Maheen Humayun's Blog

I miss you isn’t enough

[Image description: A woman lying on her bed, with half her face covered by her hair.] Via Unsplash

Trigger warning: Mentions suicide and depression

I never liked the month of May.

When I was younger, it reminded me of the end of things.

The end of the school year.

Exams.

The end of the uni year.

Coming home.

The Karachi heat.

But for two years now May has etched a hole into my very existence.

And as the calendar date changes from April to May, my heart quickens and my body numbs.

Because I don’t want this month to begin.

It’s too dark.

It’s too much.

And I’m not sure I can handle it.

All the bandages I use to wrap myself up during the other 11 months are ripped off

and I’m standing, looking at the month of May as it attacks my senses and reminds me of what I’ve lost.

Every tool I’ve used to begrudgingly rebuild my broken insides — the therapy, the isolation, the writing, drawing, reading, teaching, exercising — all of it merely quicksand as I continue to fall deeper.

I never did do a good job rebuilding at all.

Paper houses. If your very foundation is cracked — it’ll never stand tall.

It’s May.

And your face grows larger in my memory.

I ache for your company.

And my body crumbles.

I lay here in the bed I made myself and I relive every single moment of that day. When my eyes open in the morning. When I close them at night. I can’t stop reliving it.

The other day, I dreamt of you.

My dreams of you are abstract and complex, always filled with anxiety, because I know you’ll leave. Even as I wake up, I explore the meanders of your face.

I don’t have words for missing you.

How can I?

How can the word missing even come close to explaining what I feel?

The slicing of my heart into pieces. The anxiety that shatters me until I can’t look at my reflection anymore. The delusion I have built myself into to allow myself to ease back into society. The smile I have carefully sewn onto my face during the day so people deem me as acceptable.

It all collapses.

Because even in my dreams, it haunts me.

That listless feeling of my life moving too far away from you.

Of too much happening without you here.

Of me growing.

And you, eternally young and 24.

In my dreams, I crawl back to our younger years when life was easy and pain was a game we used to play to tell ourselves that we could feel anything but invincible.

Now, I feel anything but invincible.

I feel the fear. Real-raw-terrifying-fear that plants its seeds into my mind as I tackle my way through this new grim reality.

I miss you.

It’s not enough.

I miss you.

It’ll never be enough.

I’ll keep saying it.

Maybe one day, years from now, I’ll find enough words, enough to encompass the way I feel and plaster them onto my flesh so I never forget.

I miss laughing with you.

I wish I could have been the comfort you needed. I keep wishing, maybe because it’s better than the guilt I have felt, and continue to feel every day of my life after you.

Because now it’s just that. After.

I try to reach out to the girl I was up until that 17th of May:

Do I look like her?

Is my laughter the same?

Is the air I breathe still the same?

I don’t have the answers but life stutters along.

People don’t want to talk about suicide. They want glitter overflowing on their feeds. They want cookie cutter images of girls. They want beauty. Discomfort is a part of living. Life isn’t all that it’s chalked up to be and we need to acknowledge that.

We’ve become so comfortable with social media friendships — thinking seeing a friend’s Instagram story tells you they’re okay, or seeing their name pop on a whatsApp group chat is enough — it isn’t.

Checking in is important. I’ll never take a friendship for a granted now. Real conversation is the only thing that makes a person feel better. I could type up 20 white lies with my mantras of “I’m fine, I’m doing good, I’m alright” when in reality, I’m probably not.

Think about the people you value and let them know.

It could change everything.

How I finally allowed myself to choose my voice

Mind, Love, Life Stories

All my life, this is what I’ve wanted and I’m finally able to revel in it.

If you had asked me who I was four years ago, I wouldn’t know how to answer. I’d give you a generic response — writer, English Literature major, Pakistani — three basics.

Four years ago, there was a lot about myself I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what the meaning of my pain was.

I didn’t know what the importance of writing in my life was.

But mostly, I didn’t know what the importance of being selfish was.

For years I had been giving myself to the people around me. Cutting tiny pieces of myself and sharing them with a world that sometimes didn’t want them.

Here’s a piece for you…

And one for the woman on the road,

One for the friend I tried too hard to keep,

One for the friend that took me for granted,

One for the girl from my class who needed my notes…

Today, I collect all my pieces. I scoop them up and decide when they’re right to give. I smile when it’s earned. I laugh when I feel it. I express my feelings when I need to. Because otherwise, it all falls through the cracks and pulls you down with it.

