I turned 22 last week, on Wednesday. I still can’t quite face it, I don’t feel like my age and I wonder if I ever will. I’m young, but not that young, but not so old to know enough about the world and love and taxes. It was a day that came and went in a breeze, but so full of joy that I can still taste it, smiling all by myself like a loon.
For the first time in a good while, this last week was one where I felt like myself again. Not just as a sentimental, mostly sad girl — but as someone that stands with a heart open to give, enjoy and receive love. I felt such a heavy, giddy dose of happiness. I felt enough, and worthy of love, not only on that fateful day, but throughout the whole week. I found, no, built the strength to believe in it again, that my value is my own, that I am a good person. I felt truly, deeply loved, receiving kind words that felt as a celebration of my existence. It’s the sort of support you often miss, and too often you only realise you had it once it’s gone. I knew it was there, and I was finally feeling it.
Sadly, I write this letter from a darker place, as I seem to do with most of them. I bargained time with the universe, postponing and promising to make another one of these before the end of may. As if it heard me, that grand, vast, magical and cruel place sent me some pretty heavy familiar feelings in a unexpected message from an acquaintance, over the breakup I finally felt I was letting go of. It perturbed me deeply. All the steps I took, suddenly, lost all meaning, because the earth beneath my feet was shacking again. I felt unsafe, in danger. It was done with good faith, but it shattered all the progress I had managed to make by, perhaps, simply reminding me of the complexity and the nuance that can’t be avoided in human connections. The message said she was hurting with my absence, and instead of caring about her pain, I could only think, now?. It was the first time in my life thoughts similar to ‘you only know what you had until it’s gone’ stopped being poetic and bittersweet. They made me angry. Through the past year, I felt her slip through my fingers and become a ghost, our relationship abandoned on both ends, and now that I broke the chains, I’m tormented again by the weight of all I did.
A huge part of my identity in the past was based around the concept of shame, directly or indirectly, specifically when I wasn’t being ‘easy’: when I wanted something different than my peers, when I desired, when I made mistakes or took choices deemed as wrong, when I disagreed, when I felt jealous or envious, when I got hurt and wished to explore why but wasn’t really heard, when I wanted or expected support, between many others — these instances shaped who I came to be, even against my better judgment: avoidant, fearful, scared. I let fear guide my choices and actions. In my innocence, I felt it was the path that’d lead to love.
I don’t think it’s shameful to be afraid. One thing that always helps is to picture this in someone else. Would you consider it wrong, if a stranger was afraid? If your friend was afraid? If the person you loathe the most was afraid, of drowning or the dark or a job interview or dying or something greater or much smaller? Or is it an ‘It Depends’ situation? Isn’t fear a feeling that comes from within us? Irrational or unintentional at a first glance? If I was afraid, what would you feel? For some reason, to me, fear is a path to love. It’s through it that blooms an effort to understand what others suffered or lost, or what you want from life. It leads to compassion, you’ll imagine yourself in the shoes, or perhaps their pain is a mirror of your own. It doesn’t have to end or begin in you, but I find we tend to want to take care of each other.
Fear, anxiety, has at the same time always come to me as a means of protection — which makes sense even in biology concept; the shame was a long trench coat, the fears were the tiny kids stacked on top of each other, pretending to be a big person. For the sake of this letter, I’ll share with you one of the fears in my inventory: I’m afraid I’ll always feel like somebody has to save me.
And isn’t it strange? How is it that through shame, I still feel like I must be rescued? Like all these fears weren’t my own, my responsibility, my children to quiet or feed or put to sleep? It is a fear that even goes against one of my strongest beliefs in this world — you can’t save people, regardless of how much you love them and devote yourself to them. It was contradictory, I was contradictory. I was inconsistent, in this spot on the middle, like a Wednesday, where moving left or right felt useless, there’d be something wrong either way. This sense of helplessness was unavoidable, I never let it out. Rejection is such an old persistent tune, I know its every line, I called for it believing it was a guarantee.
Most situations are more complex than we can grasp at a first look, especially those where people get hurt. I do struggle to this day and most likely always will, with shame, fear, the perceived or confirmed sensation of rejection, but I’ve also prided myself in being able to see the other end of the stories. Closure and opposite interpretations go hand in hand, and I felt like I did a great job at standing at that centre, looking at all sides, at the grand picture. But that was it. I didn’t use the knowledge of all ends to make a decision, I got stuck — if you can see so many endings, which one do you take?
