Change is a painfully slow season. A clock that ticks a second too late, an hourglass with a whole desert in one end. Even if you know in the end of all things that everything will be alright, that all scores will be amended, it still surprises me to notice those around me, and that I too, am not the same.
These days, I find myself questioning who I’m becoming. I don’t like what I see, who I might be today. In the midst of the confusion, I peek at the past versions from between the blinds, trying to channel memories of I was, of who I thought I’d be, a starting point. My hands come barely empty handed, but I do remember daydreaming sometimes with a close friend (one of the few I’ve managed to keep through all these years).
Back then, we’d talk about sharing a flat, the nights we’d spend together shopping and going out, the silly games and dances we’d do around the kitchen and the songs we’d sing along, the concerts we’d go, the memories we had yet to make. We’d have partners, and pets. Life was whatever we wanted it to be when we knew little about the world. Today, none of us have left out parents houses, and I wonder if she even remembers we ever shared such fantasies together. Does she also look at them with fondness and patience, as a mother, cupping the wet cheeks of their child?
It seems years ago I hoped today I’d be someone else, and I can’t recognise that person anymore. It feels foreign, a star that shines light years away from where I sit. Someone that’d go out most nights, party with friends closer than family, tighter than blood. Someone with deep kinships and a tongue that’d only say the right words, the jokes that never miss or hurt, the embrace no one would let go. Behind the glass, she seems so much braver, so much better. Everything.
Do I hate her? Is it regret? Disappointment with how I turned out to be? Throughout this life, I’ve heard multiple times I had yet to reach my ‘full potential’. That I do good, excellent even, but there’s more, there is always more. More. More… More playful, more calm, more confident and outspoken, skilful, smarter, faster, stronger. It’s incredibly debilitating, rotten, this idea that there’s a.. space people keep pointing in the map that I don’t see, or can’t find with a compass and road signs.
Because how do we come at peace with who we are, knowing we could be more? It’s a question no one ever took the time to answer, a decades, centuries old enigma. How can I not loose myself trying to meet every end and corner, leaving no trail of regret and disappointment? They say sometimes good enough is enough, but how can it be when the feeling of loss won’t go away? Does it get easier only when you exhaust yourself to shreds, when a voice other than your own assures you so? When you choose something other than yourself?
Sue Zhao muses in ‘Hong Kong’,
When I didn't know how to live I became my grandmother: opening windows in the morning early enough to see the light sifting between the curtains, I swept the floor with a bamboo broomstick and made breakfast. And in my head came her raspy voice and her soft voice and her quiet voice; which rarely laughed but was always delighted with living and eighty years of reticent habits cultivated by her small hands. She had not always been loved, so she knew all about love. And on days which were longer and longer still, on returning home to an empty apartment in that spectacular city - her voice emanated like bells. You must be hungry, she said, looking over at what I was cooking. And I laid my head in the lap of her voice, nodding. I am, I am.
Life tugs and it’s as if I’m holding to a rubber band, a tight, tight rubber band, seconds away from snapping. Who am I when I am not wanting? Hungry for the taste of a fruit I have never had? Will I ever be satisfied with the plate in my hands, the water in my cup?
The restlessness, the insecurity, the fear, they feel as if they have a will of their own, ghosts in my body. And I say this a lot, but I do get tired, or perhaps I just get sad and it all feels too similar, with how everything ends where it begins, an ouroboros.
All efforts and shortcuts run from pain, from the barest disappointments. Take a deep breath, you’re okay where you are right now. Until it happens, when you get a trigger that tips the angle, skyrockets your palpitation, blurs your vision; until it happens, when you sometimes open an app or a book and it will say, you no obligation to stay a certain way or do something, that if you want, you can change whenever you want, whatever you feel like changing. Of how you own no one any explanation. Seek no definition for those only exist in the dictionary, or something like that.
On days that are longer, when the hunger is louder than the voice of my mother and the chirping of the birds, I seek comfort. Mostly in art, in words, in the certainty that this feeling has an echo. Stillness, a place with no judgment and little fear. In a book I picked, the author proceeds to make a list of songs that he turned to himself when he needed comfort. In it, he mentioned ‘If I Could Change Your Mind’ by Haim.
And I smirked, to no one in particular, as if that was a joke between us. It was a name that rang a bell, from times when I was 12, new to the internet, dancing in my room much more often than I do now, with little to no worries or problems or existencial issues. The impulse became bigger than whatever I felt, I went back to that album.
Have you ever felt saved? It’s a bit embarrassing, definitely an exaggeration to say it, but finding this piece, this bottle in the middle of an ocean, felt a lot like salvation. Words from 10 years ago came afloat, buried god knows where, as I sang along. Have you ever thought how our brains manage to memorize lyrics, phrases from literature? How they stay with us forever. They won’t leave, that simply stick. I love it, I love that about words, even if I abashedly admit my memory fails many times. Words rarely leave.
Rather than that song, I want to mention ‘Falling’, and the one sentence they slip so casually in the bridge: don’t stop, no one’s ever enough. Isn’t it a contrast to what we’re told as solace? That we are enough and we don’t need to change for anyone or anything and that we’ll find something if we just keep going for it or waiting?
Haim never shared what the song’s really about. I like to imagine it is about stepping into the unknown and the uncomfortable. Standing at this point where satisfaction seems more like a pipe dream, I try to make peace with my hunger, not anger, and little resentment. To what I could be, I sigh and smile, and begin to understand that who I was, who I am, who I could be, it won’t matter, they all would know very little besides words from songs they used to love, excerpts from books thought long forgotten. The faith that things would be alright, no matter how they turned out to be, is a constant. It feels close to surrender, but I’ve exhausted my weapons, the pessimism and bitterness and anger will only take me so far. I return to what makes me feel whole, and face the world again. I change so slowly I barely notice.
Thank you for reading delicate this week. Look at your window today for me. I hope sun greets you.
DELICACIES OF THE WEEK
Not surprisingly, Haim’s debut album ‘Days Are Over’ deserves a honourable mention. The bass and the guitar are outstanding, the production is so immersive, some of the best I’ve ever heard, so addictive and delicious that it catches you and doesn’t let you go. Besides the singles (‘The Wire’, ‘Falling’, ‘If I Could Change Your Mind’, ‘Don’t Save Me’), I’d mention ‘Running If You Call My Name’, ‘Edge’ and ‘Go Slow’ as tracks worth checking out.
Went back to Gracie Abram’s latest album, have to admit I was wrong. It’ll happen every now and then: I check an album the second it’s out, don’t like it very much, find it a month later and magic happens. Gracie has some divine bridges here and there, worth replaying a couple times.
This poem leaves me crazy.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: edge by haim, kill you to try by daisy jones & the six and falling behind by laufey (live)
ahh loved this so much, thankyou<33
oh man, this felt like it was written for me. lately i’ve also been grieving both my past selves and my own ‘potential’ -- years pass by and i feel like im nowhere close to who i want to be and when i look at my past selves, i wonder why im not as confident, not as driven, not the same as before.
but like you, i also grew tired and i felt stuck in a cycle resenting myself for treating myself as a continuous ‘self-improvement project’ and getting disappointed when i don’t reach the goals i’ve set for myself.. this week, im giving myself more kindness and faith that everything will be alright. thank you for your tender letter, ines ❤️