‘I can turn these ropes into strings,
play Cat’s Cradle with my misfortune.’
- 24th February 2020
It comes in fragments, the image of before. At the grocery store, in the frozen food aisle. I see myself, dreamlike in the tie I have to the girl floating her hand between ice cream tubs. I can’t read the flavours, and when I go to leave my feet are so slow, but there is no fear in waking up. I’m in the dream because I don’t know it, and as long as I live in this delusion, somehow, I am safe.
Elsewhere; I can drive home from uni. I can be tired, in the shallow, long-day kind of way. I can watch the car in front inch forward by the red light, drumming my thumbs on the steering wheel and dreaming of this; a hot tea, my soft bed, a tv show I now can’t recall. Tomorrow, or the next day, I’ll walk by the house with the long gravel driveway, the one with the vines wrapping around its front fence, melting down by the tufts of daisies. Maybe I’ll take a photo with my shoes amongst the flowers, press my hands onto my hips as I brave the uphill return home. I realise it’s the triviality of these images are what move me, how simple the ghosts that haunt me are. And it’s beautiful, and it’s painless, until the same guttural question arises, repeating, was it really ever that easy? It knocks at the core of me, it leaves me winded. Dreams vanishing, images fading, I wake to my own voice answering: if it ever was, it no longer is.
It feels important to tell this story right, but the fact of this changes when I’m still within it. In a year or two, I imagine there will be better things to say. Gifted by hindsight and good will, I hope I’ll be formed differently, and the truth of the experience no longer so opaque.
To see clearly through suffering feels valuable and weighty, and yet I’ve found the unseen outlines of my own being that I consistently knock into give me more than any well-lit mirror ever could. There’s a small mercy in this, to uncover what you wouldn’t have otherwise. Even if it is tied to the uncertainty of it ever being good use.
And there’s no way to know what sticks, what’s solid. Least of all one’s own self, which at best can feel shadowy and fleeting. Yet, I’m still faithful in my endeavour to reach out to it all, with the bitter comfort that everything eventually has an end.
It’s this belief that pulls me consistently to record, to remember, again and again. Not just the good but the agonisingly bad, too. The fear of eventual nothingness ties me concretely to joy, to suffering, to moments that beg in my mind to hold their own. To have no detail lost on me, however seemingly inconsequential. Not the laughter, not the sighs, not the creak of a door hinge or the rush of a fan above the stove. I ache for it all to have a home within me, knowing there was no other in that space who felt and saw exactly as I did.
With these motives, I hope to take you back and through by my side. Sitting here, in my small chair overlooking my overgrown backyard, pressing hard on the keys of my laptop that don’t always work. Scrolling intermittently through my phone that’s become the gatekeeper of my experiences; photos taken in the thick of grief, and fateful pleas sent as messages, and half-finished thoughts tapped into the notes app with eyes still half open at 4am. These etchings are the makings of me. And writing of them is the buoy that allows me to hold their weight.
I hope you can hear me, as a friend, as a stranger, as yourself. And should you see something that mimics a wound you’ve come to know; I hope you’re too able to find a way to give it a home.
With truth, with love, I hope to give it all, from within.
Nami.
I love this so much. Your writing is effervescent, glowing, tender, and unreal. I'm so glad I stumbled across your Instagram recently. Looking forward to whatever else you write next!
i love this so much, your writing comes from your heart and i’m so here for it <3