chillest girl in the MRI machine

it’s a saturday night when i have my first MRI. the MRI looks at three things: my brain, neck, and upper spine. this means that i have to lay still in the tube, with the camera helmet enclosing my face, for about an hour. at our appointment a week prior, the neurologist explains the procedure to me, and asks if i think i will do okay being confined in the tube for so long. i laugh. silently but not invisibly, i have been resisting crying for the majority of our appointment. when i laugh, she seems sort of relieved by my lightness. she laughs, too. i tell her that there is literally zero chance of me doing okay with that. 

i do not consider myself particularly claustrophobic, nor do i consider myself particularly nervous around doctors, but i do consider myself liable to do poorly in the event that resigning control of my body is required. i am very aware of, and oftentimes embarrassed of, this liability. as a kid, those dental x-rays where you have to sit still with a block in your mouth sent panic pumping through my entire body. when i was in elementary school, i was in the emergency room with an extremely broken arm, and the doctors tried to roll me onto said broken arm for imaging. i screamed and thrashed and kicked like i was actively being murdered. amidst the thrashing, they caught one image and identified one break. it was not until i saw an orthopedic specialist days later that several other breaks in the same bone could be identified. when i was in middle school, the orthodontist was trying to install a pallet expander into my mouth, and i caused such a scene that they had to stop, reschedule the appointment, and try again another day. what i call “causing a scene” is probably more aptly named a panic attack, but the language of a panic disorder was not something i had access to back then, so we all called it dramatics. i will spare you further anecdotes about said dramatics. the point is that i did not take well to being touched, restrained, or physically manipulated in some way, even if ultimately for my own good. at the appointment with my neurologist, i do not go into these details.

the neurologist tells me that it is very common for people to do not-okay in the MRI enclosure. she calls in an Ativan prescription. i leave the office and buy a coffee. in the parking garage, my arm twitches and i spill said coffee all over my jacket. i take it off. i sit in my car. i cry my eyes out. my lungs feel diametrically opposed to intaking oxygen normally. this feeling eventually subsides. i drive home. i text my friends photos of my coffee-stained jacket and suggest that i am being hexed. that’s literally the only explanation, one says. another suggests we both try out religion. 

on saturday, i take the Ativan. my best friend drives me to the hospital and takes a photo of me crossing my arms outside of the neurology department. we agree that i look like a spy and we laugh. for an hour, she falls asleep in a chair in the waiting room and i lay still and devoid of thought in the tube. we listen to music on the way home. i order an ice cream sundae and watch Old Enough! on Netflix. i am glad that the day is over. i am proud of myself. i have smoothly survived a situation that would have sent previous versions of me into hysterics. i am the person fifteen-year-old-me dreamed about. she wanted to be the chillest girl in the world. 

– 

the results of my first MRI are uploaded to a patient portal, and they come through early in the morning a few days later, when i am with someone i do not know very well. i miss the calls from my neurologist. i read the automated transcription of the voicemail she left because i am too afraid to listen to it. the automated transcription is not very helpful. once i am alone a few hours later, i log into the patient portal. i am sitting in my parked car with day-old mascara smudged under my eyes. i call my mom and read the medical jargon out loud. neither of us know what it means. she sounds like she is nervous but i can tell she does not want me to think that she is. she tells me i should call the neurologists back. this is sound advice. she tells me it will be okay. 

i go inside. someone presses a parking ticket onto my windshield. i make the call. i pace around. my neurologist is very lovely. she explains the results to me. i ask her a hundred questions. i thank her a hundred times. we schedule more appointments, including another MRI. i screenshot photos of my brain and text them to my friends. i am obsessed with this one in particular where my eye is lit up like an orb. my friends curse me out. that’s fair, i respond, and it is. the photo is extremely disturbing.

later, i am in my friend’s room, watching Jersey Shore. i text my friends: crazy how the body is inescapable and i’m in bed watching Deena and Snooki make out. everyone is like well, at least that’s one of the best episodes. they add that by the way, i am handling things really well.

