Endings

The end of a year. The end of a decade. We are obsessed with showing how we've changed, how we've grown, how much better we are than we used to be. I can think of at least one way in which I am not better.

I began blogging in March 2018 because a friend of mine had just abruptly and (at the time) permanently ended our friendship. (We had met in December.) I was incredibly attached to this person; I also thought I might be in love with them. For a long time after that I thought I would never be able to feel the same way about anyone else, and I wondered if I should feel that way about anyone else. Until recently, I did not love the same way. I couldn't access those feelings, and I felt their absence, and my behaviour was problematic in other ways.

There is someone in my life right now for whom my feelings are eerily similar. I can feel myself wanting to push, wanting to demand more, wanting to do all the things I did that ultimately pushed my other friend away two years ago. When I force myself not to do these things, I spiral into tornados of emotions and disjointed thought patterns, unable to focus, unable to function at my normal level. The blame for this does not entirely belong to this situation; it is also Christmas, which brings up a lot of different feelings, and I have assessments next month, and I am questioning my career choice. Still, it isn't helping.

I am intense. This pushes people away. I know that the people who are worth my time will stay. I have not yet learned to let the others go.

I have been thinking this for a while and have not said it in this way yet. If I keep doing music full time, I will burn out, because it is not giving me adequate time to heal. I am scared that my skills aren't enough for a job that pays well enough for me to not worry about money while I am in therapy. I cannot start therapy without first being financially independent, because of various hangups and PTSD triggers. I need to make art, but the art I make while I am unable to heal is not my best art or my most conscious art. I can take a break and come back to it. I am a little more than two decades into my life. I have time.

I am not healed yet. I am not finished. My progress has not been linear. I have a chest cold and am fighting off a depressive episode. I am hurting, and there is no easy way out. I hope I change in the next decade. I hope I heal. I hope I become more compassionate, less judgemental, better at knowing when to communicate and when to let something go. I hope I never stop loving, whatever that looks like.

In ten years I will be 33.

Dear 33-year-old me,

Go back to the Grand Canyon if you haven't yet.

Whatever you are doing as your job does not define you. Neither does art. They are all part of you.

Make more bad puns. You can never have enough.

You're alive.

Be unafraid to show that you love someone. Capitalism wants us to become bogged down, to restrict ourselves. It is okay to have feelings. Just try not to let your actions hurt others.

If you don't think you grew very much this decade, that is okay. Breathe. You are not the only one. You have grown more than you think you have.

Love,

Rory