Today, I sit at a cafe. My favorite cafe. Drinking my favorite iced coffee. Writing about what this moment tastes like. And let me tell you this, it tastes like deciding. It tastes like owning my choices. It tastes like the dreams I dreamed of at 13.

For a long time, my life was just passing by, and I didn’t seem to have any control over it.

I fell into two jobs. At the moment, I did really want them and they helped me, in many ways. But they weren’t really, truly pushing my career into what I needed.

Now, I’ve finally allowed myself space to be selfish and say what I truly want out of life — to write. To carry emotions on files, feelings in my pockets, and lace my letters with the written script so it dances when it comes to life.

Many people ask me: you have many talents, why do you want to write?

It’s a life without money,

It’s a life that is unstable,

It’s a life that lacks direction.

And it’s my life.

And I want to tell them all the truth behind it…

It’s a life with rewards,

It’s a life with meaning,

It’s a life filled with promise,

I wish I could tell them that nothing feels as good as when I finish a story or a poem. And I know it’s painful, as a process. I know that sometimes it feels completely useless and it’s completely frustrating. I know it’s incredibly isolating and when I feel it, when I really truly feel it, I can’t be around anyone or anything, just my hands on the keyboard.

Clacking away…

because this is who I’m meant to be.

Everything that happens in my life, I see it on paper. Over and over again.

It becomes evocative and purposeful, and turns what was dull into color. And isn’t that the inherent beauty of life?

Because for me, it’s always been about that.

And four years later, this is what I’m happiest about.

That I chose the one part of me that feels most like home — my voice.

Originally published at https://thetempest.co on July 18, 2019.

Let’s not pretend that Chuck Bass was some sort of Prince Charming

[Image description: Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl stares off camera. His hair is brown, slicked sideways and he is dressed in a suit.] Via Elite Daily

I’m watching Gossip Girl with different eyes now. Politically correct, aware, activist, feminist eyes. And so much of what happens on this show is messed up. Mainly, the glamorization of Chuck Bass’ (played by ) character.

I first watched the series when it was released. I was only 13 years old.

So naive. So innocent. So out of touch with ideas of consent and independence.

All I knew was that I was watching this show, along with all of my friends. The series ran until my final year of high school. By then, I had changed so much but my addiction to the show and my awe of the characters had not. Recently, after a few years, I decided to rewatch it and realized just how fucked up it really is.

Here’s the devastating truth about bad boys: they don’t always change.

Season one? So much shit goes down but the one thing I absolutely cannot get over is Chuck’s rapey behavior. In the first episode alone, he racks up two accounts of sexual assault. First with Serena van der Woodsen and then with Jenny Humphrey. In both instances, he got off scot-free.

Instead, the audience is made to focus on yearning over the will they/won’t they of his and Blair’s (his love interest) mess of a love story. In the second season, they do mention that night again, but Chuck just apologizes to Jenny and in the typical fashion of our current society, it’s pushed under the rug. And damn, it did not sit easy.

And yet I continued to watch to see what else I’d notice.

Season two works beautifully in building Chuck out to be this hot, mysterious all-encompassing 17-year-old billionaire, which he reminds everyone multiple times. His hair, outfits, everything seemingly changes aside from the inherent darkness within his character. And we, the gullible audience, dote over that darkness, waiting for it to sprout into something beautiful. It may be because so many of us lend ourselves over to the idea of the bad boy finally turning good.

But here’s the devastating truth about bad boys: they don’t always change.

Season three (yes, my binge watching is problematic) comes with another dark side of Chuck. Everything about his and Blair’s relationship is shaded with this deeper and desperate need for pain. In season three, episode 17, ‘Inglourious Bassterds’, Chuck basically sells Blair for his hotel. He plays her into believing that the only way to save the empire is for her to sleep with his uncle, and Blair, full of naïveté and misconstrued pretenses of love, falls for it.

Love should never justify treating women as objects.

Chuck also carries around this black book that lists all the girls he has at his beck and call. It’s seriously disgusting, and just kind of ignored in the show. It’s weird that there are these unspoken rules for men and women where a man exploring his sexuality is deemed as alright, or he’s just called a fuck boy and he wears that as a badge, but for women, they’re constantly shamed and blamed for acting in the same way.

