broken-hearted, disappointed, it was still beautiful
on satisfaction and the labour of love
I’ve been searching for themes to write about in the corners of my life, underneath the rocks and behind dusty doors. It’s June and days pass so slow, yet we’re almost at that line between the ocean and the sky, reaching yet another end, and another beginning.
So, have you ever felt disappointed? I’m sure we all have. Maybe the ice cream you craved for weeks and finally had wasn’t as sweet as you dreamt it’d be, perhaps the reward at the top of the ladder didn’t feel worth the whole climb. Whatever the case, big or medium or small, I can picture that all of us have felt disappointed with something, with someone in our lives.
These past days, I’ve been dealing with a a stubborn sense of dissatisfaction with… life. A dysphoria, of sorts, where too much is never enough— I’m unsteady and uneasy, deeply disappointed without particularity. If ambition usually will push one forward, mine eats me whole, steals my joys, abandons me in despair. I’m starving for a taste that doesn’t seem to exist. Any emotions in front of me won’t feel as if they’re enough unless they are overbearing, right in my face, screaming. If the spark isn’t immediate, if it doesn’t rock my world, then it’s as good as dead.
What I normally do whenever I meet an issue is research. It’s my one way to take action, to get my hands dirty and stop wallowing. Studying isn’t all I know how to do, but it is something I’ve been doing for most of my life; between finding people suggesting hard drugs often, which isn’t a considerable course of action at the moment, I read plenty about gratefulness, or mindfulness, meditating, finding happiness in what you already have, and the idea of how happiness is within, not without.
And I do agree, to an extent — that all you need lives inside of you. That you are capable of great things even if you might not be aware yet. This feels like potential, which is a concept I have a troubling past with, like a promise done to a wind that never stills, but I do believe in it. Nonetheless, I can’t shake the anxiety away, how everything feels so finite, nothing fills my cup, this shapeless hole I can’t mend or stuff. Am I being unreasonable? Is it underlying, unknown expectations? Who am I trying to prove? Who am I comparing myself to, if not to a reflection that doesn’t exist? Do I believe I’ll be finally better or happy or loved once I reach… somewhere else that isn’t now? What’s missing? Why does it feel so…wrong?
How can I learn to be at peace with what I have and not in a constant game of chase the bone? How can I sit still when I’m so sure there is more? I don’t want to walk, I don’t want to run anymore. I want to stand in the middle of my room and, for once, not wonder what it’d be like to be loved a bit more, to be slightly happier, more successful… at what? I can’t even tell. At something, anything. It’s as if I can hear a voice but can’t for the life of me understand what it says.
This despair comes with a deafening lack of direction, with these tiny wars within my brain. I waist my days away like this more often than I’d like to admit. I forget who I am sometimes. I go by, I trust what those I love tell, that I’m funny, happy, inspiring. It’s surreal, coming at terms with the sheer, innate complexity of everything and everyone, that this person I am to many feels like a stranger, feels so lacking, so sad. That that person struggles with something as simple as genuinely enjoying what she already has.
I’ve spent the past months, almost a year now, in this sage of sending curriculums to so many places, shouting into the void with little to no answers. I know it ends, I know it leads somewhere, because it has led before, but the path, the journey to get there is so long. How much time will I have before I disappoint everyone besides myself? There are days where it feels as if I live with a clock on top of my head, tick tack, tick tack, counting down how many hours, minutes, seconds I have left until it’s finally too late.
It’s as if my own shadow outweights me, and there is a hole somewhere within that leaks and leaks and leaks. I wish I could tear this thing apart. I feel as if I am ticking bomb, and I should make up for whatever’s not right. And it’s no one’s fault, that nothing seems to satisfy this hunger, which makes it hurt even more. What do I do? How do you pick a broken cup and make it whole again?
I‘ve been trying to write fantasy again, and it has been a winding, deeply disappointing experience so far. Many of you might not know, but the first scripts, scraps, pages of… anything I ever wrote, they were fiction. From cheesy love stories to time travelling fantasies, everything came so easily when I was younger, I’d spend my summers doing fake covers for books that never left the first 3 chapters or so. Excitement would flow through my veins almost.. naturally, for a maximum of 2 weeks, it’d outgrow the embarrassment I’d feel, the sensation that I wasn’t nearly as good as everyone else. I even published once or twice on Wattpad — which is now a cemetery. Funnily enough, all I write today leaves me wishing I was dead. It angers me. It’s either too ‘weak’, too ‘flowery’, too lacking in emotion or prose or form or shape or background or character. I’m trying to embrace the… crappiness of it all.
Delicate is a very real place, still bumping and bleeding, where I challenge myself to think and come to conclusions, but mostly, to not give up. I return, time and time again. I come back to you, and to me. I return to myself. To the fifteen year old Inês that dreamt of writing. To someone I’m…proud of being. Someone that doesn’t run away, stays through thick and thin, does the hard thing. There’s also an ease to being here, I’m not… proving anything, trying to be someone I’m not. Sure, I’d like to believe my diction has gotten better, that my text is more cohesive than the one I had when I started. I’m proud of here, of this one thing. It takes work, but it’s a labour of love. Even when at times it might be frustrating, if it takes hours, if I grow disappointed at the finished product or the reactions, I enjoy connecting the dots between ideas, finding metaphors, pieces of my days to show you.
