the core of you

it's all... love

My parents speak sometimes about how different me and my brother were as children. My brother was born with a frail health, he keeps to himself and he loved books since he was little. He’d pick them up and tell you their stories not because he knew how to read yet, but because he memorized all the words from so many times of hearing them out loud. He was also unabashedly in love with Power Rangers or Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh or whatever franchise catered to kids his age, so much he’d often throw tantrums to get whatever expensive toy he wanted, including aforementioned books. Apart from the asthma, he was easy maintenance. He was easy to please.

I, in contrast, didn’t throw as many fights to get what I wanted — except the one at 8 years old when the High School Musical 3 DVD was out and my mom insisted she’d buy me a mug instead if I stopped crying. I couldn’t stay put a lot of the time, I’d follow my mom as she cleaned and try on her shoes, waiting with a smirk for the moment she’d catch me and smile while shacking her head; I couldn’t shut up, and I was a rebel here and there, never brushing my own hair or playing too much with my barbies or never wanting to eat my soup or painting walls with crayon and glueing online ‘Congrats on finishing the game!’ certificates to my wood wardrobe (yes, with a glue stick). My parents always laugh when they talk about how I used to love eating sand at the beach as a 2, 3 year old, because it was salty and grainy and felt good on my mouth, I guess.

Sometimes when I think about childhood, I believe that it’s biting me back in the arse. That I wasn’t a kid to my fullest potential. I should’ve cried more, harder. I should’ve screamed back when people wouldn’t judge too badly and call me crazy. My laptop is old and buffers a lot. I am patient, sure, still my leg starts to shake harder when it seems it’ll crash. And it won’t happen too often but it does, and those are the times where I just want to break it. To hit something, throw a tantrum, be that kid I once was, simply because things don’t seem to go my way, work how I want them to. This happens in other various instances. You’d think that with the amount of times I get this frustrated over not getting what I want that I was pampered up as a child, but it was slightly the opposite, my parents managed to keep some balance — either that or I’m trying to be forgiving, it wasn’t their first time parenting but they’re scarred from my brother and their own upbringings in ways I have yet to understand, learned lessons that may not be for the best and sincerely… they tried and did what they did because they both loved me and it was what they could do at the time. Not all they could’ve done, yes, but why hold others to standards I wouldn’t be able to reach?

I hold a hunch that the countless experience of not getting what I wish for kills me slowly. Seeing that now I’m older and it still won’t happen, the past is in the past and it’s out of my reach, and I can’t change everything only some parts, that reality is always a hue darker than my fantasy. I can be so independent and smart and deep down I’m still that kid, eating sand because it’s tasty. I keep waiting and waiting and when I realise everyone else seems to go forward and get partners and travel and live life with or without me in it, I’m offended, because how dare they? As if it was their fault they aren’t living my life for me, as if I must be included in theirs to truly exist in this earth (I’m aware I don’t have to!!!!! And that’s alright!!! Don’t let the amount of exclamation points fool you because I mean it, while also wishing that people chose to include me anyway!!!).

And then I feel unavoidably behind. Behind who? People. Who? Friends. Relatives. People on the internet around my age. Behind how? Behind in life. How? I live with my parents. I don’t have a lover. I don’t own a car. I don’t go to concerts every month, I haven’t even travelled out of the country. I feel poor. I don’t have the same clothes, the same body. I feel like I don’t have as many friends as everyone else. I don’t feel close. I feel out of place and behind. And do you want all of those things? … . Do you want them or not? …I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe? I need more time to think it out. The more time you take, the more behind you’ll feel, no? Yeah. Yeah, probably. I ask you again, do you feel behind? Not exactly. I don’t know. I feel lonely in my choices. Lonely and indecisive. Have you never been taught independence? How is it so different from abandonment? If you are free to chose, you’re independent. What if my freedom is a cage too? You can turn anything into heaven or hell if you wish. Fair enough. So, what do you want? I’m not sure.

