Today, I'm writing to you from a bustling coffee shop within a local food hall in Durham. The couple next to me is chowing down on dumplings, the pair of friends on the other side of me is inhaling wood-fired pizza, and me: now I am hungry. Above all things, I am slowly crawling back to myself.
Clarity is a funny thing. Last weekend at this very moment, I was at a different desk with a different vantage point (and no coffee on hand). I was writing to you with the day behind me, my dear friend sleeping on the couch beside me, and the apartment windows in front of me lighting up as night fell.
The morning before I took off on a plane toward New York City. As I rolled to my parents in a foreign car and in all black, I looked out over muddied river waters and shivering buildings that seemed like they needed a blanket. I wondered about a lot of things I didn't quite find answers to, like: will my dad be okay and how can he be, will I survive anyone else I love dying, was I supposed to be in this city with her already all of this time, and can my grandma hear me when I talk to her.
I gave my parents the biggest hug, and we accidentally ended up at the diner where they had dinner before my mom's high school prom. The staff, made up of people of different ages and ethnicities, exclusively played Taylor Swift songs — which I was weirdly and fittingly listening to in the car ride less than an hour before. I asked the teenage hostess if the restaurant had any affiliation to her. She replied, “No. They just like her music.”
marjorie came on moments later. It's a song about her late grandmother.
Later that day, I wrote: “The things I want and need to process are too big to write about this week, because a loss so great is something that can't be processed in this short amount of time. I also can't seem to write about anything else."
When the jumbled jungle of emotions and words I had written down last weekend didn't feel quite right (and honestly, felt like way too much), my friend told me to return to it next week. I fought it at first, but decided to lay it down. We went to
Ruby's for dinner and walked 30 blocks back in the freezing, enlivening cold. It was the right choice. Now here I am. Everything softened like butter and the words have slipped right into place, even if the emotions around them aren't alright or all perfect or all better. They just are, and that feels okay right now.
Clarity goes hand in hand with time. So does peace, healing, understanding, comfort, joy. Time is only to be listened to; not rushed. Lay it down. Rest.
Now, in this bustling coffee shop within a local food hall, the couple next to me has been replaced with another, the pair of friends on the other side of me is gone, and me: I am full. With what, I'm not exactly sure.
Breathe (2 AM) plays instead of
marjorie. I wonder if my grandma can hear me singing the lyrics under my mask. I wonder if the deepest parts of me can hear it, too.
Thank you for reading
last week's letter. And thank you to those who admitted that they read it because they care, but also because they are nosy. There is nothing like radical honesty. See you next week — or maybe the week after.