this praise becomes familiar. one of my friends calls me the most laid back person she knows. i can hardly believe such a compliment. when i tell my sister about this, she is equally surprised, and we agree that at least as far as my immediate family goes, i am unanimously considered the most neurotic. humbling. still, my friend’s compliment holds a phenomenal weight somewhere inside me where i am still fifteen. that part of me can think of nothing grosser than my own reactivity. with adult eyes, now, the pattern is indiscreet: when the external circumstances of my life felt exhaustive, difficult, and out of control, i took to constructing a fiercely indifferent personality for myself. rather than react directly to what happened to me, i focused on becoming unrelentingly fearless, confident, and unbothered. the coping mechanism itself is not all that different from younger iterations of myself who did not want doctors anywhere near me, who would rather just live with a broken bone than have to endure the burden of someone examining me. at twelve and at fifteen i just wanted to have a say in what was going on.

in some ways, the reminder that my family still sees me as the source of drama is a comfort. yay, the teenager who was double-fisting eating disorders and daring her boyfriends to drive over one hundred on the highway does not get to permanently tamp down my emotional availability! in other ways, the whole thing is confusing. it is odd to worry about whether or not i have lost access to my childhood neuroses because it feels sort of unbecoming, as a twenty-two year old, to idealize the behavior of a neurotic child. in practicality, i would not have made it to this point in life indulging every anxiety. i have spent years working on understanding, managing, and living with anxiety. i have done so with a doctor who is not all that convinced that i am a dramatic person. i think more than anything else, he thinks i am normal.

before my second MRI and spinal tap, i have to visit the medical center again for more bloodwork. i make small talk with the woman who draws my blood. i am accustomed to lying to strangers who ask about my life plans, but i tell her the truth. she wishes me luck. i do not spill my coffee in the parking garage. everyone acts normal. i feel like i should be more emotional about this whole thing. i worry that i am outrunning my own reactions, and that there will be a devastating collision ahead of me whenever i stop and catch my breath. i try to make myself cry on the drive home. i listen to Holocene and Pawn Shop Blues on loop. the old tricks don’t work. the parts of me that want to cry are counteracted by parts of me that feel twelve years old again every time a tear forms.

why endure the humiliation? the latter parts ask.

it’s inevitable, the former parts insist.

the latter parts are like, whatever.

i assure myself that i still have an Ativan left, in the event that such a collision presents itself and i find myself choking on air. i wish i could shake myself by the shoulders and yell in my own face: everything means something! my roommates and i hang out around our apartment wearing massive bedazzled sunglasses. on sundays, we usually see each other for the first time around one in the afternoon, when we are all eating breakfast. 

–

the scheduled time of my second MRI is 8:50 am on a friday. the time i wake up is 8:35 am. my ability to sleep through alarms is a concerning development, but i am not really all that panicked. i brush my teeth and walk two blocks to my car. when i get to the hospital, the radiologist and i make small talk. we both grew up doing all-star cheerleading. i tell her that i would never want my future children to do it. she agrees. we both intrinsically understand why, which is kind of sad, but it’s kind of fun that we have something in common. she inserts the IV into my arm. i look away.

i do not take Ativan before this MRI, because i only have to be in the tube for thirty minutes this time, and because i want to save my Ativan for the panic attack i am anticipating but also avoiding, but mostly because i woke up fifteen minutes before an appointment that takes fifteen minutes to drive to, so a lot of things fell through the cracks. i look in the mirror while i am taking off my jewelry. mascara is smeared under my eyes again. i snap my nose ring in half trying to take it out. i send a photo of the broken jewelry to a friend. maybe you really are being hexed, they say. i throw it out. i worry that i have become immune to embarrassment. late last night, i stared in the mirror in my bedroom and decided i was extremely beautiful. in this hospital lighting, i fear that my face actually needs a complete surgical overhaul. the radiologists compliment my nail polish. they give me a warm blanket. i get into the tube.

thirty minutes go by quickly. this is probably because i sleep through the entire MRI. i wake up when it is over and teenage pride beams through me. i am the easiest patient. i am cool, calm, and collected. i wear the grippy socks they gave me home. there were years i was so anxious i could not sleep. i stayed up for days straight. it made me lose my period and everything. i cannot believe i have mastered the art of self-sedation. i have not thought about what will happen when i receive the results. i feel like i was written by Ottessa Moshfegh. i feel like Fleabag. i maul the curb a little bit leaving the parking garage. i am the main character. everyone is trying to diagnose me. i am the Bob Dylan lyric: looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes.

