#50
on self-forgiveness
dear you,
i hope summer is treating you well. i hope that you are experiencing wonderful landscapes, moments, and feelings, and feeling at peace. wishing you lots of light, laughter, and love <3
this summer, i have indulged in remembering what i know i should forget, or move on from.
summer is an open wound, and it’s nights are the kind in which the heart feels its own weight.
the endless expanse of summer made me feel restless and anxious, and at its premise, i felt like i had nothing to say. i struggle immensely with feeling a lack of control, and over summer this has taken shape in a change of routines and ways of being.
i have let myself be slow and have taken each day as it comes. i am reminding myself that the ground beneath me is more solid than i think, and i am trying to stop planning to the point where something crucial is missed in the rush. i think that what is happening is not that i am taking too long, but that i never fully arrive anywhere.
i’ve spent a lot of time alone this summer in between things, going to lovely places and doing things i want to do. these little moments and days by myself have been cherished deeply, and have allowed me to inhabit my life and feel more like myself.
emerging from / an abyss and / entering it again / that is life, is / it not?
“desires are already memories”
italo calvino, invisible cities (trans. william weaver)
i want slowness and deliberateness.
i don’t know if the solidity i have built in myself has kept me from leaning on someone else, and kept them from leaning on me. i hope the tenderness and sweetness i have been careful in offering come back to me in a form that i can hold.
i am forgiving myself again and again.
it’s impossible not to think of the past and the people who are left there, but i’m trying not to dwell unproductively on its memory. i’m trying to accept or make peace with the uneven distribution of love, time, and joy in the world. i will always want it: the connection, recognition, and softness, and i will want until the want becomes my companion itself. and if it doesn’t ever come, i’ll still be myself, with worth and the capacity to love, listen, and care, and that is more than enough.
“childhood does not end in one fell swoop, as we wished it would when we were children. it lingers, crouching silently in our adult, then wizened bodies, until one day, many years later, when we think that the heavy burden of bitterness and despair we've been shouldering has turned us irredeemably into adults, it reappears with the force and speed of a lightning bolt, wounding us with its freshness, its innocence, its unerring dose of naivety, but most all with the certainty that this really and truly is the last glimpse we shall have of it
guadalupe nettel, the accidentals (trans. rosalind harvey)
i’ve been feeling numb, nostalgic, and burnt out most of the summer, and it has been difficult to feel okay a lot of the time. shame, rejection, and imposter syndrome convince you to reach arbitrary states or objectives to be whole. but joy and love are easier to reach, and it is possible to honour your desires while respecting your limits and boundaries.
david wright: if i can quote you at yourself, you’ve talked about how literature can hold open human wounds, the wounds of history, how poetry can allow us to see the ruptures in the language, the ruptures in the self, the ruptures in the culture that occur in situations of extremity. it strikes me that the story you were telling about the prison and going to the barrio and being in that room [during her time in el salvador as a human rights advocates, at the beginning of the salvadoran civil war]. that’s not a story you’ve allowed to heal over in any way. it’s a wound that’s supposed to be held open in some way.
carolyn forché: yes. because i don’t want to lose what i learned there. and i don’t want to move on. and i don’t want closure. and i don’t want to recover. because i don’t want to lose what happened to me. i don’t want that to be changed back. i don’t want to return to the obliviousness that i had participated in before that. you have to hold things open in order to nurture whatever new awareness was born there.david wright, assembling community: a conversation with carolyn forché
it is important to bear witness to what we struggle to in all aspects of our lives.
i am grateful to be surrounded by wonderful people around me, and i am constantly reminding myself of the magic of having deep chemistry with them whenever i feel lost or alone. it is such a blessing to feel that there is little space between what i think and what i say around them, to learn more about myself and see different sides of myself in proximity to them, and to become more myself in their company.
our sense of self does not exist in a vacuum — we have to use it and consider it alongside others to see where we are as a person. otherwise, our personalities slowly become a hazy clone of their former self, stagnant and stunted, making it difficult to adjust to change or to interact with others again.
“who does not know what it is like to go with a friend to a railway station and then to watch the train take them away? as you walk along the platform back into the city, the person who has just gone is often more there, more totally there, than when you embraced them before they climbed into the train. when we embrace to say goodbye, maybe we do it for this reason - to take into our arms what we want to keep when they’ve gone”
john berger, ‘will it be a likeness?’ from the shape of a pocket
there are endless things to fall in love with, appreciate, and feel affinity for. endless things to learn from. warm conversations with strangers, in books you wouldn’t have thought of picking up from a shelf, in the happenings of nature.
these days i am reading things i wish i could have written. i am finding lightness in humid weather and sweet cherries. i am embodying simple pleasures, and letting the soft animal of my body love what it loves.
“we tend to associate intimacy with closeness and closeness with a certain sum of shared experiences. yet in reality, total strangers. who will never say a single word to each other, can share an intimacy — an intimacy contained in the exchange of a glance, a nod of the head, a smile, a shrug of a shoulder. a closeness that lasts for minutes or for the duration of a song that is being listened to together. an agreement about life. an agreement without clauses. a conclusion spontaneously shared between the untold stories gathered around the song”
john berger, ‘some notes on song’ from harper’s magazine (february 2015)
there is a very thin line between hope and despair. i’m trying to figure out how to tread the line: how to change my days when i don’t feel good, and create my reality within life. practising long-term persistence and self-forgiveness is more important than quick gratification.
any lesson that i refuse to learn will repeat itself until i do. it’s okay if i have to begin again, i am a master at starting over. i will remember who i was before i knew the world, who i am now, and i will honour the gap in between.
you can go back to the past, but nobody’s there.
even if i could go back, i don’t feel like i belong there anymore.
“the summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting. and for those who understood such things, the stars were sending messages”
louise glück, midsummer from poems 1962-2012
i am not in love right now, but the way it lingers around me feels like a promise.
the golden sun is shining, the flowers are vibrant and beautiful, and i have this crazy faith that everything is going to work out for me.
this is so so tender i feel so exposed
i almost started crying this is so so beautiful tiya i love ur work so much :,)) <33