunchy if you can, savour it with every healthy teeth you may have.
DELICACIES OF THE WEEK
I can’t remember if I’ve told you before, but I’ve been watching Haikyu lately, and (surprise, surprise) I’m often at the verge of tears, happy ones at least. It’s so full of hope, energy and this..tenderness. Who knew the highs and lows of a volleyball team could be so inspiring. It’s my first time watching, and I have a special spot for Sugawara.
The other day I had a pretty swift and acute interest in Pride & Prejudice again, one of my favourite films, sparkled by this “Therapist Reacts to Pride & Prejudice” videos. It’s such a timeless story. The confession in the rain still leaves me holding my breath like a 18th century man that saw a woman’s ankle for the first time in his life.
Also, I watched ‘Anyone But You’ on Valentine’s day. It’s white, it’s cliché, it worked for me. Don’t trust me to be the best judge of movies…
SONGS OF THE WEEK: we're everywhere by cheeze , end of the world by searrowsand & ripples by beabadoobee
delicate’s spotify playlist! & delicate’s tumblr
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