Future letter to myself - April 2023
Hi,
A year and a half ago, in September 2021, I wrote myself a beautiful, hopeful letter after spending time at the Mayan ruins in Tulum. It was talking about the trip being a demarcation, a sign that better things were coming. Today I sit at my desk in front of the big window in my bedroom and wonder if I was right.
In a way, it was a demarcation - 2 months after I wrote that letter, my mom and I had that absolutely terrible phone call that I'm still recovering from. 1 month after that, I got robbed at gunpoint. 2 months after that, Matilda broke up with me, and 2 months after *that*, I lost Andi, my best friend, who when I look critically and literally, wasn't my actual best friend at all. I fell into a depression, got suicidal, got sober from weed, got on bipolar medication, and started intense therapy.
I also met Kelsey and Fluffy, and I fell in love with them. I traveled to Colombia, I spent my birthday with my family, I stood in the middle of mountains and breathed in the fresh country air. I ate amazing food, I connected with my sister, I lived so fully that just thinking about it makes my heart feel full. Since the Tulum trip, I've felt the breeze on my face and allowed the seasons to slip through my fingers like cool water in a creek. I've written, I've painted, I've laughed, I've traveled, I've spent time with family, I've lived. In the cracks of my despair, I've lived, and I continue to live.
In a way, my prediction was both right and dreadfully wrong.
In the past, I've always looked for the future to be better, which allows the future to always stay just a bit out of reach. It's allowed me to look back at my past with self-deprecation, self-lacerating and self-flagellation, while spending more time pining for this fantasy of a beautiful future than being present with my "real, actual, dumb, selfish, fucked-up, dear, astonishing, lucky car crash of a life" (thanks Cheryl Strayed).
Last week in therapy, I stared at my grief straight on - something I never do. I sobbed with grief over my life with Javi fully being over, including the grief I feel of losing him (he was my best friend), of losing my family, losing a mom that loved me and cared about me in a safer way than I've ever known, of a partner I woke up next to every day, that was always waiting for me at home, the grief over the loss of a fantasy I've so desperately wanted (Metzli ADC, my beautiful girl that will never exist, I will always love you with all of my heart) and it hurt so, so terrible. It felt like a chasm opened up in my chest, with a black hole deep in its depths that threatened to swallow me in despair and sadness.
I know there's more grief - grief over every person that I've loved and lost, grief over the person I have been and the decisions I've made, grief over past experiences that will forever be encased only in my memories, grief over things I don't even know I'm grieving about.
The interesting part about grief, is that grief is there even if we don't acknowledge it. My self-penitence, my self-hatred and rumination about past wrongs that I believe if I think about enough that they'll change the outcome, that they'll scrub the sadness and the loss, that's all grief too, it just shows up differently. Self-hatred feels safer than feeling grief in its full weight, in its full sorrow.
Last night, as I was trying to stop my brain from its usual negative chatter, I noticed that this thick grief has shrouded all the happy memories too. I don't remember fond things, happy feelings, happy moments, the "camera moments" I used to make, because I've been so consumed by their loss.
The beautiful thing about life, my love, is that we don't have to tackle everything at once. We don't even have to tackle it at all, if we don't want to. All I know is that the sunshine is shining a little brighter through the cracks right now, at this very moment, and at the end of the day this moment is all we ever have.
I won't say that I'm going to fully focus on the happy memories now, especially since I took my Adderall and I know I'm having a spike in dopamine right now, but I am closer to understanding this complicated relationship between loss, grief and joy, and that's enough for me right now.
I hope you're having a beautiful right now, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, my darling. I love you and I'm proud of you.
Love,
Zazu