letter five: protect the sand

isn't it better to have fun?

Dearest friend, 

It’s been a while-while, oh my goodness. It hardly feels like it when it’s only been a handful of weeks at most, but how terrible — and unfortunately on-brand of me — to fall out of structure the moment I impose a rigid routine upon myself. But with that said, we are back at the usual schedule as of this week, I hope. It’s been a whirlwind of a holiday season for me: an uncle went into cardiac arrest early in December, my mother and various aunts and cousins across the globe all had to fly to Southeast Asia just as news of Omicron was gathering momentum, finances are in disarray, both work and personal deadlines descended upon me one after the other, and as if to remind me why December is the month I spend every other one of the year dreading, each week leading up to and following Christmas was marked by multiple deaths and death anniversaries that left me feeling like a punching bag with sand eeking out of a torn hole. That’s how I’ve felt, I think, for all of 2021: a punching bag full of sand, designed to absorb the blow of each punch and then let it pass through without hurting the boxer, and it so happened that December was the one to finally leave a tear. 

That’s not a very cheerful note to begin with, though, is it, not for a letter and certainly not for a year. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever been the most respectful of beginnings, at least not in the sense that New Years’ Eve might feel for some like a momentous shift from old to new. I’ve never bought into that, which isn’t to say that I’ve been against it, either; it’s more that I am apathetic to it, and in that apathy, perhaps a little irreverent, but I consider it only symptomatic of living in a timezone almost a day behind the rest of the world. Nothing leaves you quite as disillusioned with the passage of time, whether to bemoan it or celebrate it, than seeing people already in the future while you have just woken up to start your last day of the year. It’s just another day, another sunrise and eventually another sunset, and therein lies a greater woe and therefore also a greater comfort in the way that I am choosing to tackle life and the world this year. 

For instance, I wrote a couple days ago to a heart-friend on Twitter saying: 

i loved hearing you say fuck being apologetic about expressing feelings. because honestly? yeah. Yeah. let’s love each other and love the people who love us. no, you don’t blast a heart open, you nurture it, but the difficult part is that those don’t feel all that different from each other, do they? a healing wound is still a wound — until it’s not, until it’s only a scar, and if we’re unbelievably lucky, until it’s as if it was never there. but that’s not what i’m asking of the world anymore, i don’t think. not this year. i’m not asking for scars to disappear. i know that’s not something within my control, and that often it is impossible. i can’t will my wounds into healing. all i can do is tend to them, protect them while they’re still raw, to trust that somewhere in my body are an army of cells doing their absolute best. all i owe them, then, is my absolute best as well. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since, what I meant by it, if I even meant anything deeper than the stray, rambling thoughts that come out of your fingertips on a Twitter DM that no one except the one person will likely read. But not too long before I sent this message, I also finished a little indulgent writing project where I wrote a conversation about feeling like real life is happening separate from you — to which one character argues that the more you conceptualize “real life” as a thing that happens far away and separate from who you are, the more that person does become someone else, and therefore the more impossible that being them becomes. Because the painful truth is that everything happening to us is real life. For better or for worse, this is the body and the life we’ve got. And plenty of people have already written about how they don’t believe in having New Year’s resolutions, arguing that if they really wanted to change all those things about themselves then they wouldn’t need a holiday marker to get to it, and I agree in some part at the same time that I find that an unfair argument to make. I agree because I do think real change shouldn’t only come from the title of a new “chapter,” so to speak, but I find it unfair because the bigger, more present problem with New Year’s resolutions, I believe, is that they tend to fall back on the same age-old habit of treating the path towards growth as a checklist.

There’s nothing new for me to add to the conversation around the phenomenon of That Girl — which, if you’re not in those circles on YouTube or TikTok, is basically a catch-all term for (micro)influencers whose content revolve around “productive” routines: waking up early, working out, eating healthy, bullet journaling, maintaining a Notion time management template, etc. Of course not a single one of these things are to be looked down upon, and each are in fact healthy habits that contribute to long-term growth. One can’t be faulted for writing, as an example, something along the lines of “drink more water this year” or “exercise more diligently” or “read and journal more often” in their New Year’s resolutions. I know that at the root of all this is a sincere, well-intentioned desire to ostensibly “improve” one’s lifestyle, and I applaud any attempt towards a life led more healthily, a life conducted with more mindfulness. But I do also want to interrogate this kind of constant self-optimization, in particular why and for whom we might be doing this. Often, I think that resolutions, the way we traditionally think of them, aren’t any more sustainable in the long run than a That Girl lifestyle is, and so we also become trapped in a cycle of beating ourselves up over being incapable of seeing these resolutions through, when the truth of the matter is that this was bound to happen to even the most diligent of people. And don’t get me wrong, this opinion stands with any lifestyle meant to serve a specific structure; there are people out there, I’m sure, who have resolved to go to museums more often, or to read more poetry, or to watch more films, and again, again, again, none of these could ever be bad things, but just because something isn’t outright harmful doesn’t mean it isn’t always worth interrogating the motivations behind them. Whether it’s a desire to romanticize life or a desire to make it more productive, at the end of the day, both are adhering to something else that I have cause to believe doesn’t always necessarily center who we are so much as it does who we want to be. 