at home, we have a Dance Moms style pyramid of the Love is Blind season 3 cast on the wall. it is made of stick figures on post-it notes. i wear my hospital grippy socks with the most obscene outfit imaginable. i clean the kitchen and ask everyone to rate my look. 

later, i read Rayne Fisher-Quann’s essay “In Conversation With Myself.” i am secretly hoping that she is living the exact same life as me and can tell me exactly how to feel. that is a delusional hope, and she is not living the exact same life as me, but i feel a little bit like she sees me when i read this part: i’m almost pre-maturely exhausted with external perceptions of my own pain before i’m even done being exhausted with the pain itself. i haven’t even started crying before i start thinking about whether i’m performing it. 

Rayne is one of my favorite writers, and in talking about herself, she is also talking about feeling trapped by the voyeurism inherent in womanhood. it infiltrates even the most intimate processing of pain. it urges us to reduce even the most unbearable experiences into aesthetic capsules. i think it infiltrates, too, the avoidance of that processing. dissociation has become almost feminized in its reduction to a mood, a trend, a nihilistic political statement. there are examples, if not playbooks, for women on how to isolate ourselves from our fears or how to lean just far enough into our anxieties that we plow through them entirely and end up on the other side, numb, skinny, drinking a Diet Coke. i have an ex who told me their first impression of me was that i had “no thoughts.” now, they assured me, they knew i was “actually crazy.” i can’t believe i ever thought that was funny.

i could cite all of Emmeline Clien’s “The Smartest Women I Know Are All Dissociating” here, but what sticks out to me the most in thinking about my own health are her words on the dissociative, “post-wounded” rejection of optimistic wellness for women: When we thought happiness was a possibility, we thought it might be nice if our bodies were in a healthy condition if we ever achieved it. if i have given up on the world and on the future, and have dissociated from it to such an extent that my body is nothing more to me than a tether to a reality that i didn’t ask to be a part of, then any ailments confirm that giving up is the right call. i can beat any bad things that happen to me to the punch by preemptively becoming hopeless. i have said things akin to this line of thinking many times: of course this is happening to me! but i do not want to be resigned to a “post-wounded” identity anymore. i am not immune and i am not disinterested. i want to believe happiness is a possibility.

i have struggled to determine how much of my apparent unaffectedness is a performance, and how much reflects a legitimate loss of connection to my own feelings. here is what i do know: though parts of my behavior and demeanor might indicate calm, i am forming an alliance with the middle schooler wailing at the orthodontist’s office. she is what Emmeline Clien would call actively un-chill, and i miss her. i miss freaking out. i want to be smacked in the face and talked onto the ledge. i want to reverse whatever numbness has adapted its way into my evolution. i can blame the coping mechanisms i developed as a teenager for repressing my ability to process heavy things, but when i really think about it, i know that the teenager was ultimately just trying to protect me, too. what do i learn from splintering myself into all these different parts and motives? calling some of them healthy and others problematic? it has taken different shapes, but i have always had the same guttural, animalistic, base instinct to protect myself. i want to give myself a hug that stretches across time.

at night, i do my makeup sitting on the floor of my room. i listen to Machines by Jensen McRae. i think about one line for a long time: now i know that i bleed months, but i was a machine once. i think of times when my caloric input and output were the structure of my entire day, other times when i woke up determined to zombie-walk through whatever would be tossed my way. i think there is a collective underestimation of how intelligent, deliberate, and calculated adolescent girls can be. they are steps ahead. i have not felt steps ahead like that for a while. i do not want to. i do not want to be a machine. when i am done with my makeup, i go to a concert. my friend and i share drinks, and when the show is over, we eat garlic knots. we are like, how come nobody told us garlic knots are the best food in the world?

