FRANK, by Amy Winehouse

It has been a long time since my last post. My words have found themselves elsewhere in the meantime. I am a very different person than I was in the early days of 2018. Tonight I return with an overflowing gratitude for Amy Winehouse. Frank was released in 2003, when she was only nineteen years old. It nursed me through my first heartbreak (age 19) with the perfect tiptoe between tenderness and cynicism. It was exactly what my fragile heart needed.

She crooned about poetry as a healing process (Maybe if I get this down I'll get it off my mind), fears about doomed destiny (I can't help but demonstrate my Freudian fate), covered jazz classics, whispered over birdsong, chronicled messy ex sex.

The album's title itself is a reference to a Frank Sinatra CD, shoved into a box of things her ex gave her. She loves Frank Sinatra, as if her music itself didn't betray that fact with every note. But it's too painful to look at. As things go.

I have a pair of my ex's shorts on the top shelf of my dorm room closet. There's no door there, so I can just glance over my shoulder to see it folded there. I'm waiting to give it to his brother or best friend, both of whom incidentally attend my university. He has some of my favorite t-shirts, god knows where. I can't ask for them back now -- it's been too long, and I know from experience that I'd just melt in the materialization of what is to me a mere memory now. When I visited him at school in the wake of our breakup, he showed me a shoebox he kept full of things that reminded him of me. It was his most prized possession, evidently. But none of those words meant anything. I have no idea if it's in the trash now.

But you made me cry, where's my kiss goodbye? I think I love you

Amy was such a mess. But she was a tender, loving, raw mess. I miss her. I wish we could have been friends. I wish I could have watched her grow through the same tribulations that now plague me in similar ways, living in a different country in a different body in a different life. I keep her poster above my dresser; her face gives me the encouragement I need to get up in the morning and get dressed and be the bad bitch she was before there was even a term for it, and in the midst of the myriad aches plaguing a heart that lived its truth even when it didn't make sense to.

Okayness

Me but loves and accepts myself as I am. (I'm already enough)

Me but trusts myself unconditionally to get past whatever is thrown at me. (If I've made it through everything so far I'll make it through this)

Me but isn't bogged down by an obsessive need for perfection. (The world will not end if I finish something before perpetual alteration)

Me but doesn't shy away from being saccharinely optimistic on the internet. (Cynicism is overrated)

Me but eating oyster crackers at work on a Monday. (With iced honey green tea)

It feels like okayness isn't dependent on circumstances beyond my control. Because truly, isn't it exhausting to believe that so many things have to be exactly a certain way for things to be okay? For me to be okay? It's not even a pursuit, really, so much as it is a practice. Progress feels like the world blooming around me, not dramatically but in tiny glimmers and silent gasps. It's a strategy game - one that doesn't require a consuming amount of attention. Okayness! It's what's for dinner

December 1st

I cannot remember when I revoked my own permission to exist poetically: when did I decide I had to stuff my being into a linear narrative; that it was not important to find meaning and beauty in little details? (Only to take this meaning and beauty for granted as I lost touch with what mattered most to me)

When I stigmatized my own experiences, did I anticipate the extent to which my future self would be tormented by discomfort and unknowing? Why is this happening to me, after all? Of what consequence is sitting in a corner seat on an orange line train car flecked with decay for thirty minutes every Friday at the cusp of afternoon to pay a stranger to listen to me talk about everything I wouldn't have to talk about if I just took the time to sit and write it all down?

It will all be okay with some bright lipstick and lung-deflating hugs and takeout burritos, not necessarily in that order and omitting consideration of cold sores brought on by intrusive thoughts and 12-page-papers; uncomfortable attempts at amity and train schedules that don't line up with our plans; frosty first-of-December fingertips and stolen debit card numbers.

I think I'm getting there, slowly, one burst of realization at a time. Moving at my own pace even if it means befriending my cats like they're people and staying in most Friday nights to lay in bed listening to jazz.

Pantone pee & other thoughts

I feel like I'm doing research for Pantone: Right now my toilet has one of those little blue cleaning discs in the tank to keep everything fresh and every time I pee into the blue water (in various states of hydration) a new shade of green peers back at me from its immaculate porcelain goblet. I think this perspective would inspire a new wave of hydration-mindfulness. It's very hard not to focus on whether or not you've had enough water that day when peeing feels more like an art project than gross and critical self-analysis. Have I taken care of my body today? What would I name this exact shade of green?

It's currently late at night in the interim of Saturday and Sunday and I'm sitting in bed typing with the smell of my new gardenia and tuberose candle bathing my senses in crisp floral bliss (I'll get back to this). Sam flies up in 5 days which brings to light my shock/awe at how quickly this summer went by, in all of its obstinate ups and downs. What a weird season. When we're kids everything suddenly lacks structure so we are left to our own devices in deciding how to spend the freedom and sunshine and warm days, which essentially sets the mood of our childhood. I'm not sure how my perception of it will change as I get older and don't have to go to school anymore. I'll keep you updated.

I'd also like to use this platform to formally announce that I am now a candle person. You can find my registry at Anthropologie under my first and last name or you could just stick to the eternal doctrine that I love the way gardenia and jasmine smell. You should also know that I love pretty colored glass jars with well-designed lids. Buy me pretty and good-smelling candles and you will be let into my heart.