how i'm feeling now
a magnolia parks binge, and finding beauty in unexpected places
Setting: 5:40 PM. Friday evening. Under a fluffy, white duvet. Finished off one of my favourite loaves of bread from the bakery with that fig and orange jam. And that will most likely be my dinner. Everything shower is completed. Dry brushing and moisturizing oils make the biggest difference to the skin on your body. Hair is air drying. We’ll see what it decides to look like in the AM. “Without You” by Spooky Black is playing through my phone’s speakers. An artist I follow on IG posted it on their reel and I kind of fell in love.
You know what I never think about? A break-up from the man’s perspective. I wonder how heartbreak and heartache feels for them. Honestly, I wonder what falling in love feels like for them, too.
I wonder if I am the first thing on their mind when they wake. While they’re making their morning coffee, when they go sit on the couch. Does the “what were they doing last night?” ever creep in? Do they try everything they can to forget those mornings, too?
How do they deal with those endings, with those ghosts? At the bar, and in their bedroom? What are the conversations with other girls like? Are they being polite and nodding along? Are their interests anything other than Pilates and carrying around those huge-ass water bottles? How quickly are they wanting to sleep with them? Is it immediate, or do they train themselves to wait?
Will they close their eyes and pretend, too?
What does it feel like, to lose me?
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I have 2 very important people in my life, who, thankfully, both know each other. I asked
for help on newsletter topics this week, and I’m reading ’s die hard recommendation of Magnolia Parks. 500 pages in two days. A new record.“How to find beauty in places where we wouldn’t think there’s magic.” Logan tells me when I ask him for help with newsletter ideas.
Did I tell you that I do these things called “glimmers?” It’s essentially a gratitude list - but there’s something poetic about calling them “glimmers”.
My list usually looks the same - “my morning coffee. my white duvet. walks to coffee shop. my favourite sandwich. my newsletter. my community. etc. etc. etc.”
But there was something about Logan’s prompt that made me ask myself: why? Why do I love what I love so much? These seemingly mundane things, like a morning coffee and a white duvet - why do I always write these at the top of my glimmers list?
In my last newsletter, I asked myself - “who are you, when it’s just you?” To which, I answered: free.
The dark and coziness of my bedroom on a rainy morning. The quiet hum of the refrigerator. A good night’s sleep. A quiet hallway, because, thankfully, the world hasn’t woken up yet. A phone on “Do Not Disturb”. Putting on a pair of slippers my sister bought me for Christmas. Walking over to my coffee machine, putting two tablespoons of Starbucks Dark Roast in the filter. Walking to the bathroom, admiring my skincare products, and getting excited to do my routine. But I save that routine, that morning facial - for after my coffee has been brewed.
It’s in between these morning moments - through the quiet and calm, through the peacefulness, through the independence - where I realize that I am exactly where I want to be. Exactly where I should be.
And exactly where she would want me to be. Not having to answer to anyone, but myself.
It gives quiet luxury a whole new meaning.
So to answer Logan’s prompt - how do we find beauty in the mundane? Well, beauty is subjective.
But, when a lot of your life has felt driven by instability, by chaos. And after moments of “emotional whiplash” (thank you for that term that so aptly describes my love life, ChatGPT) - you become increasingly grateful for these moments that draw you back into who you really are.
Free.
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Karlie wouldn’t let me leave New York without making me download Magnolia Parks. Just read this description, you’ll understand why:
She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain's most photographed bad-boy lothario who broke her heart. But Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it. They're in the stars... just suspended in a strange kind of love that looks like hurting each other a lot of the time: She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it.
Unfortunately, it is my favourite type of trope. Chaos and love and too much love and too much fear and a lot of self-loathing. And it took me a long time, after coming home from New York, to read it. Because I knew. I knew once I started it, old, old feelings would arise.
And then, naturally, I had to take a visit down memory lane.
“You know, I didn’t realize how strong I was being in that moment. And how much courage it took to end things. It didn’t feel right because it hurt so much.” I text this to my best friend a few days ago.
“You’re absolutely right. And how much easier it would have been for you to tell him what he wanted to hear - that you’d stay in Toronto for him. But you stuck to your truth.”
I replay that conversation on my balcony a lot.
“It’s hard with you. I have to mentally prepare myself that at any point you can just pick up and leave and go to Rome if you wanted. And I won’t have any control over that.”
But it wasn’t just Rome, is what I’m realizing now. It was what Rome represented. And what I represented.
Freedom.