You might say, “Sha, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Yeah, I think it is. I think it is good to have a person you want to be, but I also believe that this plays into what I mentioned earlier, about conceptualizing a life we want so intently that often that’s all it remains to be — a concept, an idea separate from who you are. More important than that, though, I think that pursuing what we see other people want, like, say, defining productivity by how much other people get done in a day compared to you, or reading fifty books a year not because you want to read each one but because someone’s Goodreads challenge had the same number — I’d argue that this often tends to blind us from what we really need as individual people. When we form a metric for our lives based on some apparently universal measuring scale, we might fail to acknowledge the intricacies that make us who we are, and fail to examine if there are realer, smaller things we can do to serve our own being-ness. 

To me, for example, I know that both psychology and most personality typologies would agree that I have a hard time connecting with my body, usually content to stay in my mind, sometimes lost in the theoreticals instead of the instinctuals — so, knowing that, it matters less that I wake up with the sunrise to work out as it does finding a comfortable time in the day to move my body in such a way that will leave it feeling more like what it is: my body. Sometimes, that means walking to the pool in the middle of winter to turn my mind off for an hour or so doing lap after lap of freestyle. More often, it means simply getting out of bed even long after the sun has set, to do the hard labor of peeling myself off my mattress to heat up water for instant oatmeal, take my antidepressants, read the same book I’ve been trying to finish for two months or finish the same movie I started last year. 

And this isn’t me being like, “Boo, some of us are neurodivergent!” at the That Girl people, or discounting the amount of work that it takes anyone to maintain that lifestyle. But it is precisely because I empathize with how much work it is to simply live that I think we can be kinder to ourselves in examining how we can do that: how we can live, how we can heal, how we can thrive. With this taken into consideration, I think resolutions are best approached as little reminders stripped down to what it is doing for us, not for the world or the people out there who define a right and valuably “productive” way to live our lives. What do you need to be mindful of this year? Why do you want to exercise, and would a more achievable and sustainable way of achieving that simply be going for a walk while the sun is still out? Why do you want to journal, and would it be better to record little videos of yourself talking about your day instead, or maybe a little coin bank that you fill with paper slips of things that made you happy, so you can open it up at the end of the year? Are you reading a book because you are interested and connected to it, or are you doing so for the sake of completion, to put the title down on a list that people will glance at once? 

To be clear, this isn’t me cooly passing judgment on anyone who’s motivated by the perception of other people. I think there can be value in such a thing, and even at its worst, it’s one of those things where there’s no use hoarding superiority over one person when an entire phenomenon or system is at fault. The truth is that this is a generation raised to perform to and for each other, and performativity, with or without its negative connotations, will always be a component in how we all interact with the world. But it doesn’t have to be a primary component in how you interact with yourself, is what I think. Or rather, other people’s perceptions and definitions need not be how you perceive and define yourself, too, and it certainly need not be how you examine the things that will best serve your own growth. What does your body and your mind need? What does it want? What does it need to feel good, feel protected and cared for? What does your life need to be and feel real in a way that will matter to you?

So with all those questions in mind, for me this year, my only resolution — if it can even be called that — is to remember to have fun. 

I’ve already alluded to it a few times in previous letters, but my friend, if you can forgive me just one more letter to discuss it with such bleakness: 2021 was an absolute shitshow of a year for me. It’s been so, so rough, and I’ve felt coiled so, so tight that it’s almost laughable now just how awful everything consistently was through that whole year. The other day, a university friend sent me a photo of us two at the museum, a week before the world went into pandemic lockdown, and it was so startling to see myself look so young and carefree in it. Only a little under two years ago, and even that younger self had survived their own fair share of awfulness, but nothing could have prepared me for how 2021 left me shaved down to the very bare foundations of who I am. I feel as if I have been left gaunt and fraying, so whittled away that I couldn’t respond with anything other than weak caution to two pieces of unexpected good news from this past week. Even now, I don’t even want to name them, to get specific about them, still waiting for the next shoe to drop, for the world to balance out this supposed good-ness with something so bad that I would wish I never hoped for anything better in the first place. 

I stopped praying, you know, last year. I’ve never been orthodoxically religious in the first place, but I’ve stopped praying, scrolled past all the affirmation and manifestation stuff, couldn’t care less about superstitious chain mail-type posts designed to be circulated by people with anxiety, didn’t even spare a wish on my birthday candle. I’m just taking it day by day right now without daring to hope for better. If worse comes, then I’ll deal with it — I already suspected it will. If better comes, then I’ll let it pass through me without passing over me, and I refuse to take it for granted, to be complacent. The world has snatched too much from me this last year. I don’t have enough left in me to sacrifice to hope. 