–

the results of my second MRI are uploaded to the patient portal on sunday evening, when i am sitting in a coffee shop with a friend, trading complaints about how Boston is freezing all of the sudden as if we couldn’t possibly have seen this coming. i click on the message the doctor left me, see one photo of my spine, read a few words i only vaguely understand, and excuse myself to the bathroom. i smile at the other people in the bathroom line. when it is my turn, i throw up violently. then, i stand there, hinged at the hip, doing quiet heavy breathing in a public bathroom, and i feel very scared. wanting to be okay is very scary. 

my body is sometimes a better communicator than my brain. it is telling me that we are on the same team. we might have some trouble, but we are devoted to persistence. Rayne Fisher-Quann, in a different piece of hers, repeats the line: i want to be devoted. it reminds me of the ending of my favorite book of all time, Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, which reads i wish i could love something so much i would die from it. it is scary to be so devoted to or so in love with anything because it requires presence, vulnerability, the humility of unabashedly clocking in. but what is there to do without devotion? even when we insulate ourselves from accessing them, these general consequences to openness are the crux of being alive. that i have gone so far to shelter myself from emotion just reinforces how meaningful the emotional experience is. whether i want to give them space or not, give them voice or not, emotions still live in my body and circulate through my blood like reminders of my own personhood. sometimes they are so visceral they feel like threats. they eventually demand confrontation and i think that’s pretty amazing. to vomit in the Tatte bathroom and come back out, chewing gum, saying “that was weird!” feels like proof that i am still inside myself. it’s kind of a feral example, but i find it a little bit magic.

right now, i am taking the magic wherever i can get it. the bathroom my roommate and i share directly faces the street, so we have to cover the window in our shower with sheets of swirled plaster, but the beautiful thing that happens is when the light comes in through the sheets it makes these tiny little rainbows all over the tiles. we are twenty-two which means we have each cried, thrown up, and danced against all the color in that shower. it makes me think of a line from one of my favorite stories: how in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of concentrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?

i am trying to get better at finding the magic in moments of solitude. when i drop friends off and am left alone in my car, when i leave the coffee shop bathroom and am now trying to synthesize what happened into my continued sense of identity (guess now i have to put a finger down if anyone says “never have i ever thrown up because of an email”), when i am trying to sleep at night in my ridiculous grippy sock outfit. these are my most intimate moments with myself, when the choices i have made are stripped away from their framing and left as the base of what they are: evidence of the life i am living and the person that i am. 

for what it’s worth, these days, i am really pulling for me. i am not going to talk about specific diagnostics, but you can know that i am showing up to all my doctor’s appointments. i am answering when they call me. i am making friends with the other people in the waiting room. i am going to start being better about keeping a journal. i am sharing a tub-sized lavender latte with my friends while we all sit on the floor. i am the chillest girl in the MRI machine. i am the least chill girl in Tatte. i am a normal person.

turning 20

may 24, 2020

it’s my birthday. and it’s gemini season. what does that mean to me? (buckle in.)

today, i’m 20. a whole 2 decades old. i know, i’m dramatic - i’ve seen so many friends of mine turn 20 before me, and so many people will turn 20 after me, so maybe turning 20 isn’t that big of a deal. sure, i’m prone to romanticizing my life - but, weirdly, my turning 20 still feels so significant to me. it feels like i’m finally, actually old.

i find myself thinking about when i was little. about how i used to want to grow up so badly. about the “adult” or teenage life i imagined having - how even simple things like having a job or wearing mascara used to seem so glamourous to me.

i guess i was one of those little kids who never really appreciated being a kid because i was always looking forward to growing up. to the next big thing. i am immensely privileged for the childhood i had - always a roof over my head, food on the table, loving family - and i do not take any of that for granted. but still, i remember as a kid, i was so frustrated by my age. i would feel so agitated when the adults in the room would stop telling their stories when i’d walk in, when i would have to go to bed at family parties knowing the adults were still awake downstairs talking - being reminded of my age felt like a slap in the face. i was desperate to grow up and to be taken seriously.

i used to vow to myself that once i became a ~teenager~ (warning: take a shot every time i say the word teenager), i would never take things like being able to drive a car or have my own cell phone for granted. i would promise myself that once i was older and had some degree of freedom, i’d make the most of every second.

