Some things I have learned by the age of 23:

1. It’s better to be in an uncomfortable place, than a place where you’re comfortable and stuck.
2. Just because other people are succeeding does not mean you are failing.
3. Don’t date people who always have one foot out the door.
4. You not setting boundaries is a form of people pleasing. 
5. You need to wear sunscreen if you’re going to be in the sun. You just have to.
6. It’s okay to outgrow the YouTubers you once loved to binge.
7. You need a third place. You cannot just have home and work, you need a third, separate place you also enjoy being.
8. Forgiving everything is a form of people pleasing.
9. Your taste in music will change with time.
10. Your taste in people will also change with time.

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I fell victim to the digital camera buying spree of Summer ‘23.

Once it arrived, it was permanently glued to my hand at every gathering you could imagine, every trip I went on, every car ride and sunset. I noticed that its date was set to January 2022. 

I left it that way.

When I finally downloaded its photos onto my phone, in went the photos of ‘23 into the midst of those of ‘22. In went faces of ‘23 alongside the faces of ‘22. It was so strange to look at, like a badly drawn flip book whose pages you couldn’t stop turning. 

Later on, I realized that the reason it felt strange was because these faces I no longer looked at would never know my life now, and all of the faces I looked at right now would never know my life then. 

It felt wrong to have photos of the same days, on two separate years, intertwined with one another in my camera roll, as if I was breaking some sort of memory code, as if I was undoing all of the stitches in my sealed-shut notebook of 2022 and shoving in pages of 2023, like a “Ha! Look at me now!”, even though that was never my intention. 

If I could have separated the memories, separated the feelings that each one brought about, I would. But they are stuck in between each other, intertwined; ‘22 and ‘23, and now neither in ‘24. 

A very ironic joke on behalf of life; cue round of applause and a sadistic bow.

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Song Of The Day:

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On My Mind:

I wish I could tell Past-Me that it’s okay to say goodbye to things that don’t make her feel good. I wish I could take all of her anxieties, all of her sadness, all of her questions, and push them all far far away. I wish I could tell her that it gets a lot worse before it gets better. And it actually has still yet to get better. But we are getting there.

I wish I could take her in my arms and never let her go.

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Podcast Of The Day:

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Today’s In’s & Out’s

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