The truth of the matter is that this entire situation was so chucked up that I don’t understand how Blair ever forgives him. Watching this show as a teenager and believing that their love could overcome anything was so problematic for me. Love should never justify treating women as objects. Thankfully, Blair finds the strength to push him away. Though his response is that she should stand by him through the worst of the worst.

How is any of this okay? And how on earth was this the TV show of our generation?

In the final season, they end up getting married, and as a teenager, damn, I celebrated it. I remember all of us girls were so happy that the on-screen relationship we were pining over finally come to fruition, but it wasn’t okay. I will not glamorize his character. I will not allow myself to ignore all the bad in men anymore.

How is any of this okay?

Growing up, so much of what I was taught about heterosexual relationships was based on a power dynamic — the man has to earn, the man has to be strong, the man has to be manly. But I’ve realized that all that was bullshit. Balance is everything. So while TV shows, and characters like Chuck, will always remain at the front lines of our lives, we have to compartmentalize.

We have to stand up and say, this isn’t okay. This never will be.

https://thetempest.co/?p=113110

Originally published at https://thetempest.co on June 11, 2019.

What I’ve learned about my mental health after losing my best friend

Sometimes I still delude myself into believing I’m living a nightmare. I believe none of this ever really happened. I’m half asleep, walking through life and just going through the motions.

It’s been one entire year since my best friend took his life. Saying those words still does not come easy to me. I don’t like to use the phrase ‘ committed suicide ‘ because from the beginning, it stigmatizes the act. Nothing about what he did was criminal; nothing about what he did loans itself over into that narrative for me. The only thing that comes through is pain. A pain that now resides within my bones. Pain that’s wrapped itself into my bloodstream. Pain that has now made a home within me. But that pain also translates into remembering.

Grief doesn’t follow any specific order as you might think. It injects itself into your world and destroys everything. You have no way to protect yourself from it. One year ago, I wrote about how broken I felt. Today, I honestly don’t feel any different.

I’m just going through life. I have days when things are good and I can almost taste happiness, but then there are others where I’m knocked out and can’t breathe. I’ve always been good at avoiding things and at some point last year, I took the pain I felt and tucked it away. However, when people speak about suicide ignorantly, when people pass unwarranted comments about mental health, or when they just bluntly ask me if I knew what he was going through — I’m triggered.

I’m trying so hard, I swear. I’m talking about it, I’m learning the effect of my voice in society, I’m calling out for help when I need it, but I’m still not okay. And I think, for now, that’s alright.

One year later, there are so many things that I can say I’ve learned. Over the past year and a half, I’ve been teaching O level students (between 14 to 16) literature. While I’m teaching, I have the opportunity to observe students and the narrative they create for themselves. And it isn’t a pretty one. There’s a lot of self-deprecation, nihilism, insecurity, crudeness, bullying, drama — everything that builds into an incredibly toxic environment.

Observing this space has really irked me. K nowing that there is only so much I can do ends in my savior complex screaming to be let out. A lot of mental health issues begin to stem post-puberty, and being in that competitive, high-stress environment where it’s “Get an A or just be written off,” creates resentment within and amongst students.

I’ve learned that schools need to do better to create safe spaces for their students. They need to allow for mental health days, moments to breathe, walks outside class, and to enable a conversation between student teacher that isn’t a power play. Otherwise, things won’t change. We will continue to ignore the importance of mental health and refuse to engage in the discussions surrounding it.

When people casually throw in an “I’m gonna kill myself” in conversation with me, especially people that know about him, I can’t deal with it. Talking about suicide requires a certain type of language, and just throwing the word around as if it were trivial is deeply painful for those who’ve lost someone to suicide, or are contemplating it.

Creating a safe space for yourself is everything. If this year has taught me anything, it’s to choose myself. I know that it’s okay to be selfish, to put my well being above my “yes, girl” instincts. There have been days where I haven’t wanted to leave my bed, moments where I randomly burst into tears, and times where everything just seems too fucking much. I’ve come to terms with the notion that things will be overwhelming, that nothing in life comes easy, especially your personal growth and happiness.