i have a vivid memory from one of my birthday parties as a kid. my mom had decorated the whole backyard, my entire extended family was over, lots of cake and presents - it was a whole thing. i was wearing a special pink dress for my birthday and there were matching pink balloons tied to the deck, making the whole day picture perfect. and i remember standing by one of the balloons, fiddling around with the tie, until i had accidentally undone it. and so, i remember watching the balloon float away, irretrievably into the sky. unknowingly, i had let it go.

logically...who cares about losing one balloon? i mean, caring about the environment the way i do now, i probably wouldn’t just release a balloon into the sky for no reason - but being young at the time, and losing merely one balloon at the birthday party that i was so lucky to have, it probably would’ve been easy to shrug it off. no one else noticed as the balloon flew away, so it was just me there, watching it. even now - while i recognize its relative insignificance - i still remember it. i remember being a young girl standing there in my pink dress, watching the balloon fade further and further from my vision. i remember how both it and i were so small in that moment.

looking up into the much larger sky, we are reminded of how small we are as well as how temporary. likewise, birthdays (and the balloons that tend to accompany them) are temporary reminders of our aging. they don’t stay around for long - i guess that’s the whole purpose of them, they’re really only there for the celebration. and like i said, when i was younger, i thought the passing of years was the best thing that could happen to me - each birthday helped close the gap between being a kid and finally being older. so i waved goodbye to the balloon, to being little, and i waited and waited until i could be something more.

and yes, this was years ago. when i was a little girl. and now i’m turning 20. but i think about how i felt so small in that moment, but still so lucky to be there, and how letting go maybe felt symbolic in a way. and somehow being a kid doesn’t feel so far away. 

the years i had as a teenager have been so formative and so transformative. so transitional and so positional. mostly i don’t think i ever really imagined they’d end. but the years come and go, they pass with birthdays and like balloons - at some point, you have to let go.

in the midst of those years, and in the midst of my growing up process, i stopped wanting to grow up. it started to get scarier and scarier as it got more real. as much as i could, i would pretend it wasn’t happening. when it came to things like choosing a college, trying to imagine myself as a functional adult with a career and goals and responsibilities, really any type of thought that requires heavy self-reflection - my plan was to avoid it at all costs. i always thought that i’d have more time, that being a teenager was all i was ever really meant to be. i got the freedoms that i always wanted as a kid - i got to have a job and drive a car and have my very own phone and stay up as late as i wanted - so, what more could i really want?

don’t get me wrong - i was more than ready to be done with high school. i remember not really being sad at my graduation, because i didn’t really see it as a significant ending point for me. i guess i just didn’t really let myself actualize what was going on - that a phase of my life was completely over - that i had to keep growing up and make choices for myself.

and so, i had graduated high school and ended up at a college that i hadn’t put much thought into choosing. there was nothing wrong with the school itself, and it’s a really great place honestly, but if i had known myself at all as a senior in high school i would’ve known it wasn’t for me. but, of course, i didn’t. so there i was.

the thing is: phases of my life ended even when i didn’t want them to. even when i wasn’t prepared for them to, when i didn’t think they’d ever actually end. they ended anyways. the balloon flies away into the sky even if you didn’t mean to set it free.

let’s be blunt. i hated freshman year of college. i had absolutely no idea what i was doing, all i knew was that i didn’t want to be doing it. mostly, for the first time in my life, i felt like a colossal failure. i felt like i had spent my whole life wanting to grow up and wanting to be an adult and now that i was, i couldn’t do it. it’s a weird experience to be 18 or 19 years old and feel like your life has already passed you by. 

most of all, i was so comparative and competitive during this time. i was constantly comparing my experience to other people’s around me or on social media - and feeling like i was missing out completely. not that this is necessarily the path for everyone, but i felt so much pressure to go to college and to make it the ~time of my life~. when it became clear that i was not doing well, i felt like i had slipped entirely off track of the path set out for me.

so after a year of that, i finally transferred schools. and i really thought that this was it - that now, i had it all figured out. fall 2019, i was off to a much bigger school, much farther from home, pretty much the opposite of where i had been before - what could go wrong, right? i decided that i had pulled myself out of my first-year slump and that i was finally going to get back on track, to have the college experience that everyone else was having.