I hear that people sometimes don’t feel like the protagonists of their own lives. In my episodes of deep emptiness, I’ll be floating in something close to that, a loss of ownership of this boat of life. I don’t think I’ve ever had that clear of an understanding of who and what I am, I’ve done countless personality tests half for fun and half for the rush, for the sake of adding one more quality to the list. Stubborn. Open-minded. Irritable. Friendly. I collected adjectives like badges of honor. I felt closer to myself the more tests I made, reading horoscope pages about Geminis and retaking MBTIs and judging whatever I got both in how close it was to what I knew and how disconnected it was to who I truly wanted to be, how I wanted to be perceived, remembered. I felt closer to myself but I was walking away, or around, or anyway other than straight ahead.

One could write books about it, but a simple phrase suffices: hell is full of good intentions. We don’t get to control how our actions will be interpreted, the way other people see us. We never were in control in the first place, those times where it aligned were luck, coincidence, fate, all or neither of the above. What we do have is the intention, call it wish, for our actions to be perceived as we hope so. For our hearts to be seen. Intentions matter to us, to our identities, yet the consequences of the actions or lack thereof, how they'll be perceived is mostly out of our reach, which is both cruel and a small blessing from life — think of just how overwhelming it’d be to control everything.

I went to a medieval fair with my friend, and for 1 euro we got to pick a secret scroll with a message, tarot-esque stuff. Mine said to stop and think if what I wanted was really what would be best for me, which made me laugh. Don’t the stars know already that I question most of what I feel and what I get? That it’s never been easy for me to believe? I question so much, and I wonder why I feel lost.

@jseojd_art on instagram

I think and think and think, except sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I assume, the guess comes at a faster speed than the thought and I’ll run with it. The other half of the time I’ll daydream my life away, and that sounds very sweet but it’s mostly bitter, singing tales of should haves, punishing reality to become what I want. How do you punish reality? By punishing yourself. It’s important to remember all this time and time again, I’m not as introspective as I am ruminating and impulsive. I’m used to not trust myself, okay, big stuff, and the irony is that I’ll trust the assumptions and easy wants, because I’m still looking to hold on to something, to a thread where I can tell who and what I am and what I truly wish for. How I can fill up this hole within.

If not my thoughts, what then? Am I the past that’s already been written and can only be seen looking back? If it’s the actions, is it the ones I did or the ones I didn’t? Both?

The answer is pretty simple: You can be anything you want. Within limits, of course, and no, I won’t say which. I’m not what happens to me, if I don’t let it. I’m not what doesn’t happen either, which is such a strange thought — but don’t they say you regret the things you didn’t do? You can, unfortunately so, be made of shame and regret and guilt, there are days where I fear it’s all there’s left of me.

I’m “me” when I make someone laugh. I’m “me” when I’m singing out loud while washing the dishes. I’m “me” when I try and follow the advice my friend gave, and I’m “me” when I don’t answer a message right away on purpose. I’m “me” when I find a new song and instantly know I’ll love it forever, I’m also “me” when I’m alone in my room with a book in my hands and ambience sounds playing from my computer. I’m “me” when I pretend to be asleep so I don’t have to talk to a person on the metro, I’m “me” when I’m so angry I have to hold back tears and lash out on those that care for me, even if they’re clumsy with their love. I’m “me” when I’m pessimistic and sarcastic, I’m “me” when I break a plate, I’m “me” when I’m waiting for the bus.

I enjoy reading about mental illness, specifically about recovery journeys, the words someone healed would say to themselves in the past, and what made them stay, what made them keep up the fight, keep their head high. Funny enough, no matter how different the articles and interviews may be, it summarizes to a bunch of traits, qualities, conscious and continued choices: Acceptance. Determination. Perseveration. Vulnerability. Communication. Courage. Curiosity. Change. Trust. Faith. Hope.

I’ve told you how hope’s easy to find, for me, which is a half-truth. I’ll catch my brain mid convincing myself that hope’s real sometimes and it feels… like a deception? Maybe it’s normal and I’m being judgemental because it feels unnatural to have to… teach myself something like this, hope. Like I’m the kid being told I’m not supposed to eat sand even if it’s so tasty.

