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by
Mari Andrew
Read between
March 25 - March 26, 2021
In the journey to adulthood, you can use an old guidebook that belonged to your parents, hitting up the same monuments they did when they took the trip. It’s probably the only map you have lying around, and it seemed to get them there, even though their lives aren’t necessarily what you’d create for yourself. Their worn-out map probably points to a specific route, to achievements by certain ages, to designated stops along the way. This map shows a paved road, the safe way. But what if nobody gave you a map? Or what if the typical route doesn’t do it for you? You might choose something else: to
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The end of summer is slower. This time of year is precious to everyone. It belongs to the soft cotton part of your heart that never ages past ten years old.
When I entered my twenties, an older friend told me it was my time to explore. I had ten whole years just to grow and experiment and push my limits. “If you stumble,” she said, “that’s a great sign. It means you found your edge. You tried something that didn’t work, and now you know.”
This was the first time it occurred to me that I was not immortal, and the first time I realized just how much I enjoyed living. Not because of triumphs and trophies, but because of things like pressing elevator buttons, wearing a sweatshirt and making pancakes on Christmas morning, finding a seat on a crowded subway, reading on trains, whispering when there was no need to, and watching a cat clean his ears with his paw.
What I love most about living isn’t accomplishing things, but experiencing them.
They say saudade is unique to Portuguese, impossible to define in English. Nostalgia gets pretty close, but saudade is more complicated. It’s the remnant of gratitude and bliss that something happened, but the simultaneous devastation that it has gone and will never happen again. It marries the feelings of happy wistfulness and poignant melancholy, anticipation, and hopelessness. It’s universally understood by a cross-ocean culture with a constant feeling of absence, a yearning for the return of something now gone.
But the truth of grief involves stepping into the deepest, darkest, monster-infested zone and acknowledging, “This place is the absolute pits, and you might be here a long time.” It takes a very brave person to step into the lightless murk of true empathy, and I’m fortunate to have a few of these brave souls in my life.
Acceptance is not a relief; it’s the realization that you will always carry grief with you.
People are so uncomfortable with the lack of a point to life that almost every religion has a belief in a higher plan for each person’s existence. Even people who eschew religion may instead put their faith in astrology or the universe, attempting to make sense of rejection as something that “wasn’t meant to be,” and something that paves the way for “something better to take its place.” It’s a comforting thought until you get tied up in the logic that the universe’s plan has failed plenty of people.
The mire is where lotuses grow. At least, this is what friends told me as I confessed that I had found myself at rock bottom.
I was there in the dead of South American winter, which is to say, a gorgeous time of year.
felt like so many of my insecurities went away when I traveled, and the things I’m most self-conscious about became things that helped me be a better traveler.
But over time, I strengthened into a different version of myself. I had new muscles, a new way of moving in the world. My creativity and resilience and courage had grown. All this growth made me feel worthy of a new kind of romantic love—one in which I was far less concerned about whether I was worthy of a man and much more interested in his worthiness of me.