When you’re there, seemingly sinking into the darkness, acknowledge it, allow yourself a moment to truly check in with yourself. I’ve done it; I’ve isolated myself beyond belief for weeks at a time because after my friend left, I didn’t think I had it in me to be the same person I was. And I’m not. I am definitely not. But realizing that I can’t always be the one giving in every relationship, understanding that not everyone will understand, and knowing that that’s alright — that’s what’s really helped me. I used to expect a lot from others, but expectations are bullshit. Nothing ever goes as planned and that’s what we need to plan for.

Allow yourself to make homes within other people. There are a handful of people who have made this year bearable for me. When he left, my life felt like it had been pierced through and that time stood still. Yet here I am, one year later. And I’m alive and I can do so much with my life. On the first birthday after his death, we told stories about him. On the first new year after his death, we mourned over him. Now, on his anniversary, I hope to do right by him. I want to remember the incredible friend he was, the one that changed so many of our lives.

I know I’m tumultuous, and sometimes I can be completely irrational because I feel like a loose cannon. But, I’ve realized that it’s alright to be more emotionally inclined. It’s okay to tell the people in your life that you care about them, to reach out to an old friend just because, or to do something nice for someone — because life is too damn short to risk it.

And finally, I’ve realized that I will always have questions. I will always have that one question. I go to sleep dreaming about it, letting the question mark engulf me as it grows larger and more vast, but I’m hanging on. I always have to remind myself that my questions are valid, even though they can never be answered.

Last year, at this exact time, I remember writing about mental health awareness week and feeling like I knew so much. The world shakes us to our core in the most messed up of ways, and this was mine. I realized that sometimes you never really know someone as well as you think you do, and I’m learning that my mental health needs to be my top priority. Because when it’s bad, when it’s really bad, you can almost feel yourself free falling into nothing, spreading thin over the encompassing sky, handing yourself over to that feeling; that’s when you’ve gotta reach down. That’s when you gotta reach out.

His death lives in all of his loved ones, just as he does. Life slowly pushes on, but I will always remember.

If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, check out the resources below:

* Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline1–800–273-TALK (8255). Here is a list of international suicide hotlines.

* People who are deaf or hard of hearing can reach Lifeline via TTY by dialing 1–800–799–4889 or use the Lifeline Live Chat service online.

* Text TALK to 741741 for 24/7, anonymous, free counseling.

* Call the SAMHSA Treatment Referral Hotline, 1–800–662-HELP (4357), for free, confidential support for substance abuse treatment.

* Call the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline, 1–800–656-HOPE (4673), for confidential crisis support.

* Call Trevor Lifeline, 1–866–488–7386, a free and confidential suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth.

[Image description: A black and white image zoomed into a girl’s face. She has a nose ring and her cheek is streaked with tears.] Via Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

* 7 Cups and IMAlive are free, anonymous online text chat services with trained listeners, online therapists, and counselors.

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https://thetempest.co/?p=113948

Originally published at https://thetempest.co on May 18, 2019.

“The Perfect Date” is only perfect in movies, and why rom-coms still need to do better

Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture

I love Noah Centineo and the charisma he exudes, but this movie is setting the wrong precedent for young people.

I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. When someone asks me what my favorite type of movie is, my answer is always, without a doubt, the rom-com. The early 2000s were the best years for people akin to the rom-com, there was something for everyone. At that age, I didn’t think much about the implications that the rom-com entailed.

I just thought of it as guy meets girl, they fall in love and that was that (very heteronormative, but pop culture while I was growing up didn’t show the possibility of girl meets girl or guy meets guy). For me the rom-com can’t be defined as a genre, it’s a mood. Since last year and the rebirth of the rom-com with Noah Centineo taking center stage as the male heartthrob, I’ve realized that rom-coms are great for light watches, girly nights, and heightened emotions, but some of them may be problematic.

Last weekend, I watched Netflix’s The Perfect Date, and on the surface, it was your typical feel-good rom-com. The guy meets cute, they become fast friends, they realize they have feelings for each other, and eventually they end up together. The predictable plot wasn’t what irked me.

There was one scene in particular where protagonist Brooks Rattigan (Centineo) writes a letter to Celia (Laura Marano), expressing how he truly feels and he says that before she came into his life, there was this inherent emptiness within him, and I think that was the problem; the story revolved around this teenage boy who didn’t understand who he was, and suddenly his journey of self-discovery came to a close because of this one girl.