One person in a forum while I was searching for answers talked about kids building sand castles. How they find enjoyment in building and throwing them down, and how, if you were to ask them why they do it, they’d shrug and say ‘because’. Isn’t it charming, how simple it can be? One vivid memory I have from when I was younger was that, after dinner, my parents would allow me to watch some tv while they cleaned up the kitchen. I remember watching Mermaid Melody, the thrill I’d feel when they’d sing songs to ward off evil, the antics between Lucia and Kaito. I remember counting down the days until Friday, because Disney would have this ‘I LOVE FRIDAYS’ program with new episodes. I’d be so excited I would pee in a rush, run through the hallway, afraid to miss even a second. I played with Barbie dolls until I was nine. NINE!!! And I never had a house for them, but I’d build them through shoe boxes and cabinets I had in my room, my makeshift home.
I think purposes make life a little less tormenting, but I have zero idea what could, should be considered one or not. I pick love typically, but even that turns its back on me sometimes. Growing up comes with a realisation that besides a few things I can count with the fingers in one hand, there is nothing logically wonderful about existing. So, what if we gain the ability to exist in our lives even in the places we don’t particularly enjoy? What if I can do it out of love for everything else that I am, that I can be, that exists in this world and can make me, on occasion, get out of bed or smile through tears? I guess, so far, disappointment hasn’t broken me to the point of no return. It happens, like a wave returns to the tide and the shore.
Perhaps wanting more doesn’t mean I have to be unhappy, dissatisfied, but my brain tricks itself to believe it does. I do have a lot of love for what I have. I love beyond flaws many times. Happiness is feeble and that doesn’t scare me, or does it? The feeling of wanting is a separate feeling from the one of accomplishment; they don’t necessarily bring out each other — a concept I’m familiar with, the one where you play your cards right and still lose the game. I keep thinking back to that one tumblr post, the one that goes something among the lines of ‘learning how to live comes with the need to not let regret consume you’. I’m so easily consumed, I guess I forget to exist, live in the present. I get consumed by all I am not, and become a ghost of who I could be. I envy this Inês that gets everything right, that never doubts the love she’s given, that finds the right words and does the hard choices and doesn’t need anyone or anything and is the pride of those around her. Fundamentally, by an Inês that doesn’t exist, or that I have yet to meet.
As I write this, the smell of caramel flows through my room. I detest having my room smell like food, but this one time, I let it. It won’t last, nothing does. I’m disappointed the door was open in the first place, that whatever my mom is preparing needs caramel, that smells can be so intoxicating. I let the disappointment be there. It’s not so bad. I give it patience. I mute the clock that runs and runs. I exhale and whisper, ‘with this breath I’m letting you go’ to whatever I’m gnawing, chewing, holding too closely. I remember a person that woke up once and just knew (is this a bad habit for all of us or something??) they’d have a bad day, so they decided to sit by the river either until the feeling was gone or the day was over. I think of Gavin with such sweetness singing ‘I used to wear my sadness like a choker, it had me by the throat’. I let go, let go, let go, and it doesn’t get easier, at least not right away, and I’m still disappointed, and I let myself be. When did closing the doors and lock them ever help? Or shaming and saying it’s all wrong? I have so much inside of me, I’ll let it flow once more.
Thank you for reading Delicate, which is a bit messy this week. Today, I look forward to breakfast, trying a new iron, listening to songs on the radio with my Mom and watching the travelling documentary that plays every Sunday on channel 2 (Cycling Around Japan). I’ll be disappointed probably, I don’t know where yet. I won’t get all I want, or I’ll get it in a way I didn’t want to. You too probably, definitely, will feel dissatisfied. How about we make a path to still find our own ways to live, woven between the stones and pebbles in the pavement? Let it be heavy, it won’t break us.
DELICACIES OF THE WEEK
While I was scripting today’s letter, for whatever reason, youtube recommended me ‘One Step At A Time’ from Jordin Sparks, which happens to be a beloved piece of my childhood. It’s a cheesy song and it’s just as cheesy to admit but I sang along through all the lyrics with a gentle smile in my face, like the lines of a prayer. There was such a simplicity in that moment, I don’t want to forget it.
There was this small, lovely comic I saw the other day (please visit it), where the creator talked about the start of a new relationship, and an instance where they asked their what she expected of them. The answer was “nothing”. That’s all. Upon asking again, girlfriend said ‘I try not to hurt you & you try not to hurt me.’. I couldn’t stop thinking, how tender, how human to be this way. There was this quote, among others, that went: As if there was no choice but to hurt.
I didn’t find a way to incorporate the sentence in today’s post, but a stranger said this: Schopenhauer interpreted the last thing left in the box of pandora as hope. It’s a haunting, devastatingly beautiful sentence. Do with it what you will.
Tiny Desk is one of those phenoms that simply pours something good into the world. I’m not the biggest MUNA fan out there, but I do like a couple of their songs, even if the indie pop genre isn’t one of my go-tos (I like my indie separated from pop and vice versa). Well, that aside, I cried twice watching their performance, and then I continued to sob while replaying it a couple more times.
The acoustic element side to side with their lyrics, voices and outstanding harmonization made everything so much more heart-breaking, it’s such a cathartic experience. I can’t listen to the ‘Stayaway’ bridge in this without tearing up. Please watch this, they are incredible.
I’m also almost a month late, but here it goes: happy pride month. I love you.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: open my door by alice phoebe lou, fast times by sabrina carpenter and we're in love by boygenius