all seemed fine and well until i got there and i immediately knew i had to leave. i wanted so badly to be able to finally enjoy college, but at that point: i wasn’t in the right headspace to be able to. the depression that i thought had been the worst of my life at my first school was honestly a hundred times worse when i got to my new school - and now, as a sophomore in college, i felt like there was an insane amount of pressure to make up for lost time. i put these crazy pressures on myself, and things escalated to the point where i couldn’t even set foot in a classroom building without having an overwhelming panic attack - to the point where i ended up taking what they call a medical leave of absence (sort of a gap semester) from school and going home. at this point, it was blatantly obvious that i needed to seek help, even though it had taken me so long to accept.

when i first got home, i was beyond embarrassed. it felt like i had admitted defeat and failed, for real this time. i begged my mom not to tell anyone that i was home, i didn’t want to leave the house. they say there’s something that happens when you’ve been a student all your life and then all of a sudden you aren’t - you realize that school has been a foundational part of your identity, and you have to learn to navigate who you are outside of it. and even though i still knew i wanted to go back to school at some point, i definitely experienced some variation of that same identity crisis. i felt miles and miles behind everyone else. without the structures that i’d always depended on to give me a sense of identity, in this case being school, etc - i felt like a stranger to myself. to reconsider yourself against a blank background is a really, insanely tough process - but i think it’s one that pays off.

this time away from school, during which i got the therapy i needed, was undoubtedly the most challenging and defining period of my life thus far. this was where i learned the single most valuable lesson i’ll now carry into my 20’s: comparing my timeline to others’ will never achieve anything positive.

it used to make me feel like i was drowning when i would compare myself to the people around me, or the people i saw on social media. to see that other people were still on the trajectory i’d imagined myself on - 4 years of college - when i had fallen so far off track. and i won’t lie, sometimes that type of feeling crawls its way back in.

but, now i know so many things that i didn’t when i left school back in september. i know that the timeline i am on is uniquely my own - and the individual timelines that everyone else is on are uniquely their own, too - and that no one’s journeys are ever exactly the same. i learned to accept that i needed a few extra months to really do some soul-searching, to really construct an identity and goals for myself, to restructure my relationship with myself, with school, with my body, with food, to be able to lead a happy and healthy lifestyle in the future.

i know this may seem cliche, and i also know that i still have so much to learn, but i want to take this time to say that nothing positive ever comes out of comparison in any form. the truth is, that even when i’d compare myself to the journeys of other people and feel like a failure, i had no idea what that said person was experiencing. the only feelings i’ll ever feel are my own - the only person i’ll ever be able to control is myself - and so why would i compare that to the people around me?

it’s funny, how i spent my childhood wanting to grow up so badly only to grow up and realize that i still felt like a child. and so i think that even as i physically grew up, it took my mind a little bit to catch up - it took me a second to really examine who i am and who i want to be.

and so now, i’m 20. i have a lot more intention behind how i choose to carry myself and the decisions i make than i once did. and i’m so proud of who i’m becoming. but of course, some days, i still question it - i question what i’m doing, i question who i am, i question where i’m going.

i look back on all the versions of myself that are gone, the versions of myself that i can’t get back, and sometimes i’m sad about it. sometimes i wish i could go back and tell myself everything i know now.

i think back to times when i was 15 when i was a lot meaner than i should’ve been, and i wish i could go back and tell myself to be a little kinder. i think back to being 16 and being terrified to eat in front of anyone in the cafeteria at school and i wish i could go back and tell myself that there’s a lot more to life than being skinny. i even think back to being 17 and 18 and how i would bite my tongue so many times instead of speaking up when i know i should’ve. i think back to all the nights i would stay up and cry and wish i was anyone other than myself and i wish i could go back and help those versions of me find a little more peace.

recently, i came across a quote that really aligned with everything i’ve been thinking lately. it said: cringing at your past just means you have improved as a person. and i think that is such a valuable mindset to carry - what a comfort and relief it is to relish in the distance between past you and present you. when i look back and am embarrassed, or ashamed, or saddened by the way i’ve acted or the way i’ve spoken - it just goes to emphasize that i would react differently now, that i have grown. and i think i’ll always be growing. maybe some day i’ll read this back, and reminisce on the 20 year old melissa, and cringe at her. even though i like who i am now, i hope that i’m continuously on the way to being a better version of me in the future. so, while i can’t go back and talk to 16 year old me, i can learn from her mistakes - i can ensure that 20 year old me is a completely different (and better) person.