The entire movie is based around Brooks trying to figure out who he is to write his college essay for Yale. At the end, there’s this scene where both characters, having been estranged, meet at a coffee shop. A lot of emotions and hopes rest on this one table. Brooks hands Celia this paper, saying he’s finally written the statement, (subtext: finally understood who he is) but the essay ends up being addressed to the Admissions office at “The University of Celia” and is just cringeworthy and sappy on a whole. The notion that these movies are teaching the younger generation that you need another person to somehow feel whole is the problem.

The Perfect Date warps audience-beloved Noah Centineo into this compulsive liar and manipulator. Even when Brooks and Celia pretend to be dating to make their love interests jealous, it was just plain bad. Brooks’s character is your typical annoying high school jerk. His entire scheme of creating an app to ‘service’ women also leaves a bitter taste. His goal in life to be something, to change the world in a Steve Jobs way, but he doesn’t know what he wants to change or how or why. His misconstrued idea of being special banks on popularity, wealth, getting into an Ivy League, and the hottest girl in school. Cause that’s what everyone’s dream is right?

Wrong. It isn’t.

The movie relies on Centineo stealing the audience’s heart solely because of how he’s been built up in his other films released last year like To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and Sierra Burgess is a Loser. His fans were craving a chance to fall in love with Brooks like they did with Peter Kavinsky in TATBILB, but it wasn’t the case. SBIAL was also incredibly problematic; I don’t know if the leads of these rom-coms being manipulative liars are supposed to appeal to the common movie watcher, but for me, I just felt weird.

Rom-coms from the early 2000s still had that whimsical glow of the happily ever after that weren’t as problematic as these films. But what happened to the rom-com? Why did it take this on-screen presence that we loved so dearly and mold itself into a Noah Centineo shrine that accepted all his character flaws without even considering the wider consequences?

Imagine a young girl watching A Cinderella Story, or Sweet Home Alabama, or A Lot Like Love and thinking that’s how relationships work, seamlessly transitioning into a happy ending. Imagine her mapping that rhetoric out in her own relationships, what does that set her up for? It isn’t happiness, and it isn’t the so-called happy ending.

This is not to say that I’m not going to watch these rom-coms, because I will still enjoy them, but that doesn’t mean I can’t criticize them or call them out. Everyone claims to be “woke” and understanding of the concept of what’s politically and socially correct, and for me, The Perfect Date just did not cut it. Aside from that, I am at that age where I can truly just enjoy a film for fun, but it does have a greater impact on the younger generation. There is a risk that a big chunk of the impressionable audience will start believing that the Sierras and the Brooks out there are good people because they end up getting the boy/girl. Except, life isn’t about finding someone to make you whole. That empty feeling — it won’t really go away until you’re truly self-reliant.

The Perfect Date showed me just how imperfect rom-coms can be. My inner romantic writes this even though I know I’ll keep watching, but I just wish there was the perfect rom-com with the perfect message.

Originally published at https://thetempest.co on April 20, 2019.

My karachi lens

Culture reverberates through the heart of this city

I feel my Karachi lens expanding

The gaze of the intellectuals

The literatures

The writers

The thinkers

Charged with one meaning

The defenders of the written script

The warriors of the pen

Take up arms

In hopes

That someone out there is listening

Understanding

For the sake of art

For the sake of truth.

How to pick yourself up after the winter sparkles settle

Health Care, Mind, Love, Advice, Wellness

There’s always that one month that rolls around where everything spins out of control.

The onslaught of February has come in all its gusto. The weather in Karachi is settling down. The buzz of the winter has long gone. It’s time to get to work, to pick up all the pieces of the unfinished puzzles we left back in December.

Every year on February first, I imagine it as the new year. January has too many highs, too many things going on — wedding season ending and questions beginning, resolutions luring me in on social media, my birthday and all the expectations I hold for it, just that shiny feeling of everything being glossed over, glazed over, looked over. But all that’s been washed away now. It’s just me. By myself. On my own and I’ve got to get my shit together.

This time, I’m making myself a promise. To execute. To plan and pull through. To find all the pieces I’ve thrown around and pick them up. To make it all my own again. Because that’s the problem, right? Ownership, identity, finding yourself. Isn’t that the culmination of everything 20s?

