It’s like this.

I cook oatmeal on the stove with ground cinnamon and pink salt. I pour hot coffee into a mug of steamed milk. I listen to jazz. I get dressed and go to class and feel all at once how strange and solitary these days are.

These days of finishing things, of squinting and seeing the end in sight.

[unearthed from the archive: was originally posted on June 15, 2023]

ENDINGS

College always felt like such a big thing. It felt monstrous in the way that all things do before you start, before you know anything.

Driving used to feel like that. Getting an apartment, a job, a life of my own. Traveling alone for the first time. I suppose that it was always something that I thought of the beginning of a hell of a lot more than I ever considered the end. Joan Didion put it perfectly when she said It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

Well I am seeing the end now. I am seeing the end like you see a car in your peripheral vision on the highway— blurry and fast-approaching. Where the hell did it come from and is it coming for me? They are telling me that I am graduating from college next week, that they need me to confirm an address for my diploma.

But wait. My what? My degree? No. Degrees are supposed to be harder to get than this. This has all felt like nothing. Like a dream. Like no time at all. I’ve only just been reading books and falling in love.

I was driving home today on a freeway that overlooks the downtown skyline and I had this moment where I looked to the side and saw the whole world blurring together in a haze. And as I pushed the gas and propelled myself farther and farther down the highway, I realized that that is what my life feels like these days. Like pressing my foot down hard on the pedal and watching the world as I have always known it grow smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

WHEN MY WORLD GREW UP

When you are growing up, your city is your entire world. It feels like a never-ending labyrinth.

As a kid, my mom would only ever let me go to the corner and back of our street. My entire world existed in the space between our house and that corner. And it felt endless. It felt like my own planet. Until one day I started going just beyond the boundary. I learned that if I snuck away at sunset and ran a half of a block up from the end of our street, I could see the two tallest buildings from downtown twinkling in the distance.

I knew I never had long, but I would stand there and watch the planes land over those buildings for as long as it would take for my mom to notice that I was gone. The sky would fade from a deep orange into a bubblegum pink that would fall down upon my skin and all over the ground. It was like standing in a cloud of warm, rosy light. It took my breath away.

For whole moments I would stay there, lost in the sounds of the world and the feeling of that air before realizing that I needed to get back. Those were the early days of my love for this earth, the ones that taught me to simply listen to it. They were also the ones where my world began to grow for the first time. I was just a kid but I knew that there was so much more for me on the other side of the line that had been drawn. I wanted more, even if it was only half a block.

FINDING NEW WORLDS

The first time I went alone to New York felt a lot like sneaking past that street corner.

I was suddenly inside of what felt like another planet. There was everything to do and everything to see. I was a kid tasting a bubblegum sunset for the first time all over again. And when I came home, I didn’t expect my city to feel as small as it did. The coffee shops and parks and beaches that I had spent my teenage years sneaking off to were suddenly tiny. They were not everything anymore. Suddenly the biggest place that I had ever known was like a grain of sand on a beach full of unseen places.

My world had expanded irrevocably. It would never be the same.

So as I looked out at that blurry skyline from the highway today, I couldn’t help but remember when it all still felt infinite. When I was that bare foot kid who stared out at the twinkling buildings on the top of the hill when she was supposed to be safely at the bottom of it where her mother could see her. I am still just that kid reaching out for infinity but the buildings are a bit taller now and a hell of a lot farther away. I’m going to need to steal more than half of a block this time and someone might notice that I’ve gone.

But for now, I am home.

I am going to the store and buying ingredients for dinner. I am going for long walks and imagining what my life would look like if it were playing out behind the windows of all of my favorite houses. I love the little Craftsmen homes, the ones that look like the smell of fresh banana bread. They always have baby strollers on the porch and fresh flowers in the windows. I stroll home and turn the oven on. I cut up broccoli and cauliflower and boil the water for the pasta. Tonight: penne with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and roasted vegetables. Black pepper and red chili flakes sprinkled over the top.

One moment at a time.

Love, m.

Click here to support a small artist with big dreams (me)

GET ON THE LIST

Subscribe to give your inbox something to look forward to.