There have been many bits and pieces these past few weeks, but I’ve been having a hard time putting them all together. Like many people who are now in an enclosed space with their family during the holidays it feels hard to marry these different versions of yourself. No matter how hard I try I always seem to melt into my little role in this little family unit.
With spending the fall traveling on a budget it is hard to escape what a privilege it is to be this luxurious; to have parents that can afford to stay in nice apartments that overlook the ocean, to be able to eat at a nice restaurant. I want to be really grateful, and I am, in moments when the sun emerges through the palm trees just so, or when I’m sitting by the ocean at night with my sister looking at the stars and talking about things we never talked about before, or when I’m examining the tide pools with my dad for sea urchins or little shell creatures. Yet, there is a part of me still that thinks about all the people in my life, and not in my life, that might deserve this more than I.
I’ve retired trying to argue with the feeling of undeserving when once before it felt like my own spiritual mission to feel deserving of all the good things in my life. It’s not that I want to give myself over to guilt or shame, it is more that deserving and undeserving hold less weight for me now. The world seems to feel too chaotic and unfair for such simple binaries. All I know is that it is both true for me that I want many people I love to experience this feeling of luxury, and that there really isn’t anything that makes me more deserving of this than anyone else.
Family vacation is really a time warp where you have the extended enclosed period of time together, and for better or worse all the resentments, the love, the dynamics, emerge in this hot sticky mess. My mom once remarked, I don’t really know this adult version of you fully. The separation hovers in-between us and yet I feel closer to them then I ever have. There were many fights, but it all resolved cleanly and neatly like a hallmark movie. Maybe not everything is healed, but I think we all came out of it with more of an understanding of each other, and I think that’s all you can ask for. A deep and heavy ache settled in my chest when I said goodbye to them. I didn’t expect to miss them like this. I was all too aware of my aloneness in their absence.
So here I am, off on my own again. I am both nervous & excited. Though I remind myself of what I know to be true: it’ll work out, and even if it doesn’t work out, I’ll still be fine. What a miracle to have your own back.
The Ocean is not to be messed with (another timeline)
An important and relevant reminder for my time in Costa Rica, the ocean is not to be messed with.
I can’t tell if I have experienced or witnessed an abnormal amount of brushes with death or simply living requires at least a handful of moments where death blows past you like a summer breeze enough to make the hair on your skin raise. There was the time I fell off a cliff at 13 and was saved by a rock formation jutting out of the side, there was the time I almost got t-boned at a red light when my seat slid back and I couldn’t reach the breaks, there was the time I totalled my moped after getting hit by a car (I hit the car) and if it wasn’t for my helmet that I by chance decided to wear that day it could have been much much worse. Then of course, there was the brushes with death that I was a part of, the time when shelly almost fell off a waterfall (see death by waterfall episode in the podcast) and the time just a few weeks ago when I had to save my sister on the side of the highway because one of the front tires literally fell off as she careened off the side narrowly missing a passing car.
Granted in most I perhaps wouldn’t for sure have died except maybe the cliff incident, but it was enough to make me feel the presence of other timelines; one when I didn’t grab my helmet, one where I didn’t reach the breaks in time, one where Shelly didn’t manage to grab onto a rock, one where the eons of rock formations on that cliff were slightly different. I try not to dwell, but in my most anxious moments I can feel those timelines breathing.
I spent some time these past few weeks trying to get better at surfing. My dad and I went out in the morning just after high tide. After an hour of surfing, I could feel the current pulling me out. I started paddling back in, but I kept drifting farther and farther out as the current pulled me away from the shore and into a group of rocks. I noticed that there were no surfers close to me. I felt panic rise in my chest, the kind that makes your vision tunnel and shallows your breath into short intakes. I took a deep breath, another, okay, think.
When I was a kid living in Australia (the sight of the cliff incident), it was mandatory to do water safety training where one would learn what to do if you were caught in a riptide or a strong current. Like most situations in life, it requires not panicking and not fighting against it, allowing it to take you out and then returning back to shore on currents going back in. Though, I don’t remember being told what to do when those currents were trying to slam your all too breakable body against rocks.
I looked up, and like a miracle a boat was in sight, I waved once, then more frantically. They came to get me, and, just like that, the whole ordeal was over.
That night my mind kept pursuing the other timeline. Like many pursuits of the mind it all felt a little bit silly, but I would replay the panic over and over. What if I looked up and there was no boat? What then?
Sometimes, I think it is a miracle to be in this timeline. It could all be a coincidence, all circumstantial, but it is a nice thought to think about unseen forces collaborating to help you. That in the most critical moment time was on your side. If nothing else, it is a nice thought. Death is by no means the worst thing that could happen, merging back into some mysterious unknown is something we will all share. However, the sheer momentary aliveness I’m granted feels all the more sweeter knowing that it is not guaranteed to me. Nothing is guaranteed but an experience, and I’m glad to still be having one.
A Spell for Certainty
The more certain I am in myself and my decisions the more that certainty gets reflected back to me. The more I validate myself first before anyone else does, the more people reach out with their own lovely messages of validation. It’s a worthwhile venture to have your own back in this life, it is something that people spend lifetimes trying to get the hang of. Lately, I’ve been playing with a version of myself that experiences a lot more certainty. Funnily enough the image that came to mind when considering this version of myself was a me that wears pink striped pyjamas (I’m not sure why). In practicality I think it really is just trusting myself to be the ultimate authority in my life.
When her lip pencil shaving in the toilet flecked red like blood would make me blush. It was all far too intimate, so shameless it would make me angry. Though I think It held something I desired. A steady certainty in its own right to exist.
Best Books 2022
Every year I do a best books list! Here is the 2022, books wrapped.
More fiction and poetry than any year before it!
See you in the new year. Love always,
-Thai xx
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happy new year love this one and love you 💜🌞