So here’s what I find helpful:

Lists

Lots of them. Excessive amounts that fill all those new notebooks.

Sleep

Sleep well, rest well or you will burnout and crash.

Reaching out

It’s imperative to reach out and talk to your boss, or a friend when everything is piling up and you can’t find a way out. There is always a way out that isn’t avoiding.

Avoiding my responsibilities has always been a problem for me. I’ve been a multitasker since I can remember, taking on too much, moving too much, doing too much. But I’m tired and I don’t know if I can anymore.

I have my new planner sitting on my desk. I’m filling it in.

I have all my new stationery lined up, ready to conquer the classroom.

I have my books lining the ends of my shelves, begging me to pick them up and bring color into my world.

I have all these fitness plans waiting for me to be healthy again.

I have the name of my new novel floating around my google docs.

I want it all so bad but I can’t remember all the pieces I’ve left astray. I’m running around my head, grasping for them, scooping them up, trying to put my life back together and wondering how I dropped the ball.

I have all these ideas and plans.

For my future.

Execution has always been a problem for me.

That’s why I keep moving, moving, moving. Unable to stay in one place for too long. I don’t want things to get boring, repetitive, the same. I’m not cut out for the same so I fill my days with too much of what’s different. People and places and things.

I’m going to follow my own advice this time around. I know that my mental health is everything and all these little things that I want to keep for myself, they deserve nurturing as much as I do. This February, as everything settles, I’m starting again. My cogs moving slowly and finding their perfect rhythm.

Originally published at https://thetempest.co on February 21, 2019.

I am the word collector

I’m collecting all the words. Constantly. Picking them up. Sliding them into my arms, more words than I can hold. More words than I can understand. I’m scooping them up. Consuming them. Keeping them for myself. All the words. I want all the words. I grab and grab and grab the words. All for me. All for me. I pick them out of books and articles, out of peoples’ mouths and make them my own. I take all the words. Grabbing at them violently. Desperately because I need them so bad. I need them so badly. I take all the words. I bite at them, feel around for them, even in the darkness, even when there are no words left to latch onto, I feel for them. I’m collecting all the words. I’m writing them down. My fingers swiftly moving across the keyboard. My body moving to the rhythm of some sad indie song that I’ve heard about a thousand times before. Because I crave the comfort of what’s known and predictable. The same way I read the same book over and over again because I like endings I’ve already heard before. Otherwise, I hate endings. I hate saying goodbye. I hate people leaving. I hate words being thrown out and then never being given back. I can’t keep giving my words away to people when they aren’t returning them back. I can’t do it. So I take them. I take them all. Wrap them up into poems and prose. I keep wrap wrap wrapping. Not stopping. Not breathing. Not for anything because I need the words so desperately. I pick them out of the empty air. And water them until they bloom, nurture them until they grow up. Tie them up. Beautify them for the world to see. And then slowly, when I feel ready, which is not often, it takes time, and effort and a lot of self loathing and self love at the same time, I release them. My little butterflies, floating into the world, a world so encapsulated with hate. Trying to send them to grasp onto any form of love that they can find, letting their little wings fly above and beyond, in the direction of places I myself can never go.

Echo

[image error]

I hear this constant echo

in my head

every now and then

slowly reminding me

I am here

alive

breathing

I place my hand on my chest

searching for a lub dub

and yet

I feel

nothing.

 

via girloncobblestones

 

 

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All the things

I am dark wine on a cold December night.

I am the inhale and exhale of a menthol cigarette — the moments both in between and after.

I am the last page of your favourite book as you devour it slowly, unwilling to put it down.

I am the last sip of a macchiato on a hot work morning, leavin you bitter yet alive all at once.

I am 2am thoughts as they overwhelm your mind — intoxicating and spiralling.

I am the end of a rope as it breaks free, leaving you floating.

I am the fluffy quilt you hide yourself into, afraid of the world outside.

I am the early morning when everyone around you is asleep. The birds are chirping, as you silently listen to the wind and think about how alone yet free you feel.

These are the things I most frequently think of. Objects and feelings and motions that we go through, in and out, time and time again.

We could be a manifestation of any and all.

After all, I am. And for that, I will always be.

Inspired by Toni Morrison

https://medium.com/media/80b77deb4cef8f2055b0fa27a689876c/href