I turned 23 last week and had, for the most part, a pretty awful birthday. My heart felt weary and vacant, the ‘i love yous’ felt bland yet necessary, hearing ‘happy birthday’ was a reminder that I wasn’t having one, at least not until I got home from work and left that entire week behind me.
Crying in one’s birthday feels like a rite of passage. I replayed ‘Nothing New’ as a way to bid farewell to my 22s on the day before, adding more fuel to the melancholic fire. I stay ever the pessimist, scared of change but simultaneously reluctant to stay in the same place where I’m not well. And, recently, something happened, something…new (badum tss), or rather, not usual. I caught a cycle happening, right before my eyes, and got to hold the hand before the burn.
What do you do when you catch yourself right before you fall? Before the trip, when the ground is far too close to your face to avoid? When you encounter the same dead ends, and the labyrinth starts to feel familiar — not because you know the way out, but because you recognise the traps. It happened so softly, in slow motion, so the impact would hit harder.
It was spontaneous, and it’s a bunch of old things I’ve stuffed in jars and hid under the bed. A quiet voice, a lullaby, whispered, ‘Oh, It’s happening again.’ The waiting between short replies that takes hours, days; that gut wrenching feeling of not being enough, of being close but not that close, of slowly drifting away only from those I desperately wish not to. Every time I hit the ceiling, frustrated with myself, I’ll say I’ll calm down soon enough, anger’s always an umbrella emotion, isn’t it? Don't panic! And it's true — it ends. And then it happens again. And then it ends again. And it returns, and it goes, and you start to wonder if it ever really leaves you. If feeling this way isn’t the default and everything else is transient. Do you know how people say if you draw a circle around a beetle it won't move? The first few days after noticing were similar. I froze, without a way out of the thoughts, watching as they got closer or further, as they orbited, the sensation of deja vu like a ray of sunshine cracking through the cracks.
I'm putting someone else in a pedestal again, different person but standing high and mighty all the same. I’ll have no choice but to look up. I’ll let the amount and type of attention I get determinate my worth, weight heavy in the scale of my self esteem: three replies and I’m special, no words and I'm quite forgettable. Jealousy flows too, my old friend, and I know I’m powerless denying it, against it, there's no use trying to pretend I'm fine, the key is how you act upon it. I don’t. I’ve been convincing myself I’ll turn it into something, but so far it remains nothing but a trigger. The lack of your attention has me shrinking. I start to feel disposable, like I’m fun to stay with for a while but not to stick around to. I make for some quick smiles and laughs, I’m comfortable, but I’m not looked for, not wanted. I’m not the one you call in times of need, I’m not the person that gets to hear the good or bad news first. I see that it shouldn’t bother me yet it does. I feel so unimportant, all again, the girl waiting, waiting, waiting. You hold my happiness in the tips of your fingers. I’ve done all this before and I don’t want to go through it again. So I ask myself, what have we learnt from the past? Plenty of things not to do. I’m the beetle in the circle. It gets tiring to have your only way of exerting control over yourself by not doing, not acting.
Except I do have one thing that relieves me, that brings me mercy and peace and the control I long to have. Writing. I didn’t start writing or reading for pleasure, or only from a place of mere curiosity and fun. No, I was a very lonely teen, something I’m only coming to terms with now that I’m a young adult. You know, in my mind I was cheerful and loud, even if I spent so much time by myself, even if I felt isolated frequently, and somehow that couldn’t coexist with the loneliness I felt. Books were ways to busy my days, to dream with my eyes open, to live more, because I was lonely and often times alone too. And with writing, there’s this thrill, this electricity when a scenario plays in the back of your mind, a movie for only your eyes to see, that you try to recreate to the best of your abilities. I’ve never finished any of my ideas, though I tried to plan and map them out, but I’ve written them down over the years, and now they’re like promises I forgot I ever made in the first place. Ghosts. There are so many characters I gave life to just to let them die as memory faded.
And I write out of fiction too, as I do here with you, and in my journals. I let the emotions bleed through ink and graphite. It’s wonderful, how something that has me so vulnerable makes me feel so powerful too. Part of me also writes because I don’t want to be forgotten, which is silly. We’ll all be dust and dirt one day, but I wanted someone to remember me. Writing allowed me to both run from and face loneliness, this loneliness that loves to be entertained. Have I been doing that with you? Entertaining my loneliness with our jokes, our messages? Have I been loving you or losing myself in you? Are they the same thing? I thought love was to find, not lose. I think so much about you — no, about this slow and sure loss of you, one would think I’m in love.
