I’m combing out my hair and looking at myself in the mirror. I’m scared that I’m losing my magic.
I am not myself.
I apply a gloss to the ends of my hair. An overnight mask and my facial sculpting tools are on the counter in front of me. I take out a pair of black sweatpants from the dryer. The warmth is a little luxury.
I miss who I am in the summer. I miss who I was in the summer. Carefree and hopeful. The mini skirts and charisma. The beautiful places and the beautiful things.
Unresolved, unfinished: that’s the category where a lot of my love stories fall under.
But that’s kind of beautiful. Isn’t it? It reminds me that love is cyclical. Real love, anyways.
I wonder if people judge me for hanging on to things. Or letting things hang on to me.
I wonder if everyone thinks I am insane.
“Love is love. It doesn’t matter where you are, or where you go. Those feelings will follow you everywhere. Whether he wants them to, or not.”
I think about this line from PN, often. I don’t miss him, but I miss the act of making someone miss you.
I found a book that is helping to heal me. Again. “Alien Daughters Walk Into The Sun.”
She (Jackie Wang) talks about the beauty of being a lost girl: “But not everyone can make a career of making themselves nothing to become everything - some are made nothing. Some are better at being nothing than others. Can suffer with grace. Can lose themselves with grace. Can lose themselves and still have: a story.”
Real friends remind you who you are. They soften the blow after the words we speak to ourselves. Is what we think of ourselves true? Sometimes I feel like I walk around with the word “temporary” on my back.
Does needing a silk pillowcase make me vain?
What is vanity? Because I feel like it’s the one thing I can control.
I always felt like my skincare obsession was somehow a trauma response. But maybe not everything is a trauma response.
The leaves are changing colour, they’re starting over, they’ve had time for a reset.
I love starting over.
Can we always start over?
Please?
Broken hearts make beautiful things. I wrote this down at 4 AM when I couldn’t sleep. It’s true, though. Every single artist I know has had a broken heart. And they make the most beautiful things.
I am not perfect. I am confused, most of the time.
I do not have a relationship. But I do have you.
I want to start over.
I picture a moment of us together. I am embarrassed to admit that. That all it takes is one conversation. And while we were talking, I thought about it. I thought about us. I thought about it and us more and more and more. And the more I thought about it and us, the less I pictured myself in Rome. I pictured myself with you.
But picturing a moment is different than living it.
I used the phrase “just another girl at the bar” when referring to myself again. And my best friend had to course correct me and say, “You are not just another girl at the bar.”
I need these reminders daily, it seems.