no strings attached

The name of the game was simple: don't get attached. Easier said than done for someone who isn't me. Attached to what, I don't know, but attached I've become. Attached to my phone and attached to the possibilities of a new night and attached to that first moment of hope that hits you as you close the door behind you into the dark for the first time and attached to that first breeze that blows your hair just right as you strut down the street believing in the possibilities of the night and attached to the way those possibilities grow and build bigger and bigger with each beer that goes down and how these possibilities soon become possibilities you actually find yourself believing in because it's 12:30 and you are texting him and he is replying yes yes yes and this is the fourth time he's said yes so of course it means something or you at least really really really want to believe it does and attached to the way he places his hand on the small of your back as you swig back more beer because you know how the night is going to end and attached to the giddy cab ride home and one last cigarette before a walk up another flight of stairs and the shutting of a door. And you are mostly attached to the way he holds you tight afterwards and how you believe it' somehow matters each and every time.

love minus zero

Memories don't work the way we expect them to. And memories don't last the way we rely on them to. We are constantly forgetting and misremembering and believing in a true past that is more fiction than anything resembling reality in the end. We remember what we want to when we want to and we change those memories when they don't suit us anymore. But as easy as it is to forget and misremember the past, the real and true past always finds a way of creeping back in and reminding us of who we were and how we are today.

Last weekend, half drunk off beer and fatigue, I made a spoon around a boy who came in and out of my life in less than a month and who I will undoubtedly misremember and probably romanticize in the coming weeks. It was either too late or too early, and my room was so dark I could only make out a faint silhouette against his heavy breathing. Never saying much between bottles and kisses, this boy could barely be called a friend. But in that moment, when his breathing gave way to a light snore and he kicked once no twice in his sleep, he was suddenly him and I was transported two years back into a bed and a room I hardly think of anymore. My hand found its way alongside his belly, and I moved in closer, pressing my cheek to his back like all those times before. But he was not him and all those times before only existed in a room twenty minutes away and memories and memories ago.

And although I knew all this, and even though I don't want to relive that past one bit anymore, the simple comfort of hugging in sleep brought with it memories and feelings I thought were well buried for the time being. A relationship is still in no way the name of the game these days, but perhaps falling asleep to a warm back may be something worth getting used to again.

with a flower in my hair

San Francisco was like a dream of the bluest sky and the bluest water and the most perfect stillwarm breeze that ran up my spine and tossed my hair into the sunshine and held it there and I didn't stop smiling once.

hibernate

This time of the in-between calls for hibernation until life works itself out again and I figure out how I feel and what I want.

summer turned into september

My summer came and went in the past three weeks. Each day seemed sunnier than the last, and with the sun came long walks home and a bouquet of flowers and more park-sits than the previous three months saw and a flower in my hair and all those gentle people there. Sometimes the sun shon so bright it burst yellow and the sky looked coloured by my favourite shade of blue that I had to stop and aim my camera up up up to hold onto the hope of it all. And this hope carried late into the night when the temperatures said it was no longer summer but the beer swimming around inside said otherwise and messages were sent and phones vibrated in response and I saw him through the dark and my bed was suddenly occupied again and maybe backs were rubbed and maybe spoons were made and maybe that's all it was and maybe I got the summer I was waiting for but didn't even know I wanted.

we'll dance the night away

I've been avoiding this space because how do you reduce the biggest year of your life into words that can even begin to communicate all that you felt and learned and grew when you felt and learned and grew more than you ever have before?

At 3:30 on Tuesday morning, I submitted my very last paper, and how anti-climatic it all was. With the simple click of that 'Send' button, I could no longer wrap myself around an identity I've clung to for the past twenty years. Suddenly at twenty-three, the future was wide open and the possibilities endless. As this realization slowly hit me over the course of the next few days, the euphoria soon hit, too. Nineteen papers and two-hundred-and-fifty-five pages later, I am done.

School may have been my worst enemy this year, but in spite of it all and because of it all and with it, I survived. I navigated a new campus and remembered new faces and new names and I got my heart broken and I began to imagine a new future and I changed my part and I went on strike and I fell in love with Brooklyn and I opened my heart again and I got my heart broken again and I knew these new faces and new names and I cared less and less and drank more and more and I visited a best friend and a country I loved more than I thought I would and I wrote a bit and I fell down and I fell down again and I embraced this new future and I sang and I danced and I grew and I burst and I swung high into the night last night and never felt happier.

fisheye party

There is too much to write and not enough space to put it all. A real update will come soon. In the meantime, a party in photos. Thanks to Maria for such beautiful shots.

our way to fall

Even in my most cynical state I can listen to this song and remember how it felt to be fifteen again. Away from the phone and each other for the first time in the first three months of our dating, I covered a box with hearts and filled it with thirty-six notes. One note for each hour we'd be apart. How precious it all seems now, but at the time, those thirty-six hours felt like a lifetime. A year later, away from school for the day, he filled my locker with a handful of paper hearts, a bouquet of flowers, and the lines to my favourite song. I miss you I miss you I miss you so much.

At fifteen, the simple touch of a hand on a back could send my heart racing. At twenty-three, my heart has steadied and grown older and wiser and skips a beat less and less. But this song transports me back to that futon and that night and that first kiss that happened so fast and was so light I stood stunned afterwards, watching as he disappeared into the night, wondering if I had simply imagined it all. At fifteen, he was my wonderland of freckles bursting, and at twenty-three and with this song, I am still bursting.