As summer comes to an end and the violently hot sweat filled days make room for the increasingly bearable days that come with fall, I find myself looking back on this year with a smile on my face. While I can’t stop the feeling of dread that also goes hand-in-hand with winter from creeping up on me, I feel confident that the way that I spent this year was more or less the exact way that I was meant to spend it. I’ve tried to live more true to myself than I ever have this year and it has opened so many doors and allowed me to experience so many things I did not even believe possible last year. Moving out of my cousin’s house and into an apartment with a girl I had just met before our move-in date was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Since I started writing this post a lot has changed dealing with the chemistry of the relationships between my friends and me, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this year was one of my best. Living true to what I believe is my wants and needs is the only important thing to me. As it gets colder, I begin to reflect on all the interactions I’ve had with others, what lines of communication I should cut out of my daily routine, what behaviors I should adopt, what things I would have done differently had I known what would come, and so forth. I’ve grown to become a better version of myself by the day and I feel as though I need to show respect to my body by thanking it for making it to this point. More than anyone in your life, your own body and soul deserve the most love and patience.
When I started writing this post, I was planning on speaking about the struggles I’ve faced as long as what I regret doing and bringing into my life, but I think that will only work to further harm my mental state if I were to focus on it. I do that a lot if it wasn’t disgustingly obvious from my other posts; focus on the past that is. I’m always looking over my shoulder to reminisce on what could’ve been and what I would have done differently. I spend so much time looking back in the past that by the time I’ve realized I’ve been stuck in a memory, the present has already escaped me. The cycle continues itself because I allow it to. I’ve allowed myself to be stuck in these circles since I could remember. There is never anything good that comes from focusing on the past like I do, yet I can’t seem to stop. Perhaps it’s because deep down I believe a difficult past to be more bearable than an even more difficult present. I can say with almost absolute certainty that my parents’ own mindsets about this topic have influenced me heavily, especially my dad’s. My father has never been capable of living in the present. He is someone who is plague constantly about what could have been, which has taken away his ability to appreciate the moment that he’s currently in. Just like my father, “what if?”‘s suffocate my thoughts but only ever when speaking of the past. What if I said something different here? What if I wore my clothes differently in that picture taken of me? What if I never dyed my hair that color? Although it’s honestly quite sad to admit, I can’t remember the last time I asked a “What if?” in terms of the future. To me, my present is the past, which is what causes the cold to bring with it depression and isolation.
For anyone that you ask, winter is always going to be a time that holds some sort of significance to them. That’s the beauty of winter, you don’t have to celebrate anything specific to simply celebrate being alive with others. While some of the things you do in the winter are things that are possible anytime during the year, there is something about coming together with those that you love as a chilled breeze blows into the cracked window. Winter is about community and love, which is what I have brought most of my own meaning for the season. Without explaining all of my family dynamics in great detail, there has always been a large lack of connection between my immediate family and the rest of my family, which was painfully obvious whenever we spent time with them during the winter months. Conversations would quickly die out between us, the gift we got each other were always out of obligation rather than love, as well as the fact that “bonding moments” had to be forced by my mother onto my father’s parents. My father never stood up to them for me, I haven’t thought much about it until this moment but even though my mother was rough with me as a child, she never held back from fighting for me if she felt like it was what I needed. I believe that part of my mom to definitely be part of the reason why my relationship with my mother came so easily while the relationship with my father has never improved over the years. Sometimes I’d like to write about my beautiful mom and how she has grown into herself during these past few years. She is one of the most important people in my life, I wish there was more of her in my family. Due to this disconnect between my immediate family and the rest of my family, I grew further and further from each of them until the only thing we knew about each other was our names. While I did not mean for this to change my view of winter as a whole or to become a new tradition, and need, for myself, when I was eighteen I decided that I could not handle the fake love any longer.
Traveling out of the country for my first long trip was definitely very terrifying to do at first, but after a couple days it felt like this was what I was destined to do. I have always had an interest in traveling, but after this trip, I found that I only feel at home when I am not at home. As soon as I landed back home after my trip, or rather even as soon as my plane left the UK, I was overcome by a feeling of dread. Since that moment, I have found that escaping the year during my most potentially vulnerable is something that holds priority. While on these trips that I have taken every winter, typically from mid-December to the beginning of January, I have found lives that I can feel as though I am genuinely touching for the first time in my life and there are no words to describe the amount of joy I felt while on them. You could brush this off as the vacation is what was making me feel so happy with my life, but while I’m sure that plays a part I know that I simply felt more at home while I was on these trips. Being around many people that I don’t know the stories of, yet finding space to comfortably be myself around them is something that I have never been able to find back home. I’ve spoken of this exact problem a large number of times on this blog as it’s one of the main things I find myself struggling with every single day, yet that worry of mine left my head whenever I was on these trips. To find multiple groups of people with that I can exist as I am and not worry about what their reaction might be to me is what I want more than anything in my life. Of course, there were times when I was insecure in myself, but the difference is that it was not suffocating. Finding people like this and then experiencing the two holidays that mean the most to me when thinking of a community helped me enter each year with slightly more hope than the year before.
