ribs
All encounters in life are reunions after a long time apart.
I don’t celebrate Christmas, but my family does. So naturally, I’ll be attending family events. Usually I just hide in the corner with my eyes super glued to my phone screen, unspeaking and unmoving. The personification of a mentally ill couch potato.
Yesterday had been fun. So that’s a shock. I’ve written this phrase before in my journal pages, haphazardly and in black ink: ”I can tell it’s December through the chill in the wind, but my heart is much lighter.” I talked to him over the phone and made bracelets with my cousins. Afterwards we went on a night walk through the neighborhood, I felt the cold seep through the thick polyester of my jacket, and we got ice cream at a local convenience store. I haven’t eaten anything flavoured purple yam in a long time, I was surprised that I didn’t hate it. Every bite was laced with caramelized sweetness, sticking to my teeth, but for some reason, maybe because of the light-hearted sensation I was harboring, I didn’t hate it. I didn’t think about punishing myself for eating so much, either.
(A part of me, even though it might dwindle into a speck of dust one day, will always remain ravenous. The sad truth about eating disorders is that they burrow itself under the skin. The calorie calculator up there may rust, but I don’t think the battery will ever die out. One of the hard realizations I had to swallow involved my disorder and disability. I’m resigned to it, but that doesn’t mean I’ll just wallow in my misery and drink my days away to the bottom of the glass. Being permanently mentally ill doesn’t mean I have to be permanently miserable. Sometimes that little girl within me says I don’t deserve that kind of self-indulgence. I have to sit with her for the rest of her life. I’ll hold her hand and wipe her tears away, because no one else did that for me.)
This town is held close to my heart. The road is wide and seems to stretch on for eternity. The rare lampposts stroll through its edges by the sidewalk, however there’s an off and inconsistent chunk of free space between each one, resulting in a periodic blanket of darkness. I felt like we were in a strangely cozy horror movie.
I miss this place the moment I leave it. I miss the harsh cold and the cable lines crisscrossing below the looming dusty blue sky. I hope that next year, when I return to this place of stifled laughter and chocolate, that I’ll be someone I can admire.
I want to be someone admirable not just to myself, but to my loved ones too. It's so strange growing up, you know? But I think I'll learn to like it. I hope that when we head to university—my circle of friends in LSPU SP, Mel in BSU, and Artyom heading to college again—that the new faces and environments won't pull us apart. That our connections will deepen, that distance will make fondness grow stronger. They are the only friends I need, after all.
We spent our youth together. I think it's great that I got to be immature and embarrassing with the people I love. I'll look back at those moments and cringe, but for now as the year near its end, I'll think of it with nothing but affection in my heart.