i used to see each passing year as balloons that flew away - and that i could never get back. that i didn’t even mean to let go of, but now were gone anyway. and somewhere along the line i became so scared to let go. the truth is that sometimes i held on to the past a lot longer than i should’ve.

i’ve learned that even if you hold on to a balloon as long as you want - it’ll stop floating eventually. it will run out of air or helium or whatever keeps balloons afloat. and then, what do you have left?

now, i’m more conscious of the passing of time, and that there’s nothing i can do to stop it. i’m also doing my best to make peace with that. even though i’ll always have my moments of self-doubt, i’m at peace with the process of moving through my life at the speed that is best for me. too much focus on the past or the future has always led me to feel like my head is spinning - i’ve learned to be a lot more grounded in the now.

even though i’m a different person now - when i look back, i sometimes feel connected to past versions of myself. even though i can’t be them anymore, i’m still thankful for all the versions of me that have carried me into today - even the versions i’m not so proud of. i still lay in my bed at night and i listen to Lorde and i find myself connected to the 16-year-old girl i once was, who would do the same thing. i roll over at 3 am with a burst of inspiration and i type a nonsensical poem into the notes app on my phone thinking it’s a masterpiece, and it stays in there alongside the ones i wrote on similar nights in 2015 - none of them make sense after i wake up. i watch Lady Bird like 3 times a month and it always gives me the feeling like i’m in high school all over again. i’m still growing up, still learning. i know that who i am now isn’t who i was then, but sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that the balloons that floated away into the sky aren’t always as far gone as i might think.

i think, maybe, that it’s nice to exist as a combination of all the versions of myself that got me here. i think that’s the best part about evolving, growing, becoming - you get to keep all the best parts of yourself and you get to learn from all the parts of yourself you no longer want to keep.

i wonder - is there anything more beautiful than the human capacity to always begin again and again and again until we get it right? 

even though things can get complicated and it might not always seem easy to move forward and to move on, there is so much beauty in letting go. letting go can be an act of love - it can be a lovely thing even when it’s the hardest thing.

i’ve learned to forgive myself for needing help sometimes, and to accept and embrace the pace at which i move through my life. i’ve learned that i don’t get to choose how fast my life goes by - i can’t slow down the process of growing up. what i can do is choose how much i allow myself to grow - how much of the past i allow myself to be free of.

the night before my 19th birthday, i slept in the same bed i’m sleeping in now - in my childhood home, my family asleep upstairs. i wear a lot of the same clothes. from the outside, i probably look pretty much the same. what’s significant, though, is just how differently i fit into this same room now, how differently i see myself when i look in the mirror. i guess it took me finally surrendering to myself, finally allowing myself to completely restructure my world, to finally start to get to know myself. i always thought that the solution to my problems was some sort of change (location, etc) - and while i still believe that we should always be trying to expand our comfort zones outside of ourselves - what a wonderful journey it is to venture inwards. sometimes leaving your comfort zone isn’t so much an external transition as it is an internal one. and though at times i wish it didn’t take such a drastic and emotional year, i am so happy with the person i have become - the person i am still becoming.

today, i’m turning 20. and i have to let go of my teenage years, to close the book on all my triumphs and all my regrets and all the pieces of me that i won’t carry into this next era of my life.

i hope i don’t sound too cliche, but i really do believe that what feels like the end is often the beginning.

and somehow i still feel small again, i feel like i’m staring up into the sky at a balloon that’s floating away from me. and i’m learning how to not feel scared at the thought that i can’t ever get that balloon back. when you spend too much time looking at the sky, you tend to miss what’s on the ground. so, if i can offer you any advice, it’s to let the balloon go. accept the process of letting go and moving forward - because i think what’s coming next is so much better.

so…here’s to getting better! here’s to crying on your birthday and embracing it! here’s to cringing at this post next year! and most of all… here’s to 20!

thank u so much for reading,

melissa