Every year I live life just trying to work towards this trip. Life is hard but the trip is soon so I can do it, right? This year though, I find myself unable to go on a trip in the winter. Trying to pick one person or situation to blame for having this happen would only help hurt me more, so I won’t waste any more of my thoughts discussing what could have caused it. One of the factors in it though I’m sure is the fact that I have gone to New York three separate times this summer, each trip totaling roughly $700. So as I’m able to understand that even though I might not be able to go on a trip in the winter, at least I got to go on the trips I have already gone on, I still cannot help but feel helpless at the loss of this trip. The other trips I’ve been on during this year do mean a lot to me, but nothing can compare to the meaning that I have behind my trips and what void in me that they are filling. The mindset I have on this is extremely unhealthy, but I’m not sure what I can do to change it. The thing is because I have not experienced Christmas and New Year’s at home in four years, I have no idea who I am going to see or what I am going to do. There is no longer any place to go to Christmas, or Thanksgiving now that I think of it, because of all the drama that went on with my cousin and me last year. Honestly, that situation explains why I felt so alone as a child at Christmas because even in this situation that is over him refusing to do the dishes, my dad’s parents choose him. I’ve spent a lot of days lately crying over thinking about what I am going to do. I’m not sure what to do to help myself or the situation, and my friends are not even sure either. I’m not sure there is any way to win in this situation. I believe that I will simply have to experience the winter as it is and maybe coming face to face with my own loneliness will have some kind of life-changing impact on me, though I think it will just make me spiral.
I think that I find more comfort in a situation when I don’t know anyone rather than in one with friends because I feel uncomfortable allowing myself to be vulnerable around those that know me already. This has caused me to feel a disconnect whenever I find myself getting closer to someone else, which doesn’t help the feelings of isolation that come with it. I need to learn that I can be myself around other people and let them into my life and it won’t hurt me, but I can’t see myself understanding that properly anytime soon. The literal act of running away from my reality that is very obvious in these trips is something that I hadn’t noticed until very recently as well. When I reacted so badly to the idea of perhaps not being able to go on a trip, I saw the weight that this annual trip has on me. I had gotten to a point in my life where I was either waiting for a trip, on a trip or just getting back from a trip. There is never a time when I do not have a future trip at least in the planning stages and I believe this is because I cannot fathom staying in the present moment for any longer than I have to be. Even when I was young, there were countless times when I would do anything to try and escape what I was currently experiencing, even if it was something as simple as a boring class. Whether through dreams, daydreams, or physical trips I have always been running from understanding that my life is my own. By pushing away from myself, I slowly lost track of who I was and the ability to connect with others left at that moment as well.
One of the hardest conclusions that everyone has to come to is the fact that you are you. Just because there are parts of myself that I dislike, that does not mean I get to stop being me any time soon, and no matter how many trips I go on this won’t change. At the heart of it, it’s a lack of love and understanding for myself. I am the only person in my life that I will have by my side forever, so I should show myself more patience but I never do. I never sit back and allow myself to fall in love with myself. When I was younger I might’ve thought that someone was lying if they told me this but it is true that you cannot truly love anyone else unless you love yourself. My lack of connection in all of the relationships in my life is no less a direct impact of this lack of love for my own body and self. I don’t know when I will reach a point where I can fully love myself, but I hope it’s soon. I do know for a fact that there is so much love in my heart that needs to be shared with the world, but I am not at a point in my life where I can healthily do that. I need to stop running away from myself and understand that I deserve all the love that I can give. Searching for a community with people that I will never be fully intertwined with gives me a false sense of a connection that I use to substitute my need for a real connection. This can only last so long though, as sometimes something fake is almost as good as the real thing, but the fake things never last half as long as the real thing does. One day I will get to a place where I can have the real one with those in my life that I care about, but I have to make sure that it is safe for me to do so first, and before I can offer my heart to anyone I must learn how to take care of it. This winter trip of mine not being able to happen is something that will affect me heavily, but I can use this new experience as a way to work to better understand myself so that I do not have to run away to experience happiness.
It’s been a while since I posted, which makes me very sad. I’ve been wanting to post for a while but I haven’t been able to find the motivation to write. I’ve had a lot on my mind, and still do, so it’s difficult to push all those thoughts out to even just talk to my friends, so writing is out of the question most of the time. Writing is not something I want to give up at all, as it does bring me a lot of comfort. So I’m sorry if this post comes across as somewhat clunky; I’m still getting back into the swing of things. A lot more has been going on in my life, more than this, but I don’t want to go into detail about it in this post. Perhaps I will sometime in the future. I have taken a lot of more beautiful photos on my camera though! I’ll post some below, enjoy! (I’m sorry some of the photos are extremely dark! I have edited them on my phone, but I don’t have the edited files on my computer, only the originals. Turn up your brightness if you need to please! I am very proud of all of these pictures!)
.˙· 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞.° ｡˚𓆝˚｡ °.𓆛.° ｡˚𓆞 .˙ 