Today is a sort of follow-up on the first newsletter, Welcoming August, and the most recent one, Loving is Limitless. I’ve pondered a lot about feeling unloved or unwanted or unnecessary; It is only now I’ve come to realize that lockdown has affected me far more than I thought it did.
It is only now that, after being surrounded by my friends five days a week, every week, for about two months now, I truly feel that I am in the right place: a place where people want me present and a place where I want them present. It is a gratifying feeling, and I regret the 18 months I spent feeling so low about myself. I wonder why I was so unhappy then and so unsure over my place in my friendships. The truth is, I needed to see it to believe it. Now, I pull a line from a poem by Bella Townsend (@poems.bybella on Instagram) sent to me by a friend a while ago. It says,
YOUR FRIENDS DON’T HATE YOU … you’re just having both sides of the conversation and calling it sanity.
You’re just having both sides of the conversation and calling it sanity. (I swear, in that moment, it felt like the fog cleared in my brain.) When all you can know of a person is the words they choose when they text, you make up the rest. And when you’re unhappy, you don’t make up good things. You imagine someone’s eyes rolling when they get your text. You imagine them typing a half-hearted response back. When you speak with a person in front of you, you cannot imagine anymore. You see their eyes trained on yours, listening. You cannot make up anything bad, because it is not bad. You realize then, almost overwhelmingly, that these people care. Pieces click into place.
Quarantine was out of our control. It was devastating in so many ways— some we were painfully aware of and some we could only realize once we left lockdown behind. When you’re confined to the same four walls every day for over a year, you make up versions of people in your mind that are so far from the truth that you forget who they really are and how it feels to be cared for. You forget how it feels to have someone’s hand in yours, or your knee against their back, or the way they laugh when you tell a joke, or the way someone seeks you out in a crowd of hundreds of students. It’s so easy to lose sight of these seemingly small, domestic things. But this is what I lost during the pandemic, and it has been almost cathartic to have it back.
Being around people all the time is still quite overwhelming for me. I think I’ve said no to quite a few plans I might have enjoyed if I forced myself to go. Slowly, but surely, as I regain my place in a physical group of friends, I will begin feeling like myself again. Until then, I take it one thing at a time.
The past month has been strange: I’ve been sick, I’ve been dressed up, I’ve been studying, I’ve been sad, I’ve been happy. Slowly, I am finding joy in the more minuscule things. For example, the full moon always occurs right outside my bedroom window. For a few days each month, I catch its eye and sit in its veil for a minute. It reminds me of my grandmother, too. When I wake up each morning for school, I get to watch the sky change colors during sunrise as I fall into sweet sleep on the bus ride. When my parents leave the house, I play my music far too loud and sing even louder while cleaning. I open my windows and pretend I’m in a music video, the crisp autumn wind brushing my face as I sing. The point is, I don’t know if things will get better— and that’s okay. Through moments like these, I will continue to find more small instances of hope in between, and that will be enough.
It’s been a while since I’ve written. I have lots of ideas for the next few newsletters, so hopefully I am able to get this out more often. Here are some good things from the last three-ish weeks: this poem, this song, vegan apple cake, season 2 of BTS In the Soop, New York Times crosswords, and my lovely friends.
Keep yourself healthy, warm, loved, and full this autumn. Thank you for reading, again and always.
Love,
Aarushi.
“ You forget how it feels to have someone’s hand in yours, or your knee against their back, or the way they laugh when you tell a joke, or the way someone seeks you out in a crowd of hundreds of students. It’s so easy to lose sight of these seemingly small, domestic things. But this is what I lost during the pandemic, and it has been almost cathartic to have it back.” this is literally everything. u r amazing.
I love this so much. Especially "The point is, I don’t know if things will get better— and that’s okay. Through moments like these, I will continue to find more small instances of hope in between, and that will be enough."