Delicate has turned 2 years old this week. It feels surreal that it’s still standing still, although I’ll admit I don’t publish as much as I used to or wish to — ironic if you read last year’s letter, yeah yeah I know…. I think, if I were given a way, I’d never shut up…. but the unspoken has its importance, the gaps between letters aren’t always deliberate but I need them too, so I can rest assured that the heart I give to you is true.
Winter hasn’t arrived yet, but the cold weather surely has. Around here, we dust off blankets and our knit sweaters, hold on to umbrellas and scarves as secondary sources of life. I read someone complaining, ‘is this what people love about winter? that flowers shrivel up and dry and die?’, and I think, with winter comes the chance to be reborn. I’ve lost two close friendships and both happened when warmth was harder to find, one in October and another in April. I lost my cat two years ago, October 15, and my inexperience with the grief that came along led me to begin writing here.
‘Grief is love with nowhere left to go’, it’s one of those sentences that get to make a lot more sense if you live through them, like Jane Austen’s ‘If I loved you any less I might be able to talk about it more’. I’ve wept more this weekend than I probably did when she died. Don’t they say memory make everything much fonder? I miss her more today than I did when we lost her. I still remember when my dad got the call in the middle of the road and I just knew. I knew. Or I guessed and got it right. I wish I hadn’t.
I miss her a lot. I still search for cats everywhere I go, and I wonder if I’m not just trying to find her. I miss her curiosity and her cowardice. I miss when she’d wake me up early and lead me to the kitchen, when she’d begin to eat but pause to look up, make sure I was watching. I miss her bites and her purrs and her fur and how she’d somehow always know when I was sick or hurting the most. How she’d place a paw on top of your leg during dinner, because she wanted to lay on your lap. Most of our dinners would end with us talking to her, pampering. I miss how she’d insist in coming to my room, sit on the same chair I am writing on, where we barely fit. I think I even miss when she’d poop on the floor or vomit on the carpet. I miss her so much.
My parents used to say I was obsessed with her. Which was true. And in other occasions, where she was clingier, where she’d follow me like a shadow, they’d shake their heads and reverse it, declare, ‘She’s obsessed with her!’. I never denied it and I can’t remember if I believed them, but I did trust them when they told me she sat on my chair and looked at the door when I went on a 2 day long school trip.
A big part of why I didn’t mourn too deeply was the belief that she was no longer in pain. IU once mentioned in an interview she thought one of the purest ways of expressing love is wishing someone sleeps well at night. That’s what I hoped for, that at least she wasn’t suffering, that her sleep was gentle and senseless and, today, I really wish that in another life, we get to meet again. I won’t say I want her to be a pet one more time, but in her next life and in mine, I do wish that we may love each other once more.
There’s a theory that if you sum up the numbers in your birthdate, the last digit tells you which life you’re living. I’m on my third, given I was born in 2001. One year after the start of a new decade, no longer new but barely known. I’m still learning how to live. Without her, I’ve been loving myself as if it was a chore most of the time. Love feels like this birthday party you threw when you where 8 and barely anyone you invited shows up most days. I want a love so kind and sweet it gives me a tummy ache. Or maybe it’s not as much want, but I dream of it, envy it. Do you want what you dream? Is what you envy a clear picture of what you want? I want my love to be celebrated all the time, but to make a feast you need two people, a witness, and no banquet lasts forever.
I’ve been also thinking about the analogy of love as a tangerine or an orange. I like tangerines more. I love you, I’m glad I exist. I choke and stumble on words often these days, I begin to speak I give up midway. There’s always so much left to say. Love as an orange comes already sliced and is seen as meant to share. I also see it as bittersweet, citrus flavours often are. Love isn’t as everlasting as we’d hope it’d be, like the seasons, it changes and morphs until it returns to us again. Until it’s obvious in your face. You trick yourself with the fable of how unwanted by this world you are as to make the acidity burn less, it’s still there. You convince yourself the world will be alright without you — in fact, it’s better off without your company as you can see. Because you can see it, can’t you? Clearly? If you ask yourself for proof, you’ll have it? Lay it for the world to see and judge? All the evidence? I think about this a lot these days, the power of evidence over thought. You can’t see your reflection in boiling water. You are not your thoughts or your emotions. We look for fate and power in the places where they can rarely be found.
Truthfully, I never wished to die, and when I was younger I found it impossible to understand how anyone would want to, when there’s so much left to read, so many songs that have yet to be released. Time is finite and attention is feeble, you’ll miss a couple without meaning to, and I still don’t want to die, but I feel the sadness all the same and maybe I get it now. I don’t want to. Still, lately, I mourn the death of the person I thought I was and try, try, try to make peace with the person I might really be.
Potential is the sister of disappointment, and so is expectation. I’ve published more than 70 letters, and it’s still unreal, this whole project. I can’t tell if I feel satisfied with the quality of what I write, but I do have hope that I’m getting better, even if it might not show each time. I still feel like a disappointment every now and then. I’m a lot more calm in the face of disaster but I’ll lose my mind sporadically. The shame is still there but it’s not as loud. I’m as honest as I can get, I hide only direct names of those I might mention out of privacy and respect, I grit my teeth and spill what has to leave, there’s a solemnness to the act of writing and another to the act of reading.
There’s this new trend, ‘do you think we were friends in another universe?’, paired with ‘maybe i was happier in another life’ — which both use a variety of images of different scenarios to prove it doesn’t matter, the background you stand, the possibility of things being different somewhere else. On the last letter I mentioned I’ve been obsessed with the idea that maybe I’m happy with what I have simply because I’m unaware I could have something better, or that I couldn’t be happy with what I have because I couldn’t stop thinking that I could have more.. Can’t even remember it properly. Both don’t matter, do they? It hurts to hope for more and for better, and we do it anyway.
So, what does matter is the now and here, the staying. I’m accustomed to leaving but this is one place I return to. I am late and I miss the timing many times, but I look forward to writing as much as I look forward to reading not just your thoughts but your words, your own newsletters, even if I may be late. I want to tell you that a lot of things aren’t as weighty as they seem, that what matters may change, but love, staying, returning, means a lot. Thank you. It matters, to speak and be heard, to love what you can and change anyhow you must.
Thank you for your time, patience, and the chance you’ve given to write. I hope I have helped you at least once. I know there’s still a lot more I must learn, and it is a privilege to have you by my side as I do it.
Delicate will return :)