to dance with the daffodils
"but i still want to cross the bridge and reach me / the real me"
i have been made to feel my loneliest in rooms full of people and made to feel perfectly content and joyful being on my own. lying in bed staring at the ceiling, reading a book, taking a walk, metaphorically holding my own hand and keeping tucked under my ribs the knowledge that i am okay. not for the rest of eternity, probably not for the next month but at least in the span of this one (1) moment i am sharing with myself.
in his song 어긋 (uhgood) from the mixtape mono. (2018), rm says :
All I need is me
All I need is me
I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I knowBut, why do I feel lonely?
I feel so lonely when I’m with me
I feel so lonely when I’m with me
i’ve never considered myself to be someone with many friends and i’ve never been The Most Comfortable™ in social settings. meeting new people or even attending large gatherings of friends used to send me into an anxious frenzy. i used to curse myself for my social anxiety, for backing out on plans when it felt like i could potentially burst if i pushed myself too much. throughout my adolescence and especially when i got into college, i reached a point where i was convinced i’d be left with no friends. that no matter how hard i tried, there would be no point, that at the end of the day i would be left all alone so why bother? i backed out on plans before they were even concrete, cancelled every chance i got. some people stuck around, some didn’t. and i can’t really blame them.
trying to make new friends in college felt alienating in a lot of ways. going out of my way to attend “social events”, to try to connect with people i could feel i’d have nothing in common with, made me feel like something was wrong with me.
it’s taken me years to understand that wasn’t the case, rather it just wasn’t meant to be. you’re not meant to connect with everyone you meet and in my experience, if you don’t connect with someone or a group of someones, there’s usually a very good reason. my hypothesis was confirmed over the four+ years i spent in college, hanging out with the same tight knit group of friends. truthfully, i wasn’t going out of my way to meet anyone new, to open up. maybe there is a small part of myself that regrets it but i found that the friends i did make were friends i’d keep forever. and i have. (so far).
when looking at where you are in your life, it’s important to take into account the circumstances that have made it that way. anxiety has hindered me from doing so many things, things i wish i’d given myself a chance to achieve or at least try out. to this day, it takes me way too much energy and motivation to put myself in situations that i know others wouldn’t even think twice about. not only that, life is a question of opportunities. my inner dialogue used to go a lot like why don’t i have more friends? why am i so alone ? i have no hobbies, no interests, i’m a big blob of nothing doing nothing loving nothing. now… this might have been a tiny bit overdramatic (i am a libra with a leo moon after all). but i never did seize any opportunities that came my way. i locked myself in a little vault of self-loathing, throwing away the key and acting surprised when i realized there was nothing left to do but to indulge in more and more and more self-loathing.
in i wandered lonely as a cloud, william wordsworth wrote :
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
developing a sense of self-worth, love for myself and understanding of my own identity has allowed me to grow in so many ways. there used to be such a wide gap between the idealized version of myself and the real me. be more like this, less like that, stand up straighter (lol) (little did u know, past noa) (sorry), be more outspoken but never too loud, never too much or too little. don’t be scared to be alone, to indulge in building a strong relationship with yourself. there’s a solace in it.
in the poem someday i’ll love ocean vuong by ocean vuong, he wrote :
The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
finding your footing in this world is hard and it often feels impossible. it’s not. learning to let yourself Exist, let yourself feel, let yourself Be can be so freeing. you are just as you are. there isn’t anyone like you on this earth, there is no mold you have to fit yourself into (and especially not for the convenience of other people). in the words of namjoon himself in the same aforementioned song : “But, I’m sorry, I can’t give up on myself / I can’t let go of me who I know as myself / because you, in my head, are so whole like this / Here, again, the ideal me in my head is called “you” / because you are so perfect”
a poem for small things
i went to see mitski in concert exactly a week ago and she was phenomenal <3 i managed to sit front row with my friend and it was such a personal and intimate performance, it made me realize how much i’d miss attending concerts.
saw a friend i hadn’t seen in months and it felt so nice to reconnect with her. turns out i Do Exist and people have memories of me, isn’t that crazy?
bts’ anthology album that comes out june 10th is called proof (ahhh!!!) and it has a new track called Yet To Come (The Most Beautiful Moment)
sometimes i read
all about love : new visions by bell hooks : rly enjoyed this read; this isn’t a how-to book on how to love but rather it gives you thoughts to reflect on. while it was at times very enlightening (we choose to love; to see love as an action rather than as a feeling), she lost me a bit during her talks of spirituality.
convenience store woman by sayaka murata : “After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too.” sometimes you don’t fit in and for some strange irrational reason, people seem to find that infuriating. this is a book that talks about that, about conformity and capitalism and womanhood and societal norms that pushes us to fit a mold we don’t want to.
when art makes me feel (alive)
Amrita Sher-Gil (30 January 1913 – 5 December 1941) was a Hungarian-Indian painter. She is a key figure of Indian modern art.
After studying art in Europe at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and as she was looking to reconnect with herself, she chose to return to India in her mid 30s. Her art is a direct consequence of her identity as both an Indian and Hungarian woman and it’s fascinating to see how her travels influenced her art. After she traveled to South India, she began to depict scenes of everyday life she had observed around her on her journey. She pursued what she called an "artistic mission", which consisted in depicting in her paintings the life of the Indian people. Returning to Shimla, she embarked on a vast enterprise of rediscovering the traditions of Indian art. Her paintings hold a deep sense of melancholy and love for art. “Sher-Gil looked at the Indian art traditions with a fresh eye and she gazed at the sad-eyed people around her with empathy. She became excited by the Indian miniature traditions and as a consequence of her travels to the caves of Ajanta and Ellora and South India, her visual language underwent a dramatic transformation. Her palette became saturated with intense reds, ochres, browns, yellows and greens, and her figuration expressed a new visual reality.”
Over the years, Amrita Sher-Gil developed a unique style, quite different from her paintings done in Paris that were closer to a post-impressionist and realist style. In the words of Judith Ferlicchi, “She broke the conventions of miniatures, altered the traditional and customary image of women, and exalted colour in her portraits of confined women, caught between ennui and desire, as in Woman Resting on Charpoy (NGMA, New Delhi, 1940).” Her paintings are the direct result of her personal trajectory, adopting over the years a more introspective approach. In a letter to a friend, she wrote “I can only paint in India. Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque.... India belongs only to me”.
lots of love,
noa <3
ily