Blog 3: you're still in there

/A letter from trying times/

You’re still in there. That person you remember. Those big dreams you had. All that laughter that came from you. Those friends that lit up around you. That excitement for growing up you carried. That playfulness that filled your heart up. That softness that had you show that to other people, and be loved all the more for it. For not being so serious. for not being so responsible. But for just being, you. When you and those around you had ideas of the world that meant wherever you were for now, was just fine, and perfectly right. When the roadmap was imaginary, invisible, but for now, it seemed you were perfectly timed. Before you seem to have decided that you've somehow slipped years behind, failingly late to pursue anything more and equally unskilled or respected to be anything of experience. Before you got here, before all you could ever fathom, was that you are wildly behind, sorely forgotten, and painfully regrettable to those who vested interest in you.

Before you started to question if you should get out of bed some days, before you questioned if anyone would notice. Before your trips to work had your eyes glazed over, while you kept putting one foot in front of the other to get to the door, but all the while wondering if this was how the world had always worked, if this thing you're living in, was always what you'd been so excited to grow up into, to be apart of.

Before back, when you used your body to explore the world, when you used your arms and knees to catch your falls, and your head to throw yourself into those falls with what you only knew then to be pure, real exhilaration, for nothing more than a couple of wheels beneath you. When you never thought twice about the body you were given to taste this world with.

When you would run, as fast as you could, not even until your heart was exploding, but further, stopping only if you felt their finger tips graze your back, when the bubbling laughter and thrill of defeat washed over your scrunched up eyes and wide open laughter, the only thing that could stop you. When you'd end your lunch breaks so exhausted, but so alive, you'd lay down on the earth, the dirt and grass schnitzelling your arms and legs, splayed out in a star, heart pounding in your chest while you caught your breath. You'd shut your eyes for just a moment as the breeze ran over you, maybe it saved you energy, maybe it was because subconsciously you knew that the feelings inside this body, right here in this moment, were everything and more than life had to offer, bound up inside your veins, washing through you again and again as fast as your heart pounded, not being alive, but being. as life.

Maybe you shut your eyes because your heart knew, knew it wanted to remember all of this. What you gave it was so perfect, that it wanted to give you laughter, let it bubble through your chest, let it burst out of your eyes as they flashed up at the sky, let it flush through your cheeks in the perfect hue meant for you, to thank you, for bringing this body such extraordinary experience of what it is capable of feeling. Back, when you had tasted what there was on offer.

And all you could do was wonder, if this is now, what grand amounts more is there for the future? Before today, when you sat on your way to report for duty, to earn your wage, to do your part, to be enough for this city. Before you thought you'd realised, that you'd been wrong about all this. And that you had it all, back then.

Before you thought it was all lost.

But you're still in there.

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/A letter from my future self/

Do you remember how dark it felt?

What?

How it used to be?

Not really? i dont know, I often wonder if it was ever that bad, or if maybe I was just a sook?

You don't remember then.

That day in the car. That day that song came on, and the traffic was crawling, we were on our way to work, tired, especially despondent. and i was thinking about when we were young, when 50 minutes on an empty field of dirt and grass was more joy than we could remember how to even feel. I didn't know if I could do it anymore. That game we were playing. Showing up to that place again and again, feeling nothing, nothing in our body, nothing in our mind, nothing in our heart. I couldn't even see what was in front of me that morning, you had to drive. I don't know how you got us there in one piece.

But you listened that day. I had been too quiet before that, unsure, trying to work out if it would soon fit, but it just never did, and it never would. You listened to me though. You told me you'd get us out of there. and you did. you did. you did. you got us out of there. It took a while, years, what felt like an eternity, but I believed you, I was patient, and you did. But still, if we had arrived to where we are now, and only had one day left to enjoy it, it would have all been worth it, because this joy feels so much more to this body and mind than that eternity of pain getting here, that it's now so quickly fading into nothing.

That day in the car, you recalled so vividly what we were capable of. the way it thrilled us to run with our body, the way it felt to laugh with our whole chest, the way it felt to have such camaraderie, with even the children we didn't much know. The way we all dressed the same, that nobody could much tell what we went home to at night. The way we knew that tomorrow would bring another chance of it all. Same place, same time. 50 minutes for us. the way our value to the world seemed like a gift waiting to be unwrapped. But today, I can hardly remind you of how dark it felt in the years that followed. When you'd settled into the life you thought we were supposed to live. You remember the details, but you can hardly fill your heart with the pain that we felt. It will never be as powerful.

It was good we did that. Made those mistakes. We needed a chance to understand what we could throw away if we weren't careful. Intentional. But If there were only one thing I could give to us, right when it was most awful, when you promised me you would save us, and you were on the way, but we were still there, living in what felt like hell, one thing to help that pained heart to be sure that she would keep going and make it to us here, it would be to teach her one thing. To thread deeply into her bones, the enrapturing truth that there is no fate for her. That there is no exit that cuts losses, but that giving up at any point on this way, this way of exploring the world and herself, will be the only loss, and will always be a loss, because if she continues surely, she will forever be arriving.

There never could be a way to tell her that. But my god, let whatever power that be find her, and do what it can, each of those thousands of times she strays, to convince her to again find her way forward. To keep learning, growing, feeling, seeing, experiencing, relishing in it all.

I know thats hard. I know thats a lot to ask. because its not a 50/50 chance of if she'll make it. It's not to stay there or to come here. It's that every passing moment, within every single hour of every day, that she has a choice to move towards the life she designs, or further away. and thats an awful lot of chance to lose her way. But it's also an awful lot of opportunity to find it again. And if she knew that the only real fight she's fighting is not, if it would be worth it, to pursue the one of design - she already knows, we all do, I wouldn't have to tell her that. It's that somewhere along the way, she caught the idea that, in hope there is loss, and that to hope in the eyes of another would cause her pain. but the only real pain that comes from that, is believing that it is so. and if she could just let go of the feeling that hope was shameful, perhaps she could heal more than herself along the way.

my ciccios xoxoxoxox

Freya

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“Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.” - Stephen Vincent Benét