I don't know how to just be disappointed, what is that supposed to feel like either . It seems like an umbrella emotion, a cover up term for this mix between sadness, contempt, anger. Something to cover up something else. And I’m probably not the only one here because when I looked up how to feel disappointed, all I got was resources on how not to feel disappointed. I think you have to get through the feeling to really come up on the other side of it, but instead I’m in the cycle. Life’s all but one, but won’t I come around a tad different with each turn? Why do I keep acting the same way expecting something different?
Last weekend I realised I’m not as half as self aware as I thought I was, which hurts my integrity. I surprise myself, and I hate surprises. The pessimism flame within burns the possibility, the hope that what I might become isn’t…. evil, disliked, hated, abandoned. I distrust who I am, because day by day I’m finding out more about her, uncovering what I once held on to as fulcral pieces of my being, of my soul. I shred my skin like a snake, I’m letting go of what’s of no use, I want to embrace whatever calls, tugs at my heart.
I am the most me when I write. Sitting here, I strip my heart, place it open. It’s the way I have to look my expectations in the eye, the hopes and wishes hidden underneath it all. Shame. It's so easy to tell, see in others — how shame is nothing but destructive — but mine is so natural, so instinctive. It's shameful to want to be wanted, to want to be needed, looked for, looked after. It's even more shameful to realise what you have doesn’t seem enough, unless one can crave and be satisfied at the same time? And I’m smart, I know better than to expect, know that I myself am not stable, that life has its highs, lows. I’m not a stranger to wishing for more than what someone can give. You warned me.
But I wonder again and again, if you can give it to others, can't you give it to me? It's not begging but it gets pretty close to it. A truth that came along too late was that the moments you grow most fond of are rarely the ones drawn in clear lines. It’s when there are no titles, no nicknames, no stakes, when nothing’s official that the glee is immense, the joy contagious. That’s why I love beginnings, in books at least, and in relationships too it seems. It’s the only kind of unknown I like. Aren’t surprises and unknown scenarios close cousins? It's when it makes no sense that is fun. When it gets serious, that’s when the fear creeps in, and the ‘what ifs’ get louder and louder.
Am I the one putting up a sea between us? It’d be contradictory, because these thoughts, this way of being is just like myself, it might even be one of my greatest talents — to revolve my world around someone else, around others. I have such a tendency to make my life smaller than it actually is, no wonder I start to feel so trapped, so chocked. But no one's living this life for me. I can stay here forever and watch as the world circles the sun, as the night turns to day, as I miss the chance to love this life a tad more because I’d rather live in its painful moments instead.
Should I never allow myself the little joys then? The hope of you replying like you used to? Did you know, how happy I felt with each blue box? Should I kill the dream of laughing with people I love altogether? The excitement of possibility? All the dreaming? That’s unrealistic, impractical. They say all the love we put up has a way to return to us. It comes back in a million little ways. I wonder how. Sometimes you just want to give and give and give and give, it's tricky to know how to balance all that, to only give as much as someone is willing to take.
But still, I have to ask, if I can't know you like I know my favourite books, do I even know you at all? Do you not care to know more about me anymore? Have we reached each others ends already? Who am I without you now that I let you in and you’re going away? Were we distractions for each other? To be loved is to be known, and I think I could’ve known a bit more, if you’d let me. You can only get as close to someone as they allow you to. It works both ways, we aren’t the only ones capable of pushing others away, of leaving them stranded, afar. Have I let you down though? I will disappoint you. You have disappointed me, though I’m sure it wasn’t the intention, it was collateral damage. We showed ourselves our best sides, it was time for the worst. Were you repulsed the more I got to be myself? Don’t answer this. I don’t want to know. No, it’s not just this tendency to see love as something that hurts, that has to hurt you sooner or later. And don’t call it pessimism. If love is to last, it has to coexist with the certainty of a tolerable amount of disappointment. With each day that passes and you don’t return, it’s not that I grow sadder. I just wouldn’t like to have happiness in this life without you in it. But if fate should step in, if you don’t want me anymore, if there’s something or someone else waiting for each one of us and it forces a goodbye, then let it be. I’m letting it be with this letter. There’ll be happiness. We’re changing into things I can’t make out yet, and our shadows will soon stop meeting on the ground. Our lines aren’t parallel but they don’t seem as intertwined as before. Does it bother you too? That we aren’t each others comfort anymore? I think I was just starting to take you for granted before life shook us both. Now the more I get away from you, the more I feel like breathing. I’m not leaving, or at least I’m trying not to, but I’m scared of how sticking around feeling like an half empty cup might change me. I don’t want to break again, but I will. I’m learning how to fill myself up again.