I cowered and followed fear, like Eyrydice holding Orpheus’ hands as she climbed up from hell. I put my life in the hands of fear, because it protected me, until it didn’t. Until I blurred and erased the lines between where I end and where others begin. Until I rearranged the wires within my brain to accept each and every situation with a full, open heart, even if I was hurt, for whatever reason, or if I felt unsafe, unwanted, misunderstood. Fear promised me that it would keep me a good person, and good people are loved. It’s for a good cause, it had to mean something to the people I did it for, to those whose love I craved, it had to mean they’d love me, because I wasn’t needy, or greedy, or selfish or mean. Because I acted as if all was alright. It really went past my head, all this avoidance and negligence, tied with a hope, a burning certainty that I’d get the validation I was looking for one day. There would be empathy and compassion at the end of the tunnel, waiting to hug me.
There is only so much you can do in your head. The hopes I held so close to my chest, the expectations I took as granted, gave me more regret than I can measure. They crumbled. I’m aware I might be sounding a bit confusing right now, but stay with me, I promise it’ll make some sort of sense by the end.
Before writing and going through all these musings, I found this tumblr post. It haunted me in the best way possible.
There’s somebody who’s been trying to save me all along and its me. I can’t stop thinking about this one line. It goes against this instinct within me to be cuddled and saved, told what to decide, on the pretence that it’s the best choice, the future that will be kinder, that will have less pain. It goes against that strong belief, the one where no one can save you. There’s somebody who’s been trying to save me all along and its me.
Sometimes, you need something real. Something outside of you. Proof. It helps if you could hold it in your hands, or have it in a song, or notice it. Here’s mine: I bruise pretty easily, and I knock over furniture without meaning to on a daily basis. I often bleed from cuts I can’t even remember making, yet my body heals. without needing direction or order or thinking. On more stubborn wounds, I’ll place a band aid, or spread a balm, or apply ice. It is one of the rare occasions where I treat myself with genuine kindness. Where I feel as if I do deserve it.
I was my saviour all along. and instead of seeing that, those real actions that happen out of love, not fear, I chided myself for my hopes and expectations and needs and my pain. My self esteem is so low, a bottomless pit I kept telling myself I’d never be able to climb out of without trying. But I don’t allow myself to cry, to fear, isn’t this pit my own doing? I think, maybe in a couple of years I’ll change my mind, but for now I do believe that hurting is the one selfish thing we do that should be excused of shame. How you do that, exactly, I don’t know how.
And you can however do what I did, and think your way out of pain or uncomfortable feelings and situations, or out of victimhood by placing all blame on your own hands, but the brain clings to what’s familiar, craves the misery, fear, anxiety, stress, shame, that all disguise as a comfortable bed.
Fears look for survival, and if you want to live, we’ll have to look beyond them. I fear frequently that speaking about all these things makes me seem as if I am some sort of victim and bad person. Victimhood feels as a trap, and I’m not innocent, so I always felt that suffering because I too did not-so-good things meant I was rewriting the narrative, making myself as a victim. I convinced myself that that took away my own liberty to be hurt, that I needed a person to pull me out from the wreckage and claim that yes, I could suffer.
Here’s what I’ve figured: you’ll always have yourself to save yourself. It doesn’t excuse or take away the fact that outwards support does help, make it less difficult. Having words, gestures, actions that you can hear, feel, touch, see from somewhere that is not within the walls of your thoughts is extremely freeing.
I had, I have myself, but I was too lost in my shame to…. feel what I felt without sensing it wasn’t true. I didn’t seek proof, I did whatever it took to solve it on my own, which meant that, apart from my efforts to adjust to everything, I waited. I waited for the validity to land in my lap, like a sleepy cat. And waited, and waited. The shame of not being alright, of being hurt, and the fear of the repercussions it’d take, to follow the path that would honor who I am, they paralysed me. Didn’t I want to be a good person? How can I both take responsibility for what I have done, even if it came from a place of good faith, and let myself hurt for the pain I can’t deny? Aren’t these mutually exclusive? I waited in silence with these complex hot potatoes. The compassion, the anger, the shame, the fear, it all shuts up when soon enough I remember, no one will come to save me. Except myself. I have to take the first step, at the very least. I have to be the one that picks my own side, and holds my own hand before going to the scary doctor, slices the tangerine in half. And I did. It felt so terrifying before, but I feel comforted by this notion now.
