believing the most generous narrative
being accepted in all your forms
January passed like night rain you only realize happened when you wake up the next morning to the smell of wet air and soaked pavement. Quiet. Humbly. Giving. The world is not the same, and neither are you.
I rang in the new year eating dimsum at Lin’s with high school friends visiting Austin for the weekend. H and I rotted together for a whole day after getting both our covid boosters and flu shots. (Rotting is much better when you’re not alone.) I hosted crafts night and an early Lunar New Year’s dinner with friends in my studio apartment. I handed out red envelopes and taught my friends how to say 新年快乐 (Happy New Year!) in mandarin as they crowded around a table spread of dumplings, salad and sparkling cider and we ended the night lighting a stick of incense and saying the names of our passed loved ones out loud.
H and I snuck over to his parent’s house for the winter freeze and I come back to our apartment complex warmer in more ways than one. A girl’s Notes app is a sacred place of secrets, grocery lists, failed poetry and passwords. I scribble a journal entry under the covers next to H when I can’t fall asleep one night.
2024’s Texas winter freeze just happened this past weekend. We sheltered at H’s parents’ house in Mueller. It’s connected to Dell Children’s grid so chances are they wouldn’t lose power. But post covid and flu shot rotting, we hauled our little selves over and made a home for two days there. And it was so sweet. I feel like over the past year, they’ve really taken me in and had their front door open to me. It felt like family in a way I haven’t felt in a while. H’s dad is making me a mug of espresso in the morning while he chats to me about starting his new job as Dean and how he’ll have to interview someone to be his assistant. H’s mom hugs me close enough that our faces touch, a hug that’s tender and fierce at once. She folds laundry and asks me about me and I ask about her. I know where the bowls are but can’t find the scissors. They feed me and I don’t need to do a thing they say but if I want I can cut the green onions. “Wow look at that skill!” “That’s why we like her so much!” I chase Luna around and she runs to me when I laugh. Shelby hunts for my food and I love how she looks when she’s asleep. I feel loved here and I’m really grateful to be a part of it. I feel a lot of tenderness towards H and what he comes from. He scolds me for not putting on a coat and I love him for it. Therapy has been already such a strong footing for me - I feel more confident in myself and my relationship with H and although I am still fighting my way through insecurities, I trust my ability to change towards a narrative that is more generous and true. We ended our Tuesday going to D and M’s place for a chill fireplace hang. D stoked the fire and asked me to pick a record. M made brownies and showed off her new tattoo. D brought a cheese ball and A awed at my drawings and we shared color pencils. It was a sweet time and it felt so good bc I didn’t overthink it. H and I ran to the car with our breath hanging above us. We kiss at a red light and smile and he tells me no flossing tonight and I tell him I’ll do it fast.
I trust my ability to change towards a narrative that is more generous and true.
I found an asian therapist this month and I ended my first session with her saying, “I love her.” She dug her nails right into family dynamics and I immediately knew that she would push me in the ways I needed. It can feel discouraging to do this work - to still see yourself activated over the same damn things over and over. “Am I even changing? Why does this still feel so hard and slow?” And the scariest thought of all, “What if I’m just too broken to be loved? Who has the patience to stay through all this growth?” As I urge myself, I urge you to hold these thoughts as simply thoughts and not your identity. Identifying is becoming. And you are not these things that are gristly and mean. How can you be? This human beautifully failing and beautifully trying and enough all the time.
“My story is to live. And I’m not afraid of failure. Let failure annihilate me, I want the glory of falling.” — Clarice Lispector
I have a goal to read two books each month. January was Ikigai by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles and Wellness by Nathan Hill. I’ve been taking notes as I read because my brain apparently can’t absorb a single thing and it feels good to be able to flip back to all the juicy quotes I want to get my teeth into one more time.
I started Wellness during a time of higher relationship anxiety and it felt both activating and comforting to read a story about a couple grappling with their past and what it means to build a life with another person. With both of their childhoods fraught with messy relationships with parents, shame and this painfully hopeful desire to start over in a new city and with each other, it hit home on my previous fears of being too broken to be loved.
Were they destined for each other? Was he even right for her? She did not know. She wasn’t sure of anything right now. She could not be certain that she could ever love Jack as grandly, as unconditionally, as he needed. She understood that there was some fantastical and elevated place where his love awaited, and she was never certain she could join him there, whether her heart was capable of it. But she knew she loved him right now. And she would probably love him tomorrow. And maybe that was good enough. Maybe she didn’t have to be certain of anything. Maybe the human heart was just that messy, and all romance was deeply precarious and the future was unresolved, and that was fine…You could choose to be certain, or you could choose to be alive. And the only thing she was certain of was this: that between ourselves and the world are a million stories, and if we don’t know which among them are true, we might as well try out those that are most humane, most generous, most beautiful, most loving.
And if we don’t know which (stories) among them are true, we might as well try out those that are most humane, most generous, most beautiful, most loving.
My therapist made me take a test during one of our sessions to see if I was an HSP. A Highly Sensitive Person. I answered yes or no to questions like, “Do you need to withdraw during busy days” and “Do you have a rich and complex inner life?” My favorites ones were “I am deeply moved by the arts or music” and “Being very hungry creates a strong reaction in me.” You need to answer yes to 14 questions. I got 25.
If you’re an anxious and avoidant person and are pinpricked by the smallest of things, it can be hard in the thick of things to let people stay when you’re being imperfect, what you think is a bore or “too much.” We question things. We rattle our pretty lives in their cages. We bruise and we pick apart because of all our insufferable what ifs and because we didn’t have healthy models growing up for communication or how to make things right when you inevitably hurt others. But as much as we adopted narratives about ourselves that are unkind and weren’t really ours, we can believe in ones that are generous, beautiful and loving. We can trust when the people we love tell us that it’s okay to stay.
I had a bad day in January and I had plans that day to see A. I texted her that I didn’t think I’d be able to make it. “I don’t want to bring my bad mood.” A and I are classic avoidant people. We have ugly feelings? We’re gone. But she said, maybe this would be great practice for us. “How would you feel about coming over, I cook for you, we don’t have to talk or anything you can just go on your phone if you want to.” As the month of love approaches, I hope you notice all the different love you’re steeped in. Your partner reminding you to put on a coat. Your grandmother leaving 10 tupperwares of food in your freezer. Your friend cooking for you and letting you cry while laughing on her sofa. You are accepted in all your forms. All you have to do is show up.
Ikigai was a nice, fast and digestible read. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways I think about throughout my days.
Presented with new info, the brain creates new connections and is revitalized - why it is so important to expose yourself to change, even if stepping outside your comfort zone means feeling a bit of anxiety - will increase self image that you can figure out things that are new and difficult —> started doing the NYT mini without caring how long it took me (don’t let shame or embarrassment stop you from trying a new thing)
Art in all of its forms, is an ikigai that can bring happiness and purpose —> “Enjoying or creating beauty is free, and something all human beings have access to.”
Interviews with elders
“I go right outside to check in my tomatoes, my mandarin oranges…I love the sight of them.”
“Talking each day with the people you love, that’s the secret to a long life.”
“Laughter is the most important thing. I laugh everywhere I go.”
You are accepted in all your forms. All you have to do is show up.
“I should have told you that holiness resides in needing each other, in acts of survival made generous."
Thanks for being here and holding me in all my imperfect forms x
always a treat to read your words and feel warm and fuzzy inside when thinking about you and the lovely beautiful things in your life! <3
ok wait why would you skip flossing though