Lines in the Sand

To the world: I need you!

Over the past nine months, there is something I repeatedly find myself grappling with: the in-between. In my own experiences and in witnessing others’, I come to realize how much of life is spent drawing lines in the sand of morality. At what point should you dig your stick into the sand, drawing a line so deep that even the waves cannot erase it, and at what point should you throw up your hands and say that it is what it is?

Whether a product of my introversion or something else, I’ve always been anxious in social situations. It scares me to be dependent on people, to love them to a point where if I lost them, I’d become weak. In January, I was hell-bent on self-reliance. I wanted to be someone who was only at school to pay attention in her classes and leave, someone who focused only on herself and her ambitions, and someone who needed no one. Part of me knew it was unrealistic. But another part of me was running on spite, a need to prove myself as independent.

Still, loving is inevitable. As much as I wanted to be someone who could do it all myself, I’m not. I am endlessly inspired by people. I find myself in this beautiful intersection of youth and ambition, surrounded by people who have both big dreams and the motivation to achieve them. If I do not rely on others and learn from them, I am missing out. 

Seascape, Candido Portinari (1953)

To echo a sentiment I know you’ve heard before, what am I but a mosaic of those I love? My go-to blush is one a friend got me in October. My favorite pasta recipe that I always make for guests is one that my aunt made years ago. My vocabulary adapts to that of the people I talk to. I began journaling consistently after watching one of my friends do so. The best books I’ve read have been recommendations. The ring on my middle finger was my mother’s, and the chain around my neck was my grandmother’s.

In an era of hyper-individualism, where people online will encourage you to cut people off at the smallest hint of conflict, it becomes increasingly more important to maintain a community. We cannot hold ourselves to an unreachable moral standard, where anyone who can’t reach it can’t be a part of our lives. If that is true, then no one can be a part of our lives. What a sad thought, to be so lonely. I don’t mean to encourage infinite forgiveness—not everyone can be forgiven, and not everyone will apologize. Still, people deserve a fair shot. People are not perfect. Neither am I. It makes me think of this comic I saw on Twitter.

We will never be perfect people. We have a moral code, and sometimes we’ll break it. We’ll judge others for what they do and not always hold ourselves to the same standards. We will make rash decisions and regret them later. This is the human condition. From a song called “People”:

Am I a good person?

Or a bad person?

The assessments are all different

I’m just a person, too

I’m just a person, too. You’re just a person, too. Part of me wishes I knew this a year ago, but I know that this is something that I had to have learned the hard way. People change and grow, and I am no exception to this. I hope that going forward, I am able to lean on the community that has uplifted me and give back to it. I hope I can live quietly and slowly, with intention and with forgiveness. I want to be comfortable living in the in-between, acknowledging those messy, complicated feelings and making peace with them anyways. When I need to dig my stick into the sand, I hope I will. And when I need to stand back and let time heal my wounds, I hope I will, too.

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Good Things:

• My journal. I love her.

• My Astro Poets horoscope for the week of 04/30

• This song, this song, and this song.

Thank you for being the people that inspire and uplift me. Thank you for reading.

Love,

Aarushi.