“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

–Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

This has been my hardest semester at Smith. And it’s made me realize that sometimes you just might have to give away pieces of yourself to make it through and hope that when the time is right you’ll find those pieces again and they won’t be forgotten. 

I think if you would ask me to describe myself I would say, I like movies, or I make music. I tend to describe myself by the things I do. And recently I’ve found that I don’t have time to do many of the things that made me, me. So who have I become? I have an identity, I’m sure I do. I’m not a person walking around with no face, no personality, but I’ve realized that I might be a little bit afraid to claim pieces of myself I don’t actively shape and do. It forces you to stop, and look at who you really are. Aster once asked something along the lines of if I’m good with compliments. And not to sound self-centered, but I’ve learned that I’ve had to get used to compliments, I get them too often to not know how to take them. That still doesn’t make them feel any less weird. I don’t think I articulated it well at the time but I said something along the lines of “I like getting compliments on the things I do.” The things I spend time and energy on because they come from the most urgent pieces of me. The lines I write, the music I create, the clothes I pick, the work I do. Every other compliment feels like unearned flattery and fake. So I feel like the time this semester has stolen from me has also robbed me of my personhood.

I feel like I can boil down the past few months into themes, and I will for you: time, wants, and the assertion that everything is too little in comparison.

I have constantly felt that time is fleeting from me, every new day is today’s day after the next. When it’s Tuesday, it’s basically Thursday, and there’s never enough time for me to feel like I can do it all. And I want to be able to do it all. My Goodreads goal is dead, my media consumption is dead. Most times, when I hang out with my friends I have to fight the thought that I should be doing something else more productive. One of my advisors, James, said I reminded him of himself. Wanting to do it all, and not knowing how it can all exist together. He said it’s a lifelong struggle to know how each piece of yourself can coincide.

This leads me to the fact that I have goals! Maybe too many of them. But I feel like I haven’t achieved much, there’s this gaping hole in what I deem achievements. There’s a chance I, like many other people, am my own harshest critic. I think now is a time for a redefinition of my wants. Coming into this semester I wanted community and I still do, but I feel like somehow I’m not doing something right. My delusional local celebrity crush is dead, and our friend group has barely grown. We’re in desperate need of adoption. But people come and things change and I can’t make them stay. This doesn’t make me as sad as it used to in the past. I think it’s because right now I at least have Maya and Stella. I want to build these relationships and I want people to build them with me. But time is a bitch. It takes so much of it to build with people, to grow with them and in that time you lose someone else. Friendships I made last semester are different now and I can’t say for the better. I can plead, and in a drunken bravado admit to people that I don’t want to lose them and that we should hang out, but when the sun rises and there are no new texts, you know that some words don’t really matter. So instead I might have to pivot into a new goal. 

Rest. I want to focus on resting. I’m always worried I’m missing something and it’s a fundamental part of me—understanding that things are better when they aren’t the bare minimum. But recently I constantly feel like I’ve been hitting the bare minimum. That I can only fit the bare minimum.

Resting is finding the time for sleep. I think this is the worst, or most tired, I’ve looked during my entire college career. I’ve never noticed the circles around my eyes more than in the last few weeks. Sometimes I wake up with eyes so heavy my body instinctively knows how to snooze. My skin has been corrupted by something in the air, and my physics table is so joined in our stress that our cycles have synced. So I am looking forward to London next semester. To being new—starting fresh. To rest in London! My days have been a timer for when I can rest, and the only true answer in sight is when the winter hits. So I’ll be patient. In the meantime, resting is finding time to read, to watch a movie or an episode of a show. None of which I have done in a while. I think some of it is mitigating aspects of my life. A background show, a background movie. Being with people when you eat, when you do work. Integrating the things you love into mandatory parts of life.

I went to a poetry reading the other day with an emphasis on friendship. On the importance of finding family in queer friendships which I think I understand more than a lot. I think one of my missions in life is to build family out of friends. I’ve had this talk a lot recently. We as a society have shifted into an individualistic mindset that is symptomatic of capitalism–on profit and gain. So it makes sense that people have come to believe that love is finite. I have a complicated relationship with my family and the ways in which we perceive “closeness”. They can provide me with support but they can never be who or what I really need them to be. I used to be afraid that I ask for too much in friendships and that people wouldn’t be willing to give me what I want. But it’s all a matter of being hopeful. Love isn’t finite, time might be, but nothing about you as a person is. I think I’m always asking for a lot and will likely continue to for all my life. I hope I find it.

I’ve learned many things about feeling like nothing is ever enough. In comparison to last year, when things feel off, they are probably off. You can’t force someone to hang out with you, to think of you in the way you want them to because as cheesy as it always is—if they wanted to they would.* It’s important for me to find a balance in accepting what you can change and who you can’t. If anyone asks me to, I will always make space for them in my life. But I can’t force aspects of me to change, I can’t change my importance in someone else’s life. Other people are smart (most of the time), you can’t defend them by giving them the benefit of the doubt if they treat you wrong. People are intuitive and if they’re hurting you, they can probably sense it—I’ve been guilty of it.  If they cared—you would know that they do.

I’m looking for magic. Which in the context of today might be a little hard. But we don’t stop living. I’ll wake up tomorrow and the day after next and the day after next. Today, it doesn't feel hard to be hopeful for a future of mine 4 years down the road. I know I can’t say the same for others and maybe I am in “delusionville.”

I think around this time, last year, I said I wanted the theme of my year, 2023-2024, to be love. I know I’m different now, because I can say more than anything I want community. I want to feel supported and for others to find their solstice. I want to smile at someone and have that smile be returned in full. To have passing looks and be understood. I want open and free communication and a consideration of others that lets them know that you see them. When you grab them that spoon they forgot or pick up their trash. When you give them a letter they mentioned as a joke in a one-off comment, when you’d do them that favor of walking with them even when it’s out of your way. I, in spite of it all, and this might sometimes be a little contradictory and hypocritical, want to live in a world of compassion and kindness for the people you care about, even just a little bit. It comes in an infinite abundance. I find that I find myself within other people. The conversions I have helped me find pieces of myself. Not that I make art, but that I can make my friends laugh or be brave for them. I can give them advice and they can tell me I’m smart. I have an identity but in lieu of it all, I thought I lost it.  

I want time, I want people, I want for everything to be enough. I know some days will be hard. But today it’s warm, even if it shouldn’t be this late in the year. I’m sorry I’ve caused global warming because the Earth wanted to be kind to me and give me good weather in the midst of a turbulent semester. 

The wind is gracious and the sun kisses my skin. The faces around me are a bit defeated and if no one else can be hopeful today, I can be.

You and I can take turns.

—

* I’ve been really into snapping after things that resonate, so feel free to snap