With regret, I realise I procrastinated standing up for myself so many times, I’m angry for the past me, that wanted so much love, and thought the way to get it was by being complaisant. I cry still, thinking of the times I sought for salvation in the hands of others, particularly of those that wouldn’t share the burden with me. These days, I take action. I face the tiny and the big fears, the triggers, knowing that if they are meant to be in my life, even when I think I’m done with them, they will find a way to do so. And I have the resilience within me to face them. I open up, I tell people my side of the story, even if it won’t matter in the big scale of things, even if it feels self-absorbed, the victim seeking pity. Being yourself, it seems, will always come with some amount of selfishness.
I share my point of view, knowing and understanding the million other interpretations that coexist. I train to stop thinking I'm evil because I have emotions. I train compassion with myself. I train the belief that no action done out of love is a waste, and that those that seemed to fail are never useless. I ask for a hearing ear, a shoulder to cry and confess to, because praying, waiting in the wind changed very little. I don’t fight the anger, that speedy reflex, but I do make sure I don’t let it lead me to shame anymore. To the good old fear. I do the effort of being accountable, and being compassionate. I start to own my needs and opinions, because I know they matter to me, that those that love me won’t run away by their existence. They haven’t yet, at least. I become the proof. I learn that some amount of selfishness isn’t evil, that there will always be thousands of judgments. I am a good person that does a couple of not so good things.
I’m finishing this letter with a bunch of jumbled thoughts, like cereal in a bowl. Maybe more to myself than to you — I am practising selfishness after all: You will always have yourself, which is your greatest comfort and tragedy. There are people out there with a hand ready for you to take. It’ll hurt either you do grab it or not — it might hurt less if you take it. You can wait and wait, that the pain that never meets compassion won’t budge, it usually gets easier once you decide to make it that way, once we act upon it from a string of actions not deprived of fear, but one that isn’t led by it. And, on a more personal note, you can’t silence or hate yourself into being loved, wanted or saved. It’s cruel, it hurts, but you exist beyond the concept of all the bad, wrong things you’ve done, and beyond those that left you. You’re not necessarily a victim, but you are not the villain either, and if you’d like, you could become a morally questionable hero. I think many of us already are worthy of love just because we exist, but my sentiment here is to tell you that you exist beyond fear, shame, helplessness, whatever definitions that don’t feel like houses, but like prisons.
I love you, and thank you for reading delicate this week. It’s raining as I finish this, a heavy downpour, and I turned off my music. Silence used to be something I feared, it normally felt charged, tense. Now, I make a home in it, another proof. I hope you too can find home anywhere you go. Here’s to being 22, and not that good of a person.
DELICACIES OF THE WEEK
I know this week’s letter was extensive, so I’ll keep this bit as short as I can.
The words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, from letters to Natalie Paley.
Jungwoo’s ‘Love Song’ recently became a song every dear to my heart. My knowledge of Korean is limited, and the only translations I’ve found are a bit clumsy, but the sense of comfort transcends language in this song.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: love song by jungwoo, kataomoi by aimer and from the start by laufey
ines, thank you so much for this letter. not to overshare, but reading this finally felt like seeing the light after crawling for so long in a dark tunnel. i’ve resonated a lot with this but 4 months have passed since my acquaintance’s abrupt message that perturbed me deeply and i feel like i never recovered from it no matter how much i tried .. it’s like my brain was clinging to the definition that im not a good person bc believing it meant i can protect the friends i still have now.. from myself.
“you can’t silence or hate yourself into being loved, wanted or saved. It’s cruel, it hurts, but you exist beyond the concept of all the bad, wrong things you’ve done, and beyond those that left you” thank you for your words. i honestly feel like i can now move forward from this and i can finally accept that being human comes with selfishness and i am still worthy of love as i am. thank you 🫂