The biggest thing we distract ourselves with (in the Western world) is no longer pleasure but finding meaning. It’s much easier to get caught up in finding meaning rather than doing, feeling, perceiving.

I’m questioning what that is — meaning. What does it “mean” to have a meaningful life? What does it “mean” to create a meaningful thing? And mostly, why does everything have to “mean” something?

I think our quest for finding meaning has become religious and incessant in its pursuit in a way that no longer contributes to the genuine development of the search. It’s a default mode of being that isn’t necessarily expansive; instead, it is obsessive and relentless and inherently tied to a type of perfection. It’s odd that way, how relinquishing actually renders freedom.

There’s some phrase stirring said by someone at some point — I’ve conflated flowers blooming with sunsets but whatever. The thing is: they just do. They just happen. And if I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that “just do your best” tends to cover most if not everything.

Life gets distilled into singular moments. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never stop wanting all the things and people and places that I’ve wanted.

When I question why I’m here, sometimes I think it’s just to make a good story. I know I always have to be prepared to walk away. And it’s not hard to know that the simple things are ultimately what matter, but it’s difficult to get off the ride.

It’s a carnival. It’s lonely out here. Oftentimes, I live inside my head too much. Reality’s stark; my imagination is lean. I’ve always been a magnet for happening.


The life I want is the one I have, but how can I be sure?

Beauty is painful. My entire life gets lost in it: muddled and blended til all I know is the whirr of an aeroplane and that wherever I rest my head tonight might be the closest I’ll ever get to home. Which is to say that I was restless.

When people call me strong, what they’re really saying is: you’re on your own.

One summer I was picked out of a crowd. Still can’t quite say why. And all the places I come back to are just reminders of the things I have lost.

Sometimes I feel so alone that I can almost grasp the freedom and desperation in the potential of being anybody. How long does it take to disappear? Forty minutes with some hair dye, the rate at which no one can find you. And that, for me, is easy.

I know when I look at the stars at night that I’m staring at moments that have passed. Endings raise the hair on my skin like fear and cold air.

If you don’t know me, you’d think that I wear all this well. Transient shit.

Well?

Last summer I was in San Francisco. I yelled Solange as we cruised down Highway One, watched the fearless boys bullet down the hills (and I love them so).

I sang in Dolores Park with my Morpho and that blue butterfly, let my heart ache its way over Twin Peaks. I always know what will hurt me most later. And so a certain savour.

When I lie on the couch in a hoodie watching basketball, I’m indulging in a normal thing. I kinda feel most like the me I could’ve been, in another life, but I got this one.

I’m not afraid to say that love is the only thing that really healed me. People who experience it unconditionally and on a regular basis don’t know it as a feeling but rather a default state of being.

Still. I can’t waste time resenting the hand I got dealt. I’m lucky in many ways, I know, but mostly I didn’t come this far not to be happy.

I know that happiness will have a different look about it. It won’t be the flavour by which society persuades you.

I also know that the most I have to give will be invisible, and it will be given to you. Someone like that.

I try to tell myself to find ways to be happy with what I have now, that if this is all there ever is…

In another language, you could call it gratitude. In another language it’s called survival. The point of survival is to move forward.