I know how that sounds. I’m sure there are brighter, gentler people than I who still believe in hope — and I promise this doesn’t mean I don’t believe in softness anymore, or in kindness, or in tenderness. Of course I still do. But these are tools, and in privileged hands, they are luxuries. Most times, they are also coping mechanisms, are states of being that you slip into because it’s the only choice you have. Because I don’t want to give the world the satisfaction of making me hardened, too. Just because I do not pray or wish or hope doesn’t mean I suddenly don’t believe I owe other people basic humanity and basic decency. That will never be out of the question. I’ll always love the world and (most of) the people in it. But it is too difficult for me, going into the new year, to wish for too much. The tear in the punching bag is still there. Sand is still dripping out. Can you hear the soft whooshing of all those fine, little grains falling onto the ground? I can. I feel it, too. Let the world not make me less of who or what I am, but let the world also not leave another torn hole in me when there is only so much sand left. 

There is only so much sand left, and I want to protect them, to keep them, to cup them in my palms without letting them fall out through my fingers. I don’t want the world to empty me completely just yet, not when I’ve come this far despite everything, and so I’ve thought long and hard this past first weeks of the new year about what I can do to conserve what I have left. But therein lies both the question and the answer, I found, because — really, truly, instead of thinking and understanding and intellectualizing every emotion I accept or refuse to feel — isn’t it better to remember, every now and then, to simply have fun?

And I don’t even mean in the “do this or that for your inner child” way, nor in the “don’t be scared and just do it” way, nor even in the “take some time off to have fun” way, all of which are of course still important and essential in their own respective contexts. Rather, I mean that yes, I am afraid to hope, and I am afraid to pray and wish and expect good things for myself, but that does not mean I should be afraid to love what I do have, what is already here, nor be afraid to understand that there are things I like, and sometimes having those small things you like can mean more than having anything you want or hope for. It doesn’t have to make you happy or cheered up, and you certainly don’t have to even love it. It’s the same thing, I think, as the big, life-altering resolutions. Constantly aiming for immense joy isn’t sustainable nor possible in the long run; like any other emotion, even happiness is fallible and fluctuating, and I’d argue it’s more harmful to expect it to be a constant state of being. Because it isn’t, and no emotion, whether love or anger, hate or joy, will fill you up and keep you full forever. And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we see this as a fact of life instead of the tragedy of it, then the better we can learn to navigate it for ourselves and to understand that just because something isn’t some grand, eye-opening emotion doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Like, hey, I don’t feel like I have any goals or aspirations at the moment, if only because I know I’ll accept any rejection right now without even the slightest of recoils, like a flimsy air balloon with hardly any mass or momentum left to it — but I’m lucky to still find enjoyment in food, and I do like how it feels to slip out of the winter cold and under a warm duvet. Sometimes, this is all I can do, when even flowing in and out day to day is hard: I just go from one moment to the next, hot to freezing, starving to full, fog-brained to clear-minded, and all vice versa.

The crux of it, I know, is that I don’t want to think anymore. I am so exhausted of thinking. At times, I’m even more exhausted of doing. But did you know that the word fun comes from the Middle English word fon? Don’t quote me on this, but I believe it’s both a verb and a noun, depending on the dialect, and all that its meaning essentially comes down to is to make someone a fool. To be a fon is to be a fool. To fon someone is to trick them. Fon, however, also gives us the Modern English word fond. And I wonder at that, at how the words for a person naive or stupid or innocent enough to be fooled could become the same words so inextricably tied to the precise connotations only they carry. How can foolishness eventually become the same words we use in fun house and fondly yours? Is it a bit ridiculous of me, to go into this year resolute about, technically, being a fool?

Maybe it is. I also — to say it as gently as possible — don’t really quite care anymore. I am tired of knowing things. It gets wearying, some moments, to be treated like I should be certain of things that other people aren’t, to not be allowed to remain unfinished at my own pace every now and then. I am also tired of acting like I can either anticipate what the world will give me next or wrangle it into giving me what I want next. Neither are more possible than the other. And there is so much freedom to be had in playing the fool with life for a moment here and there, if it also means allowing myself to be fond of the tiniest, most inconsequential things, and if, at the end of the day, it means having fun. If it means protecting what little I have left in me. If it means getting to keep what little remains of me. If it means that there are things in my life that get to stay sacred in the meantime. 

So, my friend, please don’t think this is a sad, somber letter. It isn’t. I am determined to have fun this year, however you might interpret that. And if you have any resolutions yourself, I wish you all the best with tackling them, with interrogating them, with transcending them. More than anything, more than any people we want to be, let’s also remember to protect what we do have, what we still have, and if the world ever gives or takes more, then we will figure that out when that time comes, too. Don’t we always?

A rather late but no less heartfelt happy new year to you, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

Your huckleberry friend,

Sha