It’s why I find it so important these days to say ‘I don’t know’. To surrender yourself just a little, because I’m young and I’ll miss how entitled or proud I sound sometimes, how I’m closing one door after the other by clinging and gripping and believing I am right from the get-go, that I know myself better instead of.. giving it up to chance and hope and change. Sometimes I am wrong, about others, about myself. Sometimes the surprise isn’t a tragedy. This isn’t me trying to claim we’re ALWAYS WRONG, it’s not, as Heather Havrilesky says, a cheeky “Hey, guess what? You’re wrong about everything!”. That’s punitive, it’ll have you wanting to wallow and complain harder. It’s a disbelief and distrust in the world, in others and yourself. It’s the other shade of the black and white thinking.

Recently, I found a phrase, or refound, that’s been begging me to hear it: “acceptance of life as it is, not as it is supposed to be” and “the need to change, despite that reality and because of it.”

That ‘I don’t know’ is a first step that allows me to begin seeing the world a bit clearer. Maybe it’s a good idea, to begin journaling on opposites: write first how it should be then how it is. Maybe it won’t be as grim as I fear. I don’t like reality much but living in my head hasn’t been helping either. Acceptance of life as it is may start with recognising how it isn’t what you think you want.

The truth is while I ponder what to do and suffer in silence and tell you about how I could change or not, days move. My parents aren’t getting younger, my mom falls asleep on the couch which she never used to, my dad can’t walk without a slight limp anymore. I spend whole afternoons writing here and sometimes it doesn’t even get me anywhere. Loneliness is still time spent on this earth, or so the quote says. The time we get to be together in this world shortens just like this. The days I call wasted with waiting are still time here in this universe. The weeks I spend questioning anything and everything, running away from reality by wishing it away are days I’m still in it. The times I worry about not knowing who I am, afraid I’ll ruin and break and regret, they don’t change the fact that I am still here, and that I want to keep being here, and that ‘here’ is this place that holds everyone and everything I love, or have yet to love. And I believe the reason we were made was to love. It’s all love. It is all love.

I could’ve lived even while I waited, who could’ve thought?

Hope is a funny thing, isn’t it?

Hope, love. It sounds silly to come to this, like I’m mocking my suffering. But no. No. It’s been love all along. It’s love or hope or something within my veins that I can’t name yet. The wish for it, the need. I read somewhere, “for me the rusty edge of hope was need”. I’ve been wishing life was different out of a lot of different places, and at least one of them was a place of hope — that if it was different I’d feel better, which is to say, complete, or happier.

Nothing’s been solved with all this. That’s a misconception my brain gets from writing here: that simply by reaching the end of a letter, I’m healed. I’m not, there’s still some cracks, and that’s where the light gets in. I haven’t reached any feasible and specific, actionable decision. I’ve never offered solutions here. I’m trying, I’m doing those lists I’ve told you before, and I’ve been writing down things every day that were good, that I ought to remember because I treasured them. I’m writing my own story by documenting what often escapes me.

These days I try to look at life, getting older, through different lenses. I’m an author. I hold the pen between my fingers, and the ink will never run out. I scratch what’s written not to be forgotten, but because I’m changing the history to my will. I can never truly erase, it’s there forever, it’s ink, even if I cover it. And maybe it doesn’t have to go anywhere else. Maybe it can stay right there and it doesn’t have to mean anything else besides it happened and it’s over. It’s not you.

Thank you for reading delicate. It’s still beyond me that these letters manage to help anyone. It’s something bigger than me. We end up helping others even without meaning to. In trying to save ourselves, we save each other. Thank you for being here.

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This week there’s no delicacies. This was a whim, impulse-led letter. I’ll return with the usual layout soon.

Meanwhile, you can check out delicate’s spotify playlist! & delicate’s tumblr

and anything you’d like to say anonymously or otherwise can be sent here xxx