I read somewhere that eventually we become the person we once needed the most. That we end up becoming our saviours. I think of that girl, 13, 14, 15, alone in her room, a book in her hands, daydreaming her youth away. Why am I this scared of being rescued by my own hands? These hands, small, with an damaged right thumb, with nails cut short? The hands I use to declare my love for books and songs, for my family and friends, for this treacherous life through words, typed or written?
Have I been running from myself all this time? Why avoid myself, when I live with me? Must I leave myself if other people leave? If I say I want to go back, to be the Inês that used to lose herself in magical realms and find herself between words, don’t I have to face the fact that she’s gone? That she changed?
Is she within, listening?
A lot has changed. I'm not the same I used to be, always running and putting on a strong facade, only giving and giving. I recognise I may be weak but that it doesn't have to mean I’m hopeless. I’m not powerless, just not powerful in a way I can control anyone else besides myself — and, trust, few people can do otherwise. I remind myself that saying things I don't mean will hurt the both of us, and make it a rule, I refuse to pretend anything. Yeah, should’ve been one since the start but I clearly didn't get the clue, because for the past 22 years I’d rather hurt myself than risk making someone sad, swallowing frog after frog. I take my time when I know emotions are turbulent, because just as Hayley Williams shared in an interview, you can't say some stuff while you're in it. I apologise, even if it’ll sound out of place, like a kid trying to walk in their mother’s heels. My closure doesn’t need a reply, it never does, but I think of all that’s left unsaid and speak, even if my voice shakes, if I fear what comes after. You can never unsay something, take back how you made someone feel. It works both ways.
And I remember that one time I heard we really won’t change until the pain of staying the same is much, much greater than the pain that comes with change itself. There are changes you force, and some changes that happen to you, and other changes that you desperately wish would happen, that you’re impatient for. But, lucky for me, I’m a patient being. Time goes by, I’m learning to enjoy my life outside of its corners. I’ll be picking my books again soon and greeting this summer, and I’ll try to not be so scared of 23. The books make me feel very lonely sometimes, but my heart calls for stories, for more. I don’t think I can give up on people, not yet, not ever. Aren’t we all each others cures and diseases? Hell is other people but heaven is each other. Sometimes you don’t know what’s on the other side of the door, and it’s okay to just shrug instead of trying to keep it closed. The joy of creating sometimes is that you won’t know exactly what you get — that applies to you too.
Thank you for sticking around. I wonder when I’ll run out of words to express my gratitude to still have all of you here, people that look forward to these thoughts, these letters. Much, much love. Thank you, always.
want more? click me to read a randomly picked letter: you shape me !
delicacies of the week
I got the chance to go to the second date of the Eras Tour in Portugal, far away from my home, thanks to a kind friend that allowed me to tag along. It was my first concert ever, and I didn’t cry though there were many close calls — but if I listen to the songs I heard, I want to sob, I had to hold back from crying the other day listening to ‘Shake it Off’.
Her songs have been with me for more than 10 years, they’ve been my safe spaces. The energy was out of this world, I finally understood the thrill of screaming so hard until your voice is hoarse. Listening to ‘You’re On Your Own Kid’ absolutely broke me in the best way possible. And I was very, very lucky that Paramore got to open, and sang ‘Last Hope’ as a surprise song, another song with a lot of emotional weight to me. I’ll carry that night for the rest of my life, it meant so much, to begin a new age with a moment so unique. It felt like exactly what I needed.
‘Older’ by Lizzy McAlpine has been fundamental these past 2, 3 weeks. It’s an album that allows me to sit with pain, not in it, without letting it swallow me whole. These are songs that help you process and let go, a hug that lasts long. Warning, it is extremely sad.
Can’t recall if I’ve shared this before here, but I adore this version of ‘Glue Song’. Hearing the actual kids sing gets me so teary eyed T-T
I read ‘Sound the Gong’, the sequel to ‘Strike the Zither’, and it was amazing. You can read my full review, spoiler free, here.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: sexy to somebody by clairo, come down soon by lizzy mcalpine and you're on your own kid by taylor swift
delicate’s spotify playlist! & delicate’s tumblr
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so gorgeous.. this felt so intimate as always 💗 also i don't know if i've said this before but i love how you address us, the readers... :') it's got a little kick to it.. i feel so seen every time you send out a newsletter haha
Wow, this really got to me. Soul baring. Beautiful ♥️